Government-Issued Speed-Controlling Devices

Larry Borsato writes about some experimental new devices:

Transport Canada is testing an integrated GPS device that compares your speed to the posted limit of the streets you are driving on. The idea is to make sure that you can't exceed that posted limit.

You can read more about the device on Engadget.

While I find the technology interesting, I wouldn't want one of these devices in my car. I just don't want some centralized authority invading my life like that.

I've occasionally wondered whether there is a more effective approach to keeping our roads safe. Here's my nutty idea: Install a digital video camera on everybody's dashboard. The camera is set to constantly record everything. Accompanying the camera is a big blue button. When you press the blue button, the camera sends the last five minutes of recorded video to the nearest police station wirelessly for review. If the reviewer agrees that an infraction has occurred, the offending driver is immediately issued a ticket.

Technorati tags: traffic, automobiles, speed, enforcement

Other Orientations in Computer Programming

Don Box:

I still find myself occasionally having to remind people that objects are at best a means to an end. They aren't the end unto themselves. Trying to design software only in terms of object-oriented concepts is like trying to speak English without using adjectives or adverbs.

Well said, Don.

I'm glad to see all the hype around object-oriented programming is waning. There are other ways to approach computer programming. If you don't believe me pick up a copy of Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming. It's worth it. Really.

Technorati tags: object, oriented, programming

The Short Head of Programming Languages

The TIOBE Programming Community index is a list of the 20 most popular programming languages in use today:

The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TPC index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.

It should come as no surprise that Java, C, and C++ top the list.

Tip of the hat to Ian Landsman.

Wiki Software Flame War

I am the recent beneficiary of new desktop machine at the office, which leaves my old machine available for other experiments.

In another bold step into the 90s, I'm looking into setting it up as an office wiki server.

I'm not at all familiar with any of the Wiki packages and I don't really know what features I should be looking for, though this comparison of wiki software chart has provided some hints.

One.. Two.. Three... Four... I declare a flame war.

Which wiki software is the best, and why?

Technorati tags: wiki, software, corporate, private, knowledge, management

It's Funny...

In one of her rare blog posts, Mandy writes:

The next weekend is then Christmas... this year has certain zipped by, hence why I haven't spent much time publishing... oh, that and the fact that I would need to beat my hubby over the head with a stick in order to get any significant computer time. ;) Just kidding dear! :)

Heh. I'm reminded of that Homer Simpson quote: it's funny 'cause it's true.

Technorati tags: blogging, funny

Canadian Liber Government Falls to Vote of Non-Confidence

Mandy just shouted up to me that the Liberals are dead. The opposition parties, led mainly by Steven Harper's Conservatives, have forced another election with a vote of non-confidence.

What I'm still trying to figure out is why the NDP would vote along with the Conservatives and Bloc on this. Their handful of MPs effectively had the much larger Liberal contigent by the balls. They could have gotten the Liberals to pass virtually any bill they put forward.

Or maybe not. Maybe those NDP pushed too hard, too fast, and Martin decided he'd rather take his chances in another election than spend another year pandering to Layton.

Harper, I'm sure, will be out taking credit for toppling the government, though he really didn't have much to do with it. What he doesn't seem to realize is that by taking credit of it now, he is winning the blame of voters when they are forced to trek out the booths in Canada's coldest month.

And that's politics as usual, in Canada.

Imaginative Poverty

Dave Pollard asks an intriguing question:

But in a modern, homogeneous society, do we still need imagination? I think it's possible that in a hierarchical, overcrowded, enormously interdependent society imagination is an evolutionary disadvantage: It breeds dissatisfaction, nonconformity and discontent, and it suffers in an environment of homogeneity and monoculture. Even language, which has been shown to affect the way in which our brains are structured as we grow, drives us to think in linear, traditional, established ways. So I would argue that over the last 30,000 years imagination has been bred out of the human gene pool, and what survives is systematically squelched long before the school system has the chance to inflict further damage on it. Imagination can be frightening, and our society ridicules fearfulness (except of things prescribed by the government, the media and our peer groups as 'reasonable' to fear). I think we actually learn not to imagine.

