• PHP
Yeah, PHP isn’t the new, cool kid on the block, but it’s dynamic and it does the job. If everything goes as planned, I’ll be porting to RoR once our version 2 release is done.
• CodeIgniter
On the surface, CodeIgniter looked like it would be similar to RoR (Active Record, MVC, etc), but it’s a pale, pale version of RoR. It’s missing most of the ActiveRecord goodness, and the MVC framework rewards discipline and attention to detail.
• MySQL
MySQL is the second best part of the LAMP stack. The performance is nice, and it works well with my chosen IDE (emacs, what else?).
• Linux
I can’t put into words the comfort I feel using Linux for day-to-day development. The tool set is full featured, using the mouse is entirely optional, and I feel like I could recover from just about any disastrophy.

This environment isn’t perfect by any means. I’ve had a few problems with NetworkManager and lockups, which rock my world to the core. The combination of LAMP, a great startup environment, and working at home has me feeling pretty special, though. It’s nice to be able to walk upstairs, gently wake your son at 10am, cook him some breakfast, and go back to work.

I’ll be posting snippets of code when I can. Hopefully I can help others using the same set of tools.

As far a the polyphasic goes, I’ve been experimenting fast and loose with my schedule to try and accommodate my day to day and job responsibilities. I’m still on the plan, and am moving back toward a more classic Uberman schedule. It’s working, and working pretty well. Some days, when there’s lots of work to do, my laptop never gets cold.

• Sunday Morning (4-8)
• Monday Morning (4-5:30)
• Tuesday Morning (midnight – 1:45

I hope this is not a harbinger of things to come. I’ve been using a timer app on my Android phone to wake up :30 min later. I’m going to switch back to using the trusty (and low tech) egg timer and see if that makes any difference.

So far I’ve felt really good. I exercised Monday morning at 2am, rode my bike to the Dr (1 hr), and was able to awake after :30 every time other than the incidents mentioned above.

I’ve decided that I’m going to take measurements of my mental acuity from time to time. I’ve got a “brain training” Nintendo DS game and a particular high score. I’m interested if I’ll be able to beat my high score, perform dismally, or something in-between (and normal). I’ll post results.

I just took a job with Learning Earnings, and I’ll be working at home most of the time. There will be the occasional client meeting, collaboration session, or video shoot, but most of my work life will be spent hammering out new features using a LAMP stack of tools. Perfect time for another run at polyphasic sleep. This go-round, I’ll be taking my “naps” at 8,12 and 4 (and 8, 12 and 4).

Right now, it’s “day” 2. I started polyphasic sleep yesterday (6-Jun-2010). Most of my sleep cycles have gone well, but yesterday I ended up sleeping for the entire 4am to 8am cycle. I’m going to chalk that up to the boundary condition of starting the cycle. If I’m still sleeping for 4 hours at a stretch by next week, I’ll have to seriously consider curtailing this experiment.

So far, I’ve felt fine. I’ve wanted to lay back down and catch a few more minutes of sleep, but that’s to be expected during this first week of of the cycle. Onward and upward.

Not long ago, a friend of mine (David Grubman) suggested that I do some reading on Polyphasic sleep (links at the bottom of this post). The idea sounded both interesting, and plausible – Train your body to enter REM sleep early in the sleep cycle, and when REM is over, wake up (typically 15-30 minutes in duration). Essentially, take a nap, instead of going to sleep. The most common of these polyphasic patterns is the Uberman schedule, which advocates six naps a day equally long, and evenly spaced. That amounts to a total of 1.5 to 3 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period – significantly less than the “recommended” eight hours.

So, back to my history. I can’t sleep. When I do go to sleep, I’m nearly guaranteed to wake up in an hour or less. Sometimes I go back to sleep and sleep the rest of the night, and sometimes I get myself a Scooby Snack and watch some TV. I’ve attended 3 sleep studies over the past 20 years, and all of them have been inconclusive. Part of the problem with those sleep studies is that they are looking for sleep apnea. I don’t have sleep apnea, and never have.

Some time back, my Mother saw an ABC special on “Night Eating Syndrome” (NES), and we thought that we had my diagnosis. It fit the symptoms perfectly:

• NOT sleep walking – I’m always wide awake when I get up
• Waking up (sometimes) several times a night, and feeling a strong desire for something to eat

I tried some of the therapies for NES, with mixed results. There is a medication that helps, but it has some side effects, and starts to lose it’s effectiveness after a few months of use. The whole discipline thing has never worked for me with my eating. I’ve got great discipline during the day, but typically, when I get up at night, I’ve got none whatsoever.

Enter Polyphasic sleep. During my reading, it was apparent that there is a long (2 weeks or so) grueling adaptation period, where it’s unsafe for you to interact with people or machines. I’ve been sleep deprived for long periods of time before, and didn’t relish the idea of burning a couple of weeks of vacation/life for such punishment.

As luck would have it, I’ve been hacking on a few personal projects lately, and those have held my attention into the wee hours for the last couple of weeks. So I’ve been moderately sleep deprived (which I’ve read is a good starting point for Uberman). Last night finally shutdown the computer around 1:30am, and crawled into the bed. I awoke at 2am fully awake, with vivid recollection of a dream. From my blog reading, dreams are associated with REM sleep, so I figured my body was already in the Uberman cycle, so I should try and take advantage of it. I went back to my computer, and piddled around on a new piece of code until 5:30am, then went back to bed. I made a mental note that I should probably get up at 6am, whether I’d fallen asleep or not.

I awoke at 5:58, again with vivid recollection of a dream. I felt refreshed (certainly not as dead I I would normally feel on 1 hour of sleep. Due to my mild to moderate sleep deprivation over the past several months, I haven’t gotten up at 6am of my own accord more than once or twice. I’m going to see how well I do today, taking naps every 3-4 hours. If I’m still lucid this evening, I’ll make a blog post about my condition <grin>

If indeed I am in an Uberman sleep cycle, why was it so easy? I wonder if I’m genetically or otherwise predisposed to this type of sleep pattern? It’s certainly something that’s been on my mind since Grubman mentioned it to me. I always thought that an early project I worked on, where we had to work both 2nd shift providing support, and 3rd shift fixing bugs nudged me into serious sleep problems.

Or, has the “Software Developer” lifestyle done this to me? It’s a project driven industry, where timelines can’t slip. I learned how to pull all-nighters early in my career. I’ve even accompanied several junior developers on their first all-nighter. My ability to stay up far longer than anyone else even paid off when our church had an event called “Up All Night”. Has all of this sleep deprivation trained my body to accept Uberman more easily than others?

I’ve got an hour to kill before my next nap. I’ll probably use that to plan how I can sneak away and get a nap while at work tomorrow….

dhw

PS. Does this post sound like it came from someone who is lucid?