The Sleeping City

Well, that it was when I went biking in it an hour ago.

The city I'm talking about is Ghent, it's probably the most beautiful city in the world. We even have Japanese people here who come all the way from Japan just to try out their new cameras. That's how beautiful it is. Yeah, Japan.

Anyway, this is the second day of my new sleeping habit. Days do seem a lot longer, I can't believe it was tuesday just two -technically three- days ago, and I actually find it fun.
I didn't quite have luck with following it exactly though. I should normally wake up at 7 AM, which I do, but then I didn't feel like getting up and fell in a halfsleep again, yes, I overslept for an hour. Same thing with my naps, but instead of too much sleep, no sleep, so I guess that compensated a bit. But the whole concept of polyphasic sleep gets lost that way and I felt tired some moments of the day. But not really tired, just tired, like when you're nearing your sleepy sleepy time. Not like this xkcd.

I asked my dad to really get me out - like in, not in it - of my bed at 7 AM, his waking time as well, so hopefully I can stick to that from tomorrow on, and also sleep during naptime. I hope the naps are just something to get accustomed to, otherwise, I'm screwed.

Soooo, what did I do today?

Do you really want to know?

Truth is, when I looked at the statistics, I hardly have any readers yet, so I don't really know the answer. But, like Jesus said,

"Being silent equals yes." - Jesus Christ

I don't know how he actually said it, but it had the same meaning, Bibles never lie.

"There's only one thing I love more than my father, and that's my bed" - Jesus Christ

It's in there, I swear!

However...
My HTML-learning-endeavors are coming along nicely, in the morning I learnt about going from HTML to including the strict HTML 4.01 tag, to XHTML, and after my nap two chapters on CSS were also fully digested. Can't wait for HTML5.
I need more time on it, but the guitar-playing experiment could become a succes, I practiced for about an hour in total spread over two awake-periods, I still need a good name for those, and it felt like it went smoother already. No harm in it anyway, score! I'll keep you noted on that.
This holiday also means a lot of studying, and today I read 'Computer Organization and Design' by Patterson and Hennessy by means of studying computer architecture, for which I have a rather large task to be done in a week. I'll finish studying that tomorrow and from then on it will be C and C++, for which I have another grand task.

Oh yeah, about the opener of this message, 'The Silent City'. I had nothing to do and I hadn't really gone outside yet today, except for going for my sweet mother, so I felt like riding my bicycle through Ghent. It's amazing to ride through empty streets without being wasted, what would normally be the case when riding a bicycle at 2 AM. For me, anyway.
The feeling of freedom it gave me was amazing, it even inspired me poetically. Feel blessed, for I won't write anything down, I'll spare your lives. However it be, I think riding through different parts of Ghent will become a main nightly activity for me, being awake when the world sleeps makes you feel like God. I might even make a journal or something about the different parts of Ghent and how they are at night. A guide to sober nightcyclers.

I remember telling you yesterday that I would write more about the different cycles that are spoken of in the hyperlink I gave you, but I reconciled and decided to do that another time. In the meantime, if you have a question, don't feel to ashamed to ask anything. You can freely ask questions about them anytime here.

Tomorrow will hopefully be the first day I get out of bed at the exactly right time, I'll even try to go take a morning run, but I also have to get in there at the exactly right time, which is in five, no, wait, fuck, two minutes.

So, I bid you all a good night, enjoy your lives,

Blogging the night away

Nah, I'm just writing this to make some kind of journal of this experiment.

What is this so-called experiment - the mere question could have popped into your mind the very moment you read the last sentence - that I am talking about?

This 'experiment', which I will from now on address as 'le experiment' (French!), is a shortening and altering of my daily sleeping pattern. The cycle I started following is the Everyman Cycle, seen below:

I chose to do this after the past few weeks, in which I underslept every night, and I was broke from fatigue after two weeks. A friend told me to try something like this next time I would try living a long period without lots of sleep, and I didn't doubt for a second. With this schedule, I only need 4 hours of sleep every day, and I'll normally won't feel tired at all, ain't that sweet?  Imagine, just imagine the time you win with being awake for 20 hours a day!
In short, I chose the three-nap Everyman Cycle, which consists of a big block of sleep of about 3 hours, and three small naps of about 20 minutes.
Today is the first day I completely followed the schedule, and now it's 1:17 AM, a time I would some days be awake and some days be asleep, but for now, I'll always be awake at this time, so I need something to pass the time without falling asleep and summarizing my day, especially at the start. I came up with the idea to write a blog, for other people who would want to try this, but found mostly blogs on the Uberman-cycle, since that is much more special, but don't have time for that and want to try the Everyman.

Well then, more about me.
I'm an electronic engineering student in Belgium, in my second year. I have a lot of classes this term, and I want to pass them all, another motivation for this experiment, since I can and hopefully will spend a lot of the time gained on useful studying and self-development. I have a two week long holiday now, in which I hope to get used to the Everyman, if you were questioning my decision.
I'll also try to find out if practicing every awake-period of five hours has any benefits on improving other skills, like guitar playing, or sports for that sake, since you have a bit of sleep refinery four times a day. This is just hypothetical and sounded quite logical. I'm also quite into listening to a lot of music, so you'll probably find some links to noteworthy albums and artists
I'm also getting into programming and web design more then ever before, so expect me to put things on what I did on here, not too much though, I wouldn't want to bore you all to death.
The last thing I want to try out is writing, I really like to write, and I've been playing with the idea of writing a book for several months now, but I will probably begin with a short story. This may be or may not be for anytime soon, the story will be published externally, and I'm not sure yet to make it Dutch or English, I will probably go for Dutch, since that is my mother tongue. I love that word, 'mother tongue'.

Tomorrow I shall elaborate on the different sleep cycles if you would be interested, since I didn't really tell you much about them now, and about my day and feelings of tiredness, since I didn't tell anything about that either. You can always find some info on the sleeping cycles on http://www.highexistence.com/alternate-sleep-cycles/.

That's it for now, I bid you all farewell, and remember kids,