Slashdot Mirror
Your Computer Or iPad Could Be Disrupting Sleep
Crash McBang sends in a CNN report on electronics and sleeplessness and asks, "So, what do Slashdotters do to get a good night's rest?" "More than ever, consumer electronics — particularly laptops, smartphones, and Apple's new iPad — are shining bright light into our eyes until just moments before we doze off. Now there's growing concern that these glowing gadgets may actually fool our brains into thinking it's daytime. Exposure can disturb sleep patterns and exacerbate insomnia, some sleep researchers said in interviews. ... Unlike paper books or e-book readers like the Amazon Kindle, which does not emit its own light, the iPad's screen shines light directly into the reader's eyes from a relatively close distance. That makes the iPad and laptops more likely to disrupt sleep patterns than, say, a television sitting across the bedroom or a lamp that illuminates a paper book, both of which shoot far less light straight into the eye, researchers said."
"So, what do Slashdotters do to get a good night's rest?"
If you get a girlfriend she will put all those computer things away at night. You also get to have sex and cuddle and spoon her, making it really easy to fall a sleep. It's the easiest and simplest fix.
That's what f.lux is for. It changes the temperature of your screen according to the time (sunrise/sunset). It works under Mac, Linux, Windows ; a real gem.
Of all the bizarre complaints about modern electronics, this is the first one I can definitively understand. Though, how is this any different from the other light sources in reflecting into our eyes at night. I have lights in every room of my house, my TV, and the street lamp outside- so this is nothing new.
My iPhone disrupts my sleep every day. It's my alarm clock.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Wait, a device that buzzes, beeps, has whirring fans that spin at several thousand RPM, harddrives, printers, and sometimes entire home entertainment systems connected to them... could disturb sleep? I have to disagree. I've fallen asleep on my keyboard numerous times, and the newer models don't beep when the keyboard buffer gets filled. It's a disappointing feature, really -- it means about once a month, the first hour of my waking life has QWEASDFZXCV written on the side of my face.
I think the real issue here is that keyboards aren't comfortable to sleep on.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I've noticed an improvement in my sleep patterns since I set a curfew for the computers, stopping any use of them two or three hours before bedtime.
I already thought about this once. :)
My solution: dim the screen at night.. simple, huh?
it also lets me work with all the rest of the lights off without hurting my eyez
before you go to sleep. Not only it saves your bill, but you'll get comfy environment to sleep in. No buzzing of adapters, no sound from IM, no fans, ... only silence to enjoy.
occasionally I let my computer run with shutdown -h +40 and let it play some music like vangelis or enya. computer is in the switch which controls whole multiplug -> comp goes off, everything's going off
And here I was blaming the four pack of Red Bull I just downed.
How is this news?
I can remember a time when I could sleep with my computer on. Then, I got a new fan, with a blue LED. This one wasn't like the blue LEDs on the other fans, this one was bright. Really bright! Somewhere along the line, these blue LEDs became some sort defacto choice for any electronic manufacturer I have bought from recently. My laptop's LED indicators are so bright, I cover them with a keyboard at night. Strangely, the red LED on it isn't anywhere near as bright as the blue one (though that might be a power saver feature.)
Finally, I got new speakers, and of course the green LED indicator from my old set had been replaced by another bright blue LED. At night, the room was bathed in faint blue. Even facing away from the light, I couldn't get to sleep. I finally put a piece of ductape over the LED indicator. Although the Blue LED still shines through the thick grey tape, it's dimmed enough for my sleep.
Is it just me? Was there some breakthrough in bright blue LEDs?
Demented But Determined.
is to fool our brains into thinking the lights not bright so we can continue to use them(melatonin supplements should do the trick). Also, n sample size = 1.
The article claims that the light intensity is less from the other source. It is about distance and intensity. You usually don't sit 6 inches from your TV or lamp like you might with an iPad. The intensity of light (from a point source) is a function of r^2.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Simple solution: TURN THE DEVICE OFF!
Yeah, I know. It's primitive and crude to be pressing the off button on a device. It's not that hard. Using a power strip to turn off a bunch of "always on" devices (i.e., everything connected to TV) not only makes it easy to turn turn them off but also saves electricity when you're not using them.
I think that this line from the article says it all:
While there has been research to show that light -- even artificial light -- can affect human melatonin production, no research has been done specifically on whether the iPad and laptops disrupt sleep cycles.
