Black Raven Dragoons

[Zancarius]

Here's f.lux. You may have heard of it. If not, take a moment to read their bold claims backed by research.

f.lux adjusts your display's color temperature to match the ambient lighting under the theory that blueish light (like that during the day) tends to trigger a physiological response to stay awake, but softer yellower light reduces the effect. Color temperature is usually measured in Kelvin (after Lord Kelvin), with lower values appearing yellow or red and higher values appearing much bluer. If you have color temperature controls on your monitor and aren't using sRGB (which adjusts it automatically as per your display adapter's color profile), you may have encountered this before. But, instead of fiddling with it yourself, f.lux does it automatically.

Now, I'll warn you: I tried this about a year ago and it lasted 30 minutes, because I didn't realize that you have to manually adjust f.lux's settings before you can get any value out of it. Out of the box, f.lux will adjust your display after local sunset to a very, very yellow/red color which probably doesn't match your lighting. Under the application's settings, I found that it's easier to tolerate if you bump up the night time temperature to around the fluorescent hash mark. The idea being that the "white" on your display should match the white of a piece of paper in your room as closely as possible; at night under fluorescent lighting, white will be yellowish but it won't be a softer, tan color like the default settings might suggest. Also, adjusting the transition time from the default of 20 seconds to 60 minutes makes the change far less drastic and noticeable at the expense of some performance. Fortunately, you can override the setting or close out the application if performance is critical or if you're doing color sensitive work where you absolutely must see the real values displayed on your monitor without interference.

So far, it seems to work. Whenever I'd stay up late working, I'd find myself unable to get to sleep. I don't know if it's tied to f.lux, but after reading on my monitors for a half hour or so with f.lux enabled, I feel sleepy!

Another thing to keep in mind: Whenever the subject of f.lux comes up, most people share either their love or their hate for it. It may not be of any use to you, or you might find it jarring and annoying. Perhaps some people are more sensitive to color adjustments than others, or perhaps the psychological effect of knowing that the colors aren't quite "right" are enough to annoy. In either case, it's strongly recommended. Although it doesn't affect games, so if you're up late playing a game, you're on your own.

[Tirian]

Listen, you don't need to be reading reptilian conspiracy theories and building your pipe bombs in the middle of the night. You can do that during the day, too.

[Zancarius]

Can't help but feel that joke is in poor taste.