Gestolen along with 2 controllers and 11680 points worth of software. I can download the software again but it will only work under my xbox live account from now on which is why I consider it stolen. Insurance doesn’t cover this - I think it should.
Continuing to partially document my experiments with polyphasic sleeping.
Day 3 was the hardest day to get through, but every now and then I have another cycle that just isn’t working for me. I’ve ‘crashed’ about twice a week for the last couple of weeks. This is still a lot less sleep than normal: 2 hours x 5 days + 8 hours x 2 days = 26 hours instead of the 8 hours x 7 days = 56 hours. But I’m still dissapointed I haven’t become completely polyphasic.
I do have more time to do things, but I haven’t been sticking strictly to the polyphasic cycle. I think the longest I was on the cycle continuously was 4 days.
The truth is I enjoy sleeping.
Anyway I’ve had some naps in interesting places:
The couch in the meeting room at work.
Propped up against the wall sitting on a chair in the kitchenette at work.
In Alex’s car.
In a Daytona bucket seat in a huge busy Auckland arcade while friends played Daytona around me.
Sitting on a bar stool in a pool hall while friends played pool.
In friend’s houses.
In a moving car travelling from Auckland to Hamilton.
The couch in the flat lounge.
And many many naps in my bed.
I drift off to sleep 6 times everyday. I would like to say I’m now good at it. I am better but falling to sleep isn’t something I can do on command yet. Sometimes it takes a good 30 minutes for me to fall asleep, the problem is I’m continuously adjusting my alarm. I need to sleep for 15 - 20 minutes and this doesn’t count time falling asleep. There is no other way to do it other than perhaps being tuff - if I don’t fall asleep in the allocate time I’m not going to get any until next time. I think this would severly mess me up so I continue to adjust the alarm.
For the last week and a bit I’ve been getting used to a polyphasic sleep cycle. Poly meaning many, this is different from the normal monophasic sleep, one sleep period in 24 hours.
The schedule I’m on is a 20 to 30 minute nap every 4 hours. Adding this up means I get 2 to 3 hours of sleep a day.
There are various discussions and details concerning this sleep pattern. I did some research a couple of years ago and attempted the schedule then. I found that I didn’t have anything to do with my extra time and was bored so I didn’t continue. When I was researching the schedule I looked through several articles. The first was possibly the original article at everything2. The second article available at that time was at kuro5hin.
At 5am Wednesday before last I was staying up late as I often do. Surfing the internet I came across an article on Polyphasic Sleep that I hadn’t read. After reading a bit I decided to try it again. Steve Pavlina’s series of posts are fantastic and go into a lot of detail. I highly recommend reading them if you are interested in polyphasic sleep.
I’ve had several ups and downs including attempting to move the naps drastically, skipping naps, and sleeping too long. However on the whole it’s going great. Each nap feels like I’m sleeping for hours and afterwards I can get straight up and I feel great. I’ve had to start eating more and eating healthy. I now eat fruit and nuts a lot more than I used to.
The common reason for stopping once properly on this schedule is that it’s inconvenient. If or when I get past 2 weeks on the schedule this would be the reason I would stop. That or the fact that I really enjoy sleeping in.
My mother was concerned so I did some more reading recently and found a particularily blamming article at supermemo. Upon reading this article I started getting concerns myself but I couldn’t help notice the writing style. It’s written with a goal in mind with a great amount of emotion. But it did make some decent claims with apparent evidence to back it up. One of the main pieces of evidence was research by Claudio Stampi. He was quoted as noting “performance on polyphasic schedule is still far less than that in free running sleep conditions”.
The supermemo article by Dr Piotr Wozniak is arguing that while it’s possible to sleep polyphasically your creative ability and general performance is reduced.
I was distraught as I value my creative ability highly.
I continued to read from various sites around the web eventually reaching this polyphasic blog. Interesting enough this contained a replicated comment that details a couple of experiments Scampi did. His conclusion: “Adult humans appear to have a natural ability to adapt to polyphasic sleep schedules” and “Polyphasic sleep may be a feasible, and perhaps the only, strategy allowing remarkable levels of sleep reduction during prolonged quasi-continuous work situations, without unduly compromising performance effectiveness”.
Painting quite a different picture.
Anyway, I’m going to continue this for as long as I can. It’s estimated that I will gain an extra 11 years of time if I keep this up for the rest of my life.
11 years.
I don’t normally watch movies with a lot of drama but this one looked like it had enough action and adventure to make it worth while. And it was good.
When DiCaprio’s character first appeared on screen, for a while I couldn’t believe it was Leonardo DiCaprio - he has a fantastic South African accent. Months in voice coaching no doubt.