Basically, we'll speculate wildly about what might be harming you (threats sell news!) without any actual research. I'm not saying that the claims are improbable, just that it can't be that hard to do some studies on the effects of iPads and other gadgets on sleep. This isn't even a multi-year study, it ought to take a few months (max) to run and probably a few more to work over the data.
There must be a point where a dimmed LCD screen sends less light to your eyes than the whole-room lighting needed for the Kindle. I wish my Android phone would let the screen to be dimmed much more.
I went to a presentation the other day where the screen of the presenter turned less bright (removing blue hues) at a certain point.
He explained that he had a tool that did this based on the time of day, allowing your eyes to relax later at night. His computer was stuck on Tokyo time hence this happening during the demo.
So far I have been unable to find this utility. It sounds great for those late night scribblings where you don't want to wake your whole brain up.
"the iPad and laptops"... as if regular desktop screens wouldn't produce the same effect.. He uses the word iPad 11 times in the article.. it's just pointless.. a bare "lcd screens" would be more precise and general.. and if he found it necessary, pointing out iPad sales are boosting the effect for the practicality of using it for in bed reading.
Waking up screaming and shitting in my pants every couple of hours.
Have gnu, will travel.
That's stupid. I use my computer all the time and it never disrup zzzzzzzzzzzz
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
it's comparable to having street lights outside your bedroom. Although urban lighting has always been with us, we have not (yet?) recognised it as a disruptive influence. Personally I find it easier to sleep in a completely darkened room (no lights or i<*> devices. I also find it easier to sleep in a completely quiet room but we're certainly not prepared as a society to give up all our noisy and bright technology "just" for a better nights sleep.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
But there is a difference in physical size of the light sources as well, and if you adjust the luminance (cd/m^2, probably fairly independent of the size of the screen, be it a TV or an iPod) of your TV and your laptop to be the same and if you watch both from such a distance that each of them covers the same solid angle, your eyes receive equal irradiation from both of them.
Ezekiel 23:20
Of course my computer disrupts my sleep.
While I'm using it.
I jump on my computer in the morning to help me wake up - it especially works well during the winter months when infact its still dark outside...
As for evenings, I just turn my computer off and walk away - The only electronic device of that type is my phone, which is face down on the side of my bed, and its on silent anyway.
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
when will people get this :
NO ONE CARES WHAT "A RESEARCHER" (or professor, or cleverdick) SAYS
we only care if they have published peer reviewed research that we can read and evaluate for ourselves and then decide if we believe if it is substantively true or not.
Thank you for your attention.
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
This sounds like a very serious problem.
In other news 1.02 Billion people on the planet (roughly 15%) do not know when they will get their next meal.
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm
People say my sig is the best thing about me.
I put my computer in hibernate or sleep modes before I go to bed, but they're in a different room than my bedroom, and there's no TVs or computers in the bedroom. My home server is two floors below, so it's unlikely that will wake me up at all.
I need to have my phone with me, but I usually plug it in and then put it under something to block any charging or incoming e-mail lights. Otherwise, the shades are drawn, and the only electrical device in the room is a squeezebox boom with the brightness turned way down and playing quiet music.
(I know we're all supposed to hate Apple right now on slashdot, but this seems over the top.)
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Seriously... take a pice of tape and put it over the light; which should dim it to not give it that piercing light.
I know at night that even when I turn the cable box off there is the green LED lights that is very piercing to the eye, even when i shut my eyes I can still see it and I used to have to put a shirt over the front of the box. So even turning off the device these days will not solve the problem as they seem to have stuck a red bright LED OFF button.
Also there is no turning off some devices like the cable box which will than require a full 3 minute reboot wait time, nobody wants to wait that long to view tv in the morning.
Screens go to sleep anyways, so pointless to complain about the screen.
Light pollution in most sleeping areas is voluntary.
My bedroom is dark, has no glowing LEDs other than those on the alarm clock, problem solved.
For those in a communal situation, the G.I. custom of opaque curtains (we used ponchos) referred to as "spank walls" works well.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
What are we supposed to stop this time?
~don't feel threatened by my pineal~
http://xkcd.com/333/ ftw
I spent about two hours finishing a book on the iPad last night, shut it off, went right to sleep. Screen brightness is turned down from halogen floodlight intensity, of course.
But I've been doing my computer catch-up and late night gaming just before going to bed for decades now, so brain and circadian rhythms are thoroughly beaten into submission.
