UltraCrepidate

Wie geht’s? Ich heiße Causa. Es ist kalt draußen heute aben. Ich Wunsch sie warm umgeben.

Danke für ihren besuch

Auf Wiedersehen

Following the trail of reasoning from a popular question: “Did a tree make any sound when it falls if there’s nobody around to hear it?”, I started to ask if God can exist if we are not around. Or put it more vaguely, the existence of the concept of God without human. It did not answer the question directly, but rather, it put the question in a different perspective for me which made me see God for what it is. The existence of God depends as much upon us, as our survival upon God. Without our realization, God isn’t even defined or put into a role. When left alone, it’ll continue to just exist. Just like space has existed and created all these awesome events. Collapse of the stars, space folding, light, heat and cold. When seen this way, the yes or no answer I’ve been seeking ceased to be relevant to me.

It also allowed me to resolve a conflict of self that’s been bothering me. Are we an accident? Or are we God’s children with a purpose?

You see, we are limited by the words we use to ask the questions and the idea of a question itself. A word represent a concept of an object defined by our experience and evolve overtime. Every question’s concept shifts and there’s nothing definite. There are only, the relationships between the questions and their words.

The last part is the recent blurry revelations that I haven’t had time to contemplate on. It happened during my German conversation class when the teacher mentioned how North Americans don’t expect you to actually answer the question to: “How are you”, whereas Germans will think this is too personal of a question, but actually fill you in on their well being. I always thought that there’s something wrong with me after some people gave me bad looks or giving me the feeling of impatience when I actually reply with something other than “Not bad and you?”. I know I should stick with it, but I never understood why till now. All these time I thought they actually cared about me. HAHA.

And that will have to conclude today’s contemplation here, as I’ve reached the limit of my own understanding. Food for my thoughts later. One does wonder, what one’s thought will be like when the brain is completely cut off from any sensory inputs.

Site statistic has increased more than I expected ending the year with 475 unique visitors, with 1/4 of it coming from site promotion tools like blog explosion, blog mad or blog soldiers. I’ve gradually stopped using them since I find that visitors from these usually don’t return. The goal for my site, is not for popularity anyway. Google analytics’s result more or less confirms with awstats.

The weirdest search is: sex with my teachers biatchs

The top content is: fdisk Geek Part I: Hacking the graphic card

Most searched phrase is: Ultracrepidate

Second most searched phrase: Can I use normal rice to make sushi.

Page Rank: 2

Most emotional post: meh

Event that triggered the most changes: Breakup

Amongst the most interesting comment I received is this one. About a girl I once find attractive while working at Nordia. It is worth mentioning because I noticed my strong emotional response to the comment. The post about this comment was downgraded to the comment reply itself. I have evaluated it and deemed it unworthy as a post.
The year passed by like a flash and I am still amazed at how much has happened. Fred’s passing comment on how this year has been the year of change for me ranged true and true as I scroll through the numerous entries. I thought these things had happened 10 years ago.

The holy jihad against any technology in the Dune series started out with a stupid girl smashing medical equipments. Until the idea “thou should not create a machine in the image of god” spread like a virus and resulted in a specialized profession. The Mentat.

A Mentat, is a person trained to function like a computer. He developed abilities to compute massive amount of information in a fraction of a second. We know it can be done because of the idiot savants that lives in mental institutes.

Given training, our body can withstand the most extreme of situations. The current breath holding record is about 9 minutes, that is beyond an accident or freak of nature.

Why did I mention this? Well, as an accident, I discovered a neat way to hold my breath. You see, my average has never surpassed 45 seconds, with the best score at 1 minute on a good day.  The reason is the discomfort and extra effort I spent holding more air than what my lungs are used to.

As I was lying in bed typing an entry yesterday, I watched my stomach rise and fall and wondered if my stomach can hold any air. So I focused on pumping air in there, before I know it, I passed the 2 minute barrier on my first try.

This happened because different muscles were used to hold the air inside and doesn’t trigger a rejection signal. I later experimented filling both my stomach and lungs, but the result is still less than 2 minute.

Try it… just don’t hold it for too long. You might forget to breath afterwards. It almost happened to me.

I was going to write some philosophy meandering, but that was trumped by what happened today.

Today marked the first time that a head hunter initiated contact with me as an attempt to get qualified people to work for them. It is interesting to note that the exchange was very honest and filled with truth. What truth?

I am in a comfortable seat. I am in the position of power. I can choose depending on whether or not your offer goes well with my goal in life.

I originally set out to achieve a blurry dreamy effect to the pictures that I see on Irena’s photo albums. Then, of course, having achieved that, I feel like a boring mimic and remained somewhat unsatisfied with copying someone else, even though reverse engineering someone else’s effect is a little tricky. So, I decided to take it as far as I can based on the image in my mind that I really wanted. The result, as you can see, is an anime like scene that I am quite pleased about.

