Lee.org

If you are planning on going to Maker Faire (you ARE going to Maker Faire, aren’t you?) you should get the discounted tickets they are offering. It’s $35 for both admission to Maker Faire and a subscription to Make Magazine. That’s like a crazy discount for the two since admission at the door will be $35. Make is the prettiest, most fun and helpful magazine I’ve seen for making things, really!

The discount ticket thing expires tonight, May 12th
http://www.makerfairetickets.com/

Maker Faire is Saturday May 22 10a-8p and Sunday May 23 10a-6p in San Mateo. I highly recommend going early on Saturday when all the Makers will be fresh. Many people start packing up by 5p on Sunday.

Check out the magazine. http://makezine.com/

No, I don’t work for Make, I’m just a huge fan.

PS, if you’d like to volunteer to help setup Maker Faire on Friday May 21st (and would like a free pass for the weekend!) email me back and I’ll hook you up with Binka at Make.

I’d love to get more time to do everything than other people. Here’s a recent discussion between a friend and I about polyphasic sleep. Darn him if he doesn’t make excellent arguments against the possibility of me (or most people) ever doing it.

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From Lee
When we were together, I spoke to you about polyphasic sleeping. It was my impression that you believed polyphasic sleeping couldn’t be done because people just aren’t capable of doing it for more than a short period of time (IE like the breatharian argument – no one is a breatharian for more than a few weeks because they die).

Morgan Engel presented at the September 2009 5 Minutes of Fame “A Primer on Polyphasic Sleeping”.
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2180170 25 minutes into the video. At 29:00 he says (paraphrased ) “I did it for 6 months and it was great. I taught myself many things with the extra time. I had to stop because my girlfriend thought it was weird”. But also… “it’s really hard to do because to have to live a regimented lifestyle.” That is a popular refrain I’ve seen from others.

If this page (http://trypolyphasic.com/map) is any indication, there are maybe 100-1000 people in the world who say they have successfully done polyphasic sleep.

There’s lots of resources and community around it… this is a good starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep

That said, I think a good simple summary would be:
Polyphasic sleep is certainly possible. However, it takes at least as much personal effort as going to a gym regularly. The awkward social aspects add to the difficulty.

Since I’ve never been able to make it to a gym on a regular basis despite trying and knowing that there are many personal benefits (having more energy, improved physical strength, needing less sleep), and I don’t feel a serious desire to attempt this, I’m not going to. At least not right now… ;-)

————————————————–
From my friend
Yeah, I should qualify that a little. I think *most* people can’t do it, but I’m not going to bet against outliers (given 5×10^9 people, lots of room under the tails of the Gaussian.) But I’d really like to see something more objective than self-reporting of “successful”
polyphasers. I think the physical is harder than the social (though the latter is a convenient excuse).

But who knows what’s “normal,” actually:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Slumber%27s+Unexplored+Landscape-a056458799

-J

————————————————–
From Lee
> But who knows what’s “normal,” actually:
> http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Slumber%27s+Unexplored+Landscape-a056458799

Wow. The big thing I got from that article was, “You think you know about sleep? You don’t know ANYTHING about sleep!” Wow. Thanks.

————————————————–

> I think the physical is harder than the social (though the latter is a
> convenient excuse).

Ummm. If the article you quoted had a summary, it would be something like, “While scientific documentation is tentative on the subject, clearly the parameters of sleep are wildly flexible and depend to a great extent on social context.” The social aspect is clearly not “a convenient excuse”, in fact it is a keystone.

There were several examples of polyphasic sleep in the article, though it’s interesting to note that no mention of people getting LESS sleep, just DIFFERENT sleep. Yeah, maybe I’m just trying to split hairs to my advantage; what I want to see is a way to lose less of my life to nonproductive sleep and what the article talks about is getting different sleep. Phoey, if only I could hack sleep to my advantage…

————————————————–

> But I’d really like to see something more objective than
> self-reporting of “successful” polyphasers.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a782431473~db=all

Dr. Claudio Stampi’s research
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myi2sRph69A http://www.sleepingschedules.com/understanding/researchers/stampi/ (in the video a test subject tried the Uberman sleep cycle for 2 months. After a while it started getting hard to wake him but once awake he worked almost at 100% ability and attitude. He was glad to have finished the experiment)

This is possibly telling…. about the same number added as removed from the list each month…
http://jorel314.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/october-and-november-2009-polyphasic-bloggers/
http://jorel314.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/september-2009-polyphasic-bloggers/
http://jorel314.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/august-2009-polyphasic-bloggers/
http://jorel314.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/july-2009-polyphasic-bloggers/

————————————————–
From my friend

> There were several examples of polyphasic sleep in the article, though
> it’s interesting to note that no mention of people getting LESS sleep,
> just DIFFERENT sleep.

Exactly. When = social, how much = biological.