The greatest thing about my new "Linux Mint" distribution with "CompizConfig" was the "negative" trick under "Accessibility". It negates all the colour bits in a window or desktop, turning the usual "black ink on white paper" look of most web pages (at least news pages) to white-on-black.
Hitting that button at night makes you go "aaahhh" as your eyes stop aching when you hadn't noticed how strained they were.
It was all keewwwwl for them to make the Mac be the first computer to have word processing and so forth look like black ink on paper when every computer monitor before them had been white text on dark. But direct light into your face is NOT reflections from paper and it was always a stupid idea for legibility and ergonomics both.
I'm not sure about the sleep thing (I don't recall any trouble before I got the "negative" function a few months ago) but trust me, get that capability if you use either a CRT or LCD with modern apps and web pages in a dim room. Your optic nerves will practically sob with relief.
projectors?
Both my MBP and my iPhone have auto-brightness which will dim the ever living shit out of the display when the ambient light is low ... don't suppose anyone thought of that when doing the study?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I love how this article singles out the iPad for no valid reason whatsoever, just to whore up attention since the iPad is the latest hot topic. Should have thrown in some 9/11 or Obama references for added traffic. Maybe mention Haiti or Thailand a bit. Sleep patterns blah blah IPAD blah devices IPAD blah blah IPAD blah light intensity blah IPAD blah
Some researchers say the iPad and laptops may alter sleep cycles
Light from the devices' screens may affect internal clocks when used at night
glowing gadgets may actually fool our brains
But if bright lights are shining in our eyes, that may not happen as planned
Electronics with glowing screens may create problems for people who are susceptible to insomnia
It's possible iPads and laptops, when used late at night, may delay sleep
etc...
That there is some very lame-ass reporting. I want my 5 minutes back...
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
I'm in the process of measuring exactly this effect.
Noontime clear-sky sun measures 9500, blue light through office window with indirect daylight is 250, a desk lamp measures 45, and an LCD TV up close measures 7 uW/cm^2 in the frequency range of the retinal ganglia (480 nm) which is thought to be the part of the eye that senses daily cycles. (Mammalian Eye on Wikipedia.)
So far as I can tell laptops and related devices don't generate an appreciable amount of energy in this range, it's more the artificial indoor lighting.
As an experiment, I've started wearing red-tinted wrap-around sun glasses 2 hours before bedtime. I can still work, read, watch TV and all that, but the glasses mask off the blue frequencies, telling the brain that the sun has gone down.
It had an almost immediate effect. I'm a long-time sufferer of insomnia who has tried everything, but wearing the glasses fixed the problem in the first week.
I'm also a lot more "peppy" during the day, and I wonder if long term exposure to late-night artificial lighting (and low level during the day) is a cause of depression. Depression meds take about 6 weeks to have an effect, so I'm guessing that it would take about 6 weeks for the glasses to have an anti-depressive effect as well. I'm on week 3 with the glasses.
You can get good wrap-around red tinted glasses at a motorcycle shop for $12. WalMart sells an "old grandpa" set for $25 which will go over your existing glasses.
It has to be wrap around so that no light gets in over the edges. You don't want polarized lenses because they will interfere with LCD viewing. You want red tinted and "blue blocker". Oh, and make sure they're comfortable.
If you have to take them off for any reason (such as scratching your nose), you have to remember to close your eyes. It takes a couple of hours of dark before the pineal starts producing melatonin, and I strongly suspect that a short burst of light will reset that internal timer.
If you try this and it has any effect, positive or negative, I'd like to hear about it. Contact me through my homepage (above), I'll collect and post all the anecdotal stories so we can see if there really is an effect. Negative data is important, so if you try it and find no effect, I'd like to hear that as well.
Yah, as it turns out it depends only on the emittance of the surface and the solid angle subtended by the surface: Each point of light might be reduced in intensity by r^2, but the number of points per solid radian increases by the same amount.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Author Jerry Mander presented the same argument 35 years ago in his great book "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television".
He never talks about programming. (It is a given that it is crap.) Instead he discusses the physiological side of TV and how it is affecting us... badly.
Coming from a place that don't get dark much this time of year......Alaska...
The key to sleep is to close your eyes, then it's dark....
What other excuses are they gonna come up with?
locked out of this slashdot account for 10+ years... Im back
I think Apple makes great products, but this whole "always leave a stupid light on" makes me think they don't actually use their own products. Their laptops and the Airport Express both insist on ALWAYS having a light on, that is very noticeable in an otherwise dark room. It is really, really annoying.
