
Better lighting for your computer - nreece
http://stereopsis.com/flux/
======
Bjoern
It is a interesting idea which other people had before him in my opinion. I
think its a bit useless though. Let me tell you why.

Rather soon after the TV was introduced people started to sleep less. This is
actually so evident that there is extensive research about this. (here is a
common article for instance: [http://www.journal-
news.net/page/content.detail/id/505495.ht...](http://www.journal-
news.net/page/content.detail/id/505495.html) )

So TV causes already people to sleep less and some experience sleep disorders,
ok what about the internet/computer thing?

Well, as it turns out that isn't good for us either. I myself (lets be
subjective for a moment) find it hard to "turn off" my head if I go directly
to bed after sitting infront of the PC. This has probably many reasons some
are,

\- our brain is not made for multitasking (what we constantly do, surfing,
mailing, videos, whatever ... It has shown to reduce brain's ability to
concentrate, because our brain can do these tasks at the cost of our ability
to concentrate. (This actually lowers your IQ)

\- Constant sitting infront of the PC and TV has caused the society do less
active things, which leads to insufficient excercise, again leading to reduced
sleep.

\- This effect is especially noticable on kids and young adults.
<http://www.socresonline.org.uk/12/5/13.html>

\- Even cellphone usage is disturbing your sleep.
[https://www.amazines.com/article_detail.cfm/460368?articleid...](https://www.amazines.com/article_detail.cfm/460368?articleid=460368)

So it is interesting to have such an application but having something rather
that turns off your emails at 11 and turns off internet at 12, and forces you
to sleep at 1 would be more interesting.

I think if you really want to enjoy a good sleep you should give yourself 1
hour without any new media (TV, Mobile, PC,..) before you actually try to
sleep.

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tsally
Neat app idea, however two nitpicks:

1.) Screenshots? This one seems obvious.

2.) Patent Pending? Seriously? The developer certainly is not the first to
come up with this idea. The idea that this "technology" needs to be licensed
from them is just silly.

~~~
ajkirwin
I had to agree with you on the patent pending statement and made a comment to
that effect.

I hate seeing things like this when it comes to software. Give it another ten
years and I'm not going to be able to code a damn thing without violating a
stack of patents.

~~~
wheels
_Give it another ten years [...]_

Uhm, try, "for at least ten years already".

------
nickb
_During the day, computer screens look good—they're designed to look like the
sun. But, at 9PM, 10PM, or 3AM, you probably shouldn't be looking at the sun._

Say what? Look like the sun? CFL or LEDs are just white light sources. Most of
them are not even full spectrum and they're not mean to 'look like the sun' at
all.

All this program did was cast a yellow/pink overcast over my screen. If you're
doing some graphics work, this is useless.

If you're on a Mac and your eyes feel tired from a lot of light late in the
evening, give this a try: <http://docs.blacktree.com/nocturne/nocturne>

~~~
nazgulnarsil
does an app of this sort exist for windows? I have done this to my computer
manually but a simple theme would be cool.

~~~
sh1mmer
Nocturne uses a feature of Mac OSX to help with the screen inversion. It might
be possible on windows but I've not seen it.

You can actually screen invert on Macs without Nocturne using the universal
access (accessibility ) preferences, but Nocturne smooths out the rough edges.
Accessibility preferences on windows might also have this feature.

------
huhtenberg
.. or, if you are going to stare at the monitor 24x7, get one with a ambient
light sensor and brightness auto-adjust :-)

~~~
pmjordan
This sounds like more than just brightness: think colour temperature.

------
allenbrunson
i tried this, since so many of you reported interesting results. it didn't do
much for me.

a common theme seems to be: "it looked weird at first, but then i went back to
my default settings, which looks blinding." might i suggest that the real
problem is you've simply got the brightness on your monitor turned up too
high?

yeah, it looks cool at first. you get a new monitor, play with the settings,
and you decide it looks most striking on full blast. i've long thought that's
a recipe for eyestrain.

i've got an apple 23-inch cinema display. i keep its brightness set on the
lowest possible setting. if there were two or three lower settings, i'd try
those.

~~~
thaumaturgy
It's not just the brightness though. (I'm using a Powerbook G4.)