> Yeah, maybe I’m just trying to split hairs to my advantage; what I
> want to see is a way to lose less of my life to nonproductive sleep
> and what the article talks about is getting different sleep. Phoey, if
> only I could hack sleep to my advantage…
>
> ————————————————–
>
>
>> But I’d really like to see something more objective than
>> self-reporting of “successful” polyphasers.
>
> http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a782431473~db=all

Thanks for data. Wow, N=99 might actually be statistically significant.

Still not buying this one, though: “prolonged sustained performance” = only the duration of the race, right? And a mean reduction of total sleep time of a little more than an hour? That’s not particularly rare or novel: we did it during SWARM crunch time, and of course naps will help when you are sleep-deprived for other reasons.

> Dr. Claudio Stampi’s research
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myi2sRph69A
> http://www.sleepingschedules.com/understanding/researchers/stampi/ (in
> the video a test subject tried the Uberman sleep cycle for 2 months.
> After a while it started getting hard to wake him but once awake he
> worked almost at 100% ability and attitude. He was glad to have
> finished the experiment)

This just tells me that the study author has skin in the game. The “Founder and Director of the Chronobiology Research Institute” needs to
have some kind of angle, and his looks like polyphasic sleep.

See http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195383427/ for more detail on institutional bias.

> This is possibly telling…. about the same number added as removed
> from the list each month…
> http://jorel314.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/october-and-november-2009-polyphasic-bloggers/
> http://jorel314.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/september-2009-polyphasic-bloggers/
> http://jorel314.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/august-2009-polyphasic-bloggers/
> http://jorel314.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/july-2009-polyphasic-bloggers/

I still don’t trust self-reporting. Look: if Lance Armstrong can have a resting pulse of 42 when average males are 70, I have no doubt that there are sleep ninjas that can make do with only a few hours. I just haven’t seen any convincing examples that normal chumps like us can “hack sleep” for any length of time while remaining alert, happy, and sane.

So bust out the modafinil and snort that orexin-A

————————————————–
From Lee
First, thanks for a stimulating conversation. :-)

You’ve made some excellent points.

Polyphasic sleep – Possible. Hard. Not fun.

“Possible” – SOME people gain SOME advantage over the course of a FEW months “Hard” – Takes time and training, detracting from the overall effect. Causes real social detriment “Not fun” – Over the course of months and years, people want to do what feels good. Putting desires like sleep and food on hold for long periods wears at a person.

I want to write and think more about the subject but there are only so many hours in a day. Heh, get it? ;-)

If you haven’t played Katamari Damacy, you’re missing a beautifully insane moment in gaming history.

Watch!

I heard this anecdote from a guy at Fire in the Valley.

This is about another friend who will I won’t name here. On a day when there is absolutely no wind he has propane in a crevasse, the bottom of a little valley and lit it. Since propane is heavier than air, it kind of flows down the river and then he lights it. It doesn’t explode, instead it burns at the interface between the propane and the air. And it’s awesome.

Proposition 13 “Don’t reassess my property when doing and earthquake retrofit” Yes.

Proposition 14 “Only the top 2 candidates make it to the general election.” Hell no! It moves the most important parts of the election to the primary instead of the general election, reinforces the “2 party system” (it’s not, is a MULTI-party system) and kicks smaller parties to the curb.

Proposition 15 “Candidates for the Secretary of State can get free money for the election” No. Umm, why is this only for the Secretary of State position?

Proposition 16 “It takes a 2/3 majority to change to a municipal electric company”. No way. This is obviously PG&E’s secret bid to eliminate their municipal competition. Guys, cut it out ok?

Proposition 17 “Car insurance companies can offer continuous coverage discounts even if people change insurance companies.” Yes. I like the part about discounts and there’s nothing forcing companies to charge surcharges for lapses in coverage. Free market = good.

Papalote rocks.

With wobble-vision, also known as wiggle stereoscopy, you can get a little bit of 3D-edness out of regular computer screens.

Check out some examples

http://www.lenticulations.com/#5

http://pinktentacle.com/2009/10/animated-stereoviews-of-old-japan/

Here’s a video shows off (sic) the limitations of the technology

http://laughingsquid.com/doubtful-comforts-innovative-3d-music-video-requires-no-glasses/

Of course, it all probably just gives you a headache.

Art
Aesthetic is perception.
Perception is history.
History is stereotype.
Stereotype is a box.

There is a documentary about Ace Junkyard.

This was a seminal art space in San Francisco for many years.

http://aceintheholefilm.com

Heavyink is going to be giving away free comic books on May 1! You know, the kind made with real paper. Very cool.

This is happening as part of Free Comic Book Day.

I’ve been using the NoSpamNX anti comment spam plugin for the last few months. It works very well. The best part is that it reduces the number of comment spams in my Akismet spam folder so dramatically that I’m able to look through the folder and rescue false positives.

Take a look at the image below. Spam comments are down from 300/day to 5/day. And now I rescue the occasional false positive.

Of course, as it becomes more popular, spammers will adapt. But it’s worked well for several months. I have noted that the Akismet chart above doesn’t track the number of false positives correctly. I’ve rescued more than the number of false positives that the chart claims.

What is the deal with this?

When I double-click a .mov file, it takes 30+ seconds for Quicktime to power up and play the file.

