I'm writing a Ruby GTK application that runs on a mobile device (Nokia N800).
It's starting to take shape now, but I have noticed that leaving it running for
long periods of time is particularly bad for my battery life.

I don't really understand Ruby threads under the hood or what alterations to
them ruby-gtk2 makes (but am keen to learn!). Powertop suggests that Ruby is
waking up around 100 times a second when there is an active thread, even 
during a sleep state. Presumably this is to check for thread activity.

Is there a way around this in Ruby 1.8? Will the new threading model in 1.9
help this?

Any pointers are apprecited,

Mark