Posted by Ryan
February 19, 2008
Several years ago (3? 4?) I wrote a tiny little Windows application that plays an MP3 file at a specified time of day. That’s all it does. Nothing fancy. You have to select an MP3 file, type the time of day precisely (eg. “6:00 AM”), and check a little checkbox. I’ve opened up to 50 instances of the little app at a time and set them all manually to play some MP3 file at different times to ensure I’ll wake up. It works.
There are many applications out there that do alarms much better than this little thing, but I recently got an email requesting it so I thought I’d share. Heck, notwithstanding all the fancy alarm apps out there I still use this excruciatingly simple thing. The simplest solution isn’t always the best solution, but is often the most used.
Download the self-extracting exe file – 288 KB
Posted by Ryan
January 6, 2008
In wondering what to write today I came across this quote, by myself:
I’ve mentioned before that I have had, at times (every single time), a hard time waking up in the morning. Actually, that’s a little misleading. It doesn’t matter what time of day I wake up. It’s always hard.
So yesterday I woke up early! It was a holiday, no work! Independence Day! Whoo hoo! My alarm went off at 7:45 AM, I jumped out of bed and got on the computer. Then, I had this overpowering urge to go back to bed. But it wasn’t really overpowering because I overpowered the overpowering feeling, thus causing the overpowering feeling to not be overpowering because I was overpowering it with overpowering thoughts.
I wrote that in July 2007 and saved it in a draft post. For all I know I changed it a bit and actually posted it, but I’m not gonna go look for it.
I’m posting it now because I read it and laughed at myself. I know, so very humble.
No really, I’m posting it because I’m going to bed earlier tonight (I’m actually going to bed when it’s nighttime) than I have for the past two or three weeks. I figure I need some pretty overpowering thoughts to overpower the overpowering feeling with which I’ll feel overpowered (but not really because I’ll overpower it) when my alarm goes off. In other words, this post is a reminder to myself of what I am capable of: waking up without pressing snooze 4 gajillion times.
That’s right.
I rock.
Posted by Ryan
November 26, 2007
Some time ago I read about the mechanics of sleep and ever since I’ve still slept in a lot.
Apparently you have to do something with knowledge or it’s of no use. Crazy.
No really, it has helped. I don’t remember the article I read, but it was back in July I think. I’ve slept in plenty of mornings since then, but I have noticed that waking up is significantly easier when I set my alarm to go off after 6 hours of sleep instead of 7, 7 1/2 instead of 8, etc.
So today I called a friend at 9:30 AM. He answered almost right away. He said he went to bed at 3:30 AM.
So, a sleep cycle is 90 minutes. 3:30 AM to 9:30 AM was only 6 hours of sleep, but it was right on the 90 minute cycle. He told me he was going to wake up at 10:30, and that I should call him then. Problem is, 10:30 AM was 30 minutes before the next cycle ended, so naturally he’d sleep right through his alarm.
I didn’t actually call at 10:30, but I figure he probably turned off his alarm when it went off and so by 11 when the sleep cycle ended he kept on sleeping. I tried calling several times around 12 PM with no answer. The next cycle should be ending right about now.
…
Dang it. No answer after 5 attempts. The sleep cycle can be 90-110 minutes. I’ll try again in a few minutes. This is fun!
