Does anyone remember, like, a billion Derbies ago, there was that Mountain Dew commercial with Pat Day in it? It started off just with shadows making you think it was some hard core basketball player drinking the mountain dew, then the gate bells sounded and it revealed that it was actually a jockey standing on a bench. He jumped down and said something snarky.
It was hilaaaaaaaaarious! Unfortunately, my google-fu fails me in attempting to dig it up. Anyone?
I noticed a weird thing that my brain did the other day…
I was at the animal shelter, and went into one of the cat colony rooms to work on cat socialization (read: petting and snuggling). The cat colony rooms are setup to be like a living room of sorts: a couch, coffee table, some tables, and an abundance of cat trees and toys and hidey holes. This is where they keep cats who enjoy being around other cats.
Anyway, as I sat down to join one of the cats lounging on the couch, I noticed my brain processing information in a particular way, and I found it rather interesting.
When I looked at the cat, I realized “that cat has three legs.” But, I noticed that it took me until I sat down beside him for several moments before I’d registered *which* of the three legs he was missing.
I find this kind of bizarre. It wasn’t as though I thought “there is something different about that cat” and then after a bit of observation noticed he was missing a leg. No, my brain processed the fact of his three-leggedness all in one go, but it took extra time to notice the specific of which leg was missing. I recall that I even spent several moments looking at his hind legs to find the missing leg before seeing that it was one of his forelegs.
Is this not a strange ability? Maybe it is similar to reading – how I tend to process text in big chunks at a time before actually seeing their individual components.
Or maybe I just think too much.
As an aside, the three-legged cat was very friendly and snuggly and seemed perfectly at home with only having three legs.
So, my internship at Schell Games has started in full swing and is awesome thus far! However, I thought I’d post about what I learned, or concluded…or just theorized from my 2 week sleep study.
1) I think I caught up on an amazing deficit. The first few days I was sleeping upwards of 14 hours a day, and eventually this tapered off somewhat to around 9 or 10 hours a night. I felt it was good, rejuvenating sleep, though. Kind of like the subconscious version of a 2 week cleanse.
2) I am, at heart, a night creature. I’ve denied this for ages, because for some reason I had some deep resolution that my being a night person was “bad.” The world, after all, does not cater to us very well. But screw that. I harbor tons of nocturnal energy, and this can’t be corrected by a rigid sleep schedule, which I think causes more harm than good. I’ve started working out at midnight, doing my grocery shopping at 1, going to bed around 2 or 3 and that’s okay, because that’s how I roll.
3) I’ve identified my napping needs more closely. I tend to need a small nap in the early afternoon, even if it’s just 45 minutes, to kick me back into gear. Around 3:00pm seems a good time. This is often followed by a longer, evening nap. I used to get so stressed about taking naps at 8:00 at night, worrying that it would “mess up my sleep schedule,” but now that I’ve embraced point number 2, I’m much less worried about it (and being less worried means I get to bed more easily when I do sleep at 2 or 3).
Overall during the test, my sleeping periods tended to be vastly erratic. At first I was concerned about this, but I think what I learned is that spaced out, shorter blocks of sleep just work better for me in general. This is roughly what my most comfortable sleep schedule has ended up being…
2:30am – 8:30am (6 hours, my “main” night time sleep)
3:00pm – 4:00pm (1 hourish, my afternoon nap)
8:00pm – 11:00pm (3 hours, my evening nap)
With this, I still get the 9-10 hours of sleep that I seem to need a day, and I’m not tired during the day or stressed out about the fact that I’m staying up late. I imagine that on the weekends I will let myself sleep more freely, to catch up on any deficit, and I will stop beating myself up over it.
One thing that has helped me IMMENSELY during this experiment was this little device, the Sleeptracker Pro: http://www.sleeptracker.com/
Jesse lent it to me. Basically, it is a watch with an accelerometer in it that you wear at night. It detects “near-awake” periods based on your movement. When you set your alarm to wake up, you give it a window of time instead of an exact time, and the alarm won’t go off until it detects a “near-awake” moment in your sleep cycle during that window. Thus, you’re more likely to get woken up when you are in the light stage of sleep, versus being yanked out of REM or stage 4 sleep, and all groggily.
I’m normally not one for gadgets, but I’m in love with this thing, and am going to get my own as soon as I am able (Jesse kindly is lending me his for the duration of my co-op, and I really think it will help).
So! There are my sleepy conclusions, and it’s midnight now…time to go to the gym! 😀
As a present, Jesse gave me the little chimera figurine that comes with the fancy-pants edition of Resistance 2. It does not look fierce, but rather as though it is yawning. Perhaps it was put on some uneventful patrol and is bored out of its mind. Poor guy.
