7 days, 5 weeks

It's starting to count.

This must've been the longest week in my mind, ever. I mean, it's been only a week since I wrote the last post, and hell, it feels like so much more time has passed. Like a month. Or more.
Hmmm.
Well, not more, but it just feels like so long ago, it's weird.

Anyway, I guess that's a good thing, it means I've done quite a lot in all that time, so my days didn't just fly out of the window, never to be seen again. That's about my - new - definition of 'constructive-time-spending'.

Still a weird feeling, but I won't annoy you with it any further.

I slept much more than I wanted too in the past seven days, except for the weekend, in which I was predetermined to sleep a lot.
Why was I predetermined to sleep a lot?
Well, I had set my eyes on a 10km long run in my city, and I wanted to make myself proud, after two months of preparing, and I didn't want to take any risks on feeling tired with that. I've also written last time how sleeping more than planned makes me feel extremely fresh, at least till nightfall, so I didn't feel tired at all after having two nights of a normal sleep.
Running went great, though my time isn't competitive at all, I'm still proud of myself. I did it in 51 minutes, while last year it took me just-less-than-an-hour - 59 minutes 30+ seconds - and well, even though I'm still feeling my legs, I'm still happy.

Why did I sleep more the other days? Well, it all had to do with the course I'm studying now.
Last year, I had the habit of learning the course while lying in bed. I don't really know why, it was just comfortable that way, lying down and just reading it while being completely relaxed.
The problem with that is that now, I've also trained the habit of using my bed solely for sleep or naps, so you can guess what happens when I'm studying the course in my bed again. That's right, I sleep. A lot.

The good news is, I'm finished with that course tomorrow! And I'll spend the rest of learning it not-being-in-bed. It's truly deadly, since it's just so easy to close your eyes and forget the world when studying analysis, and thinking you'll do it all later on... zZz. It's hard to stay motivated, I'll summarize it like that.

So once I finish it, I don't see any obstacles in being completely devoted to 1337 sleeping skills.

That's what I'm hoping for, at least, you'll read about it in a week or so.

I know I still haven't put random shit on, but random is random, when it's pseudorandom it just ain't random, know what I mean?

Now, time for the I'll-stop-with-all-these-words-as-an-adjective-for-the-quote-quote

"Whenever you are asked to do something, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!'. Then get busy and find out how to do it." - Theodore Roosevelt

Unfortunately, I stopped doing this after noticing the second part was a lot harder in university than in high school.

I'm so proud of you all,

7 days, 4 weeks

Daaaaaimn.

So, how did you miss your daily read? I would've missed the daily write, but I haven't had time the last couple of days to miss it, so that's a relief in itself.

Nevertheless, happy to be here again!

I fooled around with my sleep last week, because I did further testing on how beer influences my sleep and my capability of waking up in the morning.
And because my cell phone, which generally serves as my alarm, seemed to had gone empty overnight two times. Mumble. So that's four days out of five - I slept normally yesterday though! - where I've slept four to six hours overnight.

At the time of writing this, it's 2:47 AM, and I feel awake like I should, so there hasn't been any real harm caused by the fooling around. It's amazing how a nap works as reset of your mood, your day and your tiredness, it truly is.
And again at the time of writing - but actually since yesterday, but my cell phone deserted me for the second time tonight and my family still doesn't understand that I'm more awake when I've only slept for three hours instead of five - ugh - , alas - - wow nested em dashes - - sorry for making reading this so hard for you - - really, sorry - I'm motivated-ly going to follow the cycle as strictly as I did in the third week, since that was working out just fine.

This is the empty lil' fucker.

I've also had the feeling of having lost the reason to wake up early, but by missing parts of my morning, and hence valuable time that could be filled watching 'The Wire', I found it again.

So yeah, this week was just basically messing around with sleep, though I didn't exceed over six hours of sleep a night, I'll never return to mono-phasic sleep again, it's incredible how much longer you need to sleep when on that. 

You just read that I never exceeded six hours of sleep a day, and if you're a bit critical, you've remarked that I wrote in the start that my night-only-sleep was six hours alone. How do I explain this. Quite frankly, I've taken it upon myself to not take any dozes when I oversleep, and the non-dozing abides to the following ruleset. 

 >= 6          : Only the nightly doze or the evening doze when albeit feeling tired. But none if not tired.

>4 & <6     : I skip the noon doze, or plan two dozes in an equate interval during the day instead of three.

<=4            : No dozes skipped

By the way, it's amazing how sleeping 5-6 hours by night, even when it's accidentally, when doing it once after some days of following the everyman, makes you feel like you just had the most refreshing sleep in your life. 

I'm not doing it long enough to be able to really share my experiences on this with you, it's just from the few times I had it accidentally and was amazed.

There may be a surprise in next week's post, since I plan on testing the paragraph right above this weekend, when having a 10 km run. I'm also eating a lot healthier, and watching how that influences the sleep, and how much I need of it. 

I've also found the motivation to really start studying, I have twenty days left till the first exam, maybe that's the 'no-lifing' motivation I need.

As for a totally random not-so-daily-anymore-quote-of-the-day:

"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its true dimensions." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

MINDSTRETCH!

So I'll keep you tuned, my loyal followers,

The lessening

Of activity on the blog and thus of all the stuff - you can replace 'stuff' with 'interesting high literature', 'text' or 'bullshit', you can choose - I'm writing here.

But why?

Well, there are some reasons, I'll list them below. But really, listed, the HTML-way. My first list. Magic.

• As a first reason, I'm practically used to the everyman, so writing practically the same thing every day about how I slept, with only some variation when I oversleep wasn't really that interesting anymore. And with sleeping so consistently for over a week now, save oversleeping yesterday, there isn't a lot of experimenting either.
• Secondly, with the exams nearing - and hell, they're taking the fastest train you can find out there - most of my time goes or should go to studying, and I don't think you're interested in that, neither is it interesting to write about having read up on how a capacitor works or how some population can be described by a statistical model. Ugh. It is interesting, but it's not made to spam readers with. And telling you daily how awesome the series I'm watching are isn't that fascinating either, though I never lie.
• And for a third, as I wrote some posts ago, I will buy a laptop - most probably, I found one I want but I don't have that feeling of dire need at the moment, but I'm sure that will return once the sun is shining, I'm trying to get some work done, and my brothers are delivering me a headache - and start practicing my Dutch writing, since I really want to start pursuing my plans of writing a book, starting with some short-stories as practice. 

As I wrote above, I want to start focussing on writing in Dutch, since this is my mother tongue and I'd like some proficiency in writing that. And I'll get that proficiency by writing in Dutch. Fairly logical, right? Right. It'll also be a more serious kind of writing, since I don't have that much freedom as I've had blogging no more.
So I'll put the time I'm now using on the blog every night into writing some manuscripts, I'll normally publish anything I write and deem worthy on the blog, albeit be it in Dutch.

But no fear loyal followers.

This blog has been a great exercise in writing, preserving and improving my English, and in writing in general, and I'll be sure to maintain it, but I won't make daily long-ass posts no more.
I will at least keep you updated with a weekly post, which acts like the current '7 days, x weeks' posts, where x is the number weeks I'm sleeping polyphasic, in which I will write if the sleep is coming along better, worse, or it's still basically the same. You won't miss out any important news that way, and it'll make using the blog as a reference much easier. That's why I'm also titling the summaries that way.
I'll also start discussing seasons of series, instead of episodes daily. This'll be more read-worthy for you and more summarizing for me as well.
Nothing but advantages, right?