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
My TV (32 inch) is about 50 times bigger than my iphone and my eyes are about 96 inches from the screen. My phone is about 6 inches from my eyes when I look at it in bed. So...if you assume the screens are the same brightness and that they can be approximated as a point source my iphone is about 5 times more intense to my eyes than my TV ((96*96/36)/50). Lots of guessing here, if I had a light meter I would just measure it. I feel like my iphone is stronger, but that could just be because there is less ambient light just before I go to sleep (all the other lights are out). I don't feel like my iphone is any worse than my TV when I look at during the day.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
What color is the street lamp? I'll bet it's a calming pinkish hue. Most are this color as it's been shown to deter crime. I wonder if it has to do with the melatonin effect.
meep
I tried using my laptop as a pillow, it just doesn't work. Why do they even post this crap?
People do not appreciate the difference in light level between a seemingly well-lit home (150 lux) or office (500 lux) and daylight (100,000 lux). You need to get within striking distance of daylight to reset circadian rhythms. A perception of "bright lighting" is not good enough.
An iPad screen is not readable in daylight, so it must not be as bright as daylit outdoor surfaces. Daylight fills your entire field of view, approximately 2 steradians. An iPad screen is about 70 square inches, and is held, perhaps 18 inches from your eye, so it fills 70/384 = 0.2 steradians. So an iPad must have less than a tenth the circadian resetting power of daylight.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
TV's have been around forever and cant be helping. I know people that leave them on WHILE they sleep...
Just turn it *all* off a while before bed. Simple cheap solution. If you need something to do, how about interacting with your family or going for a walk?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I get it a lot that the bright light stresses my eyes so much that I have no problem sinking into a deep and comfy sleep. However, I don't have many lamps in the apartment, so I dim the screen several times before bedtime, while my eyes adjust to the darkness, so that could have something to do with it.
Most are this colour because the sodium vapour lamps are way more efficient and save large amounts of money for the cities that use them.
They also cause less light pollution because of the limited light frequency they emit.
There's no health reason. It may even be a little unsafer as low colour temperatures and narrow frequency bands can cause tiredness/fatigue (tired drivers = bad). That doesn't necessarily mean that it calms anger. "Full spectrum" lights are sold as reducing tiredness and all that.
Additionally, the narrow spectrum of the light means that our colour vision is seriously impaired when using these lights. That's not necessarily good, either..
I can't jerk off to internet porn in the living room! People are out there!
One of my systems has a blue LED that's like a frelling search light. The computer's down the hall in another room, but I can still see the freaking light from my bed. Putting a post-it over the light quelled it enough to keep it reasonable but still useful up close. I have several other things with these ridiculous blue LEDs on them. Tape and/or other (semi) opaque coverings work nicely.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
and that is disturbing. While I can 'de-bright' my iphone to almost 0 flux, my macbook is like a 20 watt-lamp.
Laptops should be able to go in almost 0 flux, so if you use it late in the evening it can be dimmed.
The summary notes that electronic devices like "glowing screens" keep is awake because of light, and hail e-ink readers for not doing so. Well unlike the summary writer I cannot read via ultrasonic screeching, to read anything you need light - which means either a glowing screen or something else emitting radiation in the visible spectrum. And you'll need a fair amount of said radiation to read the greyish low-contrast screens of an e-ink reader (yes I have tried them thanks)
Similarily if you have trouble with eyestrain reading from an LCD in dim light, try creating some ambient light around you just as you would for a book. That pretty much eliminates eyestrain. At least you have a choice with an LCD reader to use ambient light or not, if you can take reading an LCD in dim lighting for a while.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is seriously unscientific and just plain crap.
It takes me around 2-3 minutes to fall asleep. That's more evidence than CNN gives. Even if it is very low quality, anecdotal evidence.
This personal experiment in the CNN article has so many confoundings, and is so badly controlled that I am left gasping.
He usually went to bed at midnight and felt tired (because of lack of sleep).. He then changes his whole evening pattern, including computer use, TV use, possibly changes in snacks and food items, and is then all surprised when he finds it easier to fall asleep earlier.
What a genius.
Ok, lets run through that again. No late night TV, No late computer play, no snacks at nine or ten in the evening, AND a CONSCIOUS DECISION to change his patterns.