I don’t know when, but at one point, I reached a tipping point and just understands photoshop. I don’t know how others do it, but I seem to be able to know the approximate result that comes out of a certain action before I apply it. Could be that I am just so used to make custom hardware image filters for clients that associates mathematics to pictures. Or it’s just my ego.

This is my first site design for someone else, based on the criteria that it has to be a rain forest. The final image is out of the 2 others I found on Flickr with deviant art license granted to the general public.

Now that the picture is done, I still have to go through the headache of how to implement this on Nutang while figuring out how I can blend the picture into a dark background. Currently, the wire frame should allow me to blend a granulated background into the picture so the transition seems seamless, but you never know till it’s done and the code is in.

To conclude this, it feels strange designing for someone else. You have to work within the constraints of their criteria which proves to be a great challenge for me. If you know me: challenge = highly sought after. Not only that, it forces me to design in a way that’s different than the norms I abide by, which adds another level of understanding to my skill. One day, it’ll be useful.

Growing up with many different names makes me less susceptible to impressive titles. To seek respect and put others down by showing how wonderful and complex my job title is. Names, used to describe a function and gives meaning about you in other people’s mind. The Causalien you know, is different from the Causalien that the others know.  They are all me, yet not me in entirety.

I usually ignore the person’s title when I first meet them and observe their interaction with others instead. There can only be a few functions that needs to present for a work group to function and the rest is just copying at a larger scale so the command structure can get through. You need the designer, who knows how everything works and the concept of how to design. Then the integrator who pieces all the different elements together for a functional unit. Which is passed on to the robot who will be the grunt of repetitive manufacturing. Once that’s done, the salesman who are in direct contact of the clients and pushes sales. When business is not good, a marketer to create hype and generate publicity. Finally, the manager and the coordinator to keep all the needs of the previous workers filled.

Or more simply put. A creator, an integrator, a salesman and a manager.

Though I do feel some awe when I rethink about the title of the “Sales guy” I’ve been mentioning in my previous posts. Regional sales manager sure conveys an air of importance to that of a greasy sleazy title of salesman. Whilst Engineering Application Specialist create the same amount of confusion to that of the System Integrator to the general public. Heck with it, I am not even sure I know the meaning. So far, I’ve never been interviewed by anyone who understand what my job title is about. The confusion displayed on people’s face is usually worth the effort of telling them that I was an ASIC design engineer. Other than that, in my dance circles. I’d just respond I am in IT.

This is part twenty six of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

As mentioned in the previous post, I was debating whether or not to continue this after the 30 day trial. After weighing in the options. My decision is no.

The only pro of this is the extra hours. However, it doesn’t necessarily result in more productivity. I find that the extra hours are spent doing mundane things. Whereas when I actually have a good quality sleep, the work I can produce have more quality than on a Triphasic schedule. The hours makes your life pretty difficult.

It’s a great schedule, if you are not a professional like me who need extreme focus for a continuous uninterrupted time during the day. The sore eyes eventually killed it for me, since I cannot continuously work in front of a computer like I originally thought. I had to mix in different activities that are less strenuous on the eyes, which defeats the purpose of having more hours in a day. I can definitely see myself doing this, if I am a stay at home dad, or living on welfare, or if none of my activities involves a computer. Again, it’s up to the type of lifestyle you need to decide whether or not to stick to it.

What I gained from this? I believe I have more control over my sleep and am less susceptible to sleep deprivation. It is a great trip about learning as you can see from the numerous thing I’ve discovered.

Now, I have to try and get back to the original schedule. Just have to be more disciplined in being productive.

We now interrupt your Triphasic sleep log with a very normal journal entry. Here I am, at 1:30AM in the morning. Awake automatically.

When asked how one can still bike around Montreal around the winter hills of Mont-Royal with snow the height of your ankle that lays on top of pure solid ice, Jesse promptly replied: “Chains, brakes and anti-freeze lubricants with your chains.” It was my first introduction to the way of frugal living. With a wild eyed disbelief on my face I pondered the implication of such a reponse.

1. Jesse did not have to think before answering

2. This is not considered crazy

Although I’ve biked till way into the winter last year, I was never hard core enough to do the aforementioned modifications and bare the backbone of Montreal winter. Which is why I always salute the bikers that zooms past me when I am holed up in my warm car awaiting the red light to turn.

The business contact that I met today asked me whether or not I like the winter that finally showed up to our door. “Are you kidding me? I love it.” Not only do I have to wake up earlier everyday, to shovel my car out of the snow and ice that accumulated overnight, I also get to freeze to death for 10 minutes while my car warm up. Not to mention all the extra expenses spent in preparation for a tough winter. My car is a virtual bunker filled with extra clothing, emergency kits, shovel, gloves, food, firelog etc. etc. This still doesn’t prepare me for some days when the keyholes are covered with frozen ice, or the door couldn’t be opened because it’s covered in a 3 cm coat of ice, or it’s just too cold for the engine to start. Trucker’s advice is to bring a 50% scotch and pour it into your gas tank to unfreeze your gas. I am contemplating trying this.

