A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Good:

• I have some rather inspired Gameshelf post ideas that are just waiting for me to realize. I really will do them, once i work up the gumption for it.


• Project X's IP holder wrote me, confirming that the project maintains is month-long heartbeat frequency while in hibernation. I'm not actually worried that it may be otherwise, but it's nice to hear anyway.


• Had a great meeting with a new client yesterday, and another client has been coming by daily to dump a wheelbarrow of new tasks onto my lawn. Mmm, smells like fresh peat.

Bad:
My sleep cycle is broken again. Most days I am waking up after 10am, no matter what I do the night before. This is unacceptable during winter, when I must be especially mindful to maximize the amount of sunlight coming into my eyes. Here it is noon, I am drinking my morning coffee, and there is like four hours of sun left. When such days end with me feeling like I accomplished nothing, it's an easy out to blame my waking up late, but it's not entirely incorrect, either.

"This ends here" growled I through my morning brain-syrup. Must prioritize changing the bedroom environment, starting with installing multiple alarm clocks, and leaving at least one of the heavy curtains open. (Which means installing blinds - work, bah. Still.)

I overslept by three hours today, and had very coherent dreams. One had me surprised to read a feature about Volity (or at least mentioning Volity) in a popular magazine, and another saw invited to speak to the Zipcar board about how much their new interface stinks. At one point I said something like "I had my flow, and it was perfect, and you took that flow away from me. You suck."

An interesting morning outing to the new (f)art museum with cthulhia, as I predicted would happen in an earlier post. It was mobbed to such a degree that we didn't actually manage to get in, and we missed the animation show that was our goal - we woulda hadta practically camp by the doors in order to have a chance, it turned out. But we still had a fine time.

First of all, I got to ride the Silver Line for the first time, whee, and saw the Government Center station, which is actually very pretty now. Then we hung out in a giant woo-woo party-tent thing that Target had set up to house people waiting to get into the museum; they were admitting people in packs of 100 via a numbered-ticket system that was clearly going too slowly to give us much hope for timely admittance. However, it was kinda fun to mill around there anyway. Free snacks, and we ran into one of Cth's old neighbors and I got to talk about Jmac's Arcade and feel stupid that I didn't have any of my personal bizcards on me. (I wrote my URL on the back of a Volity card.)

We also participated in Halsey Burgund's project, where he's collecting sound samples of people answering questions from a sheet of printed questions while standing in a little wooden sound booth. Apparently he's going to mix it into music or something. He was wearing a Creative Commons T-shirt and looked like the sort of person who wears a Creative Commons T-shirt. Good time. Cth said that it was something you'd find at Burning Man, and talked to him about Todd Rundgren.

When it became clear that we wouldn't get into the museum unless we waited another hour or two, Cth got a case of the wackies and started making faces at people in the restaurant and bludgeoning passers-by with her Santa hat, so I guided her into the calming safety of Boston's financial district. I discovered that it is creepily quiet at noon on a Sunday, all looming skyscrapers and (almost) no people or noise. Her context shifted, she showed me a really neat brick alleyway where there's hidden surprise art embedded into the ground. If you're ever downtown with me, ask me about it, and I shall endeavor to take you there. But I will get lost and we'll end up wandering around until we give up and then we'll have ice cream or something, OK?

I note that we did get to see the fart mural through the lobby's plate-glass windows, so: mission accomplished.

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Now it's sunset and I haven't really done any code today, and I doubt I will, as my motivation fueler dips under the horizon for the evening. As fun as this was, I think I am going to have to set a policy of declining morning events in the future, at least during the shorter days.

Grunt, I really do have a lot of work to do, too. Let's see what I can manage.

I have had a good couple of days...

Wednesday after the RMV stupidness I went to work and worked from 10 until 4:30 and it was great. I really must make an effort to dig in by 10, when I want to have a work-day like that. Which, um, should really be all of them. Split work early to eat n drink n scheme with J, always delightful.