Last thing I'm planning to do on this blog - but I might've forgotten something of course - is making a new page on it where I will put on posts if I randomly feel like writing something to share with the world. Be this an album you should all listen to - I have written almost nothing on music yet - , a movie you should watch, a beautiful photograph I took or anything I wrote, be it book, short-story or source code, when I feel the urge to publish it, I will.
The page will most probably - how typical - have 'random' included in its name. You will see it when you do I guess.

Maybe 'the lessening' will one day be known as the saddest day in human history, the fifth of may, when planets collided and the world exploded and I stopped actively writing this blog.

My sleep was - guess! Guess! No really, guess! - quite well. I got out after the three hours and was awake, I could study, I could work, and all of my dozes were alright. Surely you understand why I'm doing this? The main subject of the blog has become something obsoletely banal.

The random-quote-of-the-day-but-no-longer-of-the-day-I-think is applicable on all my crusades for knowledge and skill, be it the programming, Russian, thinking, writing, running, playing my guitar and the other stuff I do randomly.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. " - Lao-tzu

Till next time, may you all fare well on the river that is life,

7 days, 3 weeks Pt. II

You were so serious but always so smart.

It's the second, the last, the glorious part, and the quintessentially written post you all need to read.

But don't expect too much of all this perfectness, like a wise man - yes, it was a man, d'uh - once said, "All is relative." I don't know who the man is, neither do I know if you know the expression, as it's not that used in America as it is here.

Quite obvious, but hey, it still made me laugh.

Like you've all have read my blog thousands of time over and over already, you know I overslept last night, I fell asleep at the nightly doze and didn't get till, well, 7 AM. I was struck with amazement at my own laziness, and disappointment at the same time, but some time later I didn't really care anymore, you can read more details on the why in '7 days, 3 weeks I'. Just oversleeping two and a half hours made me feel like I've just slept with three days and I was bursting with energy, and therefore danced the day away.
In a way it was, albeit sad for my resolutions, brilliant.

As has become good habit after each week, I would write a summary on how the sleep and the sleepiness are going. But, truth be told, I can really be short, albeit concise and precise, on it this week, and I will.

This week was the week of the great breakthrough in getting accustomed to the schedule, thanks to consistency and quality of the dozes. I will explain down below south under here.

Since university started again last tuesday, I've had a very consistent - save for last night - sleeping pattern, especially the big block which has been 4:40 AM to 7:40 AM each day, even in the weekend. My dozes are taken at irregular intervals but they can be chosen quite flexibly every day. I do start feeling worn and tired after six to seven hours without a doze, so it is however necessary to take that doze off once in a while.
Dozing off also goes a whole lot smoother than before because I'm getting trained into slipping in REM by all that dozing, and I cut the time for each doze from thirty minutes to twenty-five minutes, that means 5 minutes less margin for getting asleep, but it's still working alright.
I wonder how much nearer to that twenty I could get in some time.

That's actually all that I will say right now, there isn't anything notable that happened with the sleep since it happened that consistently, but it's glorious that I'm really getting into and used to it now, it's paying off already!
Of course, you can always read the last few blog entries for more details, lots of horsecrap to be found there!

Today will also be a day with nor 'The Wire', nor 'Deadwood'. I did watch some NGE though, and I will definitely catch up on them this weekend, it's just that I find to have an at the moment more important and urgent - university, grmbl - activity to put my time in, and with falling asleep last night, I lost some time as well.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

As done many times before, I will leave you all thinking about a classic random-quote-of-the-day.

"I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't."- W. Somerset Maugham

Trolling is a art.

Have fun reading, dancing, singing, studying, sporting, running, jumping, biking, trolling, acting, and wasting the night away,

7 days, 3 weeks Pt. I

Three weeks, it's getting longer and longer.

Unfortunately, and I don't know why, I wasn't even feeling tired, I guess I just didn't want to write that report or something, my midnight doze became my nightly rest.
Fuck.
Or it could be the one beer I drank with a friend, that's what my mother keeps saying.
Fuck.

Actually, when I think about it, I actually didn't 'miss out' on that much, since mostly I spend my time watching 'Deadwood' and 'The Wire' after my midnight doze, and write this blog. And to be honest, I only feel sorry for the blog, since I now lost the perfect streak. I had my diversion in other ways yesterday, running and finishing my book - finally! - on HTML, and one can always watch some more episodes in a day, which I will do this weekend to catch up on the series schedule.

Part II, which I will write tonight, will have the summary of my sleepy activities. That is, if I don't fall asleep again. But normally I shouldn't.
How ironical, falling asleep when having to write something that mostly tells people how I stay awake.

Well, it's time for finishing that report.

Fuck,

Awareness

So mysterious, so wonderful, so raisable.

I'll confuse the loyal reader by starting with the random-quote-of-the-day, hah!

"All that really belongs to us is time, even he who has nothing else has that. " - Balthasar Gracian 

And I've got more of it than you probably.

Well then, I'll start with the good news.

Osama is dead! No, kidding, I couldn't care less actually, apart from the legendarily epic visualization of what happened. The Americans used four helicopters to kill him, and one helicopter went down, and I'm imagining Osama on the flat roof of his building shooting his last shots with his dual Magnum .44 perfectly aimed at the helicopter, which goes down, and then getting mown down by the other three. With glorious, heavenly music while he's breathing out his last breath, not knowing he was tricked into being a muslim and believing there is something more to life.

I think my acclimatization time for the everyman is nearing it's end, especially when the dozes keep working out.
I feel more and more normal each day, and when I ask any of my friends, they don't find me to be anything especially less normal than otherwise. Which is great, they were saying I had the 'crazy bad juju eye' last week, and it's gone now. Lucky me, imagine someone would kill me and hide my heart under the floor, just because he thought I had a somewhat weird eye!

One would expect bad news, but well, there isn't any.

I do have to write another report tomorrow, but that's a property of the life I chose, so I won't call it bad news. It's only bad news when I don't make it, right? Right.

I've found this awesome band that worked together with The Flaming Lips on their 'Dark Side of the Moon'-interpretation, it's called Stardeath & White Dwarfs, and it reminds me strongly of the Lips. I found a quite messed up video for one of their songs - they only have one album, and it's great - and I felt I had to share it with the world! Here's the song: http://vimeo.com/5681518. It only starts at 1:40 though. Galactic sand!

I wish I had that galactic sand at home.

I've managed to do quite a lot today actually, it seems like music like the kind above tends to boost my productivity - and creativity - before I know it well enough to get distracted by it.

But a lot of the stuff I managed is school-bound, and not so interesting. Memory usage in a computer, wow! But really, I learned the whole Cyrillic alphabet - I can read the русский next to 'Russian' on wikipedia now - and I'll keep improving my Russian for a whole time to come hopefully. I set my facebook in Russian, so the time I'm idling there will be spent better. I watched my series, read, I went running, biking, being sporty and all that, it's still going. I don't feel that physically tired in any way at the moment, and I'll go for another bike ride now.

Yours truly,

Nineteen

Isn't it the most beautiful number?

19
19
19
19
19

It is, right?

It's also the number of days where I try to only sleep four hours a day, the number of posts that will be on this blog after I publish this one until the next post, a mark for exams I'll never get, and my current age in years.
It's also 17 + 2. I tend to think seventeen is the most elegant number, whilst nineteen holds the title of most beautiful one. Twenty is fuck-ass ugly.

Today was a great day for sleeping, all three (!) of my dozes went great, and I've been feeling fully refreshed all day, save this morning, where I was slightly dozing off after I returned from the market when studying. But that was only for an hour or so, so really, it's been a great day for anti-tiredness.