A bit of a political drive and a separated family make this movie ‘powerful’ whatever that means. I wasn’t in it for that, I enjoyed the cavaliering attitude of Danny Archer (DiCaprio), his moral structure, the action sequences and just the location in general.
Oh and it’s about a diamond.
Good.
Interesting concept - Vampires live around the artic circle because it’s night for months at a time. Vampires don’t like sunlight you see. These Vampires are ferocious and not smart. They act more like zombies.
This is an okay movie. I think what let it down for me was the zombie style of vampire, but more the setting. It’s hard to relate to a town that is freezing and is night for 30 days. Also the hiding and just surviving seemed wimpy.
Great style and cinematically the movie is good.
Above Average.
This is a one of ‘those movies’ that people are suprised you haven’t watched.
I thought the movie was going to be about white power and racisim, but it’s really about the life of Derek Vinyard, how he grew up to who he became, what he did, and how he changed.
Powerful stuff (powerful without quotes even), but I don’t live in America and don’t deal with these issues.
Above Average.
My cousins introduced me to a TV show called ‘La Femme Nikita’ which I enjoyed. It’s a spy, espionage, operations style series. Lots of kevlar and guns as I remember.
The show was a spin-off from the original French movie, Nikita.
I already had a good idea of the plot and I’ve liked French movies in the past. One thing that I’ve found with French movies is their humour is very well done and subtle. I’m very big on dry, dark, black, subtle humour and this movie is no exception.
There is no one genre for this movie, it has a little of everything, but I think it had far too much crying. Harden up little lady you have a job to do.
A bit Noir.
Good.
The alternate world and changing time of this movie reminds me of The Thirteenth Floor, the setting is very detective mystery. Old style cars, pocket watches, detective coats, cigarette smoke curling upwards. Very Noir.
Then there is the science fiction element which works okay.
I love the character of the doctor, the way he talks is great.
The movie is about unravelling the truth, trying to ‘get out’ of the world. Very Matrix really.
Above Average.
A tale of betrayal and revenge. Very well done. Set in Italy.
Above Average.
I find that when I watch good movies they shadow others. Alone I might have enjoyed this movie more, but watching it not long after Spartan was a lacklustre experience. It too deals with kidnapping, and I think I like Morgan Freeman but overall I didn’t enjoy it enough.
Average. I guess I should explain the rating I’ve started giving movies.
Average: If you need a movie to watch, and are just killing time I guess you could watch it.
Above Average: A pleasant experience, perhaps even if you don’t like the genre.
Good / Recommended: Worth watching.
Fantastic / Great / Awesome: Self explanatory.
I’ll make up depths of bad as I go along, but they will be very few and far between - my to watch list only includes movies that will probably be good or better.
Braveheart suffers from star actor director issues. Well I’ve seen it in Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise, two actors who have starred in movies they have themselves directed - the only two I know of. Perhaps it’s just the personality of these two people, but their movies seem to be flimsy shells for the characters they’ve built. Quite hyped, quite arrogant. Braveheart, The Patriot, Mission Impossible II.
I’m sure other people have reviewed Braveheart and said things I would read and agree with. It’s exciting, passionate and tragic. Worth watching but perhaps only because it’s one of ‘those movies’. You know the ones - the ones where people say “I can’t believe you haven’t seen X”.
Another reason to watch it is because you have an infatuation for Mel Gibson.
The ending was too drawn out and I don’t think the torture scene was really needed.
Above Average.
Evil English.
To be honest, at the time of writing I haven’t finished watching this. I think I’m half way through. I got to a point where I wasn’t enjoying it. It’s unpleasant with no ‘lighter side’. Malevolent, malingering, manipulative. It gives me the creeps and not in that awesome horror way, in that actually creepy, too close to home way.
Which might be a good thing. Perhaps it’s too good of a movie.
My actor of the moment is Pacino. He’s fantastic.
The Cube series of movies (this is the third and I think a fourth is planned) are part of a newish sub genre of movie that lionsgate have almost singlehandedly created for themselves. I guess it’s gore horror. Films such as Saw and Hostel have apparently been making good money for the budget spent on them. Though not nearly as graphic as the other movies in this sub genre Cube Zero extends the cube concept beyond the maze, but in many ways still in it’s own maze.
Watching the other Cube movies first is suggested but not needed. The second cube movie doesn’t add a whole lot to the concept so if in a rush (in a rush with movies?) it can be skipped.
This is where any rating system breaks down, I want to recommend this movie to anyone who has seen Saw, although it’s not the same, but at least recommend it to anyone who has seen a Cube movie. It’s a bit gorey and a bit sadistic so not for everyone.