“Frozen windshield whilst driving, the anti-freeze wiper fluid isn’t anti-freeze enough to defrost the ice that accumulated on my windshield. I eventually adapted to be able to see even with a deformed view”

In all seriousness, I answered yes and no. No, I don’t like the cold since I am made for a tropical country and has no “extra” fat. Yes I like the cold because I’ve always enjoyed change. It makes life less monotonic and who can miss a chance to give it a good ol’ Quebec swearing: “Crestie de caullise de Tarrrbarrrrnack”. I enjoy the phrase as much as my new found ability to roll my tongue whilst swearing at winter.

This is part twenty four of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

It is a great comfort when I sensed the urge to shutdown and go to bed at 6:30PM. Stuck in traffic due to heavy snow, I struggled to stay awake after a weekend of messed up schedule. Does this mean that I have successfully potty trained my body?

Anyway, this certainly has been an interesting trip that helped me learn more and more about my body. The 30 day trial finish line is almost here and I don’t have a definite answer of whether or not to keep to this schedule. Maybe if I can reach a compromise and switch back and fourth between weekday Triphasic and weekend monophasic, I will probablly stick with it.

I can do away without fun during the weekdays and follow a military like lifestyle that maximizes time usage, while switching to a more relaxed play oriented schedule during the weekend so I can interact with people I like.

If there’s one thing that I learned from this, it’s that the human body, given time, can adapt to anything. Your reality is what you want it to be if you take the time to slowly train yourself.

Another interesting point to note is that the mind needs diversity of information, like your body needs a multitude of nutrients. This can be seen everywhere in nature and in society where excessive focus in one thing often leads to disastrous outcomes due to the dependency on one source of interaction. I understood during this time, that no matter how tired I am, how much I want to sleep, as soon as I switch an activity, the mental alertness comes back and I can keep on learning. The burnout after, as a result for this continuous learning scheme, sould not be ignored however

This is part twenty three of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

This weekend officially destroyed any schedule that I tried to keep. My iron mental resolve met the two ender that are ever present in my life.

The biggest problem with any sort of sleep schedule is that it’ll eventually get disrupted because life is a changing eventuality. Two things this weekend. Computer game and going out. It all comes down to which I consider the more important part of my life. Granted being a super man who sleeps only 4 to 5 hours a day and doing a lot of great thing is awesome, but he can’t get over this one girl. I too can’t ignore my obsession when faced with a good game, a good book, a good movie, great company of friend or any great opportunity.

I still haven’t finished my 30 days trial yet. So I will continue on with this and readjust. How easy the readjustment will be is key to me being able to stick to the schedule I believe. One good thing that came out of this is my vegetarian diet is working out and I have to quit coffee. The thing I don’t like about this is the constant blogging, it makes my journal entries bland like rice.

I don’t know when this started happening, but I’ve been very trusting on information that I obtained from others and have been jumping straight into things without fear.

Hopping on to a bus as just as it approaches without knowing its schedule or route relying solely on information gathered from another person used to unnerve me throughout the trip. Last night though, the story was different.

I have more faith in my own ability to get out of shitty situation, more trust in the people that I know who I get the information from,  more interest in different things that happens around me and more importantly a stronger feeling that I am where I belong wherever I am.

It is with the utmost curiosity when I discovered the bus stop that passed by Montreal’s acrobatic and circuit school. I’ve been bumping into their students left and right at different dance parties and have been wondering about it forever. The mystery was solved when a troupe of young athletic looking teens hopped on to the semi empty bus and begin doing acrobatics with the bars and handles installed for people standing. Oh Montreal,

This is part twenty one of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

Wow, It’s almost a month now. It certainly felt shorter. In fact, I didn’t feel the passage of time at all. Life is one big continuous moment. I am not sure if I enjoy living like this. The only separation is between weekdays and weekends.

The Triphasic sleep schedule is a trip in mental discipline as well as an exploration of what one can and cannot do with sleep. I think I have reached a comfortable point with 1 hour naps and a 3~4 hour core sleep in the morning depending on how tired I am. The amount of time saved is amazing, though, I am not sure about its effectiveness since I have to allocate some of them for entertainment and other activities instead of working on my projects.

Still, I am amazed to discover that completing certain projects provided the entertainment and relaxation similar to other forms of relaxing activities. Whereas it presented a drain on me before.