After that it was time for some series-watching, and I'm not that addicted anymore. I tend to watch 'The Wire' in the morning and 'Deadwood' after my midnight-doze. It's working out fine that way. I didn't watch anymore FMA, I decided to finish NGE first. First things first, you know.

The Wire

Dozing off while trying to immerse yourself into something even turned out to be - though unwanted - awesome, since you get into that half-sleepy-state where every thought seems to be possible, where you're the God of your own fantasy world. And so you think something up, only to open your eyes again some seconds later realizing you still need to study and wondering how those thoughts that seemed oh so brilliant even came up in your mind.
You probably - I do sometimes - have already periodically closed your eyes when watching a long episode of a series or a movie in which not a lot of action was happening, and you only hear the voices, the conversations, the background-music, and you unconsciously start to recreate a scene with all that in your head. And then, when you open your eyes, you're mind-struck because you're hit by how your visual interpretation of the audio and the visuals of the movie differed. It's awesome.

The self-hypothetized reason that I'm not addicted to series that much anymore is because I had other ways to spend my day motivated and awake. I was social, I went for a bike ride, worked for uni and remember the HTML & CSS I was learning two weeks ago? I decided to finish the book as soon as possible, and well, starting from this afternoon I studied that. So I should finish it tomorrow morning or midday. Huray! Why? It was troubling me to leave it half-finished, I'll be more at ease studying my school-courses when having finished it.
I'll see where my conquest on web design leads next after that.

No language-oriented random-quote-of-the-day today, just one on the - how typical, phuh! - everlasting subject of existentialism.

"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought. " - John Kenneth Galbraith

But then again, if we learned to think decently, aren't we all sailors?

Wait! I almost forgot! I've found a truly great video today, and it'll be the first video in a while - you should be feeling fucking lucky and a wee sense of accomplishment now, Mr. Obama - to be linked to on my blog.
You should understand why I put it here after watching it, and here's the link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8TwRmX6zs4

I hope you didn't die laughing, that would be too extreme. Good night,

Instant recognition

It's what makes 'Classics Top 100'-lists so wonderful, aside from the music in itself.

It's the 0,1s it takes you to remember each and every detail about a song you'll always remember. At least, until your brain starts degenerating and you start confusing - much to the joy of your grandchildren - all kinds of amounts of money and the value of it. 

The 100ms in which you are in agitated doubt, filled with joy when they end.

The 100000000 ns in which you've just proven that there's one thing you can still do better than the computer you're currently staring to.

Exactly.

I was overjoyed to find myself out of bed this morning at the planned time, no oversleeping today, oh no! I've also found my ability to take naps - eurh, dozes - has increased even more, being able to sleep consistently for the whole duration of two out of three dozes today. I fell asleep for all three though, the third, which was the first doze, just wasn't consistent. But hey, I can't complain.

Another rather weird and all the same fun experience with the dozes is waking up automatically when I should, and then hear my alarm going off about ten seconds after I wake up. Makes a man feel like a man. A time-knowing-man.

My day was not in the least productive, I've done some programming and studying, but mostly did the regular distraction-stuff like watching series - everything is still getting better and better, I might tell you more about it any day soon - and movies, enjoying the beautiful weather on a bicycle, went shopping for dinner, we decided that it had been a while since we had pizza, score, reading, and exchanging digitalized sentences - I hate 'chatting' - with people I know.  And other randomness, I hate facebook for that. The oodles of time literally wasted there, ugh.

I also decided to really get serious on the book-writing I've been planning for some months now. I've been looking for a decent and affordable laptop for the past week. I could really use one to combine the planned writing, all my work for university and the beautiful weather that makes me feel dead when spending time not in it. 

The dollar-euro exchange rate is amazingly low, but typically, laptops don't ship outside of the US. Grmbl fuck grmbl. But I've got plans, and I'll probably buy one between wednesday and saturday. 

You might think it's only for my own good, that laptop, but you're totally wrong with that! It's for you, my dearest reader, since I know that deep down inside your heart you've always wanted to know if writing a blog on a laptop is different than writing it on a desktop. 

I'll let you know.

Another random-quote-of-the-day on language that might be applicable for this blog, not sure, and I won't make any assumptions here.

"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand. " - Lewis Thomas

I think that goes for a lot of other 'human' things.

Oh yeah, for all of you interested in bugs, a friend of mine started a blog focussed on insects just today, it features high-detail fascinating close-up extraordinary supercalifragilisticexpialidocious self-taken pictures of insects. I also like his writing! You can find it here, http://abuginmytent.blogspot.com/.

Well then, need to get to the market tomorrow market. The worm is for the early bird and all that. Over and out,

Unknown ceilings

Isn't that the most beautiful thing you read all day?

In any case, it is for me, and I also liked the metaphor behind it, which I will explain now. 'Unknown Ceilings' is the title of the second episode of 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' - I forgot to make an abbreviation for that last time, it will be NGE - , wherein the main character keeps waking up or sleeping in rooms he's never been before, which he instantly knows by looking at the ceiling.

I think my interest in series is getting a bit, make that more than a bit, problematic. But luckily, I only tend to be able to watch a series intensely for a week and then I suddenly lose interest, most of the time. Problem is that all of these series I'm watching now are immensely good. FMA is more than awesome, 'The Wire' is superb and 'Deadwood' is Deadwood. Hmmm. I have to finish them, but can't let myself get carried away. My only solace is the fact that I am - indeed - watching quality.

I just realized we're almost in the month of May, only one day left. Whack.

Today was wonderful, I went to a practicum this morning - yes, waking up isn't a problem anymore - and came home in the afternoon after enjoying a cheap, made-for-students - but oh so, oh so, delicious - vegetable burger. First things first then, I took a doze and after that started watching my daily series, I figured, might as well just do them then right? Time sure flies, I combined reading, trying out other series, watching the ones I planned to watch, and searching a laptop until it was time for my evening doze.
My evening doze was great, and when I woke up, the whole air had taken another color and atmosphere and I could hear the wind distinctively. I looked outside and it was storming! I told my parents I was going outside and went for a bike ride barefoot, since I had only put on pants and I was hurrying to get outside. I was soaked when I reached my destination, a nature reservation, and the storm had settled.  I started walking there, through the warm puddles the rain had made, admiring all the branches the wind had struck loose.

Nostalgia

Once home again I watched 'Mary and Max' while the rest of the family was watching 'Harry Potter' , and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Watch it as soon as you can, yes, you. Do it.

No doubt you shall enjoy the following random-quote-of-the-day.

"Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted" - Hesketh Pearson

And while you are all enjoying that quote and other things - you're quite mysterious Mr. or Mrs. Reader - it's time for me to enjoy my bed,

All these series around

Today was an ode to the hundreds of series and films you have to see in this lifetime if you ever want to feel self-fulfilled.

An ode? I lied. It isn't an ode, it's more like the starting of an entrepreneurship to watch only A-quality movies and series. But 'ode' sounds so much more beautiful. Like doze, only not for nap but for the above. Get the point? Sure you do.

I searched new anime-series to watch, since those, unlike 'Deadwood' and 'The Wire' - I'm starting to get into both of them, they're really worth it - only take twenty minutes per episode and are therefore perfect for  the small breaks I take when studying. No more goofing around! At least, not whilst doing nothing.
And, like the obvious and valid-in-most-of-the-cases-unless-you-are-a-really-luckless-bastard saying goes : "When you search, you will find." I searched, I found.
I found 'Neon Genesis Evangelion', another series with only 26 episodes, yay, I love those, they're a finish-able type of series for me. It also got a round 9.0 / 10 on iMDb, so I'm expecting a lot. The other anime has also got 9.0 / 10 on iMDb, and it's 'Full Metal Alchemist', the old one, not Brotherhood, I'll watch Brotherhood when I've finished that, and I'll write FMA - like all those fanboys - when referring to it from now on.
I still have to watch the pilots of both, but I won't watch them consistently, just when I feel like it, or for waking up. I miss 'Cowboy Bebop'.