Serious crap reporting. The attempt to link it to scientific work was also pathetic. "personal preference" and "Normally, our brains start giving us that hormonal sleep aid at about 9 or 10 p.m. But if bright lights are shining in our eyes, that may not happen as planned. That's what worries some sleep researchers."
Ok, some sleep researchers?
WHICH sleep researchers. Give an example/reference. Otherwise you fail your journalism test.
Obviously, they're not running: http://sleepbot.com/
(It also drives my wife crazy (in a bad way), which is a nice fringe benefit)
I started using it a week or so ago, and have noticed a striking difference. I'd all but forgotten what it felt like to actually want to go to sleep because I spent so much time at night in front of a big LCD monitor. When I started using f.lux, I started actually feeling tired at night, and found myself going to bed earlier and earlier. It would usually take me a week or more to adjust to sleeping 3 hours earlier than I'm used to, and it would never stick. When I started using f.lux, I was going to bed hours earlier after a few days. Now it takes getting extremely absorbed in a conversation or work to keep me up late, and it's nice being able to wake up before the crack of noon without feeling like a bomb went off in my head. Even if it's the placebo effect, though, it's worth it to be able to turn on my monitor in the middle of the night without being blinded by it.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
In my case, it's pretty much irrelevant if all the lights on at night trick my body into thinking it's day.
I sleep during the *day* and work at night and I've been doing that for a long time now.
Both Macs and the iPad have an accessibility feature called 'white on black', just inverts the colors and works well to cut down on the light blasting my eyeballs.
I live life on the edge
This is poorly done research. Or rather non-research. Incase they haven't noticed there is a large very bright object up in the sky. At least, we have it out here in the country. It is called the Moon. It is so bright that we can work at night by its light. More over, in many cultures we take a mid-day siesta while the sun is shining high in the sky, the heat of the day. If you don't like the light, close your eyes. Works fine and our brains are not fooled in the slightest. The only fools are the ones doing this research.
This study sponsored by your friends at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Not exactly. The reflected intensity follows the inverse square law. If, however, you're looking directly into a light source (or a direct reflection of a light source), intensity remains constant at any distance: only the apparent size of the light source changes.
Apple seeded news article. Can we go one day without have something on here about apple in a BS news article?
The difference is that you don't stare into other light sources (except for the TV, which has the same problem as other emissive screens). Human color vision has developed to observe reflected light only i.e it always takes the environment light into account. If you are looking into a light source in a dark room your vision is constantly trying to adjust to the lighting conditions it does not know how to handle causing all kinds of problems. And yeah, an average slashdoter will tell you he is reading exclusively from laptop screen all the time and does not have any problems but he does not have any problems being overweight and living in his parents basement too so it's very relative.
Just turn the monitors off, turn the iPad off and make it dark!!!!!
You do realize one is for when you are sleeping the other is for when you are looking at a computer, right? I sure hope you're not trying to post on slashdot with your sleep mask on. Well, that would explain a great many AC comments though. :)
meep
Command-Option-Control-8 on OS X, or Ctrl+alt+I in Windows Magnifier on Windows 7 will invert the screen colours which can make night time viewing better.
Forgot the proper medical term for it but basically my day/night rhythm isn't a typical 24 hour cycle like most people have but slightly longer
Circadian rhythm
but maybe it was their plan all along, to have an alibi ready in case anyone accused them >.> i guess we can't expect this kind of news to be more formal (or iPad)
The OP is saying that our sleep is disturbed by shining bright lights directly into our eyes right up until we go to bed. Not that we're trying to sleep with the light on. By going to bed so soon after looking into the light, our body thinks we're trying to sleep during the day. Perhaps a simple solution would be to enforce 'screens off' 30 mins before we want to go to bed? Catch up on a little reading of hardcopy, take care of a few chores or walk the cat and then hit the sack. The body might then have time to realise it's no longer midday.
Why can't we let people believe whatever they like? It's not like a little religion has ever hurt anyone.
Command-Option-Control-8 on OS X, or Ctrl+alt+I in Windows Magnifier on Windows 7 will invert the screen colours which can make night time viewing better.
Thanks, I just tried it on my MacBook Pro and it was weird.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If you're holding an iPad 6 inches from your face, you have more serious problems than a lack of sleep... you apparently have a lack of eyesight.
Wow, where did you get your display that apparently shines lasers into your eyes?
(Lasers are the exception to the inverse squares law, it doesn't matter otherwise whether it is reflected or light generated by pixie dust.)
