Archive for June, 2009

Sleep – How Much?

// June 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

A quick thought on sleep as I tuck into bed. I was recently reading a post by Tim Ferriss located here… http://bit.ly/bSCDQ …which referenced research arguing that between seven and eight hours of sleep is what the body needs. The article also referenced research which found too much sleep to be just as unhealthy for a person as too little sleep. With that said is it possible to develop a device which would recognize when one has fallen asleep and then set a timer for say seven and a half hours from that moment? This would help people optimize their sleep patterns and keep from getting too much sleep.

I don’t tend to have any trouble falling asleep, but I do tend to sleep for nine hours when left my own devices. I do wonder, though, if I sleep for nine hours out of habit or if it is truly the amount of sleep my body needs. What I mean by this is that if I set my alarm so I only got eight hours of sleep a night and did this for an extended period of time would my body then naturally start waking up after eight hours and still feel rested? On a side note, I found the part in the article about taking an ice bath to help one fall asleep kind of cool. Heh, pun intended I guess. If I ever have trouble falling asleep I’ll have to give it a try and see if it really does feel like “getting hit with elephant tranquilizers”.

Read the Tim Ferriss article I referenced above and share your thoughts if you have any.

Twitter – Where is everybody?

// June 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

What is the demographic of Twitter users? I ask because an extremely low percentage of my friend network actually uses the service. Let’s say for roundings sake I have 500 friends on Facebook. Take that number and only 2.5% are on Twitter. That seems exceptionally low considering Twitter has over 1 million users. Even more astounding is that less than 1% of my Facebook buddies actually post to Twitter. The 2.5% I quoted earlier were simply the amount who had accounts.

My first theory is that my closest friends all started college right around the time Facebook came into existence. They were generally the early adopters of the service and have seen it evolve tremendously since the early days. This means they have a very intimate understanding of all the features of Facebook and how to maximize it as a social networking utility. In addition, my age bracket (21-25 year olds) has a TON of information vested in Facebook which makes them hesitant to even try to understand a new service which they perceive as attempting to meet their social networking needs.

My second theory is that Twitter doesn’t yet understand itself and as such my age bracket is hesitant to pick it up. With Facebook and MySpace serving rather clearly defined roles, at least to my age bracket, they have no need to look at a service which doesn’t yet know what exactly its core functionality is. For instance, when I ask my buddies why they don’t use Twitter they offer vague replies like … “Why would I? it doesn’t really do anything.” There are somedays myself where I have a hard time describing the void Twitter fills, but other days it is easy. At the moment I perceive Twitter as an instant communication tool for short messages to large groups of people.

When exactly will my friends pick up Twitter? I have no idea, but I kind of hope soon. There are a lot of cool conversations going on inside Twitter that I wish they would join in on. Anybody else watching the conversation on the Iranian election unfold?

Pessimist/Optimist

// June 8th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

“There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, ‘Oh, it’s hopless, so don’t bother doing anything.’ and an optimist who says, ‘Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyway.’ Either way, nothing happens.” -Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia