Ever since I was little I have always found it easier to sleep if I have some sort of background noise. For me it quietens the mind, allowing me to concentrate on the familiar sounds instead of those thoughts that seem to always come out right when you want to relax. I like listening to audio books that I have listened to 1000 times before. My brain knows whats coming up in the story but still concentrating on it allows my sub-conscious to quieten and calm down. Its very much like a breathing meditation for me.

 

# UPDATE - 30.10.18

Note: I have an update to this post that you may be interested in [reading about here](<(./photos-personal/sleeping-headphones-update/)>).

---

Its not for everyone however so as much as I would like to be able to just play my stories using a speaker in the room its not really an option with someone else is using their own silence-based techniques of getting to sleep.

For this reason I almost always have headphones in my ears. I have tried many different types over the years and im still not 100% happy but id like to share my journey.

## Regular Old Headphones

[![](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Apple_EarPods_35446297_03.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Apple_EarPods_35446297_03.jpg)

These have been my go-tos for many years. I rock an iphone so mine are apple ear pods. This work just fine and sound great not that thats really important for audio books while you are trying to sleep however.

The problems start when you actually fall asleep with them in however. Because that sit in the ear and are hard plastic if you roll over at night they press against the inside of your ear. I actually started to get quite a lot of ear pain because of this and was one of the main prompters to find a better solution.

Another problem with these headphones is that they are wired, which means that you ca quite easily get tangled up in them. A few times I have woken up with them wrapped around my neck which was a little disconcerting.

**Pros:** Ubiquitous, Cheap (ish), Good sound quality
**Cons:** Painful when sleeping on them, cords risk strangulation

## SleepPhones Headband

[![](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/sleepphones-headphones-headband-2.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/sleepphones-headphones-headband-2.jpg)

The first alternative I tried was the [SleepPhones](https://www.sleepphones.com/shopify-collections/sleepphones) headband. These look like they promise solutions to many of the problems listed above.

They dont sit in your ear, rather the speakers sit in a headband that goes round your head, so theres no risk of the ear infection. The single wire to your phone either sits at the front or the back so theres less chance of them getting wrapped around your neck while you sleep.

The headband is really soft and comfortable but I found it hard to work out where the speakers were, so often the headband would shift and I could no longer hear anything.

I found that the cable on them was kind of short which meant that the phone couldn't be placed on the bedside table next to me, not a big issue, but still kind of annoying.

The biggest problem with them however is that I live in Australia and it can get pretty hot at night here and having this warm fluffy headband on all night really dont help with trying to cool you down.

**Pros:** Comfortable, single wire means less things to kill yourself with
**Cons:** I got too hot, headband shifts, cable too short, kind of pricey

## BedPhones

[![](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Bedphones-31u8vwkkxjzale44ympn9m.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Bedphones-31u8vwkkxjzale44ympn9m.jpg)

The next ones I tried were [dubslabs bedphones](https://www.dubslabs.com/). These are over-ear headphones means that they dont sit directly in your ear and instead sit on the ear. This means that you dont suffer from the same sort of inner-ear pain as you do with the air pods.

Unfortunately the sound quality is terrible, it isn't really a show stopper for sleeping headphones but still for a professional product I would have expected better.

The biggest problem is the over-ear wire they use to hold them in place was so flimsy that they would continually fall off my ear making them pretty much useless.

**Pros:** Comfortable for long-term use
**Cons:** Poor sound quality, fall out of ear, wired still, strangulation issues

## Panasonic RP-HS46

[![](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/s-l300.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/s-l300.jpg)

I bought these guys only a month or so ago and have been rather impressed with them considering the very low (\$12.59 AUD) price tag.

Much like the BedPhones they are over-ear headphones so you dont have to suffer from the in-ear pressure.

Unlike the BedPhones however they have great sound quality, surprisingly great infact considering the price.

Instead of a stiff wire holding them in place they have a hard plastic loop that articulates outwards for easy placing over the ear.

The only negative I have to say is that even though these are low-profile they are still hard plastic so for me its still to uncomfortable to lie on them, so I have to keep changing ears when I want to roll over much like I do with the ear pods.

They are also still wired so although it hasn't happened yet I can imagine that they suffer from the same strangulation risks as the others.

**Pros:** Cheap, great sound quality, low-profile, over-ear
**Cons:** Hard plastic, strangulation wires still


## [NOT TRIED] BedPhones Wireless

[![](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/bpw-man-laying-down-web-smallest-1024x683.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/bpw-man-laying-down-web-smallest.jpg)

These are the second set of headphones from [dubslabs](https://www.dubslabs.com/products/bedphones-wireless-the-worlds-smallest-on-ear-headphones.html) in this post and look so interesting I have a pair on them on preorder.