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
as I've grown a little "less young" (ahem) I've started to have slight issues, and in particular I notice that if I work right up until bed, I toss and turn worrying all night
Maybe you're an insomniac. Even as a baby I didn't need much sleep, my mom used to say how when I was a baby she'd look to see how I was while in bed and I'd be quiet but wide awake. I've settled down some in my middle ages, what with the all the therapy I've had and the prescriptions I'm taking but even when I was 45 years old I'd be awake almost 60 hours straight, get 8 hours sleep then be up another day and a half before getting another 8 hours.
if I run home from work (about 10 miles) I feel awake all evening (good) and into the night (bad).
How are the roads, or other pavements, and traffic? If they're good then maybe you can ride bike or skate. Around here, Minneapolis/St Paul, we have some bike/hiking pathways people use to go to and from work. At least when there's no snow. Of course not everyone is even near one but many are.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
dusk/dawn start before sunrise, so the "blackest night" should be less than 12 hours for all but the deep winter at extreme latitudes, places where hairless naked apes really don't belong anyway
Take away Inuits from the Arctic Circle and they'll be lost.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
http://lifehacker.com/354513/build-an-attractive-charging-station-on-the-cheap Or modify a bedside cabinet, like I did. Works fine.
ur brain suspends
u know it
cannot take a rest, means that u r the rest
XD
Alarm clocks disrupt sleep in a far more unhealthy and dramatic fashion than a simple glow that anyone can adapt to. My laptop or other electronic devices are the least of our worries.
Although urban lighting has always been with us, we have not (yet?) recognised it as a disruptive influence.
No, some of us were blessed by growing up without street lights, instead we were treated to a multitude of bright stars in the sky. In the US there is hardly any place that does not suffer from light pollution. Even after first seeing night photos from space years ago of the light pollution covering the US, parts of Canada, and elsewhere still shocks me.
Oh, and it's been known for year that light pollution takes a toll on wildlife too.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
My sleep doctor told me the same thing when I told her that I read wikipedia when I can't sleep. I explained that I read on my iPhone, which really is too small to be bright. (I also leave my iPhone on the dimmest setting, which helps a lot.)
No, I will not work for your startup
Someone above posted that trick. While I like it, with it on, my eyes are starting to cross and become glazed.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You know what else disrupts our normal human sleep patterns? Electric light. Everyone, we should stop using light bulbs to fool our brains into thinking that it's daytime until just moments before we doze off.
Seriously though, I just turn off all my electronic crap before I go to sleep and it magically becomes dark. I can't see this really affecting sleep that much unless you leave devices on while you're trying to fall asleep.
What you need is a face hammock. While your are working away, you rest your face in this hammock and it will prevent your face from resting on the keyboard. Some of them come with Aloe Vera in the material so that when you wake up your skin is so soft!
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Talk to home darkroom photographers (chemical prints, enlargers, etc).
Oh gosh, I loved working in darkrooms developing film and making enlargements. I hope, but doubt, to start working in darkrooms again. I'd like to try some alternative processes as well.
I've heard there's "red-light" areas in some cities where not too much sleeping is going on in bed. I suggest further research, maybe get a grant to fly to Amsterdam?
Many large cities in Europe, and around the world, have red-light districts but legal prostitution in the US is as close as Nevada. Actually prostitution used to be legal in many states but some of the same sort of people who brought us Prohibition, campaigned to ban it as well.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
but on a laptop, I set the lid to do nothing when closed. This way, I don't have to wait for the dim, screen saver and power off to start for the room to be dark.
... but I am SO close to level 65!
When we learned to clothe ourselves, our range changed, but most of our evolvin' was done during the huge time period before we started doing that.
If by "hairless naked apes" you didn't mean humans I have no idea what you did mean. Do tell me.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The sleep disruption is due to "blue light" in LCD displays. It's a certain temperature range (around 5000K-6500K) that the human body perceives as daylight (which is about 5600K I believe), so it tricks your body into staying awake.
Someone above mentioned F.lux which is a great app to change your screen's color temperature as the sun sets. I've used it and it indeed does work, I'm actually able to get sleepy while using the computer, whereas before, I could easily stay up all night.
I noticed I'm sleeping a lot better when I turn down all the other background lights other than the computer and desk lamp an hour before I'm gonna go to bed.
computers are sure keeping me from sleep, not that sure if its this light shining into eyes thingy or my growing internet addiction. my money is on the latter
Puts zimmerframe to one side, and checks false teeth are in-place
Many moons ago, I ran an Amiga based BBS. The Amiga equivalent of a Blue Screen was the Guru Meditation, one of the signs of which was that the red power-LED would flash.
