The people on EFNet #C++ told me about the Uberman’s Sleep Schedule, and they encouraged me try it out and report on its effectiveness. It seems that it would take a super man to live on only three hours of sleep per day as is prescribed by this schedule. The article claims that the Uberman’s sleep schedule is effective, because it coaxes the body to fall quickly into the most beneficial phase of sleep. Methodical sleep deprivation is used to train the body to do this, but after the body has been trained, the article cites several advantages. These advantages include more free time and an increased sense of being healthy.
Perhaps, after most of my time-sensitive projects are completed, I can experiment with the Uberman’s sleep schedule. Maximizing the utility of every minute asleep to increase the amount of time awake per day is one way to boost productivity. I surely would love the benefit of having more time, and if bursts of energy throughout the day can be experienced with this schedule, I’m fairly certain that an increased level of productivity in my development efforts will be consistent.
After some thought, the Uberman’s sleep schedule seems like nothing more than a form of insomnia, but feeling sluggish after five or six continuous hours of sleep is less appealing than feeling energetic after very short naps. The Uberman’s sleep schedule can potentially serve as an excellent subject for a high school science project under medical supervision, of course.
Eryn Brown’s Revenge of the Dotcom Poster Boy, which is featured in wired.com, talks about Jason McCabe Calacanis. Calacanis’ story is very exciting. He pushed for content long before its recent surge in demand, which is driven by businesses looking to rank highly on popular search engine result pages. Calacanis’ publications allowed him to deal with the big time players of the technology industry during the dotcom era. His inspiring persistence allowed him to continue looking for opportunities at the dotcom era’s end.
Although Calacanis was not the first to develop a content network, he has been very successful in monetizing the network that he helped develop. Eryn Brown compares Calacanis with Gawker Media’s Nick Denton, noting that “Denton kept Gawker relatively small and focused, but Calacanis and Alvey went unabashedly for scale.” Taking on those kinds of risks requires some degree of confidence that may very well be confused with arrogance. He expresses his confidence by stating:
There’s no limit to how far I could go in AOL – it’s just the limits they put on me. I’m not in line to be CEO of AOL, but it’s obvious that’s where I’ll end up, if I stay focused. Somebody’s got to be the next CEO of AOL.
I would have loved the opportunity to hear Calacanis talk “about scaling up startups with in earnestness that would make a boom-era dotcommer blush.” Like Calacanis, I actively seek the opportunity to bring startups to the next level with some equity for my team.
Wired.com has an Associated Press article that discusses the NSA’s Lamest Spy Tool: Cookies. The first sentence in the article claims “the National Security Agency’s internet site has been placing files on visitors’ computers that can track their web-surfing activity,” without bringing up any of these files’ limitations. Articles like the one featured on Wired.com feed unreasonable paranoia by conveniently omitting the extent that cookies can track browsing habits.
Andrew Glover’s Ruby off the Rails compares Java with the Ruby programming language. It discusses the conciseness of Ruby code and several language features. The article also encourages Java programmers to explore the possibilities that Ruby provides:
If you’ve ever envied the ability of multilingual friends to bridge language gaps wherever they travel or gained new appreciation for your native language by learning a new one, then you can probably see the advantage of being a programming language polyglot. Developer polyglots travel the IT world more freely than do monolinguists (sure they can apply their skills in any environment), and they also tend to better appreciate the programming language called home, because among other things they know the roots from which that home is sprung. Isn’t it time you became a polyglot?
It looks like I am a programming language polyglot. Being able to exercise skills in any environment is very satisfying. Coding with Ruby is a real joy, and its terse nature is less intimidating and distracting than that of Perl. Even if one does not plan to implement great systems in Ruby, experience with the language will expose one to new ways of thought, which should be very exciting to all enthusiastic developers.
According to this article, Microsoft and Google have reached a confidential settlement on the matter of Dr. Kai-Fu Lee. It is great to see that both sides of the dispute resolve this before involving the courts. I have been following the story of Kai-Fu Lee here and here, perhaps too closely.