Thursday I went to eat at dictator555's aunt's house with that whole crowd, which was kind of random but quite welcome. I actually didn't think about what I'd do for T-day until Wednesday afternoon. I IMed classicaljunkie to ask if it'd be tacky to post my Thanksgiving Orphan status on LJ, and then she was like EAT WITH US OM NOM NOM and I was like ok ok.

Hanging out with a friend's extended family that you don't know at all is always a little strange, and as a shy nerd at heart I found it a little rough at times, but I still made it out with not only an overful l belly but experience at playing four-handed Cribbage (for this family, like mine, are native New Englanders). This is actually pretty nifty and I look forward to teaching the variant to my own family up north!

On the train ride home I sat near a woman who was flirting really really loudly and I dare say tactlessly with the guys sitting behind her for the whole 1.5-hour ride and it was horrible and I was glad I put more than just talky podcasts on my Shuffle before leaving. Really that was the only negative experience.

Now it's not yet 1 and I'm actually a little sleepy. WOW. Off to go try and take advantage of this.

Didn't get cranky about all of this until I went through Hartford airport security for the second time in two days. (In the same direction.)

FWIW, the dead license has made it through four inspections so far. So that much is OK.

The worst thing is that I am now very sleep-deprived; was already running on deficit yersterday, and was allowed only one or two hours last night so that we could get back to the airport in time. I can't predict how this will affect my Origins experience. Likely now that I won't attempt to be Mr. Volity until tomorrow, but we'll see.

Also the wireless in the airport is free. Hey, that's OK too.

Sad that my guts are complaining loudlly of the stress. I may be doomed to play a round or two of Throne of Agony once we finally make it to the hotel. IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN

Sad also that my plans of better flying through alcohol were foiled. Had a giant (and expensive) airport beer last night and it was having its desired effect but then they canceled the flight. Now instead I just drank a coffee (coz I don't want to get a headache on top of everything else) and they cruely don't open the bar at 6 a.m., and I have two flights to look forward to since they're shunting us to DC first.

I think the coffee's improving the guttal situation, but now have to hope I don't shit my pants from the upcoming catapaultage.

Hey jmac I hear they have bathrooms on planes now. No, once we are airborne I cannot move. It will be my job to remain as still as possible so that I can listen to to every variation in pitch from the engine noise.

Calling our numbers. Whee! See you.

Ten (intentionally) annoying alarm clock designs. I've blogged about some of these before, like "Clocky" the #1 pick.

I find the puzzle one notable because I've had the idea to do something similar, like writing a program that wouldn't stop making noise until I added two long numbers together. But I'm afraid that I'd just shut the speakers off, or unplug the computer. So using a physical puzzle intrigues me.

Another low-budget idea: Lock your alarm clock in a box, and put the key far away somewhere. Maybe next to the coffee machine.

Favor to ask: the next time you happen to hear me make noises about pulling an all-nighter just so I can make an early-morning appointment, please suggest that I go to bed as usual anyway, even if it would result in my getting only 3 or 4 hours of sleep. Reminding me of this post will be sufficient.

I am now maybe fifty dollars richer from this morning's freelance camera gig, but an entire day poorer. My whole Friday afternoon sunk into a bleary fog that finally overcame me when I slept straight through a social engagement that I was looking forward to (dozing deeply enough that my cell didn't wake me, twice). And now it's after midnight and I am rested and refreshed and guaranteed not to see another person I know for another 12 hours or so, and when I do it will mean that it's time to go back to work. I'm not so much lonely as teeth-grindingly angry at myself. What the hell am I supposed to do now? I guess I can find some work to do, but I really don't want to, since I haven't had a chance to play first. Oh so bitter.