Technorati tags: imagination, creativity, poverty

Ron Garret's Google Story

Ron Garret tells the story of how he left Nasa's Jet Propulsion Lab to work for Google in what so-far is a four-part series on Xooglers.

• Hello, world
• In the beginning...
• The wormgear turns
• Day One

Back in the day, I spent a lot of time lurking on comp.lang.lisp. Ron was a frequent poster there, though it was always under the pseudonym his former name of Erann Gat in those days. His was one of the many distictive voices that I enjoyed reading on that newsgroup. I'm glad to hear from him again.

Tip of the hat to John Wiseman.

Update (2005-12-14): A comment from Ron corrects an important mistake about his time as Erann Gat:

That wasn't a pseudonym, that was actually my name at the time

Sorry, Ron. I should have checked my facts. Thanks for correcting it.

Technorati tags: lisp, programming, google, java

So long, John Vlissides

Ehud Lamm:

John Vlissides, of GoF fame, passed away on Thursday, November 24, 2005, after a lengthy illness.

More on John on the wiki page dedicated to his memory.

John was one of four authors of a highly influential book on the topic of object oriented programming. He will be missed, though his contribution continues to be felt around the world.

Technorati tags: obituary, programming, design, patterns, object, oriented

Test Driven Development: The Double Entry Accounting of Programming

I've been doing Test-Driven Development (TDD) for more than a year now. It's no silver bullet, but it has helped me catch plenty of mistakes that might otherwise have slipped through to our final product.

TDD, for those of you not familiar with it, is a three step process. When you realize that you'd like your program to do something different that what it already does, you:

• write a test case that would pass if the change was implemented (it will fail intially because it hasn't yet been implemented)
• implement the change so that the test case passes
• clean up your code

It didn't take me long to notice that whenever I wanted to make a change, I ended up describing that change in two different places: once in the unit test and once in the production code. It used to bother me that I was doing twice the work that I had been before starting with TDD.

It finally dawned on me that the duplication is the primary benefit of TDD. TDD is the double entry accounting of programming. Whenever you'd like to change your program, you enter the change in two sets of books: test cases, and production code. The duplication is what allows you to detect your errors.

Worst Job Ever

I work for a somewhat large, publicly-traded company, and while I consider it the best job I've ever held — interesting work, great people to work with, and unusually smart management — there are still days that wish I was doing something else.

Nothing on the scale of what the guy in this short must feel, I'm sure. He's got the worst job ever.

Tip of the hat to Brad Feld.

On the Advantages of Lisp Macros

My apologies for making two rather geeky posts in a row, but I just couldn't help myself. Richard Cook dug up this delightful quote from Peter Siebel's book, and I just couldn't keep myself from sharing:

DOLIST is similar to Perl's foreach or Python's for. Java added a similar kind of loop construct with the "enhanced" for loop in Java 1.5, as part of JSR-201. Notice what a difference macros make. A Lisp programmer who notices a common pattern in their code can write a macro to give themselves a source-level abstraction of that pattern. A Java programmer who notices the same pattern has to convince Sun that this particular abstraction is worth adding to the language. Then Sun has to publish a JSR and convene an industry-wide "expert group" to hash everything out. That process—according to Sun—takes an average of 18 months. After that, the compiler writers all have to go upgrade their compilers to support the new feature. And even once the Java programmer's favorite compiler supports the new version of Java, they probably still can't use the new feature until they're allowed to break source compatibility with older versions of Java. So an annoyance that Common Lisp programmers can resolve for themselves within five minutes plagues Java programmers for years.

Technorati tags: lisp, macros, java, programming

Verbs, Nouns, and the Current State of Programming Languages

I always enjoy reading Patti Digh's weekly posts on life.

This week's was no exception. In it she writes about the cultural differences in language teaching between americans and asians:

Studies have shown that in the U.S., children learn nouns much more rapidly than they learn verbs. (Nouns are easier to learn—they belong to categories, they’re unambiguous). Not so in East Asian countries where children learn verbs at a faster rate. Japanese mothers are more likely to ask about feelings, using feeling-related words when their children act up: "The toy is crying because you threw it." "The wall says ouch," Nisbett reports. By focusing on feelings, children are taught to anticipate reactions of other people… it’s all about the relationship, not the thing.