I have posted the summary of Q4 financials for this year in my management of stocks.  I tried a few things this quarter, including day trading and flip flopping. None of them appealed to me yet because I realized that in order to do so, you have to have a bigger capital in general to make a good return on the investment. Even then, the part that you use for flip flopping and day trading should only be a small amount of your whole portfolio, so that the whole process can remain purely cerebral.  Once you get  emotionally involved in the trade, that’s when you start losing money.

I also had a hard time coming up with a consistent way to log my gains, but there is none. The more I research into finances, the more I understand that the value of money is fluid at any given time. There is always someone who want to buy for more than what it’s worth and someone who are selling for less… but are they really? Maybe they’ve gained enough over time and it’s not worth fighting for a few cents for them.

Despite working at a shitty job for the first four month of this year. I still managed to save up enough to reach my 20k target With 7% of it generated from the buying and selling of stocks. It’s a great sense of achievement, yet a little bit surreal. You see, I do not understand the concept of 20k in value. All I see are numbers, day in and day out. One day, I might be 1k less than the previous day and another day, I’ll see a 1k gain from before. It’s a true emotional roller coaster and it has helped me in understanding risk vs opportunity while keeping a cool head above the water to make the right decision.

I have yet experienced any major stock fall yet, so I am crossing my finger that things will continue to be good. It seems like something is bubbling up, but I can’t get my hand on what it is. Maybe it’s the new monetization of the blogsphere, but I fail to understand how it can be related.

Until the next quarter.

This is part twenty of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

A reset to the normal hours. With 1.5 hours nap time and 3.5 hours of core sleep appears to have worked in increasing my alertness.

Sleep
Today, I’ve decreased my nap times to 1 hours only and it seem to have no affect in the way I function. I will keep the usual 3.5 hour core sleep so I don’t overdo it again like I did on Tuesday.

Activities

Refraining from working on my computer is working on the overall quality of alertness. I think the key here is a well diversified activity schedule. Perhaps I was focusing too much on getting things done with all these extra times I have. I never shut down to relax and have fun.

Nothing else to report. I’ve been hanging out with people and just plain ol relaxing.

This is part ninteen of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

The effect of a good sleep overdose is quite significant. I am more alert while performing all tasks. Although the grogginess is still being felt, whenever I try to wake up, but they are only physical symptoms.

The devil that I was struggling with for the past 2 days were both mental and physical. It seemed like my brain was invoking the shutdown process while my mind is trying to run an OS.

The eyes are still sore, and the soreness propagates to a few muscles associated with it around the head now. Staying away from the computer today and cook seem to alleviate the strain slightly.

One benefit I am seeing from this, is that I am getting up earlier which means going to work early and in turn resulted in less time stuck in traffic. I went from 2 hours per day to a mere 1 hour. More time!!!

This is part eighteen of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

The low down
I didn’t update yesterday. Something must’ve happened. Yes. First, I wanted to let my previous post stay up at the front page for a while, second, I decided to say screw it just this once.

I overdid the tweaking and ended up super exhausted. The changes I made yesterday reduced my nap time to 1 hour and core sleep to 3 hours. Which explains my inability to perform any function today. So after waking up from my midnight nap and making sure that I am fully awake, I thought about what I should do. Problem is, the feeling of vertigo never faded while I was weighing in the options. Something is definitely wrong. An extra 30 minute nap didn’t help the matter. So I said screw it, set my alarm for 7 AM and just slept. I wanted to see, how much my body needed before it automatically wakes itself up.
An hour later, I was awake again. Closed my eyes and willed myself back to sleep. This is very strange, as I recall just 2 days ago, I was enjoying a great weekend with plenty of time and fun. The past two day, with work combined, proves to be hell for me. I noticed an extreme deficiency in memory recall and had to rely on notepads to help myself to remember what to do. Imagine only having short term memory for the day, that’s what it felt like. I am beginning to suspect that the amount of sleep you need, is a function of the brain power you used. More specifically, memory recall.

Since I’ve awakened numerous time having dreams and still feeling groggy, the theory of REM sleep being able to refresh you seems far fetched to me.

“Who is this?”

People kept on asking about this picture that I put on one of my many computers at work.

“Is she a model?”

I spent the better part of my weekend helping her establish an online presence as well as experimenting with the power of photoshop. It’s the first time that I get to play with a higher resolution image and a well placed shot like this. Although I’d like to claim some credit, truth is, she took the picture herself. I am still not skillful enough as a camera man to help my subjects get through the uncomfortable stage. The session that we planned together to take pictures ended up being a giggling fest.

It used to be that you only need to create your own site, but since her goal is to become popular, I had to sign her up to numerous social sites, retyping the same info over and over again. Her main page will be on http://mistressbailey.nutang.com and I’ve been doing some modification slowly to achieve the goal we set for this site.

