The hiatus has ended! I am back on campus and readapting to Everyman. I'll record the experience here, since this is the first time I'll have gone straight to Everyman (last time, I switched to Everyman having already done Uberman).
I don't yet know what my sleeping schedule will look like, because it depends on my class schedule, which I have not quite finalized. I plan on doing mostly 3+3 (3 hr core + 3 naps), and sticking to a more regular nap schedule this time. I was rather too careless about that last term.
Last night, I slept for 4.5 hours (I'm easing into it), naturally. I was really tired and passed out on top of the covers around 3:30 am, and then woke up naturally at about 8:00. I took a nap around 5:00 pm, and another around 1:30. The intervals are off, but I plan on doing 3+3 tomorrow, so they'll change anyways. So far, I'm not tired at all. Let's see how I feel in a few days...
Monday, September 21, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Whatever happened to QWERTY?
So, after three days in the office (summer internship), where we (naturally) use Windows and QWERTY, I decided to see how quickly I now type on a QWERTY keyboard. Using an office keyboard (a desktop keyboard, which is substantially better, methinks, than that of a laptop), I got 42 wpm, 2 mistakes. That's the same exact time as my most recent Dvorak trial, with fewer mistakes, even.
Incidentally, I find that the keyboard itself makes quite a difference. I should have realized this earlier, but then again, I have not used any keyboard save my own since the beginning of the Dvorak experiment, at least until now. The fact that my laptop keyboard has both layouts printed on its keys (the standard QWERTY with which it came and the Dvorak stickers I made, if you recall) has probably been slowing me down. It definitely doesn't help when I try to type QWERTY; I just took another typing test in QWERTY, on my computer, and got 15 wpm, 2 mistakes! I reckon, not only am I more used to looking at the Dvorak stickers (as opposed to the printed keys), but also, the physical printed letters on the office keyboard's keys and those of my computer are different. Here are some pictures to illustrate the point.
The keys of the Dell keyboard have their letters printed in the upper left corner (where I have the silver Sharpie on the Macbook), whereas those of the Macbook have their letters printed in the center of the key. When typing, the QWERTY layout of the Macbook is therefore completely obscured by the fingertip when a particular key is pressed, whereas the Dell's QWERTY and the Macbook's Dvorak are still visible. Not to mention that having the one in that particular location accustoms me to looking there.
Once my touchtyping in Dvorak improves, I intend to switch my office computer to Dvorak. I would do it now, seeing as I much prefer Dvorak, but I have no desire to pry apart the keyboard, or else make a set of stickers for it.
An aside, because it has become habitual: the first excerpt was taken from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde, who is really good. I thoroughly enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, and I intend to read this one too, at some point. Unfortunately, it will be later rather than sooner, as I have a very long list of books to read, and this one's closer to the bottom, I'm afraid.
The second passage was from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Ah, classic scifi. I have read this one more than once (which makes my 15 wpm all the more pathetic). Great book. It also occurs to me: what an unfortunate name! What parents would ever name their son Aldous, when there are better names to be had? It sounds more like an adjective than a name, and reads far too close to "odious" than is healthy in a name.
Incidentally, I find that the keyboard itself makes quite a difference. I should have realized this earlier, but then again, I have not used any keyboard save my own since the beginning of the Dvorak experiment, at least until now. The fact that my laptop keyboard has both layouts printed on its keys (the standard QWERTY with which it came and the Dvorak stickers I made, if you recall) has probably been slowing me down. It definitely doesn't help when I try to type QWERTY; I just took another typing test in QWERTY, on my computer, and got 15 wpm, 2 mistakes! I reckon, not only am I more used to looking at the Dvorak stickers (as opposed to the printed keys), but also, the physical printed letters on the office keyboard's keys and those of my computer are different. Here are some pictures to illustrate the point.
The keys of the Dell keyboard have their letters printed in the upper left corner (where I have the silver Sharpie on the Macbook), whereas those of the Macbook have their letters printed in the center of the key. When typing, the QWERTY layout of the Macbook is therefore completely obscured by the fingertip when a particular key is pressed, whereas the Dell's QWERTY and the Macbook's Dvorak are still visible. Not to mention that having the one in that particular location accustoms me to looking there.
Once my touchtyping in Dvorak improves, I intend to switch my office computer to Dvorak. I would do it now, seeing as I much prefer Dvorak, but I have no desire to pry apart the keyboard, or else make a set of stickers for it.
