Tales of the Fedora

I was looking over my movie collection the other day, and I came to the realization that I have several DVDs that I’ve never watched. Some of them are movies that I’ve seen years ago in other formats, others are gifts from various friends or family members — but still films I really like. Some are just movies that I bought when they were on a good sale but never had a chance to watch them.

So, I’m thinking about starting something like “a movie a night”; I’ll go through all the feature films (and a couple of the shorts) that I’ve got in my collection, one by one, over the course of several weeks. To make it interesting, instead of working through it alphabetically, or by favorites, I figured I’d start chronologically, based on original theatrical release. Hence the first several will be early Alfred Hitchcock films from the 1930′s.

Certainly I don’t have a diverse collection, but I figure this way it’ll illustrate the evolution of filmmaking and stories over the last 80 years or so. I’m thinking about starting on June 21, the first day of summer. I’ve got over 100 films to go through, so this movie marathon will last a few months. Maybe I’ll stick with it.

I’ve been playing with an iphone app. Technically it’s billed as an alarm clock; you tell it what time to wake you up, and it will play a sound at that time. However, it’s a bit more involved than that.

First, you’re supposed to place it on the mattress near you as you sleep. During the night, you move around differently based on different stages of sleep, so the app uses the accelerometer in the phone to record this movement. Then it charts that sleep cycle and supposedly learns how you sleep. Then, instead of the set time that you indicated to wake up, it uses that as a guide to determine the lightest stage of sleep you’re experiencing close to that time, and will play a sound to wake you up.

The idea is that it’s less jarring to be woken from a lighter stage, than from a deep sleep.

I’ve been using it for five days now, and it’s fairly simple to use. Set the alarm time, set the volume, pick an alarm, and place the phone on the mattress next to you and go to sleep. In the morning I wake up not really feeling much more refreshed than a usual morning, but since my sleep habits are pretty far out of whack, I don’t think I can blame it on the app.

The most interesting data is from the nightly graphs it collects. Charting my movements against time, I can correspond the spikes on the graph to the numerous times I wake up at night, the near-constant tossing and turning, and — recently — the very vivid dreams that I’ve been experiencing. It’s also rather fascinating being able to quantify just how poorly I am sleeping lately.

Anyway, the app is the Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock, and was fairly cheap from the iTunes App Store. Not sure if I’m going to use it for the long-term; the alarm tones are soothing, but limited. They’re not exactly what you would expect to wake you up. I’ll at least be able to collect more data about my sleeping habits.

I guess today is “Fight with Drobo” day, huh?

I wish I could write like Steven Moffat.

Another night where nothing happened. Better luck next time.