prevent the system from sleeping when a user is looking at the screen. this is accomplished using the built-in camera on my laptop screen's top bezel and opencv to detect a face. i'm going to use the API used by the default movie player in ubuntu for preventing system sleeps. OTHER IDEAS: * detecting a face could simulate user activity. this would prevent sleeping and bring up the password prompt when the system is already asleep. * how cool would that be? if the system is asleep and you sit down at it, the password prompt comes up before you touch anything! * or if the screen saver doesn't lock the screen, then the laptop just wakes up. * DONE! * fire up the face detector only just before going to inactive mode. * that way the camera isn't running all the time * maybe start 10 seconds before going inactive, then run until activity * authenticating a user based on face recognition (as opposed to face detection) * much more difficult to do reliably * be more aggressive with turning off the screen. dim the screen as soon as it's not being looked at. turn it off soon thereafter. * could be enough to save battery. would need to power the camera sometimes, but would save on backlight. need to test. * don't prevent sleep when face is detected, but user isn't actually looking at screen. * requires pose estimation. * also requires estimating the direction of the eye.