'Neon Genesis Evangelion'

Since I was on the animation-train already, I looked up the fifty best animation films on iMDb, and found out I still have to watch about sixteen of those. The fun thing is, most of them are those animation movies that aren't cartoons, they're just movies but not brought live-action. I'm especially looking forward to watching 'Mary and Max', '5 Centimeters Per Second' and 'Persepolis', they all have that something.

I have to at least stay on the subject of sleeping a bit as well. This is Persepolis.

The image above reminded me of the fact I still have to ramble about how all this sleeping around went. Well, let me tell you, dear reader, briefly. It went great. My noon-and-evening-dozes were perfect, and as a result, I was fresh all day, and awake, and very, very, active with lots of random dancing. I didn't feel any latent tiredness, though I'm feeling it now because I dozed in a couch and didn't doze consistently. Oh well, nothing I can't handle. Maybe it's because I also have followed the same rhythm for three days now, not oversleeping in the morning and with the dozes working - and it probably is a bit of all of that -  that I felt great.
But however, I felt great.
Really, I felt great.
Great great great great great.

Huray, I didn't forget to include the random-wisdom-of-the-day, and here it is:

"The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore." - Samuel Butler

I really like this one. Makes me 'yeah!'

Enough rambling of these fingers for today, more rambling ensured tomorrow, so keep tuned for more ensuing tales,

Ticking away

The moments that make up a dull day.

Time sure is an awkward thing, you can ask Pink Floyd, they know all about it, but I wonder if they'll answer any mail.
Most of the time - wow, I could make this very complicated - time isn't at all that complicated, but when it starts getting jumpy on you and mess with your head, and you wonder where it went, life gets tricky.

It's called 'WARP!', exciting!

Hmmm, - awesome, 'hmmm' exists as a word but 'hmmmm' gets a spellingcheck-error, 'hmm-mm' on the other hand doesn't - time sure went jumpy a bit when I look back on my day. All on the dozes and when watching 'Deadwood', in which I couldn't tell if I dozed off for five minutes and missed a thing, I'll check on that tomorrow.

Just some days ago, I - at once - realized the importance of language in life, and in self-development, so I'm taking it upon myself to improve my French to an advanced speaking level, instead of goofing around with my notion on it, a product of the lousy education I got on it, and learn Russian and Japanese for fun. 

I'm starting out with Russian, as I have a good book on that, and already learnt more than half of the Cyrillic alphabet this morning to fight the sleep in the programming class. I shouldn't have attended, I already studied it last week, seemed like such a waste. But luckily, Russian was there, and it's more awesome than awesome in a house of awesomeness.

I took all my dozes at home today, and went to have a drink with a good friend of mine in between two of them, so my last two dozes today were quite late, but I'm not really feeling it, so I can probably repeat that in the future when going out. 

Waking up this morning wasn't even a problem, it's getting better, yay! But I'm not finished yet, so I won't get too excited on that.

I think the random-wisdom-of-the-day today is a slight hint towards myself for all the shitload and babbling I'm writing so easily on here,

"I have made this longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter. " - Blaise Pascal

 Pure genious. And I'm sure most, if not all, of you understand.

Oh yeah, I spent half of my afternoon class, it's an engineering project, winkwink, destroying the plastic casing of an AC/DC-adapter, and when I was finished, it turned out we weren't going to use it. Grmbl. All that butchering of plastic was quite fun though. Why did I butcher the plastic instead of just unscrewing the casing? Because I couldn't unscrew it, of course, and because I like wrecking plastic. Duh.
The assistent had never seen such screws before, and he offered to get me a saw to butcher like a pro. I declined at first, but then accepted and butchered plastic like never before. I felt like a king. A king with a saw.

Almost sleepy sleepy time, farewell, people of the world,

7 days, 2 weeks

Has it been two weeks already?

That's what someone would normally say when looking back over their holidays I guess, but not me, alas. It does feel longer, much longer.
Proof of this feeling, this still-being-mentally-used to the older notion of time, came today, when I thought my library loans were getting over time, but it seems I still have ten more days! Of those four weeks that I borrowed them, wicked shit, I might finally be on time with them for once.

I'm terrible at multitasking, I tried writing the post and watching 'Deadwood' at the same time, but well, none were done well, my grammar and sentences were below average, and my understanding of the unfolding story in 'Deadwood' even less. The inventor of the pause button truly is - and I mean this from the deepest most profound everlasting well in my heart - a saint.

Al Swearengen

Today was the first day of university with the everyman - if you're new to my blog I'd like to redirect you to the first post for more information, and the post '7 days, 1 week' for the summary of my first week, like this will be of the second, but more summarized than last time - and it pretty much worked out. Though I took my noon doze on a wooden bench in the wavering heat of a smoldering sun, everything worked out alright.
A positive effect I've found is that since I have those planned dozes, I am motivated for not-sleeping during lectures, which is a big advantage when all is dull and nothing's really that fun, anymore.

So here it is, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,

SUMMARY

This week was harder than last week, a lot harder, mostly on the mental part, it's getting heavier mentally, since the holidays ended and now none of my friends even stay up till 2 AM. No more nightly biking with company, no more nightly chats, it's just me and the silence of the world.
So in those dull moments, when you're getting tired and existential, it gets hard, to not just succumb to that latent desire of falling asleep and forgetting the world. I really hope the tiredness goes away, and I should normally get mentally used to it between now and two weeks.

The dozes are still working out alright, I hardly have ones where I can truly tell I fell asleep, most of the time I can only tell by the dreamy thoughts and the amazingly quick passage of time, but I still feel awake and refreshed when getting up from those dreamy pauses, so I guess that's pretty alright.
But those dozes and the power to take them are a gift of God, everytime I have nothing to do and start feeling tired, I long for the doze, it's like restarting in a way, three times a day, it's magic.

With university, I moved my three-hour-block to 4:30 AM to 7:30 AM. It should help since my brother can wake me up and I have to take him to school, so the big block will work out alright and will become a habit in the purest meaning of the word.

I still have no regrets on this, the only regret is that I didn't discover this last year, and you can surely guess why. Yes, time. My precious.
And that concludes the summary.

As for the random-wisdom-of-the-day, this one's for all you Americans out there.

"America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy. " - John Updike

If you wanted to read another story of my life, you can read it tomorrow, this post was dedicated to the summary. You don't mind, or do you? No, you don't, 'meh' is all that's on your mind. Well, meh yourself!

Yay, time for the continuing of 'Deadwood'. Enjoy life and living it,

I know nothing

I am from Barcelona.

What a sight it was, seeing John Cleese annoying my mother that much. At least, he was the cause for the constant background laughter in Fawtly Towers and the laughter was the cause for my mother's annoyance. Season two was awesome, but it's not that kind of series to fully watch on one day, aforementioned reason, but well, I watched it in three parts of two episodes each, and that was doable.