Although I didn't like my Gen2 BedPhones headphones I like the concept that this is company that are making headphones that are designed for sleeping with. Im hoping that this variant solves the sound quality and the flimsy over-ear-wire issues with the Gen2.

One big plus is that they are wireless so that should mean that the risk of strangulation is nill. I Am a little concerned at the battery life on them however. If they dont last the night then im going to be disappointed.

At \$100 USD these really are rather expensive as an experiment but I spend 8 hours a day with them on my ears so I guess its worth the investment.

**Pros:** Wireless, low-profile, soft, designed for sleeping in
**Cons:** Expensive, untested

## [NOT TRIED] Ear Hero

[![](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/122830902_1280x720-1024x576.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/122830902_1280x720.jpg)

I haven't tried these from [Ear Hero](https://earhero.com/store/) yet but they certainty look very interesting. They are very low-profile headphones that are designed for police and other security professionals so they can hear whats going on around them at the same time as listening to the earpiece.

Im intrigued by them for sleeping in because the they look very low profile so I should be able to sleep on them without any ear pain.

Combined with their bluetooth clip for wireless listening they could be the perfect solution.

The only problem is their rather large (\$150 USD) price-tag makes them out of the range for my experimentation for now.

**Pros:** Very low profile
**Cons:** Pricey, not tested

# Conclusion

For me the current winner is the Panasonic RP-HS46, cheap but good quality and comfortable enough to sleep. They still have their issues tho, such a being wired and hard plastic makes lining on them too uncomfortable.

I am however looking forward to trying out the BedPhones wireless when they arrive.

Well thats it for my experiments. Let me know what you think. Do you sleep in headphones? Which do you use? Have you experimented with others? Let me know in the comments below and perhaps ill do a follow-up post.

# Followup

Note: I have an update to this post that you may be interested in [reading about here](<(./photos-personal/sleeping-headphones-update/)>).

So I have been working on my "[Terraria like Terrain](/posts/hxaria-terraria-like-terrain-in-haxe-and-webgl/)" project "Hxaria" again.



Following on from the last post, I have now made it so that each particle can have its texture changed. This completes the functionality required to render each tile as a point sprite, as talked about in my[ previous post](/posts/hxaria-terraria-like-terrain-in-haxe-and-webgl/).

The way it works is that the entire world is recorded in a 2x2 array Tilemap. This 2x2 array holds a single Tile object for every single tile in the world:

[code lang="actionscript3" lines="normal"]

<pre>class Tile
{
public var x : Int;
public var y : Int;
public var type : Int;

 public function new(x:Int, y:Int, type:Int) { this.x = x; this.y = y; this.type = type; }

}</pre>

[/code ]

&amp;nbsp;

When the TileRenderer needs to render it asks this Tilemap for a Tile that represents that screen coordinate, the Tilemap then offsets the position due to the camera movement and returns a tile. So it looks something like:

<a href="/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/tm.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1795" title="tm" src="/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/tm.png" alt="" width="600" height="357" /></a>

The tile type is then passed to the shader in attribute buffers per point sprite / tile along with all the tiles which are stored on a single texture:

<a href="/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/tilescompressed.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1803" title="tilescompressed" src="/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/tilescompressed.png" alt="" width="256" height="352" /></a>

The shader then performs the neccessary calculations to work out what the UV coordinate in the texture. The Vertex Shader:

[code lang="glsl" lines="normal"]

<pre>uniform float amplitude;
uniform float tileSize;
uniform float texTilesWide;
uniform float texTilesHigh;
uniform float invTexTilesWide;
uniform float invTexTilesHigh;

attribute float size;
attribute vec3 customColor;
attribute float tileType;

varying vec3 vColor;
varying vec2 vTilePos;

void main()
{
vColor = customColor;

 float t = floor(tileType/texTilesWide);
 vTilePos = vec2(tileType-(t*texTilesWide), t); // +(.5/tileSize)

 gl_PointSize = size;
 gl_Position = projectionMatrix * modelViewMatrix * vec4( position, 1.0 );

}</pre>

[/code ]

&amp;nbsp;

And the Fragment Shader:

[code lang="glsl" lines="normal"]

<pre>uniform vec3 color;
uniform sampler2D texture;
uniform float invTexTilesWide;
uniform float invTexTilesHigh;

varying vec3 vColor;
varying vec2 vTilePos;

void main()
{
vec2 uv = vec2( gl_PointCoord.x*invTexTilesWide + invTexTilesWide*vTilePos.x, gl_PointCoord.y*invTexTilesHigh + invTexTilesHigh*vTilePos.y);

 gl_FragColor = texture2D( texture, uv );

}</pre>

[/code]

So it works in a way very much like a raster engine. You only have to render as many particles as the screen can contain.

