Comment by achompas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by achompas | Hacker News Reader

You'll see links to F.lux [0] occasionally on HN, but I can't overstate how F.lux has changed my life.

Before F.lux, my laptop would suck me in. I would browse HN, Metafilter, and Twitter even as my eyes stung and my head felt like a bag of sand. Eventually I would go to bed at 3am, confused about how time flew by so quickly.

The next morning was always rough. Some days I would wake up at 8am and arrive at work on time with a headache. Sometimes I would jump up at a quarter to nine, arrive an hour late, and chug two tall cups of coffee before noon. I'm embarrassed to say that I called in sick a few times because I was too exhausted to get out of bed. This was a terrible existence.

With F.lux I feel myself getting sleepy. After a certain hour, my body kills any running mental processes and orders me to sleep. I always get sunlight and exercise, but eliminating blue light in this controlled experiment (with F.lux and a Kindle for late-night reading) has dramatically improved my quality of sleep.

My only problem with F.lux is that I can't find the "Donate" link on their page.

[0] http://stereopsis.com/flux/

OP here. I've been using F.lux for several years now. I really can't understand why anyone would not use it. It's so easy on the eyes.

If you like F.lux and you're an OSX user, I'd also recommend using it with Toggle Screenshade [http://screenshade.en.softonic.com/mac]. It doesn't change the color composition like F.lux does. It just reduces the brightness of the monitor well below OSX default minimum. It's shocking little light that gets through. Give yourself 2 minutes to adjust in a dark room, and you'll still be able to see the monitor, but with much less light intrusion on your body.

Second, if you're getting hardcore on this. You should also buy a orange plastic screen shade from Low Blue Lights [https://www.lowbluelights.com/products.asp?cid=16] or make one yourself. I have one rubber-banded to my monitor at night. It ~triples the effect of Flux.

This is really better than any donation. :)

+1 for "changed my life." Seriously, but for f.lux I would probably have sought medical treatment for persistent insomnia. (And when I swapped laptops recently and stupidly put off installation I had two months of Zomg Schedule Hell before remembering "Oh yeah, this acharacteristic inability to sleep is exactly like life before flux".)

This is exactly my experience with F.lux as well. I haven't had real insomnia for about a year and a half now, except earlier this week --- I had reinstalled my laptop and forgotten to add Flux as a startup item.

Thanks so much to both you and @lorna. :)

Can't overstate this. For some reason Flux got deactivated on my computer. I just found out. The last nights my sleep shift has shifted and shifted. Until 6am bed time. Go figure.

For mornings, esp. in winter, I use a day light lamp [1]. Highly recommended.

[1] http://www.philips.co.uk/c/light-therapy/golite-blu-recharge...

Thanks for this--its tough to get good light during winter. I'll grab one for those colder months on the horizon.

And for Linux users whose distro doesn't have a F.lux package, redshift is often available as a nice alternative in your package tree.

Oh, thanks. F.lux doesn't work on my 11.04 Ubuntu netbook, probably because of display drivers.

As I understand it, F.lux works because your body uses light cues to determine the rate of melatonin production. Essentially: less light (or warmer light) => more melatonin production => sleepiness.

Rather than mess around with your monitors' color balance (which I find extremely annoying), I just skip the first step and pop an over the counter melatonin pill. It works splendidly, doesn't seem to be habit forming (been using it on and off for 5 years; it basically got me through the last 2 years of college), and doesn't seem to have any adverse side effects other than more vivid dreams (or, equivalently, better recollection of dreams).

As I understand it, it isn't so much less light or warmer light as much as it is a lack of blue light. The amount of blue light during the day time in the sun is huge. F.lux works by reducing the color temperature which greatly reduces the amount of blue light coming from the display and shifts it to red light.

I might've misused the word "warmer," but I thought warmer light just meant light with less blue in it.

I tried melatonin a few times and experienced some very groggy mornings. I also experienced a few nights where I could not sleep after taking a 3mg tab.

For those considering it, let me suggest a very small dose (0.5-0.75 mg, or 1/4th of a tablet) and 9-10 hours to try it out. Don't pop one of these at 2am and expect to feel great the next day.