I overslept half an hour or so, I don't know why really, I remember turning out the alarms and just not getting up, so I didn't take my third doze today to make up for that. Otherwise I'm still mentally well, if I could be called that, healthy or something, whatever, I'm still it.
Fawlty Towers took only three hours, so how the hell did I fill my day. I wonder how, I wonder why. Oh, I remember, it all started with my hard disk that was getting overly full, and I decided to counter that by installing stuff and erasing the installers, but that more or less made me still have the same amount of free space. Mmbl. And one install went wrong, so I had to redo it and the three expansions. Mmbl. Again.
I also almost finished my programming task! But it's hard when you get distracted by failing installs all the time.
That stuff, I went riding my bike since it was such a beautiful day and I'll go biking when I finish this post as well.

I'll start watching 'The Wire' and 'Deadwood' tomorrow, one episode of each daily, with the price of not laying eyes on TV for the rest of the day. Seems a price worthy to pay to me. Or when I find one way more excellent than the other, I'll focus on that, you know how to those things go. One moment you're fishing cod in the river next to your farm, the other moment you're on a boat, harpooning dolphins. That's life, happy times, happy times.


I also found a source of happiness through all of my saudade. I love that word, saudade, it's like Sehnsucht. Just exclaiming the word makes your saudade less saudade. It's that I'll be able to keep this up during schooltime, now I should finally get the recognition and respect I deserve. Huray!

And reader, remember the first post on 'Cowboy Bebop'? It seems that the picture I used there is in the top search results when you search 'Cowboy Bebop' in the Brazilian Google images, so I get some Brazilian visitors every so often, great fun. I'm still figuring out how that Russian dude found it.

I almost forgot the random-wisdom-of-the-day, oh-oh, here it is.

"Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing." - Robert Benchley

A wise man.

See you, space cowboy,

Explanation mark

It's what next sentence should end with. Fuck Easter

Well, it isn't all that extreme, I even enjoyed today. I surprised myself with my supreme acting skills when I needed to convince my grandmother I had eaten way enough, which worked.

"Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything. " - Floyd Dell

That wisdom-of-the-day  about summarizes the day, the weather was beautiful, the sun shone brightly and the air was moved with a fresh summer's breeze.
Hence I spent the non-eating time in the garden, lying in the grass, in the shadow and sun alike. Just lying, just talking, just reading, just 'doing nothing', but actually, those were all hours of freedom to just lie down and do nothing.
I took one of my dozes just lying in the shadow, too bad I was disturbed - them bitchez - by my uncle and brother, but I slept, so I can't complain. The second one was in the car on my way back and the third one was in my bed, yay. None went perfectly, but they all went well enough.

It's been one of those days you know you'll do zit of your schedule, but you don't care and you truly enjoy it. I think that's one of the best effects the sun has, next to the make-happen of life in itself, it makes people happy and feel alive by just shining, hanging up there idly. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

I also watched the first season of 'Fawlty Towers', season two will follow tomorrow, yay, another series finished then!

And now I'm just sitting here, listening to one of the most peculiar and awesome albums I know, 'Lost & Safe' by The Books.

Maybe I'll terrorize the nightly Belgian traffic scene, but not for long, I really need to finish some work as well, and if I finish it now, tomorrow will be spent very freely, so let's try that! Haskell shall be learnt, HTML books will be finished, series will be watched, the mystery of life will be solved, all when I finish the task.

By the way, I took a small extra doze this morning after waking up and, looking back, I shouldn't have. Keep this in mind when pursuing my ambitions!

Live happily and freely, be a hippie,

The eat days

Aren't quite over yet. In fact, tomorrow, Easter itself, will be the greatest.

I really don't look forward to eating so much I feel like exploding, but the pain of refusing all the food, diligently made by my grandmother with - undoubtedly - all her love isn't really an alternative. So fuck Easter. Fuck. Easter.

Just about the most awesome thing about Easter though, nostalgic Disney (Silly Symphonies)

You might think I'm moody now, well, I'm not. Only on Easter, hence, fuck Easter. I like the day after Easter though, any free day is welcome.

"I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays." - Henny Youngman.

Luckily, holidays are nowadays nationwide. Huray, religion isn't required no more!

My sleeping today was quite messed, but humorous all the while. I woke up at the normal time, that is, 7 AM and after getting up I just filled in my morning with the occasional stuff, without 'Cowboy Bebop' now though. Saddens my heart, blackens my day, I'll re-watch it very soon I guess.
We have two family meetings this weekend, one for each half of it, and so we went to restaurant today, ate till we burst - yay - and spent the entire afternoon chilling out and playing football in the garden. I tried sleeping on a couch in the restaurant, which was deemed as quite funny by the staff, hmmm, it's a shame I can't just explain why I'm taking naps during daytime. But that failed, we left by the time I could've slept in.
So I just slept at my grandparent's place, they mocked me, but well, what would you do? Right, mock me, basterd.
I had to wash my father's car when we got home, but that turned out to be a water-wasting-fest with my brothers. Aaaah, it's been so long I had a water-fight with a hose involved.
I took a doze before going out and then tried to have a doze when going out but that only worked out half. I'm not a hypocrite so I won't bring down all of my wrath on the act of mocking and disturbing sleeping people when going out, but well, let's just say I didn't catch as much sleep as I wanted.

I was also so amazed this is only day eleven, it feels like over two weeks already. But then again, my sense of time has always been somewhat vague.

Tomorrow will bring another great day in the great series of great days in the great, legendary, and purely made of epicness life I lead. So I hope you all stay tuned,

X

It's really been ten days already.

I promised myself to keep this short and let writing this blog not interfere with my sleeping pattern anymore, so I'll write earlier from now on. Something around 2 AM would be nice every night, I still have enough time to occupy myself enthusiastically and 'productively'.


Sooooo, dear reader, I had about the same scenario as yesterday, only now I do remember turning off all of my alarms, but after that, I got back in bed to check my cell phone. Guess guess, I had a text message! I suddenly woke up with the text message halfly written. I'm getting used to mumbling 'Fuck' a lot lately.
What I did after waking up was reading more on Haskell, and reading my novel as well. It's 'Crime & Punishment' by Dostoevsky by the way, and quite the novel it is!
My parents returned from the seaside, and my brother returned from his sports camp. So basicly all is normal here again, I was demoted and am now just 'lazy son' again. Cheers.

Like I said yesterday - one of the few things I actually did the day after, it seems - I finished 'Cowboy Bebop', and man, I understand, though I understood all along, why it has 9.3/10 on iMDb. It's so strong, I truly cared for all of the main characters, and well, I was amazed, shocked, thrilled, you-name-it-I-was-it, by the ending. I'll be sure to watch the series again in a month or so. I'm even planning a marathon for the series - it takes 9 hours in total - for some friends.

I took the doze, since I repeated yesterday, in the evening, and felt refreshed after it. I felt quite tired during daytime due to that refalling-asleep and stuff. Sleeping sure is tiring!

Rest of my day was spent with some C++, strolling and sitting on my bicycle while doing something with my feet, and I magically went forward everytime my feet did that. So nothing that special really.

I hope, for you as well as for me, that tomorrow will bring more enthralling stories on being epic, filled with epicness, like a chip is filled with transistors.

Make it a good good day today,

Adaptation

The eternal human struggle in an ever-developing world.

Wowie.