F.Lux appears to change the tint and other color factors depending on lighting
and the brightness outside. Yes, I probably could get the same effect from
diddling with the display settings, but this way I click a single button and
it sets everything up for me.

And, to my eyes at least, it did make a remarkable difference. I went from the
constantly nagging-at-me desire to rub my eyes to an instant feeling of, "Hey,
that looks nice. Ahhhhh."

The one catch is, I wonder how this is going to affect graphics work. Does it
mean that I'm gonna get colors all wrong when working on graphics at night?

'Course ... I'm all kinds of color-blind anyway, so maybe this'll actually
help!

~~~
jonah
It will definitely get your colors weird, but it has a one hour disable button
for when you need calibrated color.

How well is your monitor actually calibrated in the first place? ;)

~~~
thaumaturgy
It isn't in the least! There'd be no point to it.

I am one of the people for whom most of the pictures at
<http://critiquewall.com/2007/12/10/blindness> look identical. In addition to
red/green colorblindness, I have similar problems with purple/violet/blue/etc.
See also "Deuteranopia".

For this reason, when tasked with doing an actual website design, I tend to
make heavy use of pastels and "muted" colors. I'm looking forward to finding a
graphics person I can trust to do layouts.

------
syphoon
I'm trying this now and really liking it. Simple idea, and my eyes don't feel
as fatigued as they normally would now.

The odd thing about the Windows implementation (Vista at least) is that the
mouse cursor isn't affect by whatever filter's being applied. So as the screen
gets dimmer the little white arrow becomes a progressively brighter beacon
contrasted against the rest of the screen. It makes it hard to lose.

------
joshu
I went to school with the author - he's sharp as hell. He also founded Picasa.

------
joubert
Don't all laptops have ambient light sensors and adjust their displays &
keyboard lighting accordingly?

~~~
arjunlall
This app isnt meant to dim the screen. It changes the color temperature of the
monitor to a warmer setting. Its like the difference between a fluorescent and
a regular incandescent light.

~~~
eru
Actually it's a colder setting.

------
mhb
How can there not be screenshots?

~~~
bluishgreen
I don't think luminosity can be demonstrated with screenshots. Those are
better suited to demonstrate other functionality like layout, workflow etc. I
have been using this for a couple hours and it seems to be a good thing so
far.

------
cnu
How do I do this for Linux?

~~~
there
i don't know what it really does, but if it's just dimming the screen at
certain times, call xbacklight from cron.

~~~
joshu
It's actually changing the color temperature, not the gamma.

------
sak84
Anyone use this yet? Does it work well?

~~~
agotterer
At first it seems annoying and really dims the monitor (10PM here). After
about 15 minutes I turned it off and was blinded by the brightness. Its now
running again. Wonder if this will make me tired earlier, need to stop this
2am nights.

------
agotterer
While we are on the topic of light... What is the ideal lighting for a home
office? I find my eyes start to hurt when I'm on my home PC but they never
bother me at work.

~~~
amoeba
Check that you have sufficient ambient light in the room. A bright screen
against a darker backdrop can cause eye strain. White walls and a small, low-
wattage light can fix this.

------
jackowayed
This sounds nice. I like to dim the lights a bit before I go to sleep so that
I fall asleep faster. When I do that, I manually dim my laptop too.

This might 1) Remind me that it's getting late and that I should go to sleep
soon, and 2) Help me fall asleep without the manual brightness-setting.

But alas, I'm an Ubuntu man.

~~~
windsurfer
You can do similar things in Ubuntu, see my post above about using xbacklight
and xgamma

I'm an Ubuntu man myself :)

------
kellishaver
I gave this a try and the change in color temperature gave me a splitting
headache in approximately 3.2 seconds... until I finally managed to stare at
the monitor long enough to kill the app.... a splitting headache that has
remained with me all night long. And sadly, no, that's not an exaggeration in
the least. :(

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sfphotoarts
my mac does this automatically? and since its color calibrated for photo
editing I don't want the monitor to change color on me.

~~~
greml1n
Your (presumably) laptop adjusts light level only, not color "warmth". As for
photo-editing, you probably don't want a service playing with your colors.

~~~
jonah
But you can run it and click the disable for one hour button if you're popping
into photoshop for a little while.

