insomnia
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This procedurally generated Twitch channel wants to help you sleep
When you think of Twitch, you probably think of staying up too late watching people stream their Fortnite matches. However, a newly-launched channel wants to offer the opposite: a stream that helps you fall asleep.
Brain-controlled VR lightshows could lull you to sleep
By most accounts, technology wreaks havoc on our sleep. Even tools meant to help us sleep better can make insomnia worse. But sleep and tech don't have to be mutually exclusive. Artists and researchers from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University have created a virtual reality tool to induce sleep. The device, Inter-Dream, combines ambient music controlled by artists with kaleidoscopic visuals controlled by the user's brainwaves, via EEG.
Your sleep tracker might make insomnia worse
Sleep tracking can help you determine if you're getting a good night's rest, but it might exacerbate your problems in some circumstances. Scientists talking to the New York Times have warned that sleep tracker apps and devices can worsen insomnia both through inaccurate data and by making your anxieties that much worse. In a study, for instance, it led to people both spending too much time in bed (to boost their sleep stats) and reporting non-existent conditions that resulted in wasted treatment.
ICYMI: All aboard the hydrogen fuel cell train!
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: A French company just introduced a hydrogen fuel cell train that it plans to install on a line in Germany in 2017. The train can carry 300 passengers reaching speeds of 87 miles an hour, all while emitting water rather than the usual diesel fumes that go along with such routes. We think the Casper insomnia chatbot is probably just a PR stunt by the company, but it may also be functional so you're guess is as good as ours as to why a mattress company would want to talk about people (likely their own customers) who struggle with going to sleep at night. If you're interested, the truck clock video is here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
GAME to host its own UK gaming tournament in stores
It's not quite Evo or The International, but today British video game retailer GAME has taken its first tentative steps into the eSports scene. The company is holding a gaming competition called "The Great UK Game Off," which will culminate in a tournament at the Insomnia gaming festival this November. Players can roll up to more than 30 stores next month and take part in six challenges based around FIFA 15, Forza Motorsport 5, Super Smash Bros, Trials HD, Mario Kart 7 and LEGO Jurassic World. The top scorers in each region will be put forward for the North and South quarter finals, with the eventual winners competing for the "ultimate champion" title and a £5,000 gift card at Insomnia.
InSomnia sleeps until January, current Kickstarter canceled
The engines are running on empty for InSomnia, an online "dieselpunk" RPG. Developer Studio Mono has pulled the plug on its Kickstarter campaign to fund the game so that the team may regroup and rework their presentation. "We want to make it absolutely clear that this isn't the end of InSomnia," a Kickstarter update for the game reads. The team plans to return late January of next year with an improved campaign. The post thanks backers who had already pledged to help bring InSomnia to fruition, but notes that "it soon became apparent based on that feedback that there were key components in our campaign that we had overlooked, that we needed to reveal a lot more about certain aspects of the game and to ultimately provide a much better explanation of what InSomnia is and what it is not." The post notes, for example, the common misconception that the game is an MMORPG, which it is not. Although the game's Kickstarter page has been effectively closed down, the InSomnia Facebook page and Twitter profile are still up, should you wish to follow Studio Mono and show support.
Online RPG Insomnia seeks to build 'dieselpunk' universe
Studio Mono needs your help in bringing its new online roleplaying game to the masses, to the tune of $70,000. Dubbed "Insomnia," the game is described as "a co-operative online role-playing game with tactical elements and unique game mechanics in a sophisticated universe designed with a dark retro-futuristic dieselpunk style." Players will be presented with non-linear story options, many of which ask them to join forces with other players. That said, the Insomnia Kickstarter claims the game is more akin to traditional roleplaying games than their online counterparts. "Players will be free to choose if they want to tackle the single player quest lines alone, or in co-op with two or three friends taking on the online PvP content, such as faction wars or global quest lines where more than 60 players could be taking part at any one moment," reads the game's description. With 48 days remaining in the Insomnia fundraising effort, the game has accumulated $1,181 of its $70,000 goal. If your interest in this project has been piqued, you can find full information on Insomnia at its Kickstarter page. Assuming the game is able to raise the necessary funds, Insomnia will hit the PC, Mac and Linux platforms at some as yet undetermined point in the future.