Her focus was on the importance of relationship over objects, and while it was meant to get us thinking about the connections between people, it got me thinking about the current state of the programming language world.

The dominant paradigm in programming languages today would be classified as western by the standards Patti writes of. It is heavily noun-oriented, or in tech lingo, object-oriented.

Object-oriented programs consist of descriptions of things. These things contain information (state) and can perform operations (methods). The key idea is that program are composed of many independent parts into something that does what it should. Just like Lego.

Relationships between objects of course exist, but they are peripheral to the central concept of objects.

It makes me wonder how the software we use today would be different if it was written with a relation-oriented paradigm rather than an object-oriented one.

Now before you accuse me of making things up, I'm not the first person to wonder about relation-oriented programming. Timothy A. Budd wrote a paper in 1994 on a relation-oriented programming language named LEDA that he invented.

So far, it has yet to catch on.

Us westerners, we like our objects.

Technorati tags: language, object, relationships, verbs, nouns

Geodesic Club House

Yes Mag has instructions for building a geodesic dome clubhouse out of paper and staples:

Geodesic domes are made of interlocking geometric shapes--often triangles. Because loads are spread over many triangles, these domes are especially strong. Often made of aluminum bars and plexiglass, they’re also light compared to ordinary domes.
Geodesic domes were popularized by an American inventor named Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983). Look for the distinctive Bucky-ball shape in museums, greenhouses, alternative housing, and science centres. Vancouver’s Science World is a 47-metre tall geodesic dome made of 766 triangles.

Why didn't anybody tell me about stuff like this when I was a kid?

Technorati tags: geodesic, paper, projects, fun, diy

How to Save the World

Dave Pollard:

Dick Richards' new book Is Your Genius at Work? is designed for people contemplating a career change. Its focus is on helping people find their genius -- the one thing they are especially and uniquely good at, and then finding application for that genius in the work world. Its audience is anyone who believes they are currently doing less than they could or should, both for their own fulfillment and to make a contribution to the betterment of the world. It's especially valuable for those who are in need of an ego-boost -- those who don't believe they have genius, and don't believe they are especially good at anything.

This is an excellent review of what sounds like an excellent book. It's enough to convince me to add the the book to my wishlist.

Technorati tags: genius, career, work, book, review

Rainforests Paying the Price for Biofuels

Fred Pearce reports for New Scientist:

The drive for "green energy" in the developed world is having the perverse effect of encouraging the destruction of tropical rainforests. From the orang-utan reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin forest is being razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to fuel cars and power stations in Europe and North America. And surging prices are likely to accelerate the destruction

Technorati tags: rainforests, fuel, environment, greenhouse, emission

How to Make People Appear Stupid on the Internet

Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, lists seven strategies for making people sound stupid:

If you are new to the Internet, allow me to explain how to debate in this medium. When one person makes any kind of statement, all you need to do is apply one of these methods to make it sound stupid. Then go on the offensive.

As someone who used to spend lots of time lurking on Slashdot and Usenet, I've got to say that Scott's nailed it.

Technorati tags: funny, internet, debate

Administrivia: Switching to Feedburner

I've been using FeedBurner to manage my feeds on Startup Fever since I started it. I really like. It helps me understand how people are reading the blog in ways I can't see just by looking in the server logs.

I've found it so useful, that I'm going to start using a FeedBurner feed as the main one for this blog. So starting today, there's a new feed for this blog.

If you'd like to switch to it, you can find the new feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/kendyck.

Here are a few buttons that may help ease your transition:






If you'd rather not change anything, that's fine, too. The old atom feed will continue to be available and will be updated with all the latest content.

Your choice: switch or stay. You shouldn't notice any difference either way.

Louisette's Legal Fund Website

Louisette Lanteigne, the Waterloo stay-at-home mother of three who is being sued for libel by Activa Holdings Inc. to the tune of $2 million for comments she made on her watchdog site (covered here), has set up a website to gather contributions for her legal defense. There she writes,

Currently I am in the process of aquiring a certificate from a lawyer to open up a Legal Trust Fund to assist in covering the legal fees in regards to this lawsuit from Activa Holdings.