When I plug my iPhone into my computer, it takes 2+ minutes to backup the iPhone every time… and THEN it starts syncing.

iTunes is DOG SLOW to do anything and everything. It is USELESS as a player of anything because I can’t even freaking scroll down a list without frustration.

It never was a very good podcast player. I just switched back to the open source, free, Juice podcast player (an app that hasn’t been updated in 5 years!) and it’s sooo much better.

The interface is still completely non-intuitive. While I watch other people using it, their mouths always say “it’s so easy!” but the frustration in their fingers and eyes tell me they are lying.

I just reinstalled windows due to a hard drive crash. My computer was lighting fast at everything as I was reinstalling apps until I came to reinstalling iTunes. Fucking boat anchor of an application.

The ONLY reason I use iTunes is to sync my iPhone to Outlook.

Watchmen - Pretty good. Though I was expecting more given the original graphic novel; it’s really hard squeezing all that amazingness into a movie. You know, after another viewing, I really like it. It’s more elegant than I initially thought.

Big Lebowski – I’m only barely getting how my friends feel that this movie is mythic. Maybe it has to sink in. It was good nonetheless.

Zombieland – great zombie fun

Moon – I don’t know, I found it to be a bit predictable and slightly contrived. Of course the contrived part wasn’t the main storyline but the hints and clues we get to see. But it was good.

(audiobook) The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science That Could Save Your Life By Ben Sherwood. I gave up on it. It’s full of sensational anecdotes that don’t give me a real feel for how to survive. You could distill the book down to “Stay alert, don’t freeze up, be lucky.” He’s more interested in telling gossipy stories about people that beat the odds (IE, were lucky) than looking at the secrets and science that could save your life.

I started skipping around and heard bits like “A human jaw generates 64 PSI when it masticates, a tiger generates 900 pounds of force… ” Um, choose your units dude, especially when it’s important for the story. “A plane had a mid-air collision and there were no survivors. Local townspeople were looking through the wreckage and heard moaning, it was [the woman who survived].” Umm,  you just said there were no survivors. There were LOTS of annoying bits like this. And lots of anecdotes that don’t illuminate a point. And lots of “the moral of the story is, be lucky” stories.

In Lucknow India, I saw a kite about 50 feet up that was flying without any wind. I think the pilot was yanking the string to keep it aloft but I can’t google up any reference to such kites. Have you heard of such a thing?

65 days after I left 3 SWARM robots in a room in Kanpur India, packed and ready to ship, they have been delivered to me here in San Francisco. I took delivery at 1pm today.

This has been such an ordeal. Ask me to tell you about it. I’ll teach you about the 50% rule and demonstrate the use of multiple four-letter words.

I am looking for VoIP telephone service for a business I’m working for. Can you recommend a provider? They have 4 phone lines and want to keep similar services but save money. (though some bells and whistles would be nice too)

This is old info but I needed to refer to it after my Windows reinstall so I’ll just put it here for easy reference.

Windows Explorer Command-Line Options

————————————
Explorer [/n] [/e] [(,)/root,<object>] [/select,<object>]

/n Opens a new single-pane window for the default
selection. This is usually the root of the drive Windows
is installed on. If the window is already open, a
duplicate opens.

/e Opens Windows Explorer in its default view.

/root,<object> Opens a window view of the specified object.

/select,<object> Opens a window view with the specified folder, file or
application selected.

Examples:

Example 1: Explorer /select,C:\TestDir\TestApp.exe

Opens a window view with TestApp selected.

Example 2: Explorer /e,/root,C:\TestDir\TestApp.exe

This opens Explorer with C: expanded and TestApp selected.

Example 3: Explorer /root,\\TestSvr\TestShare

Opens a window view of the specified share.

Example 4: Explorer /root,\\TestSvr\TestShare,select,TestApp.exe

I tried to wind my way through “H&R Block at Home Free Edition” but gave up when it kept asking inappropriate (and unanswerable) questions about my business and hobby. And it kept pissing me off how it would ask questions in a wonky order (IE for the sale of stock, it first asks about the sale on one page, then when I bought the stock, then another detail about about the sale on a third page)

I tried Free Tax USA at random off the IRS website and I liked it a lot. I’ll definitely try it again next year.

Taxes done! And with an hour and a half to spare. No problem.

I’m part way through recovering from a hard drive crash. Last week my computer made the dreaded clicking noise. So I decided it was time to transfer my computer life over to a new hard drive.
Old: 180gb main drive, 500gb secondary, 250gb external
New: 1500gb main drive, screw-the-rest eh?

Spinrite told me there were like 3 unrecoverable errors on the old main drive.

My big question is: I have backups; how can I easily tell which files went bad and need recovering? I’ve got something like two hundred and fifty thousand files. (crap, I’ve got two hundred and fifty thousand files!). RAID-5 would automagically do it but Windows doesn’t support software RAID-5 and I don’t want to spend another $600 on drives and controllers. Other solutions?

I’ve got Windows and Outlook reinstalled. Next, the myriad support programs I rely on.