Tactical online RPG InSomnia revealed in atmospheric trailer
New developer Studio MONO has released a teaser trailer for an online, real-time tactical RPG called InSomnia this week. InSomnia's steel environments will sprawl across a deserted space station that's en route to a destination known as the Evacuation Point. The descendents of the Normans, a race that bailed on their home planet after a "cataclysmic conflict" ruined its presumably scenic and inviting landscapes, inhabit this station and lovingly refer to it as the Dump. InSomnia's initial press release describes the game's visible realm as a "veil behind which are hidden many layers of reality." More details will be revealed "in the coming weeks," but the project is currently 18 months into development.
Somnus Sleep Shirt watches while you sleep, won't be creepy about it (video)
Monitoring sleep patterns usually involves a hydra of sensors that keep track of brain activity, muscle movements and heart rates, but a startup called Nyx Devices has developed a new night shirt that can evaluate the quality of a user's slumber by analyzing only breathing patterns. The form-fitting Somnus Sleep Shirt is embedded with two sensors that keep track of a person's overnight breathing and transmit this information to a small data recorder, which slides into the lower corner of the nightie. When a user wakes up, he or she can upload their stats to Nyx's website, where they can generate more detailed analytics and log their caffeine and alcohol intake to find out how all those martini lunches affect their snoozing. Co-inventor Matt Bianchi, a sleep neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, thinks the Somnus could help patients suffering from insomnia, who often have difficulty determining how much shuteye they actually get. It's worth noting, though, that this exclusively respiratory approach is still considered experimental and Nyx still has to conduct a few at-home tests before bringing the shirt to market next year, hopefully for less than $100. Until then, we'll just keep tossing and turning in our Spider Man jammies. Stroll past the break for an appropriately soporific video.
Apple's Insomnia Film Festival cancelled
Excited for Apple's Insomnia Film Festival? Don't hold your breath -- Apple has contacted participants via email to say that the event has been canceled. The "festival" was supposed to be Apple giving participants a list of elements and 24 hours to make a three-minute film about them, but after some unexpected server problems, the festival was postponed until after the holidays last year. The website is gone, and they are now saying that they are "unable to reschedule the festival as hoped," which means it's off indefinitely. The email also says that Apple teams "constantly seek new and better ways to showcase your artistic expression," and that there will be other "opportunities to participate in Apple creative festivals." Unfortunately, they're no more specific than that -- it's unknown whether the problems last year are still going on, or if Apple has something else going down that can't conflict with Insomnia. It's too bad -- it would have been great to see what kinds of films came out of the competition. But of course given what's going on with the economy and what's happening at AAPL, this was probably just the first corner cut.
Insomnia Film Festival postponed due to server problems
A few weeks ago, we told you about this year's Insomnia Film Festival -- a contest for high school and college students to create a 3-minute film in only 24 hours. However, eager contestants were greeted with some unfortunate news yesterday when they loaded the Apple Insomnia website.Apple notes that "due to unexpected challenges" the film festival will be postponed until after the holidays. Many TUAW readers let us know they were unable to register, so server errors could be to blame for this postponement. If you have already registered, Apple will contact you shortly with the new, rescheduled date. If you haven't registered for the film festival, and would still like to, you can do so on the Apple website. Thanks to Michael, David, and others for their tips!
At last it dropped
I've talked before about playing with insomnia, and how my current schedule has caused me to play at odd hours with my Alliance toons instead of my Horde ones. I miss playing Horde, but the late shift and my new guild means that I have found myself with almost a guaranteed group for whatever the daily heroic happens to be, and I know I can rely on those players to not stun the mobs before I hit them, fail to cast heals on me while I'm tanking three mobs, set sheeped mobs on fire while I'm looking at the two mobs I was planning to tank, or what have you. So far the guild groups I've run with have been so smooth it's like I'm playing an entirely different game from when I run PuG's, and the new game is fun. We make smart recoveries from bad pulls, kill bosses, get loot and badges, and even handle the occasional wipe with aplomb rather than sniping at each other. It's been delightful.Last night, however, heroic Mechanar made it magical.