If anyone is interested in contributing, I have opened this paypal account. All funds in this account as of November 14th will go directly into the Legal Trust Fund.

My paypal user id is butterflybluelu@rogers.com or you can just click the button below.

This was built in response many inquiries from folks who have emailed me wanting to help. Thank you.

Reminder: Check Out Startup Fever

Just a little reminder...

If you are looking for links to entrepreneurial stuff, you are looking in the wrong place. It's not hear anymore. It's all moved to Startup Fever.

Why Isn't Work as Fun as a Video Game?

Of Steve Barth's recent talk at the KMWorld & Intranets conferences, Dave Pollard wrote:

Millions of people voluntarily spend 20 hours per week or more playing multiplayer online games that are essentially complex collaborative role-playing activities. In doing this they do many of the same things that are essential to effective business collaboration: set goals, select roles, identify appropriate teammates, accumulate capabilities (i.e. learn) and experience, and engage in strategic social interaction. So why is it so hard to cajole employees, when they are paid to do these things, to do them as enthusiastically and with as much engagement as gamers do them for free?

Dave attributes much of the appeal of video games to their complexity. Video games offer a rich, complex environment, where business, on the other hand, is merely complicated. The entire article is well worth the read, if you have the time.

While I agree with Dave, I'd say there are additional reasons that people love to play video games more than go to work. One of them is dependency on their work. Folks don't enjoy their work as much because they depend on it for their livelihood. They don't depend on video games in the same way. If everybody depended on playing video games to live, many would find it as exciting as responding to email.

And that, in fact, is the case. Every office worker is forced to play a video game, and its name is Microsoft Office.

Technorati tags: video games, work, business, fun, life

Blue Ball Machine

The Blue Ball Machine: simply wonderful.

Technorati tags: wonderful, animation, blue balls

Activa Holdings Files Suit Against Louisette Lanteigne

Back in May, I blogged about Louisette Lanteigne, a local stay-at-home mom who out of concern for the safety of her children was posting to her website what she understood to be safety and environmental violations at a nearby constuction site. At that time she was being threatened by the builder, Activa Holdings Inc, with legal action if she didn't remove the photos from her site.

Well, she didn't. So they filed suit. For $2 million dollars.

The story has since been picked up by the national press, Slashdot, and a growing number of bloggers.

From the Canoe story:

Her efforts led to letters and kudos from various government officials for reporting alleged violations. Then-environment minister Leona Dombrowsky wrote her to say, "Your advocacy on behalf of your neighbourhood is commendable and I encourage you to contact the ministry . . .to report any further incidents."

Environment Ministry spokesman John Steele said work by people like Lanteigne is of great value because there aren't enough ministry workers available to spot every infraction.

Also...

Murdoch [Activa's lawyer] said Activa realizes it's risking negative PR but the company thinks the lawsuit is the only way to defend its reputation.

"Ultimately, they're confident it will be resolved in their favour," Murdoch said. "They're confident the right public perception will come about."

Until now, there were two blog posts about this. Mine and Michael Hiemstra's, along with a couple of articles in some local papers. Since launching their lawsuit, 20 new blog posts have been written, along with national and international press coverage. It is hard to imagine a worse PR situation for Activa than the one they have just created for themselves.

At the very best, Activa will win the suit and be remembered as the company who sues safety-minded folks into bankrupcy for criticizing them. At worse, they will be remembered as the company who, when found to be violating safety and environmental regulations, preferred to sue the messenger instead of clean up their act.

If you would like to share your thoughts with the folks at Activa, you can reach them at the following address (thanks, Martin):

Address: 735 Bridge St W , Waterloo N2V 2H1
Telephone: (519) 886-9400 , Fax: (519) 886-8955
Contact Peter Armbruster
Position Vice President, Operations
Product and Service Home Builders
Web Page: www.activagroup.ca (nothing there yet)

Problems installing Palm Desktop

Dear Lazyweb,

While I wait to get a registration confirmation email from the palmOne support forum, perhaps you can help solve this problem.

