Category Archives: Sleep

Music Radio Alarm

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(I reposted this because of server migrations incase anyone noticed)
6 hours of my lesson-free day was fighting against my >8 years aged server. I lost the battle with some cuts on my fingers.
Instead of a bad configuration, it seems a faulty network card was playing me out. Lesson learned: If it ain’t broke don’t double fix it. If the server ain’t going to work anymore, there’s no point keeping this post as a draft, gotta publish it now.

Back to the topic, my father brought home a portable Philips radio combined with a Cd player and alarm clock years ago. My impression it wasn’t a very good audio player, its features and sound quality was just minimal. However, there was still few interesting and useful features. It served as clock and I also used it to set my morning alarms to interrupt my dreams by either

a) Turning on a FM station
b) Playing tracks of my CDs, or
c) Sounding alarms likes beeps and rings.

You could set to 2 alarms on it, so I usually turn on the 1st alarm to the CD tracks, then blast the noisy alarms 10 to 60 minutes later. The 1st alarms is for switching my body into a light sleep, and starts the engine of my subconscious mind. If I’m still in deep sleep, the loud sounding alarms is the last line of defense not to be late for school.

There were few CD tracks that never fail to wake me up- Carmen’s fantasy, Walton’s violin sonatas, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and so on… some tracks made me want to lie in bed to hear the songs- Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto 5…

That’s for waking up. For sleeping, I’ll set the timer to turn off the CD or Radio after a period of time. It seems to me I never get to sleep soon if my mind is actively listening to classical music.

— if you are not a computer geek you can stop reading right here —

Here’s did an equivalent on my server plugged to speakers. 4 linux commands I used: screen, mplayer, sleep, killall.

I start my ssh session with putty to my and run screen -r

1. Play lullaby softly
mplayer http://audio-ogg.ibiblio.org:8000/wcpe.ogg -cache 256 -af volume=-5dB
This plays WCPE, the online classical radio at a softer volume. I move to another screen window for the next step (^A,n)

2. Silence the lullaby
sleep 15m && killall mplayer
Sleep here is used sort of like a countdown timer. Here, 15 minutes later, the mplayer is terminated for silence. We need another window for the next step.

3. Countdown the alarm
sleep 3.5h && radio.sh
This shows I want the radio to be turned on again after 3 and a half hours to wake me up…

Thats not too much sleep isn’t it? La la la… ZzZzZZZzZ

About Me: Here lies the world’s sleepiest…

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Decide to change the caption from the About section in the sidebar

Before

I floating here amist my dreams.
Whacha reading is my sleep talking.

Current

Here lies the world’s sleepiest animal, and NUS’s sleepiest creature.
In this blog, I write only as clearly as my dreams dreamy.

I’m not trying to be poetic but here’s the break down if it doesn’t sounds too sound. (Please excuse any accidentals puns)

Here lies- This sounds almost like an engraving on a tombstone “beneath lies” but no, its referring to the little photo.

world’s sleepiest animal- Thats the shy little animal in the photo, a koala, which sleeps up to 22 hours a day.

NUS’s sleepiest creature- That’s me. I’m in NUS now and I love to sleep. You might already guessed the reason for my nick Zz85.
1. Its a lazy nick (just 4 characters)
2. It means lots of “zZzZzzZZzZZz”s for sleeping.
Thats why I got http://zz85.is.dreaming.org to be linked here.

In the 2nd line, its just an excuse for my low quality of writing, nothing much more.

Since I mention about sleep again, this is a opportunity for you sleep-struck readers to find out a lesson about waking out when the clock alarms.

Resetting the Sleep Cycle

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I remembered reading about sleep in the Sembawang library. The book mentioned that in a test to see if American nato soldiers can be deployed in Europe in 2 days, the group that received physical training reaching there shortly showed themselves adapted and was less affected to jet lag than another who didn’t.

My previous commander taught us “not to suffer with our leaves”, an advice to some soon-to-be-operational ready personnel not rot when they became too free during their block leave. Somehow I cultivate the attitude to make full use of the offs I had, even when its tiring during a half-day off, I would usually try to go out, play sports, exercise, run errants, or just do something meaningful instead of sleeping. This feel more satisfying that the “off” had been worth, taking a break from the routine work.

Somehow deep sleep can still imprison me. Previous day I didn’t need to return to camp, “‘Z’ Monsters” keep me accompanied for 18 hours. Imagine the horror to look at the clock when the eyes pry open, and the mind started preparations for “mealtimes” and “daylight” adjustments. Fast forward to the time tiredness crept in, there was only 1 hour before I had to get ready for set out.

From my late night projects experiences, I usually found it easier to survive forgoing the 1 hour sleep than to drag the mind out of the sleep. For excitement this time I took the 1 hour sleep. The challenge starts right after the 1 hour, when the dazed mind needs to negotiate with the body to move like a puppet.

Getting out of the house always cure the zombie state. The sun and walking seems to condition the mind and body for a new day. Having something to work on and talking to friends seems to make tiredness disappear but for a moment.

Towards the evening is critical on the perfect sleep reset. Going to sleep to early may offset the cycle. So to feel in any idle time for sleep, swimming before dinner and cycling after. Waiting times was occupied listening to music. By night, the body is shacked, and sleeps comes in at the calculated moment.

In order to prevent the disorder coming back after the “operation”, alarm in the morning preps me for a morning jog, and set heart beating healthy like a pacemaker.

p.s. Do not attempt what I did without consulting a trained physician. Neither did I actually, but my advice really about resetting the cycle is “make hay while the sun shines”, keep hydrating by drinking lots of water, (salt water and bananas if you wish to prevent cramps), and sleep at the correct time.

How many alarms does it take to wake me up?

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In the mocking style of “how many engineers does it take to change a light bulb”.

Clocks

I bought a new alarm clock from Ikea for $12 which was labeled with 2 years warranty. I bought it as in mind I thought of a replacement of a super loud alarm clock I had which broken down.

Alarm
What’s interesting it doesn’t operate on electricity but on a spring you need to wind for the alarm and the clock.

But it didn’t take long to figure out that these were not the only alarms present at home.. I had alarms in

Handphone
Watch
Computer
Radio
Cordless DECT phone
Biological body

..too