I overslept today, for the second time, but this was a more serious oversleeping. I slept for fucking five and a half hours! I felt like I slept twelve hours and oversleeping killed all the latent tiredness I felt yesterday. So I don't mind it that much, it just feels like such a pity.
How could I oversleep when I put out three alarms, each within ten minutes of one another? I don't know myself either, I must've woken four times putting them all off but I can't remember that all.
My iPod was plugged into my guitar-amplifier and had the most annoying alarm sound ever - which was, oh glory, called 'Alarm' - and set on two times, so I'd surely wake up. My cellphone was put under my pillow, with a Sonic Youth song as alarm sound, and my bedside alarm was also configured at about the right time.
But alas, I woke up wondering how late it would be, since my room was so bright, mumbled 'Fuck' when I saw how late it really was and got out of bed immediately. I wondered how I survived all those alarms and looked at the amp. My iPod wasn't there anymore. I looked around and saw it lying on my desk, quite obviously. So cheers, I had put out three alarms, and I got out of bed for two out of the four times they went off, but I can't remember a thing. I think it was due to the randomness blues that I wasn't motivated to only sleep three hours tonight, I still need to adapt mentally to the everyman. A lot.

I was wide awake though, so I only took one nap today, and I'm still quite awake now, no latent tiredness, no ninja to backstab me in the morning like he did today.

As I had silently promised myself yesterday, today was going to be an off day.
Me and my brother were invited by our grandparents to enjoy lunch together, and we eagerly took the invitation, it's been since my parents were home that we had something really good to eat. And man, it tasted.
I watched three episodes of 'Cowboy Bebop' today, I think I'll finish the series by watching the remaining six episodes tomorrow, that'll only take two hours, and I'm really thrilled by the story. Luckily I found a new series to watch instead, I think I'll go for 'Deadwood', and when I finish that, 'The Wire' will be next. For the rest, before my evening doze, I mostly read and studied only a small bit.
After the dozing away, I went for a short bike ride, and ran 5 km with a friend, it went much better than I had forethought, since it's been over two weeks I had ran. I was extremely satisfied and surprised actually. My brother was asking all evening if we were going to watch a movie, I agreed - I still have a lot of unwatched movies - and decided it would be 'Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb'. He fell asleep and once more I was free in how to spend my time. I started learning Haskell today, introduced to it by a good friend, and I understand why. I was only at page five and was already amazed at the language. It's a functional programming language and it's a new way of programming, very refreshing

From 1 AM till 4 AM I went biking with the friend who introduced me to Haskell, and he told me about his plans on starting a small programming company, and great news, I can join it! Yay, money! He has the brains, I have the looks and the awesomeness, the only thing we're missing is a name. If you, oh, anonymous reader, have a great name, we would be much obliged.

By the way, loudly listening to Frank Zappa at this hour while your brother is fast asleep in the couch behind you is awesome. Oh wait, not so loudly anymore, he woke up and asked what the hell kind of rubbish I was watching. Awesome.

I really need to stop writing such an awful lot when I decided not to,

Randomness blues I

I put the I there because I'm sure it won't be the only randomness blues I'll have.

Aaaah, the randomness blues, something like the boredom blues, or the busyness blues, but not quite the same. I do hope you know what I mean. Maybe it's a culmination of both, with an extra ingredient, randomness, mixed through the whole blue-ish substance.

I didn't really have problems with this on the days before, and after some retrospecting without retrospectacles - I never seem to be able to wear those - I found the cause(s).
It was the enormous task for computer architecture in which I really didn't progress like I wanted, together with the latent tiredness I developed over the past few days, which is hardly felt when I'm captivated by my activity, and doesn't annoy me nor interferes with the refreshing feeling I get with dozes. The latent tiredness is just there, unnoticed, not disturbing, waiting to stab you in the back like a ninja.

Backstabbed before you can say :"Hey, did I really get backstabbed? Who'd have thought? I recall saying just yesterday that I'd never get backstabbed ever in my life. How wrong could someone be. Aaargh." True story.

So basicly, I wanted to offer my day to complete the task, but it seemed like my preparation came short, and I couldn't adjust my brains to absorb the knowledge and deeper insights of assembly language. I have to do that soon, and gain those insights...
This combined with the tiredness made me very distracted, unproductive existential student today, until I decided to give up and taking the rest of the day off. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny as a summer day. Not a clouded worry in the sky.

Summer afternoon - Summer afternoon... the two most beautiful words in the English language. - Henry James

Once more the advantages of taking the dozes became clear as I took my doze this evening, it went extremely well and I woke up completely refreshed, leaving the previous mostly behind, but I didn't want to restart on the task. I'll do that spanned over a few days, with some lecture on assembly preceding it.

The combination of the pressure of having to achieve, wanting to, and the lack of power and skill to do so always get me down. But then again, I guess the combination gets a lot of people down.

Since I spent a big part of my day on that task, I didn't really do many noteworthy stuff.
I watched 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button', and I deemed it a shame I hadn't watched it earlier. I also caught up and built a lead on my friends in watching 'Cowboy Bebop' episodes. But that was after I gave up on completing that task, how filled with joy my evening became! My bike ride before writing this was short but satisfactory, there were a lot of people - relatively speaking - on the streets, but I'm starting to know the less crowded areas, funfunfun!

I know the feeling

I also further improved my culinary skills and decided never to buy falafel again. Yuk, I probably made it wrong, but man, never again. Baking tomatoes also was a fun experiment. I guess you can only get them to be black on a grill or something.

Talking about grilling tomatoes, my sleep today went quite alright. My noonly doze wasn't fully successful but the others were and apart from the hard moments described above I felt normal. Yay.

Today made me think about what rivers of self-development I want to set sail on again, and about how to implement them in my - hopefully not shipwrecked - life. Maybe I'll put my decisions in my post tomorrow, if I get out of it.

I shall leave you all be with an inspiring quote on the subject:

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. - Dorothy Parker

Farewell and good night,

7 days, 1 week.

Here comes the sun, smiling, how long have you been blue?

You're reading it people, this is the seventh day of my everyman cycle, so I've already passed a whole week. Did I say a whole week? For all you normal sleeping people, it's actually more like 9 days already, in terms of time awake. On your 7 days.  Hah!

9 > 7

If you're new, here's a quick recap on the everyman cycle.
The everyman cycle is a polyphasic sleep cycle consisting of one 'big' block of sleep and some naps during the rest of the day, summing to about 4 hours of sleep a day. My big block is a 3-hour block from 4 AM till 7 AM. The naps last 20 minutes, and I take three of them, one about every five hours.
For more information on polyphasic sleep and my motivation for starting it, you can check out my first blog post ever and ever and ever.

You're all lucky I really didn't have an all that interesting day to write about, so I can get to the retrospective of how this week was, adapting to the everyman, the thing you're probably - I can only assume this, since that's the main subject of this blog - all so eager about and I promised three days ago.

I think waking up with Bebop will become a morning ritual just like going to the bathroom or breakfast are, it's the first thing I do after the bathroom and before breakfast. There's something dubious about only 26 episodes in a series, you want to have more episodes but at the same time you don't because you know, deep down inside your heart, that quality and storyline could decrease by having that. I'm not quite out of it yet.
I exploited my culinary skills by cooking eggs for breakfast and sausages for dinner, once more in the exquise role of royal cook. Will I get promoted to King Cooksworth when I get older? I sure hope so.
I finished on C++ around 1 PM and spent the entire rest of my afternoon and evening on messing around with assembly language and organizing my projects some more. We have this task for computer architecture where we have to implement a lot of interrupts in an operating system for a floppy, written in assembly, and it'll take my whole tomorrow to finish it, and even then it'll be a close call.
I also found one of those good 4-digit number locks for bicycles, I'll try to crack the code on that one anytime soon after I finished on the assembly-messing.

But now about my experiences on the everyman.

Worker napping on railway at a construction site a Wuhan North

I'll split this part up in three parts, the block, the dozes, and the adaptation till now. Remember, you can read the day-to-day detail in the individual daily posts.