While working on the site, I became more and more aware of an undeniable fact. That people pay way too much attention to a girl with a beautiful face. I created an account a few weeks before her in order to test the layout and editing. I’ve actively participate in the forum for development issues and have generate traffic for the blog network. (Still am one of the top lurker&contributor so far). Her site, in one day, received more comment and replies from a “Hello” post than mine did through the few weeks. I was aware of this phenomenom before, but never in my imagination did I imagine it to be this big of a gap.

Back to the main topic. After my co-worker’s questions, I started to ask the same question myself. Maybe she should become a model, or some type of celebrity with a nice face. We’ll see how far we can push it. So here’s my question:

Do you think she should be a model? Or, make it as one.

This is part seventeen of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

Language

“Bonjour, j’aimerai fait vaccinner ma chatte, est-ce que je peux venir tout de suite ou je dois prend une réservation?”

“Oui, pour fait vaccinner une chatte tu dois réserve un rendez-vous. Avez-vous un idée du temps qui vous convienne?”

“Hmmm demain soir si c’est possible, après travaille.”

“J’ai six heure et demi disponible ici.”

“Ok ça c’est parfait. A demain.”

This is one of the shocking moments that made me realize that my skill in speaking French has improved to a point where I no longer have to think about it. It’s an indication that my language skill isn’t any worst under sever sleep deprivation. A girl once laughed at me for speaking Mandarin with her at the moment right before I fall unconscious into dream land.
Naps

The 6:30PM nap stayed where it is, since it’s been perfect so far. I adjusted the midnight nap back to 12AM to 1:30AM and experienced the normal grogginess when trying to get up. Maybe I’ll give 11PM another try tomorrow. I am just glad I made it through today even after the incident yesterday.

Core Sleep

I slept the usual 3.5 hours because of the incident in case that I am too sleep deprived. With only 1.5 hour nap and 3.5 hours core sleep today. I am surviving on 5 hours of sleep in total. Way beyond the goal of 5.5 hours per day goal I set for myself. I was in a pissy mood all day at work today.

Sore eyes

I spent the weekend totally glued to my computer most of the time, which I will reserve for a normal journal entry. I finally experienced the eye problems that everyone else is experiencing from keeping them open all the time. Well, I experienced this in the first 2 days but it was never as much of a problem as today. I think staring into the monitor too long increased the pain that I felt. Blood shot red eyes aren’t exactly my idea of fun. It’s understandable though and despite the discomfort, I much enjoyed working on project for such an extended amount of time. So I decided to adapt by switching back and forth between the left eye and the right eye.

My suggestions for all others who are experiencing eye pain. Do something else beside surfing the web.

This is part sixteen of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

Core sleep

Tweaking the core morning sleep from 6AM to 9AM was a mistake. If anything, it made getting up harder. I am starting to think my theory about an internal cycle that repeats continuously regardless of whether or not we are awake could be right. I had a dream this morning and I remember most of them, yet I did not wake up feeling refreshed from having REM sleep and dreams.

Naps

Since the afternoon nap at 6:30PM has been so successful so far, I kept it that way. It’s great as usual. Yesterday I tried 1:30AM to 2PM and had a hard time waking up, so I decided to do 11:30PM to 1AM as my midnight nap thinking that this might be in sync with my internal cycle. Stupid me, I went through the motion of having chinese tea right before I sleep. When I reflect on my past few nights, I realized that I had done the same thing every night before midnight. Perhaps that’s the reason why it’s so hard to wake up. Chinese tea has less effect on my sleep than caffeine, but it is significant enough when you are trying to fall asleep within 5~10 minute of lying down. Anyway, as I am typing right now, I pretty much kissed my midnight nap goodbye by doing this. If I write about oversleeping tomorrow, you’ll know why.

Learning

My learning isn’t stunted or anything by this, my daily improvement in Guitar hero 2 is a good proof of this and that’s only one area of learning I indulge in per day. People has remarked how fast I learn new and unknown things. I’ve always associated that with growing up with changing environment all the time. Moving around from house to house definitely contribute to some of that. Observing my flat mate playing Guitar Hero 2 though made me think otherwise:

“That’s awesome, you got 100% on easy, you should try playing on normal”

“But it’s too hard, I don’t know how to use my pinky yet.”

“Well, there’s no point of you to continue in easy.”

Let me introduce you to Alpha Female. She’s the type of person, who, upon missing a few notes, pressed the start button and selected quit or when left unmonitored, would kept on playing the easiest song and repeat the 100% performance. Alpha female also plays a funny game with my cat. You see, Lethe’d always sneak out whenever she opens the door. It wasn’t a big deal until I had to go fetch her from my neighbors when I return home one day. She complains that Lethe is always trying to sneak out whenever she opens the door and it’s hard for her to keep track. I then observed the following:

Alpha female would open the door very wide, position her bag intentionally so it blocks the door and proceed to take off her jacket. During which, Lethe has ample time, not to mention a crack big enough to fit a muck truck, to sneak out. Alpha female would then run after her, spend 5 minutes saying things to Lethe before bringing her in. Then she complains to me about it.

