F.lux and the circadian rhythm

Apparently blue light is important to entraining circadian rhythm, potentially even resetting the rhythm or altering the onset of sleepiness by effects on melatonin levels. At the core of this clocking and melatonin cycle is the color temperature of light. Light color temperature may even directly impact slow wave sleep. Thus those of us who linger late into the night in front of the cyclopean computer eye may be able to push deeper into the night because the color temperature of the computer screen itself is helping keep us awake.

Enter F.lux, an applet that changes the color temperature of your monitor based on the time of day. I should note that the GUI for Ubuntu Linux did not function on my Lubuntu 11.10 rig, the computer very quickly reset the color temperature.

I did find, however, after installing the program using the lines:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kilian/f.lux
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install fluxgui

I was able to successfully run the program from the command line:

xflux -l 7 -g +158 -k 2700

Now I can work in the evening without saturating my brain with circadian rhythm impacting daylight balanced light from my computer screen.