If the screen area moves beyond the extent of the Tilemap then more tiles are randomly generated:

[![](/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/22222.png "22222")](/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/22222.png)

The new tiles are randomly selected from 4 different types, Dirt, Gold, Diamonds and Rock. I have added some controls to the demo that allow you to tweak these values to demonstrate the random tile generation:

[![](/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Shot_041.png "Shot_04")](/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Shot_041.png)

The UI may look familiar to people that have seen any experiments anyone who has worked with Three.js before, its the very popular [dat.GUI](https://code.google.com/p/dat-gui/). Its a really simple library written in javascript for creating controls that can be used to tweak experiments, perfect for me!

To get dat.GUI to work with haxe, I used the awesome [Extern feature of HaXe](https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=haxe%20externs&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhaxe.org%2Fdoc%2Fjs%2Fexterns&ei=Gu_QTvK8IYP4sgbo15TzDA&usg=AFQjCNEQvrXVfGjjQNO-yHhZ6HRTKlcmYw). This means that all I have to do is provide a stub interface to dat.GUI rather than a full implementation in haXe. This is great as it allows me to rapidly begin to use the library but also have the type safety of HaXe. It didnt take long to stub out the bits of the library I needed in an extern:

[code lang="actionscript3" lines="normal"][/code]

package dat;

/\*\*

- ...
- @author Mike Cann
 \*/

extern class GUI
{

 public function new(options:Dynamic) : Void;
 public function add(options:Dynamic, name:String) : GUI;
 public function name(value:String) : GUI;
 public function min(value:Float) : GUI;
 public function max(value:Float) : GUI;
 public function step(value:Float) : GUI;
 public function onFinishChange(f:Void -> Void) : GUI;
 public function listen() : GUI;

}

[/code ]

Then I used it like:

[code lang="actionscript3"][/code]

package ;
import dat.GUI;

/\*\*

- ...
- @author
 \*/

class GUIManager
{
public var goldChance : Float;
public var rockChance : Float;
public var diamondsChance : Float;
public var mapWidth : Int;
public var mapHeight : Int;

 private var gui : GUI;
 private var game : Game;

 public function new(game:Game)
 {
 	this.game = game;

 	gui = new GUI( { height : 5 * 32 - 1 } );

 	goldChance = game.tilemap.goldSpawnChance;
 	rockChance = game.tilemap.rockSpawnChance;
 	diamondsChance = game.tilemap.diamondsSpawnChance;
 	game.tilemap.mapResized = onTilemapResized;
 	mapWidth = 0;
 	mapHeight = 0;

 	gui.add(this, 'goldChance').name("Gold").min(0).max(1).step(0.001).onFinishChange(function() { game.tilemap.goldSpawnChance = goldChance; } );
 	gui.add(this, 'rockChance').name("Rock").min(0).max(1).step(0.001).onFinishChange(function() { game.tilemap.rockSpawnChance = rockChance; } );
 	gui.add(this, 'diamondsChance').name("Diamond").min(0).max(1).step(0.001).onFinishChange(function() { game.tilemap.diamondsSpawnChance = diamondsChance; } );
 	gui.add(this, 'mapWidth').listen();
 	gui.add(this, 'mapHeight').listen();
 }

 private function onTilemapResized(mapW:Int, mapH:Int):Void
 {
 	mapWidth = mapW;
 	mapHeight = mapH;
 }

}

[/code ]

Simples!

Anyways you can check the final result out on this page: [/projects/hxaria/02/
](/projects/hxaria/02/)(Click and drag to move the camera about)

I have also uploaded a quick video too:

<iframe width="650" height="471" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hw1bntVoNmU?hd=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I have also uploaded the source again to my github page: [https://github.com/mikecann/Hxaria](https://github.com/mikecann/Hxaria)
(I have also created a tag, incase the source changes in the future)

Next up, lighting!

Got sent this today by a friend who linked to Newgrounds [upload](https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347).



I think its actually quite genius:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="640" height="440" codebase="https://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="src" value="/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/525347_scale_of_universe_ng.swf" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="640" height="440" src="/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/525347_scale_of_universe_ng.swf"> </embed></object>

It reminds me old the old powers of 10 video:

<iframe width="100%" height="400" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/A2cmlhfdxuY" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[![ScreenHunter_02 Jan. 10 20.13](/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ScreenHunter_02-Jan.-10-20.13.jpg "ScreenHunter_02 Jan. 10 20.13")](/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ScreenHunter_02-Jan.-10-20.13.jpg)

I have immense respect for some of the flash developers out there and Quasimondo is one of them. He has just released a little particle related experiment.

Whenever I see these kind of things it inspires me to bash out my own little experiments.

I wont talk too much about it but check it out on this lab page: [https://incubator.quasimondo.com/flash/galactose.php](https://incubator.quasimondo.com/flash/galactose.php)