F.lux and other wonderful life-hacking bio apps

Whenever I stay up late staring at a digital screen, regardless of how tired I really am, my eyes will start to hurt. This is never good for trying to get a decent night's worth of sleep. I've tried melatonin pills but they either do the job or keep me up all night; it's always a toss up. While I could just avoid a screen before bed, there are times when I need to bathe myself in a computer's warm glare to get a project done or read stuff online, and luckily a smart team of people felt my pain and did something about it. F.lux is a utility that automatically applies shifts on top of your display's color profile based on your location, time of day, and to a certain extent, your surrounding light type. It's not just the team's shot in the dark opinion on whether or not this actually helps, but grounded on quite a bit of research.

I'm a huge fan of bio-utilities like this. Some of my favorites are:

• F.Lux - As mentioned above. Constantly tweaks your display's color profile to appease your body's internal clock.
• Sleep Cycle iOS / Sleep Bot Android - Bio alarm clock apps that help you to fall asleep with white noise while also using the accelerometer to record your movement during the night to figure out what sleep phase you are currently in and how well you are sleeping. It will slowly bring your out of your sleep at the most ideal time so you aren't groggy. The worst feeling is to be awaken from your deepest state, REM sleep, and this aims to help you avoid that.
• Pause iOS / Android - A straight forward app that puts your phone into airplane mode for awhile.  When you are wanting to spend time with someone, concentrate on something, or completely relax, having that constant thought in your mind that some event could transpire and disrupt you through your phone makes the phone a walking object of stress. Knowing that it's off gives me peace of mind and let's me fully appreciate the present, even while it's for a short few hours.
• Nike+ Running - One of my favorite apps to throw on when I'm about to start a run.  Not only does it track your path, but it solves how fast you are moving and displays that as color on a map at the end.  While it has a handful of competitors, it's still one of the best running apps out there, has a super clean and simple interface, and allows you to track your stats, run with friends, complete challenges, and gives you audible feedback for distance, time, and goal progress as you run.  It's simple and private if you want it to be but also gives you the option to be very social about training, too.