An aside, because it has become habitual: the first excerpt was taken from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde, who is really good. I thoroughly enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, and I intend to read this one too, at some point. Unfortunately, it will be later rather than sooner, as I have a very long list of books to read, and this one's closer to the bottom, I'm afraid.
The second passage was from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Ah, classic scifi. I have read this one more than once (which makes my 15 wpm all the more pathetic). Great book. It also occurs to me: what an unfortunate name! What parents would ever name their son Aldous, when there are better names to be had? It sounds more like an adjective than a name, and reads far too close to "odious" than is healthy in a name.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Cleanup Post/Dvorak, Day Whatever (I really can't be bothered to count.)
You may have noticed a whole slew of older posts cropping up. It's just a bit of cleaning up that's long overdue; I had a bunch of half-finished posts languishing on the blog dashboard.
In Dvorak news: 42 wpm, 3 mistakes. This may not be an accurate measurement of my current typing speed, as the text was particularly difficult. It was taken from Bram Stoker's Dracula, which opens with Jonathan Harker's journal, kept in shorthand and therefore naturally staccato and full of numbers (dates and times), locations, and punctuation.
On the other hand, good choice! (Fie on you, Stephanie Meyer!)
Oh, and I can't believe no one got the reference in the title of my most recent post. The Great Hiatus refers to the three-year interval between Sherlock Holmes's "death" in "The Adventure of the Final Problem" and his reappearance in "The Adventure of the Empty House".
In Dvorak news: 42 wpm, 3 mistakes. This may not be an accurate measurement of my current typing speed, as the text was particularly difficult. It was taken from Bram Stoker's Dracula, which opens with Jonathan Harker's journal, kept in shorthand and therefore naturally staccato and full of numbers (dates and times), locations, and punctuation.
On the other hand, good choice! (Fie on you, Stephanie Meyer!)
Oh, and I can't believe no one got the reference in the title of my most recent post. The Great Hiatus refers to the three-year interval between Sherlock Holmes's "death" in "The Adventure of the Final Problem" and his reappearance in "The Adventure of the Empty House".
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Polyphasic Sleep: The Great Hiatus
Summer break began yesterday. I will be home most of the summer -- that, and travelling with the family (currently in Los Angeles). Ergo, I am readapting to the monophasic life. I've had some experience doing so, certainly, over spring break, but not for any significant duration. This should be quite an adjustment.
Of course, not enough time has elapsed, so I don't know exactly how it will go. Thus far, I seem to retain my ability to fall asleep very quickly in pretty much any situation. I find myself getting mildly sleepy in the afternoon, but that goes away. I'm having a bit of trouble sleeping through the night; I wake up at odd hours (at multiples of 90 minutes, no surprise there), but I can go back to sleep. It's still a bit surreal, though, to get out of bed and find that it's light out.
P.S. Five nerd points if you get the title reference.
Of course, not enough time has elapsed, so I don't know exactly how it will go. Thus far, I seem to retain my ability to fall asleep very quickly in pretty much any situation. I find myself getting mildly sleepy in the afternoon, but that goes away. I'm having a bit of trouble sleeping through the night; I wake up at odd hours (at multiples of 90 minutes, no surprise there), but I can go back to sleep. It's still a bit surreal, though, to get out of bed and find that it's light out.
P.S. Five nerd points if you get the title reference.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Polyphasic Sleep: The Finals Crunch
It's that time of year again: finals to take, projects to finish, half a room to pack. I am less than halfway through finals week; one down, two to go. With two such finals weeks under my belt, I have a fair idea of what to expect this time around. I will sleep no more than twenty minutes at a stretch the day before each final, studying (cramming, really) through the night and/or day until literally ten minutes before the exam begins, skipping whatever meal falls closest before the test, prevailing upon my roommate to bring me back a banana or the equivalent. I have terrible study habits, I know.
And then, after my last final on Wednesday, I will have to throw myself into packing; I leave on Friday. The storage service people come to take my stuff away (everything I'm not schlepping to my aunt's garage or flying home) Thursday afternoon. Hence, I will be packing through the night. I've accumulated more stuff than I had expected to, I'll reckon.
What does this mean for my sleep schedule? I'll be skipping a lot of core sleep, and will probably crash afterwards. By crash, I mean something like six hours, or seven and a half, or so.
And then, after my last final on Wednesday, I will have to throw myself into packing; I leave on Friday. The storage service people come to take my stuff away (everything I'm not schlepping to my aunt's garage or flying home) Thursday afternoon. Hence, I will be packing through the night. I've accumulated more stuff than I had expected to, I'll reckon.