Anyway, back to the topic of learning. After I coaxed her into trying normal. I realized that her accuracy on trying normal mode on the first try is the same, if not better, than when I first started. So the observation is that our learning ability during a small fraction of time for hand eye coordination on previously unknown movements could be the same across age/gender/ethnicity. The only difference between me and her is our reaction to failure.

My reaction: “FUCK! I can do better than this. Let me try again and prove to you what I mean.”

Her reaction: “FUCK! This is too hard, I can’t do this.”

Or the way we tackled the learning process:

My way: “Let me play expert level first and see how I fare, then I will lower the difficulty if I failed too miserably. There’s no point in learning the easier ones.”

Her way: “I’ll start with the easiest one and just contend myself with playing it perfectly and repeat the performance.”

I sighed in relief when the rhythmic beat of heavy bass started rumbling my floor. Our new neighbor downstairs enjoys a good song with a bass, I am finally not the only culprit for noise pollution in this apartment building. Oh, how I dreaded the 3 knock on the door.

I remember freshman year in university, whenever Jeff played music at inappropriate hours, we’d get a knock on the door from our next door floor mate to ask us nicely to turn down the music. Since I was never the culprit, I couldn’t understand why Jeff didn’t like the situation. She asked nicely and he did play at inappropriate times. It didn’t occur to me until it happened to me that the knock got associated to a few emotional responses that are related to the fight or flight response. The knock came, you have to deal with talking to your neighbor. Not to mention, terminating the song before you reach the emotional satisfaction you seek from the song.

I am managing most of my online presence after midnight now. My nights are not as lonely as the other soldiers of polyphasic sleep schedule because I have the cat as company. It’s also a good thing that my day job and my hobbies don’t involve the net as much, otherwise I’d drive myself crazy. In cases I do, I’d start experimenting with vegetarian cooking. The recipes I found online often involves a lot of mayonnaise, butter and heavy cream which, by my point of view, seems to defeat the purpose of being vegetarian to begin with. I always chuckle at my flat mate’s excessive use of butter and oil when she makes her meal. Whatever she made up in healthy selection of ingredient is offset by the fat used to spice up the taste.

Since Milo asked a few days ago about a logo (or months, I can’t tell anymore), I’ve been experimenting with different designs to end up with the ones below. Here they are, my first banners and the new favicon now bunkered in to everyone’s bookmarks. These are inspired by my cat’s tail and since this are my virgin designs, suggestions are welcome.

This is part fifteen of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

To mark the mid point of my sleep deprivation experiment, I posted some stats here.
Stats:
Day 15
Nap: 6:30PM~7PM, 12:30AM~2AM
Core sleep: 6AM~9AM
Total sleep: 6 hours
# of time not abiding by schedule: 4
# of extremely refreshing naps: 2
# of groggy waking: too many to count
# of time I failed to wake up properly: 1
# of total hours I overslept in the past 15 days: 2

I was awake at the usual 7:30AM today and stayed up till 6:30PM. Strangely enough I didn’t feel as tired as if I was working. I read up on SEO and various articles on sleep. I also read more details in other people’s blog about the same type of experiments. It seems that oversleeping is the most prominent problem that eventually got them to quit. No problem in that area for me there.

Comparing with Steve’s blog notes, I found out that his routine relies heavily on sleeping after a certain amount of time being awake and can only push the limit for at most an hour or so. I might be the pioneer in having an uneven sleep schedule because when I started, I didn’t read enough to get to the part where someone says the hours have to be evenly spaced out. It’s probably just a matter of training your body to expect sleep at a certain time.

I worked out a bit, have been working out for 3 days now and that doesn’t seem to affect me a bit. I practiced Trogdor in Guitar Hero2 and as suspected, my body’s muscle memory was able to continue learning and improving even though I had to stop due to hand injuries. I am able to consistently hit a 87% accuracy with 89% accuracy as the top score. This is a good evidence of muscle memory being independent of sleep deprivation.So… the question is, how come I am not as tired as when I was working during the weekday? Is it possible that the mind has certain “mental battery” and gets drained up if you use it in a certain way? My work involves mainly of thinking and creating in previously unknown patterns based on a few facts established by clients to resolve a problem. What I did today only involves taking in information and doing physical activities.

I changed the afternoon nap to 6:30PM based on the assumption that my body has another hidden cycle that’s continually repeating itself whether I am awake or not and if I hit it at the right time, I’d have a more restful nap. I did wake up feeling a lot better than yesterday (again, before the alarm), but it is still not as great as the best sleep I experienced 2 days ago. I don’t remember if I dreamed or not today.

Continuing with the same assumption, I tweak my midnight nap to 1AM~2:30AM. It didn’t make much of a difference. I also ate a big meal before going to bed for a change to see. Doesn’t seem to affect much.

