Catastrophe averted!

OK, so the bus thing didn't come through, but I did get into an attendance situation at one of my jobs, which gave me pause for thought. Basically, I was having trouble showing up and doing well at both places, so I decided to do one job well instead of two jobs poorly. I now receive standard human sleep dosage, and have time to blog again. Polyphasic self-experimentation is over.

Now to argue with the internet!

This is about as close to the Platonic form of Keyboard as you can get.

That is, without invoking the way-futuristic modular holographic keyboards they have in all those sci-fi movies. Look, the Optimus Maximus keyboard is a geek's wet dream. Take a look:

source

Yeah, all those little images on the left? Those aren't fancily-printed labels. They're teeny-tiny OLED screens. That's right: this keyboard is made up of 113 little display screens that can do pretty much anything you'd care to have them do. Letter displays are context-sensitive depending on whether you're holding Shift or Alt, you can set icons to be displayed representing whatever function you've hotkeyed to it, individual keys can even display Yahoo! widgets with the weather/date & time/currently playing song/etc. Check out the video:

In other news, I'm still reevaluating this whole polyphasic sleep thing. On the one hand, I like having free time, and fun is non-negotiable for me. On the other hand, falling asleep at my desk and waking up four hours later in bed with no idea how I got there is kind of annoying. I still enjoy writing this blog, so I'm going to keep it up - I guess I just need to budget my time better, and discipline myself to get up when my alarm goes off instead of hitting snooze or whatever. Also, I need to take my naps when I need them no matter what. People always want me to do something when I should be putting my head down for half an hour, and while it's nice to have an active social calendar, I have to stick to this schedule if it's going to work at all. Maybe I should try including a core sleep segment, while still taking naps at work, to the end that I'll still be getting reasonable amounts of total sleep but also freeing up chunks of time to do what I like at home. We'll see.

Polyphasic Self-Experimentation: Day Twenty-Three

I'm now on day twenty-three of my polyphasic sleep routine, and things are going well.  I'm getting plenty of rest, mentally speaking, but I'm experiencing a lot of muscle fatigue.  I guess that's what happens when you bike across town twice every day, and thrice on three days each week.

I've fallen into this pattern where, every three or four days, I'll take an extended nap of three to four hours instead of the usual thirty minutes.  It made me late for work a couple of times (I overslept, couldn't really do anything about that), but now that I'm aware that it's happening no matter what I do, I'm able to accommodate the need and work it into my schedule.  I'm still way far ahead in terms of time gained by the exchange as a whole, so I call it a win.

There's been one more interesting change:  I've noticed that caffeine is helping me stay focused less and less - it's just not that stimulating any more.  Energy drinks are losing their efficacy as well.  At first, I thought I might just be developing a tolerance, so I upped my dosage, but with no effect.  I drank four Red Bulls in about two hours one day, and I was super-jittery, but still nodding off at my desk.  I found that music helps me keep my head in the game, but I need really high-energy music to keep me alert, so I busted out the Spineshank, From Zero, and other bands that I hadn't listened to since high school.  I've brought my stimulant intake back down again, and things are going pretty well once more.  Hooray for psychoactive music!  Or, if you prefer, "aural stimulation."  Tee-hee!

Also, it's great to be able to say that I'm experimenting with drugs at the workplace, since that's exactly what I'm doing.  Unfortunately, in the interest of self-preservation, I have to clarify my meaning for the very people upon whom such a statement would have the greatest impact.  But whatever - I just let it sink in for a few moments before explaining.

Polyphasic Self-Experimentation: Day Four

OK, so it's day four of my "official" polyphasic sleep schedule, though I've been napping throughout the day and getting small amounts of sleep at night for months already (not unlike the "Everyman" pattern, just not as regular). All I've really done differently, now that I think about it, is to cut out the core sleep and schedule my naps more rigidly.

I've been napping polyphasically for four days now, with one brief backslide two days ago where I slept for about three hours because I made the mistake of thinking I could just lay down for half an hour in bed. Turns out, I can't really do that thing, because it turns into another thing while I can't control my actions (translation: I sleep through my alarms). I seem to have adjusted rather swiftly, though - I'm getting REM sleep during each nap now, and falling asleep is becoming progressively easier as the days go by.

One interesting thing I've noticed is that I'm zoning out more often, which may be this "microsleep" thing I keep hearing about (probably not, though, as microsleep is only supposed to last for a few seconds and these space-outs last for minutes at a stretch). It's nice at work, because most of the tasks I do are repetitive, but I'm able to maintain my focus whenever I'm doing something new or different. It is very disorienting, however, to lose a stretch of time and snap back into reality to find that a bunch of crap got done. I also have a feeling that it could be dangerous on my bicycle - the other day, I set out from work and lit a cigarette, then came to as I was crossing a four-lane street with the cigarette nearly gone. I vaguely remembered doing all the things that got me there, it just felt like I didn't actually experience the events first-hand. Weird.

From an entirely subjective standpoint, I feel like I'm less tired throughout the day than when I slept monophasically. I'm extremely tired after getting up from my naps, so it looks like I have some adjusting to do yet on the back end of my REM cycles. I still feel like I've slept for at least a couple hours, though, and within another ten to fifteen minutes or so, I'm alert and focused again.

My eating habits are also starting to change. It's kind of hard to eat "regular" meals when my day simply doesn't fit that pattern - I'm either famished in a couple hours, or I find that I've overeaten and I get a stomach-ache. Between my roommate and myself, though, we've got a bunch of vitamin and mineral supplements lying about the house, which has proven convenient: I've started taking the supplements to make sure I'm not depriving myself of any key nutrients, and eating small amounts of food whenever I'm hungry. We'll see how that goes.

Anyway, that's my update so far - I'll keep posting any interesting developments. In the meantime, I'm going to continue turning myself into a zombie. I should probably also read those submissions for the Humanist Symposium before they start to pile up.

Polyphasic Self-Experimentation: Day Zero

I said I wouldn't blog much about my personal life (because it's boring), but this could prove interesting.

After doing a little bit of reading on polyphasic sleep, I think I'm going to give Bucky's Dymaxion sleep schedule a whirl. I've gotten REM sleep during naps as short as fifteen minutes in the past, but didn't know that that counted as "real" sleep at the time (I just thought I had an unusually long-seeming dream during a short nap), so perhaps I have something of an advantage here. I get plenty of exercise riding my bicycle everywhere, and having two jobs means that my work schedule is pretty much set and my social calendar is fairly empty anyway (the major problems with polyphasic sleeping, from what I've read, seem to cluster around the fact that the rest of the world isn't polyphasic - but I don't really have to worry about that). So I'm going to try taking thirty-minute naps every six hours throughout the day, which fits nicely into my work schedule and leaves me plenty of time to do the things I like.

I've got a bunch of pros & cons to sort out here. On the pro side, I like being up at night, I like having free time, and I like the idea of doing the two-job tango while still having an active blog and having fun by other means. On the con side, I enjoy sleeping. Like, a lot. It's one of my favorite things to do, in fact, and I'm pretty much giving it up here. I also don't know how my other habits will interfere - I make liberal use of caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and tetrahydrocannabinol. Between the four of those, now that I think about it, I'm almost always under the influence of something. I may have to give a couple other things up to make this work. We'll see.

Wish me luck!