Every damn day it seems I manage to lie to myself about sleep. I set my alarm for 10am, knowing it won't work and that I'll sleep until 1pm or whenever eight hours after bedtime is (unless something non-routine is happening in the morning, as novelty is very effective at getting me out of bed early). But I set it anyway, thinking "Ah, it's five hours, that'll be enough." Maybe if I was someone else, for whom alarm clocks consistently worked, that thinking would apply, but after so many years you'd think I'd be able to face the truth.

Another lie I tell myself is that staying up all night will give me a chance to reset my sleep cycle. No, you fool, it doesn't work like that. It just fucks up the entire next day, and then I'll be back where I was, or worse. Hate hate hate.

At Wednesday's Gameshelf shoot, Director-Joe offered me a gig: he was directing a talk show for Somerville's municipal TV station the next morning, and needed camera help for an hour. So I did that, and the producer asked if I could come in this morning to shoot another talk show. Just got back from that.

I told the producer that I'd continue to welcome these little morning jobs. This is actually quite ideal for me right now. It pays well for only a little time invested, and since it's early in the morning it leaves the whole rest of the day open for Voilty work. Encourages me to get my ass out of bed at a reasonable time, too. Yay.

(This outfit is entirely separate from SCAT. It's a municipally funded and operated TV station, versus a public-access nonprofit. It also has a general theme to its programming, quite unlike SCAT, which lets any Somerville resident willing to pony up a $40 membership produce TV shows about whatever they want.)

All day yesterday helping daerr and radiotelescope (whose LJ name, I yesterday learned, has a similar Secret Origin Story to colorwheel's) prepare themselves for permanent and maybe-permanent (respectively) relocation to Somerville, and twice dining with then and our whiz biz advisor jtroutman to discuss Serious Business. Further SB talk extended past midnight in our future offices (currently my "dining room"), but rt still had enough time to join cthulhia at a halloween party.

Despite my previous post about pining for parties I actually skipped this one too because, being awake and in turns manically helpful and seriously businesslike for the last 18 hours, was dead tired. (Also had consumed many cups of sake at the Blue Fin.) As soon as he was out the door I went to bed and was immediately asleep. Woke to discover that it's freebie-hour day... a good omen, after a late night discussing how much of that most precious and expensive resource, time, that we had to make this thing work?

I am now tasked with starting to collect.

So what's actually going on with me? A lot. Now that I care -- really really care! -- about my job, I'm quite conscious about how much there is for me to do. I have a larger project I'm chipping away at (the Volity game creation tutorial that I know a lot of you have been waiting for, whether you knew it or not), and several discrete "homework assignments" to get done before our next Monday meeting. Not done with all of the latter yet and it's almost the weeekend aaaah. I will finish.

We still haven't struck the funding jackpot. Not that I expected to by now. In the meantime I am doing pretty well at making connections, and can feel the network starting to heat up, though there remains plenty important letters to send (this being part of this week's homework). Also sniffed at my old O'Reilly weblog again today -- it still works, though I haven't posted to it in nearly two years. I have been pondering out loud whether to announce Volity on it, something I've been putting off for years, but which seems more feasible now that we're alpha. That author photograph, though, ugh; summer of 1998, puffy-haired and hirsute. Got to do something about that.

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There is an interesting discussion within the ranks about funding, and whether to pursue opportunities for lesser amounts -- enough to go "yay money" over, not so much to stop looking for more. There is a worry, I think, that attached to any relatively significant sum of money is a sense of security whose magnitude is invariable with that of the sum. Take the money, and you'll relax and let yourself think of other things. Take too little money, and you'll be due for a rude awakening when the money runs out before the relaxation does.

I can't find a purely logical reason why we shouldn't accept a lesser sum, if offered, so long as we agree beforehand not to end the funding search until we meet our initial goal. I recognize we're not purely logical beings, but surely we can look out for each other? It's an interesting problem and I think I understand the feelings behind both sides of it. Tricky stuff.

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Got up early-ish today (before 10am), going to attempt early-ish sleep. I love staying up late, but not only do I work better during and after a dayful of sunlight on my open eyes, I really want to be in synch with the folks I'm working with.