Are your groggy mornings after only sleeping a few hours? I only use melatonin if I am able to get at least 7 hours of sleep, or maybe 6.5 in a pinch, but with or without melatonin I'll be groggy in the morning with less than 6.5 hours of sleep. I take 1mg doses, although I initially took 3mg and didn't notice a difference. This study seems to show that 3mg is overkill, and that .3mg is probably sufficient:

http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/86/10/4727

I had one night of hitting the sack at 10am after taking 3mg and not sleeping at all (maybe 4am?). The other night I took 3mg 8-9 hours before waking up and I still felt groggy.

I wouldn't deter people from melatonin but they should start with very small doses.

Trader Joe's has 500mcg (i.e. 0.5mg) tablets. Walmart had 300mcg tablets, which were absolutely ideal, but they've stopped carrying them locally.

There was an excellent article I read a few years back which made the case that 300mcg is the ideal dose for nightly use. Over 1mg, the body adapts to it and it loses effect.

The smaller tablets are preferable to breaking larger ones, since it's hard to be consistent due to the manner in which they crack, as well as the potentially uneven distribution of melatonin to filler in each tablet.

I've used melatonin. When I first tried it, I was on a lot of medication, so my brain chemistry was pretty whacked, and it would leave me feeling half asleep for like 3 days. I agree with the suggestion to try a low dose version. However, it also helps to take co-q-10 the following morning. It is the co-enzyme to melatonin and wakes the brain up. It counteracts the effects of melatonin.

For those saying melatonin left you wide awake: It also has immune function uses. I have had times when I took it (during the day) to treat a health issue rather than a sleep issue and the impact was to wake me up.

+1 for melatonin. I actually like the vivid dreams. I also dream in brighter colors while on it.

I have noticed that it doesn't mix well with alcohol though. It still puts me to sleep, but then I'm up at 4am and definitely not refreshed.

As far as I know vivid dreaming is not equivalent to better recollection of dreams. A dream is vivid when and only when you are aware of the fact that you're dreaming while it happens. It isn't necessarily true just because you're able to recall.

That's not at all what I meant by "vivid." I meant clear and intense, not necessarily a lucid dream. I only mentioned that recollection may be equivalent, because it's possible that, while not using melatonin supplements, I was technically dreaming just as much, but my sleep/wake pattern was such that I never recalled the dreams in the morning.

OT: That's lucid dreaming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream

I stand corrected. Thank you.

Oh my god this app is amazing!! How did I not know about it!

It's midnight here, I was feeling bleary-eyed and wide awake, switched on F.lux, and now I feel like I'm being bathed in the warm glow of a nightlight..

three thumbs up.

1. I love F.lux as well but it is (still) buggy for me, especially on my living room Mac Mini (where it is connected to an HDTV – F.lux never remembers to apply the white-point shift after the display reawakens…).

2. If people would like to see their iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch do the same thing, Apple needs to allow such functionality. Request F.lux support – native or by exposing an API – on iOS by duping #10158436 on http://bugreport.apple.com. (Please!)

Thanks for mentioning F.lux. I recall reading about it a while back but never tried it. I'm planning to install it tomorrow.

I did a quick search for an iPad equivalent, but nothing promising turned up. I'll keep looking. Much of my evening and night reading is on the iPad and I've wondered if the 'glow' has been disrupting my sleep.

If anyone has suggestions for non-jailbroken iOS devices, please share. Thanks.

Yes, please! Even if it is not a software solution (like some kind of physical filter I could place on top of the screen.)

I've got f.lux on my laptop, but I predominantly use my iPad in the evenings.

I figured there'd be a software limitation, so I was envisioning a physical filter as well. Something like those privacy screens that 3M markets to business travelers for laptops.

I just sent an e-mail to Marco. Hopefully he'll be able to implement this in to InstaPaper.

There are a few problems with this, chief among them being that tinting the screen with amber probably requires some iOS API hack that's probably not public.

I had heard it mentioned before but just installed it for the first time. It's only been 5 minutes and I've already adjusted pretty well to the color balance shift. I thought that it would end up driving me nuts but I think this'll really help. Thanks for the recommendation!

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