This is part fourteen of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

I thought the rest of my life with polyphasic sleeping experiment is going to be a smooth sailing from now on since I started having wonderful naps yesterday until I tried to wake up from the recent nap at 1:30AM. It has always been the most difficult nap period to wake up from because 99% of my adult life involves being in a deep sleep during these hours. Perhaps I am too well attuned to that.

I was awakened by the alarm at the designated time and put the wake up routine into autopilot mode. However, my brain failed to kick into effect even after 10 minutes of up and moving about. I had a constant feeling of dizziness. My sense of balance is a few milliseconds behind the reality. I felt like a drunk man trying to walk. So I decided to take a 30 minute nap, it’s still early in the experiment so I don’t want to overtax myself. I am beginning to wonder how Steve Pavlina managed to switch to right into an even more rigorous schedule than this without progressively tweaking it like I do. But then again, he’s also someone who burned through university in one year.

The perfect nap didn’t happen today, so one of my two hypothesis must be true. I am going to start experimenting with that tomorrow. I also pondered the significance of breathing that I subconsciously focused on during my first 3 days of trial. Perhaps it is the body’s natural reaction to deprivation of oxygen and forcing a longer exhale will facilitate the feeling of falling unconscious. The problem with this is that I’d aways wake myself up with a sudden vivid image. Has anyone experienced this before? Why do we exhale our last breath when we die? I couldn’t find the answer on google. Maybe it has something to do with internal/external lung pressure. I know for a fact that breathing correctly affects the performance in a dance competition. Could it be that we are wired to change our state of mind with how we take our breath? That we’ve unconsciously anchored breathing to certain state of mind and the state of mind can thus be manipulated by controlling breathing?

This is part thirteen of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

“SHIT!”

I jumped into full alertness as the feeling of dread consumed my being. The frustration at having failed after 12 days of adjustment led me to curse and swear when the obvious signs started surfacing to my conscious, confirming with the inevitable failure.

I had changed my core sleep hour from 4AM to 7:30AM, reducing it to 3.5 hours only and was very late in taking my afternoon nap due to overwhelming workload presented to me by numerous engineers. New years is a popular day to set your deadline. Add to the fact that I started sweating cold sweat at 2PM at work, an indication that my body is overtaxed (never scientifically proven, but experienced every time I pull an all nighter and write an exam the next day, or at a LAN party). Rest assured, when i finally got into my bed at 6:30PM, I was scientifically brain dead.
The sleep was too good, I remember my first thought was: “Boy, the last time I slept like this was the 2 day sleep I took after a camping trip… 2 DAYS!!!”. Which brings me straight back down to reality. I checked the clock and couldn’t believe my eyes. I had waken up at 7:58PM. 2 minutes before my alarm goes off and this is the best sleep I’ve had in years. Still not believing, I waited 2 more minutes and indeed, my alarm went off. Something must be wrong.

Then I remembered Steve Pavlina’s blog entry about the experience where he felt refreshed because he had dreams. I too had a dream this time and can still remember some of it while staring at the clock. This adds affirmation and erased some of my previous doubts about Steve’s claim to polyphasic sleep pattern. I can now fully trust this source and proceed to apply the knowledge to mine.

What did I do today that is different? I napped at 6:30PM instead of 5:30PM and I also had a chocolate around 5PM. It could be that our body has an internal clock that cycles despite us being awake and shifting the sleep time made my REM sleep match that and produced the best sleep ever. Or the Sugar in the chocolate created some kind of high that combined very well with sleep deprivation.

The 12 AM nap is still the same. Hard to get up, but once I am up, it’s fine.

So I proceeded with further adjustment as I enter phase 2 of the sleep experiment. Yesterday I reduced the core sleep hours to 3.5 and today I took away the extra 30 minutes nap in the afternoon.

This is part twelve of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

I have cut the morning sleep from between 4~8 to 4~7:30. So far so good. To help my body adjust, I kept the extra 30 minutes nap at 9PM and allowed the room temperature to drop lower so I can force myself awake by kicking off my blanket.

Everything is pretty much on autopilot now. The only time I encounter difficulties are when I am trying to wake up. There are some hidden upside to this strategy due to my day being separated into three sections now. I feel more at ease finishing pointless tasks because I know when I next wake up I can dedicate all my effort to something else.

The down side? My flat mate has started complaining about noise at night now. I don’t know if it’s by me or just her imagination. She is a weird one.

