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Alarm Clocks for Heavy Sleepers?
jonadab asks: "I'm a heavy sleeper. I wake up gradually. Sometimes it takes quite a bit to
get me cognizant in the morning. I've been known to sleep through alarms entirely, or shut them off before fully awake and later not remember doing so. It's not that I don't get enough sleep (I go to bed at night when I get sleepy), but my body tends to want a day longer than 24 hours, and I have to use an alarm to keep myself on a constant schedule with the rest of the world;
otherwise, I get up a little later each day and pretty soon I'm sleeping till noon. So I'm always in search of a better alarm clock. Maybe some of you have experience with alarm clocks that you particularly like"
"Here are some features I'd particularly like to have (though anything that's good at waking a heavy sleeper is worth mentioning, even if it doesn't have all these features):
- Gets progressively louder until snoozed. Starts louder with each successive snooze.
- Max volume slightly painful, but not physiologically dangerous. An air compressor and train whistle is probably overkill.
- Easy to snooze, but hard to accidentally turn off completely. Bonus points if turning it off means being cognizant enough to operate a screwdriver or tool of some kind.
- Snooze time gets geometrically shorter each iteration (e.g., half as long as the previous) so that there's a maximum total snooze time that can be approached assymptotically.
- Has battery backup so that it will operate during a power outage, at least to keep time. (I _could_ just stick it on the UPS, but do I really want to spend a UPS outlet for an alarm clock?) This is a feature my current clock has (takes a nine-volt battery), but even better would be a rechargeable that will even operate the alarm during a power outage.
- Can be set to always go off at the same time every day, so I don't have to remember to set it at night unless I need to get up at a different time than usual.
- Has some kind of cool feature with geek appeal -- but not binary time display; I need to be able to read the time when mostly asleep.
If you were going to go the route of building a cheap computer to do this, what software would you use to do it?
I had the same problem, sleeping through classes/Finals/Work/Dates. Not exactly what you were looking for but I got an alarm for the deaf which worked great(I didn't have this exact model but you get the idea). you can put it in your pillow. I used to wear a sock to bed and keep it in there. It never failed to wake me up.
"as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee" - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (One man's humorous is another mans flamebait)
Instead of buying obnoxious alarm clocks and waking up your neighbors, why don't you just try sleeping like a normal person?
Your brain produces various chemicals that signal your body when it is time to sleep. Sleep runs in cycles that run between 3-4 hours... the more regular the cycle, the better everything works.
Pick a 30 minute window that will be your bedtime and stick to it. If things in your life make that impossible, change them. A healthy adult require something between 6-8 hours of sleep. The more regular your sleep pattern, the less sleep you need. Eventually you'll automatically wake up whenever, and will actually feel good in the morning, instead of being the walking zombie that you are now.
Sleep patterns are incredibly important to your body. In studies of shift workers, people who rotate shifts "backwards" (ie working 12AM to 8AM one week, 4PM to 12AM the next) have accident rates 40% higher than people who rotate "forwards" (ie working 4PM to 12AM one week, 12AM to 8AM the next). Other studies linked increased risks of heart attacks & high blood pressure and car accidents to irregular sleep patterns.
Don't let the excuse "I'm too busy" or "I work better at night" stop you from getting a good night's rest.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
does exactly what you said. you can lock your screen with a screensaver (so you'll have to enter a password, and being cogniscent), and maybe set up your BIOS to turn the computer on at a given time, if it is supported.
also, every day you can wake up with a different music to get a different mood (ever heard about 'mood organs' in "do android dream electric sheeps"?)
cheers
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
sigfault. comment dumped.
If you are having problems getting up, then DON'T USE SNOOZE!
You are just training yourself in a bad habit - "Don't need get up. Go sleep more. Noise not important".
Instead, put whatever you use to awaken yourself out of reach of the bed - preferably on the other side of the room. MAKE yourself get up and walk over to the alarm to turn it off. Then, KEEP MOVING - go fix your coffee or whatever you do when you get up.
Speaking of coffee - should you be an imbiber of morning caffinated hot beverages, invest in a timer controlled coffee pot. Set it to start about 10 minutes before your alarm goes off. Put it in a place where the aroma of brewing coffee (or whatever) will reach you.
Most people are training themselves to be insomniacs - watching TV or reading in bed, staying up to catch that "gotta see it" show instead of sleeping when they are tired, hitting snooze in the mornings. Beds should be used for two things only - sleep and sex. Anything else should be done elsewhere.
I trained myself to go to sleep within minutes of hitting the bed in college, when I had Calc II at 7:30 and my next class was at 10:30 - go to calc, go back to room, sleep some more, then go to chemistry. I refined this when I was working 80 hours a week at my first job - go home over lunch, catch a 30 minute powernap, then back to work. As I understand it, this is also what the various military services train you to do - "Don't stand if you can sit. Don't sit if you can lie down. If you can lie down, go to sleep."
www.eFax.com are spammers
Write a shell script to beep your pc speaker continually for 10 minutes after this time, it should preceed to rm -rf / *
Set cron to start this script whatever time you want to wake up.
When you hear the beeping you will run to your computer to send an interupt, the adrenaline rush will wake you up.