dazed by porn dreams

In a study presented during the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s SLEEP 2011 conference, this summer, researchers fit insomniacs with caps that use circulating water to cool the prefrontal cortex. With the help of the cap, the 12 participants were able to fell asleep about as fast as adults without insomnia and maintain the sleeping state about as long.

A study shows that caps that circulate water over the prefrontal cortex help insomniacs fall asleep as quickly and stay asleep as long as non-insomniacs.

The soft plastic cap contains tubes filled with water that circulate at different speeds.

Researchers presented their findings last summer at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s Sleep 2011 conference. The study had an extremely small sample size: 12. Nonetheless, the cooling cap had a significant success rate — 75% — compared to current treatments such as hypnosis and sleeping pills, which help only about one in four insomniacs.

via Smart Planet

The first update to Firefox 9 just came out and Mozilla is already developing version 11 of its browser. There are a lot of news about it, but curiously very few that will impact non web developers.

One of the biggest changes introduced is the support for SPDY (turned off by default), a protocol developed by Google to eventually replace HTTP. With it, connections always run on top of SSL, servers experience a load reduction and high latency users get improvements over page loading times.

If you're a web developer, you'll most certainly enjoy the battery API introduced in Firefox 11, which provides web developers with information about the device’s battery status; the new free-form style sheet editing; and 3D views of web page structures.

As a major version, Firefox 11 has a lot more changes. You can check them at Mozilla Hacks

A 70-year-old fruitcake was sold on an online auction for $525. The cake was purchased in 1941 and returned to a Kroger store in 1971, and it's still edible.

via ShortFormBlog

Yu Muroga, a Japanese delivery driver, was working on the day of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, unaware of was about to happen to him. While on the road, his car was caught by the tsunami surge and ended up crushed. Muroga didn't had the same fate because he escaped before it was too late.

It might seem this isn't worth your attention. Yu Muroga wasn't the only person affected by these natural disasters. The thing is, Muroga's car had a camera that caught the surge and it even kept recording until the car was crushed and now the video is an internet sensation.

via Majirox News

(download)

Click here to download:

2011_in_Lego.zip (216 KB)

This year that is passing by was full of events. There were the protests in Egypt, Occupy Wall Street, Bin Laden's raid and the fall of Gaddafi, Arab spring, the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the riots in England and much more.

To help register this events for posterity, the Guardian has been gathering photos from Flickr users who used Legos to represent the major happenings of the past 12 months. Everyone willing to contribute can send an email to community.coordinators@guardian.co.uk or join their Flickr group.

If you're like me, todo lists are "nottodo" lists. Lists of stuff to read, watch or listen, too. You put something on a list like that and there's automatically a 99% changes you won't look at it anymore. And you'll add stuff, and add, and add, until you simply delete it and start a new one.

I always had that problem. No matter how I convince myself that this time will be different, in the end it's always the same.

This can be a problem, not just with tasks, but with everything. It affects me the most, nowadays, in my blogging tasks. If I find an interesting article or information and add it to my "toread" list, I'll probably never lay my eyes on it ever again.

I need to change this habit. Today, I started to think of solutions for my "nottodo" lists, but so far I couldn't come up with any. I don't have the slightest idea how to handle them. I even thought alarms could be the answer, but that would imply me having a lot of free time and/or a fixed agenda, but since I don't...

How did you fixed this?

... of proprietary software, so you shouldn't use it or you'll be at risk.