On the blocks.
I always take these from 4 AM to 7 AM. The first two days I overslept an hour or so snoozing off, and yesterday I overslept about the same but I felt much more tired since I didn't spend my overtime snoozing and semi-dreaming but being fast asleep, I must've woken while in anything but REM-sleep. All the other days it came along quite nicely, having no trouble getting out of the bed.
Yesterday I played out a really smart trick, which will probably, make that surely, will be repeated today. I only went to bed at five, so what did I do? I set my alarm at eight! It worked like a charm, I woke up, got out without a problem and was quite alright all day long. Which is quite remarkable since yesterday was a tiresome day with an obvious lack of true motivation, due to the lack of dozes - for any new readers, I liked the word 'doze' better than 'nap' - and oversleeping in the morning.
So I found the block is flexible as well, it doesn't matter if you do it from 4 to 7 or 5 to 8, you just need to be consistent with your naps, eurh, dozes during the rest of the day. As you can imagine, I was quite happy finding this out.

About the dozes.
I don't know if you like the word nap or doze better, but I'll never go back to the word 'nap' for the rest of my , without a doubt, successful blogging career.
These horribly failed the first few days, but I'm starting to get the hang of them. I keep myself in the same very comfortable position where no limb rests on another limb until I feel all my limbs relaxing and falling asleep. It's quite a funny feeling, and you know you'll be asleep in the next few minutes if you don't move. When you doze for such a short time, I only had the feeling of really having slept not more than four times, the rest was more like falling away and relapsing, and your dream seems like your conscious was just continued all the time. You get in that half-dreaming state without realizing it. I hope to explore that experience more during the rest of the time I use this cycle, which will be for another 10 weeks in the least. I plan on keeping this up a whole lot longer though.
I've also found out, but I already read it somewhere, that you can easily shift a doze back and forth one or two hours, just keep the interval between them regular most of the time and you'll be just fine.
When I go for a doze, I make thirty minutes time for one, ten minutes for the relaxing and trying to fall asleep, and twenty minutes for the sleep itself. Since you sleep so lightly, there hasn't really been any need to set multiple alarms, except for the ones at midnight, which I overslept two times by half an hour, and oversleeping those renders you quite tired...

And then finally, the adaptation till now.
I started on my first day with just sleeping the big block, in which I succeeded, and following the dozing pattern. But since I wasn't used to dozing away on purpose, I just laid awake for half an hour. I only had the first doze when it should've been my fifth, namely the afternoon doze on the second day. Starting then, it went a lot better day by day and it really started going swell from day five. I don't know if it's due to tiredness or habit, but I'm sure habit plays an important part.
I never had any trouble on sleeping the block, occasionaly oversleeping it, maybe to passively make up for the dozes not taken.
The general feeling of tiredness started coming on day number four, that's when I started feeling I was really adapting to the cycle. Or failing to, but since I'm feeling fresher than yesterday, I'd say it's working out. But the awesome part about the feeling of tiredness is, you have dozes during the day to catch it up. Nothing as refreshing as a noonly doze, followed by a shower. You're never that tired that you could just fall asleep randomly, and you can just take a refreshing doze to keep going for another few hours.

Do I regret it?
Why would I? Being conscious about the fact that you're awake and the world is sleeping is a remarkable experience, it fills you with a powerful and beautiful feeling. You can read on the feelings in detail in past blog, and be sure of it, in future blogs as well.
And it's not just taking nightly walks and bike rides that make it worth it. Just the fact that you have an added 4 hours a day and you can be productive all day long, it gives me another blow of self-consciousness that was quite satisfactory. All in all, I feel as if I've been reborn. I have the things I do now, and it feels as if I've cut off my feelings on things I encountered before starting this cycle. It's refreshing, and it makes me happy.
The only downside is getting used to it. The basic idea of getting out of bed at 7 AM is wonderful, but I don't think a lot of students are accustomed to it, just like taking planned dozes. But once you get used to it, and I still need to get more used to it, there are only upsides when you can combine it with your obligations like lessons, appointments and hobbies you have to attend. But the everyman is very flexible in that way so I won't ever have to quit or miss a lot of dozes because of that.
Win is all around it. Win.

And now, in the hope to see all of you join me in the glorious land of Everyman, I wish you a good day and night,

Lost in busyness

But in a rather passive way, it seems I concentrate on what's at hand and let it be afterwards.

It all started this morning, as you can see by the hour I posted yesterday, and today it'll be like that again - oh well - I was asleep at about 5 AM, it seems I rather overslept till 9 AM, instead of waking at seven. My mother woke me up so I could assist my father in preparing for their departure, which I did and then they left at about eleven. My brother and me are home alone till thursday evening, another three days, huray!

Then it was time for my morning Bebop, with a beautiful episode that ended with a fridge twirling through space, spreading colorful powder of some sort, spinning around on 'Waltz of the Flowers' by Tchaikovsky. Totally random, but oh so enthralling, it made my day, even though I was mad at myself for oversleeping.

Just before my parents left they promoted me to the roles of housekeeper, royal cook and generally-must-be-busy-person. I first performed my duty as a royal cook, namely, I made breakfast for me and my brother. I made oatmeal porridge with hot coco - I really didn't want to go to any baker -, it was delicious, and deliciously warm.
The next few hours I spent on organizing a lot of files and folders on my Windows-partition, registering my desktop even looks tidy now, registering on development sites and preparing the tasks I will start tomorrow by installing tools and reading up on them, this isn't really interesting for you, gentle, always patient reader, but it has to be written, it has to be passed down the chronicles of my life. I felt like taking big steps towards something big with that, placing the first stones on projects that will one day have a chance to be castles. Enormous bastions of epicness.
I also almost finished on C++, I should do that tomorrow anyway. I will do that tomorrow. And then it's time for exercises! Thrilled!
Actually, a lot of time went into the studying today, the only true recreation I had was when I neglected my duties as royal cook and went for a pitta for my brother, he probably enjoyed it more than he would my cooking. Just like I would've by the way, I had to ride my bicycle for about fifteen minutes to get there and another fifteen minutes on the way back, very refreshing. For me and for the pitta.

Since I overslept and went out in the evening to a birthday party, I only had one real doze today, in the afternoon. I tried another one but didn't have enough time to make it decent, just before I left to the birthday part, so that wasn't really influencing anything. But I'm not really feeling disturbingly tired at the moment, even after watching X-Men with some friends. I will now try to wake at seven in the morning again and have three dozes tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be in REM when my alarm goes off in the morning, and hopefully this kind of off-day won't be too punishing.

I'll tell you the result tomorrow. By the way, tomorrow is the time for my weekly summary, be sure to read up on that, since that will almost completely cover the aspect of sleep, in which - I'm sure you are - you're all so interested in.

Yours truly,

A cold freezin' night

But with a full moon, who can complain?

It seems the more I make these nightly rides, the more time I invest in them, and the more rewarding they get. Today I asked a friend to come ride along, but since he lives about fifteen minutes away from me, and since a quarter of an hour is quite a lot at these nightly hours, the decision was made to take a ride not far away from him.
The landscape was covered with a mild mist, and with the full moon lighting everything, and no other lights, riding through a nature reserve, called the Bourgoyen, it all had something dreary, gloomy, like you could expect a werewolf to pop out between the trees and start chasing you. It even looked like a Harry Potter scene when we were passing a row of moonlit willows. Too bad there wasn't that much light and I didn't have a professional camera with me, it was beautiful. Be-a-u-ti-ful.
We ended up in one of his favorite places, a small field with a bench in the middle of nowhere - nowhere lies somewhere in Drongen - next to a transmission tower. I'll ride there during daytime sometime and take a picture for you all. You can see the nightly scene below.