I've been trying to install version 4.1.4 of Palm Desktop on my Windows XP (Home Edition) machine without much success.

Here's the problem...

It requires Administrator privileges to install. So I switch to my Adminstrator account and install it. So far, so good. It runs fine for the adminstrator account.

When I switch back to my 'Limited' user account, the account that use for my day-to-day computing, there are a few problems:

1. All of the shortcuts have been installed to the Adminstrator's start menu. This is easy enough to fix. I just move them to 'All Users' start menu manually.

2. When I launch the Palm Desktop program as a limited user, I get the following error message, "Error: Invalid Configuration. Terminating the Palm Desktop."

Right. Thanks for the helpful message. What am I supposed to do now?

Update (2005-11-16): I solved the problem by temporarily granting adminstrator privileges to my limited account and installing the software under that account. When I was done, I switch the account back to limited. Seems to work now.

Update (2006-01-29): R Burgos offers the following solution in the comments:

1. Install the software under an administrative account.
2. Run the windows registry editor and find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PalmSource, then right click on this key and make sure you add your limited user account to the list of accounts with unlimited privileges. Exit regedit.
3. Go to the :/Program Files/PalmOne folder and right click on it. Make sure you add your limited user to the list and grant full control.
4. Log-Off from the Administrator account.
5. Log-in as the limited user. Run the Setup.exe installer for Palm Desktop. It should not ask you this time for administrative permission to install...it should just install and place all the icons in the desktop and start menu.
6. You are done. Don't forget to consider a registry backup in case something goes wrong or you change the wrong key etc.

Bought a Palm VIIx

Although I work in the tech field, I'm actually a rather slow adopter of technology. So when my wife announced to some friends last night that I had purchased a PDA, their response was, "Welcome to the new millenium!"

This, of course, was an overestimation of the leap I'd taken. Considering that my purchase was of a Palm VIIx the more appropriate response would have been, "Welcome to the 1990s!".

Anyways, a local liquidator, XS Cargo was selling them for $49.99CAN. I've been thinking of buying a PDA since I finished reading Getting Things Done. As I was just looking for something that I could store and transport my todo lists around on, the Palm VIIx seemed like the perfect fit. And the price was right.

I've played around with it a bit, and it looks like it will do the trick. I just need to get a holster so I can carry it around with me.

Getting Back into Piano

When I was young, I played piano.

For the longest time this was a forced activity. My parents wanted me to have some musical training as a child, so from the age of 7 that's what I got. And hated it. They always justified it by saying that I'd thank them when I was older.

And you know what? Now I do.

When I got to high school, I came to enjoy it. I'll always remember the day that Rob Brown and Brett Humber, having heard that I'd already spent years of my life practicing piano, approached me in 9th grade to ask if I'd be interested in getting together for a jam session. So began my career as a high-school rocker.

Fuelled by wild dreams of fame and fortune, we jammed constantly. We spent every lunch hour in the high school music room. We'd get together on evenings and weekends. Any opportunity we had to play, we'd take it.

Of course, I needed equipment if I was going to become famous. This was the argument that I used to convince my parents to buy me my first keyboard, anyway. Mind you, they were so delighted that I was finally taking an interest in music, that they were practically racing to the store to buy me a Yamaha PSR-6 the moment I mentioned it. It was a nice little unit, but hardly professional grade. That would have to wait another year, when I bought a Yamaha DX11, followed up a couple years later with the purchase of a Korg M1.

At the same time, I continued to study classical piano. I even achieved some level of recognized competence with it, receiving my Grade 8 certificate from the Royal Conservatory of Music. I continued to take lessons afterwards, but never worked towards any kind of certificate.

I gave after-school lessons to neighbourhood children, a nice little side business that provided some spending cash for whatever adolescent adventures in which I found myself engaging.

I gave up piano when I graduated from high school and left for university. The keyboards were simply too bulky to keep in my dorm room. Besides, in the course of my years of jamming, I had picked up guitar and was slowly considering myself to be a guitarist rather than a keyboard player. And a guitar could fit in a dorm room. So just like that, I gave up what until then had been an fundamental part of my life.