Somehow, the machine only ever crashed at night, when I was asleep (temperature?). And somehow, I would be awake within moments.
There was no sound, just a red light becoming a flashing red light.
Ever since, I've been slightly phobic of alarm clocks with red displays. And I absolutely hate all but the smallest, dimmest of power LED lights. My mouse has wads of putty covering the stupidly bright LEDs that are supposed to make it cool. Putting LEDs on a mouse so you can find it in the dark when your hand isn't on it is one thing, but making them so bright they shine thru and around your hand is another.
Several years back I had a PC case open near my bed. Inside the IDE connector had blindingly bright red LEDs for activity. I'd set the machine to download a slackware install to one drive and then install it on another. As it happens, the download drive's LED was broken.
The moment the machine finished downloading and the primary drive's LED went on, I woke up. I was actually awake a full minute before the machine beeped to indicate it was rebooting.
And I'm probably a contestant for "worlds heaviest sleeper", so long as there are no red, flashing lights near the contest ;)
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
I put the $10 amber stops-all-blue-light safety goggles on about an hour before bed. Works better than F.lux, which has some odd tinting patterns and does not seem to match daylight vs dark at 45.5N/122.45W.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
Zzz...
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
After reading through about a dozen replies, I feel quite sleepy myself. And it is only 9:45 in the morning where I am. I should get me a network connection in my bedroom....
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
About a year ago I came across this paper while looking into a Navy solicitation for, essentially, the Redshift/F.lux programs embedded into sailors' berth lights. Their focus was not only to help them get to sleep, but help them wake up (or more generally, help adjust to ever-changing shift times).
Action Spectrum for Melatonin Regulation in Humans: Evidence for a Novel Circadian Photoreceptor
Pawalled unfortunately, and I don't have access at home, but the gist is that blue light in the band 446-477nm encourages the "it's daytime!" melatonin response (the effect peaks around 464nm)
Some upshots:
1) It's real, and it's probably not just your computer screen.
2) Blue-light regulation could conceivably be integrated into house lights, especially if in some years LED luminaires become feasible enough to replace CFLs.
3) The effect appears to work both ways - adding some extra blue light in the mornings could conceivably help you become alert faster.
4) Some off-the-shelf LEDs produce light very close to this peak (look for "dental blue", ~460nm, used for curing certain dental adhesives). You could hack together your own active light gadgets, e.g. blue-light specs to wear on trips to reduce jetlag.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
WoW at least has simulated daytime / nighttime which corresponds to the geographically local time of the day. Does the fact that the sky looks dark on the screen (meaning less irradiation of your eyes) make any difference?Would installing F.lux make a difference?
Considering that the only time I get to play any games is between two and three hours before going to bed, "just turn it off" isn't an option if I want to continue with that particular hobby. Which I do.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
http://www.theonion.com/articles/nations-experts-give-up,682/
I'm a perfectionist but I'm trying to cut back.
Thanks, that is exactly what I been wanting - Awesome!
Never happened. True story.
For thousands of years human beings have been staring into campfires and fireplaces before falling asleep. This is just a bunch of nonsense.
The news is full of them. Even old-wives-tales are supported by generations of anecdotal observation. But not this yet.
Dim your backlight. It's not difficult. If your backlight doesn't dim enough, get a better screen.
The backlight on my MBP dims to the point where, were it a book, a mother would materialize out of the void behind me, turn on a lamp, and tell me not to read in the dark, it's bad for my eyes.
Bright Blue LED's and go back to the old Green for Power and Red for Disk Access.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Hum, what a convenient result. :p
I also heard of a study that indicates that black and white images reduce the risk of prostate cancer, and eating apples increases it.
At around 10pm, I usually take an Ambien. After a nights rest, I wake up to find that somnolence had set in and I unknowingly completed about 6 hours of programming and/or posted about 50 responses to various /. articles.
Flux? As in flumen per square metre?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
the problem is all the light coming out of the screen you're reading.
this is because most modern GUIs have this horrible predisposition to black on white text.
mac users can use: Cmd-Option-Shift-8 to INVERT the screen to white on black
viola -- no more staring into a lightbulb. :-D :-D
i've used this often to keep my eyes from burning out before bed.
2cents from toronto island
jp