This is before enhancing

After enhancing

I can tell you're excited about that transmission tower, right? It seems Aperture can do a great job on the photo enhancing part, yay!

Other notable things today?

I convinced someone, though he hardly needed any convincing, to follow the Everyman cycle as well, his motivation is quite awesome. He says he wants to live forever, and - next to having more time for studying and reading all the books he wants - this is the best way to achieve a longer life if it works out. I do agree with him,  I've also read that you age faster when you don't sleep a lot, but I'm sure the balance of hours alive and awake certainly weighs through with polyphasic sleep. Cheers!
The only other memorable things I did was watching Bebop and mastering my first solo ever, the one of 'My Heroics, Part One' by Absynthe Minded, it isn't really complicated or hard, but it sounds beautiful. I think my mother didn't even mind she could hear me on the other side of the house.

My little brother has gone for a sports camp for a week, I had the honor to bring him to the station, so no programming lessons for him this week. I will however make some private lessons in the meantime out of the lessons I downloaded, and make some exercises he can make when he gets back. I don't know if it was a happy smile when I told him this before he left.

You should google the title of this post, minds will be blown

Things are still working out for my polyphasic pattern, I woke up and got out of bed at 7AM, waking up watching Bebop and taking a morning walk to the market. Huray for morning walks. I took my dozes - yep, still using the word - at a more regular time, one at twelve, one at ten to six and one at half past eleven. The last two went wrong, I got called while sleeping for about only ten minutes at the one at 5:50 PM, but I still felt really refreshed, and I overslept - yes, again! But I'll put three alarms out, and out of my bedside reach, next time - on the last one till about 0:45 AM. And even though I was really tired I studied a bit and then went biking for ninety minutes, and then I wrote this.

It seems like everyday I write, I write later, I'll end this custom tomorrow, since I need to get up at 7 AM everyday if I want this to work, I'd better do it strictly, especially now.

So I'll search for my bed now, hopefully, I'll even find it. And upon resting my head upon that pillow I will think of nothing but the nothingness of what I'm thinking about.

Adieu,

Four

I lacked quite some inspiration to come up with a title.

Sure, I could've made it 'An evening with C', 'Tiredness blues' or 'Saintly earplugs' but that would only worsen it. Wait, I actually even like the latter two.
Maybe an index of the number of days I'm trying this may be useful for you, the reader, once in while, imagine you'd have to count to find out!

I'll explain the three optional titles to you below, but first I want to recommend a series.
It's called 'Cowboy Bebop', one of the best anime's I've ever seen. It's about two bounty hunters in the future, where man has colonized Mars and everyone flies spaceships. The music must also be the best one I've ever listened to belonging to an anime series, awesome big band jazz. Here's the opening movie. If you're interested, you can watch them for free on the following site: http://www.animefreak.tv/anime-watch/cowboy-bebop-episode-1. It's already standing on the first episode if you follow the link. There aren't any Japanese ones though, but the English dubs - like just about everything about it is - are great.

I actually quite fucked up today, this morning I woke up at 7 AM, the right time, and I read for about half an hour, when suddenly relapsing into sleep for half an hour. I wasn't all that tired this morning because of that, and I skipped my noon-nap, I didn't have time for it today anyway. I'll never read in my bed after waking up, at least not now, when I'm not used to waking up and getting out of the bed immediately. That would normally better with training I assume. Someday...
I took my evening doze - it's so much more beautiful than 'nap' - way too late as well, at about 8 PM instead of 6 PM, but that turned out to be the first real perfect nap, I slept for about twenty minutes, and fell asleep almost immediately. I then planned my nightly doze - it really is - at midnight, since, well, the last one was at eight, and I still want some time in between. But I overslept the nap by twenty minutes. Another quickly-asleep one though, maybe I'm getting accustomed to it, phew, it should be time to be able to take naps after four days. I'll let you know tomorrow if it's just the lack of a doze this noon or me getting used to it. I was tired as hell when I woke up way over time three hours ago, I'll avoid that by setting two alarms when I'm feeling tired.

My entire morning was spent practicing the songs I had to be able to play at the rehearsal in the afternoon, studying, and learning my brother the next basic steps in his quest for 1337-programming skills. It's so easy to blow his mind, I enjoy it tremendously.
You can quite correctly guess how I spent my entire afternoon now, pictures of it might follow. Or not. The evening was spent studying and watching the series above - which I will just call 'Bebop' from now on - as I had completing my chapters on C as a goal today. Yay, C++ tomorrow, and plenty of exercises on C to polish my knowledge gained today.

The programmer's ABC

I will make a summary of all the benefits and hardships I've encountered on my new sleeping cycle in three days, so actually it'll be more like a summary of the first week. I'm looking forward to it!

Enjoy Bebop, enjoy your day, enjoy life and mostly, enjoy yourselves,

Nightbiking, we're nightbiking

We're what's happening.

Here's my own catchy adaptation of 'Nightclubbing'. Oh isn't it wild? Always makes me think of the following movie as well. Watch it if you haven't already.

It's song number six, by the way.

I left home with my rucksack filled with hopes for calmness and peace, a sleeping city, once more. I totally forgot that it was friday already, so man, was I disappointed to see all those drunks strolling about. I saw a girl falling while walking with her bicycle, and a guy barfing out of his car. Yay, friday!

Just as I was so loathed with humanity that I wanted to return home, a friend - the same one that gave me the idea of doing the alternate sleeping - told me about a wonderful place, uncrowded when it's not a warm summer night. She was right, it was so calming, I just sat there on a bench and pondered for over twenty minutes. Not even in a saddening way like I'm used to, it was calm and quiet in a very sincere way, I'll return there tomorrow with my thoughts.

Other wonderful things happened as well today, I got out of bed at 7 AM, without my father's help - Hallelujah! - though I was quite tired. I don't remember my morning that well, but hey, I survived it. The rest of the day was quite fresh though, two out of three naps even succeeded, I'm still bruising with energy, even though two days ago I was awfully tired by now. Awesome.
I made a planning so I can study with that extra more aim, which I also tried today but, like it always is in retrospect, I didn't study enough.
That's mainly explained by the thing I stumbled upon today when installing Visual C++ Express on my dad's laptop, it's called 'Small Basic', it's a simplified variant of BASIC, in a very friendly IDE, made for people who want to start programming, ranging from children to adults. I saw my 11-year old brother walking as I was reading more about it, and I now have taken upon myself the holy mission of getting that boy interested in programming, and be his guiding hand in his quest for master programming skills.
You can read more about 'Small Basic' and download the IDE and Tutorial PDF (which is very nice) at http://smallbasic.com/. I truly recommend it.
A more thorough lesson pack is found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/ff384126.aspx

Not like I want to make free advertisements for Microsoft or anything, I just found it to be a really great language for kiddies with text, because Scratch and Alice don't really do anything with text, but more with video-elements.

 This afternoon I showed him what you could do with it after reading the tutorial and he especially liked the turtle, but he didn't really understand how everything was done. I was naive as well, thinking he would grasp such abstract new concepts in another language, though the tooltips are all in Dutch, so easily, when I gave him some programs he had to write this evening.
I was dumbfounded after I had to explain the principles of IO five times, but now he's seemed to have grasped it, I think he will have truly mastered it in a month or so, when I keep giving him assignments, I'll start on graphics next week, he'll like that.

I seriously started on C myself, and I'll try to get fair into C++ by tomorrow evening.

That concludes the third day for me.

Farewell, may you find peace in the land of your dreams,