Tales of the Fedora

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.

The move is finished; the unpacking begins.

I’m on a week’s vacation from work this week. Turns out we also get Memorial Day Monday off, too, so that’s an extra day for my vacation.

Otherwise, it’s a typical day. No, slightly worse. No, more than slightly.

It’s been seven years. Each day still as painful as the first.