What does this mean for my sleep schedule? I'll be skipping a lot of core sleep, and will probably crash afterwards. By crash, I mean something like six hours, or seven and a half, or so.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
How polyphasic sleep is preserving my life and sanity
This week has been absolutely insane in terms of workload. I won't bother to enumerate all the various items on my to-do list; they would interest no one but myself, and barely that, at times. The relevant consequence, of course, is that I have taken to cutting core sleep.
I have never before been so thankful I went polyphasic; without it, I would not have survived the week, methinks. (And I'm definitely not adapted to Uberman anymore, I've found.) I've seen four sunrises for work-related reasons this week (I usually take core sleep right around sunrise.) and breakfast has replaced dinner as the one meal I eat consistently (from the "wrong" end of the night, so to speak); it used to be Late Nite (a little after midnight), and before that, dinner.
And then, after an absolutely crazy work week, I decided to play the Game. No, you did not just lose the Game. At my school, the Game is a scavenger hunt type of thing, where teams of three to five students drive around campus and the city in the middle of the night solving puzzles (clues to the next location). It runs from Friday evening to Saturday afternoon -- about a continuous eighteen to twenty hours (though I did snatch a twenty minute nap along the way). I'd played the Game organized by my dorm complex two weekends ago, and I'd been asked to join a team playing a different dorm's Game. It was probably a monumentally bad idea, but I'd caught the Game bug -- I was hooked. I crashed afterwards, of course.
I'm going paintballing in a few hours.
I have never before been so thankful I went polyphasic; without it, I would not have survived the week, methinks. (And I'm definitely not adapted to Uberman anymore, I've found.) I've seen four sunrises for work-related reasons this week (I usually take core sleep right around sunrise.) and breakfast has replaced dinner as the one meal I eat consistently (from the "wrong" end of the night, so to speak); it used to be Late Nite (a little after midnight), and before that, dinner.
And then, after an absolutely crazy work week, I decided to play the Game. No, you did not just lose the Game. At my school, the Game is a scavenger hunt type of thing, where teams of three to five students drive around campus and the city in the middle of the night solving puzzles (clues to the next location). It runs from Friday evening to Saturday afternoon -- about a continuous eighteen to twenty hours (though I did snatch a twenty minute nap along the way). I'd played the Game organized by my dorm complex two weekends ago, and I'd been asked to join a team playing a different dorm's Game. It was probably a monumentally bad idea, but I'd caught the Game bug -- I was hooked. I crashed afterwards, of course.
I'm going paintballing in a few hours.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Dvorak, Day 59
40 wpm, 4 mistakes.
Today's passage was from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four. It brought back a small piece of my childhood. I grew up on Sherlock Holmes, so that canon in particular makes me happy. I actually recently acquired a Complete Sherlock Holmes for Kindle, for all of sixty cents (It's wonderful how the e-book versions of classics cost so little -- the miracles of public domain!). I could have gotten it for free off of Project Gutenberg (which is a miracle in itself), but the smooth formatting and table of contents are worth sixty cents in my book (no pun intended).
Today's passage was from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four. It brought back a small piece of my childhood. I grew up on Sherlock Holmes, so that canon in particular makes me happy. I actually recently acquired a Complete Sherlock Holmes for Kindle, for all of sixty cents (It's wonderful how the e-book versions of classics cost so little -- the miracles of public domain!). I could have gotten it for free off of Project Gutenberg (which is a miracle in itself), but the smooth formatting and table of contents are worth sixty cents in my book (no pun intended).
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Dvorak, Day 47
37 wpm, 5 mistakes. I am making an effort to touch-type, hence the increased number of errors.
Today's text was taken from The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. Huzzah for early SciFi!
Today's text was taken from The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. Huzzah for early SciFi!
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Dvorak, Day 38
33 wpm, 0 mistakes. Today's excerpt came from Shakespeare's Henry V. It was the "once more into the breach" part -- a great bit, methinks. This typing test has good taste, I must say.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Dvorak, Day 29
30 wpm, 2 mistakes. Today's passage was excerpted from Thackeray's Vanity Fair.
I'm posting increasingly infrequently simply because there isn't much to report with this sort of experiment, except for the relevant data point. My apologies for... well, being boring, I suppose.
I'm posting increasingly infrequently simply because there isn't much to report with this sort of experiment, except for the relevant data point. My apologies for... well, being boring, I suppose.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