This is part eleven of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

Well, work was actually ok. Perhaps due to the morning coffee I took. I feel normal until 30 minutes before the designated bedtime. Then I felt my mental functions shutting down one by one. The only way I can compare is if I try to stay awake late into the night in a monophasic sleep. I’d just feel shitty. In this new pattern I don’t have the luxury of feeling shitty, instead, my brain’d start shutting down without sending warnings.
There’s an interesting state of mind that I discovered during this experiment. It was when I was super sleepy, yet kept awake by the coffee I drank by accident. There were small periods of time when I experience a superb state of clarity while seeing an object in my mind. I say see because I saw something as if I am seeing something with my eyes opened. Even more. It is almost as if I can see every detail of the object. Well, today it happened again when I try to force myself to fall rapidly asleep during one of the half hour naps. The extreme clarity of the image pushed my mind awake every time I lingers between consciousness and darkness.

It felt as if my whole brain became active in a short span of time.

This is part ten of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

Tomorrow the society will wake up from its drunken slumber and crawl back to its normal everyday working life. Me too, must follow suit. The 10 days have allowed me to get tuned in to this insane schedule I am keeping for myself, but the return back to the mind bogging, brain fluid draining job that I have will be the biggest strain on this new objective.
I noticed that it is hardest to wake up if my sleep scheduled involves waking up between 12AM and 4AM. I think I will have to go with the previous schedule that interrupts most of my social activities and sleep between 10PM to 12AM. Once I am awake, it’s all fine. I don’t feel tired at all. It is just extremely hard to wake up, one must have extreme mental discipline to do so. To compensate for this and the strain of my day job, I will introduce two half hour naps between the periods of 6PM to 12 AM.
I’ve begun thinking about what to do with my time now that the day is separated into 3 portions. The first of course is for working, the second will probably for cooking, cleaning and playing, the third will be for my projects.

I really wish this is possible.

The holiday comes to an end today as the year 2007 marked it’s first day in history. I had a great break, spending time with people I like and going on shopping sprees to buy presents. This is the first time I celebrated the full American Christmas. It is definitely something to be able to say “the heck with money”. When all the dust settled down, I have a better understanding why most people are broke: Christmas is very expensive.

For those of you who recognized the picture of my kitchen. That is an updated one after I completely give up. Here’s the link to the previous post about it in case you were curious how much it has changed.
Lethe got her first piece of nature when we brought the Christmas tree back to the apartment. She went crazy and couldn’t stop climbing it and getting stuck between branches. Later, she enjoyed knocking every decoration out of the tree so she can reclaim it as her own. She also get to experience her first snowflake. The event was quite boring from a cat owner’s perspective. I was expecting her to chase wildly after the snowflakes, but she just sit there and lick her frozen paws.

I didn’t take pictures of when people are over during Christmas because I forgot my cellphone at work, you’ll just have to take my word for it that I enjoyed it. I let myself go and stopped trying to be a host for these people so I can do what I enjoy most. NOT CLEANING and playing video games with them. Having Guitar Hero 2 around definitely spiced up the holiday spirit as we laugh at each other’s tangled fingers.

Total household spending:

Tree: $51

Decorations: $30

Presents: $430

Food & drinks: $200

Total money spent in this apartment: $711

I am lucky that I don’t have any families here, but even if they do, they only celebrate Chinese new year… That’s another headache coming up. Sigh…

This year, I am going to apply something that I learned at work. It is to prioritize the things that I want to accomplish. Since, like the issues at work, there’s no way I can hope to finish all of them, I’ll just have to focus in 3 at a time. I will separate the list into main objective which I work on continuously and a second list of tasks that I can do while waiting for materials/info for the main objectives.

Main list:

#1: Separation of human improvement from main Journal

#2: Finish Level 2 German class

#3: Finish building armor for SCA heavy combat

#4: Finish rearranging digital data

#5: Understand Linux enough so I can setup my own server

Secondary list:

#1: Reaching 40k CDN in liquid asset

#2: Have a well defined 6 pack that doesn’t need a bright light to see

#3: Complete secret objective

#4: Finish making curtain

#5: Reach 95% accuracy on expert level of Trogdor in Guitar Hero 2

Happy new year everyone.

This is part nine of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.

I spent quite a lot of time cleaning up since it doesn’t require any usage of my brain. At the current rate, writing intelligible posts is a tough job. I took a break from practicing Guitar Hero2 because my left hand is hurting pretty badly. The good balances the bad out though. I’ve noticed a new found area in songs that I’ve previously listened to. It seems that I am paying more attention to the guitars and can appreciate their sound way more. they were always just part of the background before. Since some of the chords played are similar to my Guitar Hero 2 experience, listening to music now creates a much more intimate sensation because it triggers my motor and audio cortex along with some nostalgic guitar strumming memories.
The transition to vegetarian diet is also going smoothly. At least that requires effort only once a week, unlike this constant drag race against your pillow. So far, I’ve made creamy potato, spicy szechuan tofu and curry to go with my race. These will be for my lunch. The reason for this switch? I want to see if being vegetarian will cost me less and give me more energy. It’s definitely easier to make because I don’t have to spend time cooking and messing with meat. Most of the mean is cut, chop and throw into a slow cooker.