Speaking of sleep, I’ve been conducting a sort of sleep experiment of my own for the past week. Basically the idea is that I’ve taken 2 weeks of my life in which I will sleep as much as I please, with no obligations to guilt me awake. I just want to see what my sleep patterns are when left to my own devices.
So far, the patterns have been incredibly erratic, but I have been getting about 11-12 hours of sleep a day total. I have been otherwise keeping active and making sure I have access to sunlight, but it seems to make no difference.
Jesse is loaning me some sleep-robot thing that detects your near-awake periods at night, and figures your sleep pattern based on those. It seems to only work with long stretches of sleep, but I’ll give it a try tonight and see how it works. It’s a nifty little device, at any rate.
I have no idea what I’ll do with this data after the end of the 2 weeks, but I feel like it’s good to have, and I’m just generally curious. Plus, after this semester I’ll be a working woman. No more luxurious breaks, so I’d better work one in now!
A leaf bug has decided to board with us for the winter. I noticed him at first before leaving for break, hanging out on our dish drying rack. Today, I found him again in the shower.
First, yes, I know that it is extremely likely that these are two entirely different leaf bugs. But what harm is there in pretending that it’s just the one?
Anyway, I presume his lingering on dishes and in the shower is for the available water source. Today, though, he appeared to have been caught in there while someone else was in the shower, and was quite waterlogged. I brushed him with a toilet paper square to soak up some of the excess water (enough so that he could pull his antennae apart, at least. They were stuck together) and he scuttled along the rim of the bath.
Part of me was concerned that I should move him out of the bathroom, for fear that one of my roommates may not be so keen on having a bug in the house for the winter. But, I decided that he probably knew what he was doing, and didn’t want to disrupt his access to a water source.
Winter is always tough for me, because my typical method for finding bugs in the house is to catch them and put them outside. But during the cold cold winter, I of course can’t do this! What am I supposed to do with these bugs? Usually I just let them be, but I don’t want my roommates to stomp them, so where can I hide them for the winter months?
Maybe I should start a bug terrarium in the basement.
I am in a startlingly good mood today, and I am unsure of exactly why.
Part of it, I think, is that I am so excited about going to Project Horseshoe this weekend that I can barely stay in my seat nor stay focused on any one thing for too long of a time. I have a feeling that it will be something like a Game Design retreat, and I am oh-so-excited to see Insomniac Drew again. I was also delighted to see that James Ernest and Nick Fortungo will be attending, both of whom recently visited the ETC. Plus, I’ll hopefully get to visit with Bryan Cash while in Austin!
My good mood could also be attributed to the fact that Resistance 2 is coming out, and though it probably marks me as an excitable young whelp in the industry, the launch of my first credited title does have me dancing and skipping and giggling in anticipation. First steps!
It could ALSO be attributed that my WoW friends have finally managed to do a full all-guild Karazhan run (with the addition of one helper), and will hopefully do another one this week. Granted, this was enabled partly from the nerfage, but it fills me with joy and love to be able to play the big instances with friends. I think I’ve given up on the notion that I am a casual WoW player, and will move it over into the “hobby” category. It is just such a fantastic means for me to nurture my friendships with those people I love who are far away from me!
Perhaps it is the weather. Who can say!
So, the presidential election is all fine and well, but I always feel it is important to be informed for the smaller, regional/local elections that happen as well.
This year is particularly difficult, because while I am now a Pennsylvania resident, my heart is still in Kentucky, and so it’s tough to turn my gaze to this state instead of the one I’m interested in.
Sites like this and this are handy for finding out who these people even are and what their schtick is, but any research tips are certainly welcome.
Here are two pieces of technology that I think are fancy and magic.
This touch-screen foil product is a transparent foil that you can apply to the back of a window and then plug into a CPU. Put a rear-projection or LCD monitor behind the window and ta-da! Insta-touchscreen!
Heliodisplay is even more magical. It uses compressed air to create a projection surface and infrared to detect if you are touching the display. Check out the free-space interaction video.
MAGIC.
So, remember back when I said I was going to get rid of something every weekend? Yeah, that didn’t happen. I should have known the hectic ETC schedule would get in the way.
BUT, I have been making some progress. I disassembled my desk and moved it to the basement, and yesterday I did a massive room-cleaning spree. After 4 bags of trash and 1 bag destined for the Goodwill, I am feeling lighter already.
Among purged items include 2 old motherboards, a pair of snowboots that I never ever wear, even when it snows, various trinkets that didn’t live up to the sentimentality test, and the like.
Next on the cleaning agenda: THE CAR (horrors)