Tales from 2 AM
The hardest thing about playing WoW during the night shift is watching your standards for success drop as people who aren't as demented or as sleep-deprived as I am realize they have to do things like sleep and get up in the morning. Since I know I won't be able to sleep I'm fairly cavalier about it, but as the night transforms into early morning people go from let's clear Heroic Arcatraz to let's try one more time to kill this annoying boss and call it a night. That's right, Zereketh, you know who you are. I'm somewhat of a perfectionist, so it can be very frustrating for me to tank a boss over and over again and see the DPS dying from stuff I can't do much about, like the Void Zones he keeps spawning right under the clothies' feet, especially when you get the boss to 1% six times in one night.Not that I'm bitter or anything.
Time shifting
I've posted before about my insomnia and how it affects my WoW play: last night was a key example, as I ground AB marks on my Tauren Warrior, then ran Durnholde Keep on my Draenei Shaman, then went back to Arathi Basin on the bull until server shutdown. When I play in the afternoon or evenings, my PvP experience tends to be mostly positive, with the Horde winning about as many games as we lose and giving a good showing for ourselves even when we do lose. Last night was not like that. Instead, it was the Alliance rolling over us like a crimson zerg, crushing our faces into the dirt, every AB mark I managed to collect soaked with the blood and tears of a demoralized force that actually cheered on the eventual five caps as a mercy killing. As you might expect I found it frustrating enough that I took the time off to go run an instance on my Ally shammy, which went well enough... basically it was four 70's and a 69 (me) burning our way through Durnholde Keep, remarkably little strategy or tactical application of our abilities, very much the kind of 'Hulk Smash' run I usually hate. And I hated this one, too, as they talked to Thrall before I had a chance to and so I didn't get to finish the quest, so I'll have to go back there again to get that done.
Insomnia, or, I can't sleep so I play when no one else is on
One of the biggest problems I have is that, from time to time, I suffer from extremely painful bouts of insomnia. I've had this issue ever since I was a very young boy, and it still reoccurs from time to time. This has lead me to discover the joys and pains of logging on to play World of Warcraft in the middle of the night. Since I tend to play on servers in the same basic time zone as I am (Edmonton, Alberta if you're curious) this often leads me to discover that it can be an entirely different world when most of the server is asleep.One of the large positives is that I often catch the Auction House when a bid is about to expire - I got my BE pally a Sword of the Magistrate for practically nothing not an hour ago, for example. It's also a lot easier for me to do quests that involving farming mobs that are otherwise popular either because the quest itself is popular or because they drop something folks want, like the elementals in the badlands that everyone and their parents tend to farm.There are some big downsides, though. For starters, instances? Forget about it. If I can find two people on at my level at any given time it's a small miracle. Also, when you're bleary eyed from lack of sleep, that may not be the best time to try and do an annoying escort quest. Admittedly, I tend to find escort quests in general to be the second most annoying quests in the game, with "bring me x number of the eyes/hearts/brains of y" being the absolute worst, but I want to level my characters so I do them anyway.Is anyone else out there playing on the graveyard shift? It sometimes seems like I'm totally alone, but a few folks must be toiling away alongside me. Do you prefer it or are you just there sometimes? What's good, what's bad about it for you? I sometimes like the relative peace and quiet, but I miss being able to get a Sunken Temple group when I need one. And I can't say that playing the game makes me feel any more rested.
Magnetic signals could cure chronic insomnia
Make no mistake, there's a plethora of devices out there aimed squarely at rudely disrupting your nap, but a technique that utilizes a gaudy head wrap and magnetic pulses could make the process of conking out a whole lot easier. Apparently, scientists can use relatively standard medical equipment in order to "stimulate the brain with harmless magnetic pulses," which essentially penetrate the nerves that control a type of deep sleep called "slow-wave activity." By forcing the brain to conjure these waves, it helps trigger deep sleep in even the "most chronic insomniac," and researchers are hoping that these methods could be used to create a machine that lets weary individuals get one fabulous power nap. Until then, however, may we suggest wading through every last Intel roadmap presentation you can find without ever losing focus, as this little trick seems to work quite well in corporate settings.[Via Spluch]
