Been about a week since I updated this. Busy and a bit stressful at times.

Had 2 occassions last week where I'd set time aside at night to try the technique - but cocked up both! I hadn't realized but on both nights I'd set the timer to go off only once rather than on repeat so it went off the first time and then I just returned to sleep until my main alarm went off.
In some ways this was useful as it kind of acts as a control set of 2 nights - if you wanted to verify that its not just my intention to get lucid on the nights I used the IAM method to get lucid, as on both of these nights I had hoped to get lucid and didn't, largely (I think) because I was able to interupt my sleep.

So my feeling is that the interupted part is the key. But the audio is also crucial to 1) prevent me from becoming desenitized to the vibe signal
2) increasing my awareness by forcing me to take action and giving me a message to wake up and listen to
it also helps me catch FA.

I couple of nights later I stayed at a travelodge as I was away on a roman dig, in of all places, a place called 'cockermouth'! Dig was great, travelodge was ok but a bit of an interupted night gave me LD 55 - Lucid 55 - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views
after that I set off the IAM (first time I had been able to do this properly since my last lucid) and got another short lucid (56) after realizing I was in a dream seeing my wife and kids were telling me to get up and knowing that couldn't be possible. Unfortunately this ended very quickly.

Had another couple of nights off then tried again yesterday morning - IAM and got another short lucid (57) again disappointed as very short. Basically I was dreaming I was talking about lucidity with my wife in our 'bedroom' when I realized the room was not like our bedroom at all - actually now I'm writing this I realize my brain was reimagining the travel lodge room with a tv on the wall - anyway this triggered me to become lucid but it all faded to black really quickly before I could start to stabilize it. I went into the void and was about to try something when the vibe went off and I gave up.
I then had another NLD where I started to wonder if I was dreaming but decided against it. Wish I had done a RC just to check.

Tried the tech again this morning (IAM) but no lucids - first time this has happened in a while. Unusually though I seem to have turned the audio on during a RC but fallen asleep again straight back into REM and a NLD without turning it off (its hand held and audio repeats with break inbetween) as in my dream I could hear my voice talking over the dream conversation I was having, but because the voice was correct I assumed it was real life and that I was playing around with the device during the day and it was on some sort of speaker and malfunctioning. In the dream I was stressed because it was loud and I couldn't turn it off! Doh!!!! Shows how I need to do more RC's, the audio kept going on and in the dream I couldn't turn the device off. I then seem to have actually woken up and switched it off, or I think rather it just got to the end of the track (around 2min total in lenght) and it stopped itself.
Interesting that whilst it was non-lucid it incorporated the audio track exactly as in real life - that was why I accepted it within the dream.

Anyway I guess another 3 lucids isn't too bad, and the plane crash one was amazingly vivid and more stable. Will take a few days off due to work and then try again.

Final thoughts - need to really concentrate on the audio to wake myself up more rather than falling asleep during it.
- need to do RC rather than relying on just 'knowing' I'm in a dream - which increasingly seems to be the case (a good thing, but I don't want to miss any inbetween ones like this morning when I wondered if I might be dreaming, then talked myself out of it).
-spinning worked well. I was interested as to whether this might be due to the OKN response (an eyemovt which occurs during spinning) mimicking REM and when I did it I could really feel my eyes flick, flick, flick in my head, almost more than in real life. It was kind of cool, as I am sure this have showed up on an EOG. It also seemed to stop me losing the dream when I kind of panicked again so worth trying again.
-anyways better be off!