Now it has been years since I played anything. In the past decade, I've spent maybe 15 minutes at a keyboard, and all of these have been at the houses of friends and family. I sit down at their pianos just long enough to punch out a few chords and confirm that I've completely lost all my skills.

Somehow, I'm starting to feel the itch to play again. I don't know what triggered it, but I find myself missing the feel of ivory beneath my fingers. I miss the challenge of learning that comes with playing an instrument. I miss the feeling of gradual, but steady improvement that I've only ever felt with music. Most of all, I miss the ability to express myself in music, the medium to which I've always felt most attuned.

Which brings me to the point of this post: I've decided that I'm going get back into playing piano. Though I no longer have dreams of becoming famous or wealthy by it, I'd like to get competent again, at least enough to play some music that moves and interests me.

As much as I can, I'm planning to keep a record of my journey back to the piano here. Stay tuned for more posts on the topic, the first of which will probably be about shopping for a piano.

Technorati tags: music, piano, keyboard

Show Me Your Battle Scars

Steve Pavlina:

Sure there are some goals that would be really tough for you to accomplish. Maybe you’re right about certain things being impossible for you. So let’s see your battle scars then. Show me the wounds you’ve endured as a result of pursuing goals you couldn’t achieve. Let’s see that bankruptcy, that broken heart, the rejection letter, the lawsuit, the divorce, the public humiliation. Show me the total failures, the brutal disappointments, the smack-downs.

Let’s see them battle scars.

Technorati tags: courage, life, failure, success, challenge

On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets

Do you wear an aluminum foil hat to block the government's mind control rays? It might not be doing what you think. Here's a study from Ali Rahimi, Ben Recht, Jason Taylor, Noah Vawter:

Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.

Technorati tags: conspiracy, physics, silly, government

Dan Briklin Releases wikiCalc 0.1

Dan Briklin has released an initial version of some software he's been working on:

The product is the wikiCalc program -- a web authoring tool that creates web pages. It is for creating and maintaining web pages that include data this is more than just unformatted prose, such as schedules, lists, and tables. It combines some of the ease of authoring and multi-person edit ability of a wiki with the familiar formatting and data organizing metaphor of a spreadsheet. While you edit using a browser-based UI in a spreadsheet, with the A-B-C 1-2-3 grid showing, the final output, like printout from the productivity product, is static and only shows cell borders where you explicitly set them. It handles freeform text in a wiki-like manner and works well with large blocks of text.

I haven't tried it out yet, but it sounds like an interesting concept. Something to keep an eye on, anyway.

Technorati tags: wiki, dynamic, web, tool, publishing

Mark Cuban's Plan to Eliminate Content Theft

Mark Cuban has some ideas on how to eliminate content theft:

The entire content industry is missing a unique opportunity to eliminate most content piracy and more importantly, to generate a whole lot more revenue by offering revenue sharing. If the NYTimes, to use them an example, were to offer 50 pct of the revenue generated from traffic delivered by affiliated websites, not a single website with half a clue would steal your content. Instead, every blogger, splogger and small content creator would look to find ways to link to your content and drive you traffic. Companies like LinkShare offer revenue sharing programs for product sales, why not offer the same for advertising sales ?

This is an interesting idea. I have no doubt that such a system would eliminate the benefit of content scraping. If I can make more money with a link to somebody's content than with the content itself, why would I choose to steal the content?

However, I wonder if this solution would only shift the problem. Couldn't you game such a system by renting a few thousand zombie machines to follow the link on your splog and collect a fat cheque from the content producer?

Technorati tags: piracy, copyright, advertising

Larry's Available for Work

Larry Borsato is available for work.

He's a smart guy who I'm sure won't be available for very long given his credentials. If you are looking to hire a product management/marketing guy, you'd better act now.

Steve Pavlina's Polyphasic Sleep Experiment

After reading about polyphasic sleep on lifehack, Steve Pavlina decided to try it for himself and blog about the exprience.

For those of you unfamiliar with polyphasic sleep, it is a schedule that requires only 3 hours of sleep each day, taken in half-hour naps every four hours. This is in contrast to the so-called monophasic sleep schedule that has most of us spend eight or nine continuous hours each night in bed.

Naturally, the transition to polyphasic sleep can be quite a shock for people who have spent their entire lives sleeping through the night. And Steve has done us the service of finding out just what it entails in a series of blog posts:

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3
• Day 4
• Day 5
• Day 6
• Day 7
• Day 8-11

To make the long story short, it sounds like the the change is difficult, but once you get past the hump it is possible to feel as alert and well-rested with only 3 hours of sleep each day as you might with eight to nine hours.

I find the idea of gaining an extra 5-6 hours a day very tempting, although I wonder what the long-term health risks might be.

A while ago, I blogged about a story in New Scientist where scientists had identified the "sleep" gene in fruitflies, allowing them to cut their sleeping time by 30%. The last line of the story reads, "There is a snag, though, since the lifespan of [the genetically manipulated fruitflies that slept 30% less] was about 30% shorter than normal."

I wonder whether polyphasic sleep has the same trade-off. And if it does, is that enough reason not to try it.

Startup Fever Launches

After way too much fiddling around with the layout of it, I'm happy to announce the launch of Startup Fever, the new blog that I warned about in October.

The plan remains the same: all the linking to startup-related articles that I usually do will now be done at Startup Fever. This space will be used for more general blogging.

If you'd like to continue getting links to articles about startups, you should subscribe to the RSS feed, which you can do by clicking on the appropriate button below:







There's also an option to receive subscribe by email. Just enter your email address in the form on the main page.

75 Signs That You Are An Entrepreneur

Joshua Steimle:

A lot of people think they've got entrepreneurial experience. After all, they started or ran a business, and isn't that what an entrepreneur is? Maybe, depending on your own definition. Well, here's mine. These are not all necessarily descriptive of what I'm going through right now, and they are not all things I'm proud of or would recommend for other people, and most of them certainly were not intentional, but they are all taken from my personal experiences. Some are humorous, some are not.

Technorati tags: entrepreneurship

Greg Gianforte's Talk on Bootstrapping

Bijoy:

Greg, the founder/CEO of RightNow and author of the new book, Bootstrapping Your Business, recently gave a talk at a TiE Institute event in Santa Clara. You can download a pdf (2MB) of the talk and view it on the website.

To EVERY bootstrapper (and entrepreneur thinking about starting a company): WATCH THIS - and watch it twice!

Technorati tags: bootstrapping, entrepreneurship, startup, sales

The Looming Attention Crisis

Fred Wilson quotes Herbert Simon:

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

Technorati tags: attention, blogging, information

Million Dollar Experiment

Steve Pavlina:

I’ve decided to try a new experiment to see if I can attract a large sum of money into my life. I arbitrarily opted for $1 million, since that’s a significant enough sum that I’ll definitely notice it. So basically I’m going to attempt to become a millionaire. And most of all, I’m going to attempt it by using the intention-manifestation model to make it more fun and challenging. This means I’ll allow myself to be guided by intuition as opposed to rigidly planning out every detail. I’m also not planning to directly spend any of my existing cash to get it, except through reinvesting cash that comes by way of the experiment. So I’ll be starting with $0 seed money, and if I happen to need cash for some kind of initial investment, I’ll have to attract that cash too.

Technorati tags: experiment intention entrepreneurship

Fear in a Suit

Tim Grahl (via Dane Carlson):

Fear in a suit walked into my office the other day.

This fifty-something sat in front of me and tried to sell me… I can’t remember.

I remember being filled with a horrible fear of that being me in thirty something years.

Technorati tags: entrepreneurship, fear

Solutions Looking for a Problem

Don Dodge:

Entrepreneurs like to solve problems and improve things, which often leads to "solutions looking for a problem". It is important to remember the difference between Consumer problems and Enterprise problems. Entrepreneurs fall into the "solution looking for a problem" trap when they try to solve problems from a technical perspective and don't completely understand the business aspects.

Technorati tags: entrepreneurship, marketing, competition, problem

On Vacation - Sporadic Blogging Til Next Week

I'm on vacation this week, which for me means spending most of my time working on odd jobs around the house, and very little at a computer. Naturally, and regrettably, that means less blogging.

Things should return to normal next week, Nov. 7.