Tuesday 17 April 2012

Biphasic Sleep Experiment - Day 1

Let me bring you into my story first..


So, normally I wouldn't immerse myself into experiments; I'm normally the cautious side-liner that would watch, observe and then when proven will follow! I have however taken on this role of health conscious Haynes and after panning down all those Easter eggs this March, I think it's time to evaluate my fitness regime. The problem I have as an individual; is that when I get home at 6pm, it's time for tea, half 6-7 undress, redress and get ready for the evening and then I either go out to meet friends or go out to my Photography club all of which I enjoy but it does take up a lot of time. By the time I get home, we're normally around 11/12pm and I'm up at 8am very tired, to then shower and run off to work for 9am.


I want to have some time to exercise but finding it around my schedule is difficult. I've done some research and to what I understand, I've been doing this so long that my agenda is written very strongly into my subconscious. I wake up at 8am (practically without an alarm / albeit tired) I sleep at 12/half 12 in the morning, just because I need to not because I'm tired and this is what I want to change. I want to wake up early, go for a run/swim/cycle or jog have some time to relax before work and then get on with my day.



My Options...
So I reviewed my options, it appears the three most obvious (Shy of using anti-sleep drugs - not my idea of safe/fun) that I can find are to explore MonoPhasic, BiPhasic and PolyPhasic Sleep patterns.

Monophasic being sleeping during the night and awake during the day with a very particular pattern.

Biphasic to sleep for 4 hours in the morning and 1 hour in the evening - strict but with variance.

Polyphasic to have 2 hours sleep a day, every four hours taking a 20 minute nap. - Very strict.

Now I'm quite intrigured by the polyphasic idea but to be quite honest, it's incredibly unsociable and I can't imagine my boss being too happy at work when I suggest every 4 hours I'm just going to take a nap! So I said I'm going to try and migrate myself onto a Biphasic Sleeping pattern.

So now you know what I'm upto, I figured I'd share my experiences. Apparently the first week is supposed to be the worst where you feel you have been hit by a bus.


Here's my new schedule; starting today.
00:30am - Go to Sleep.
05:30am - Wake up and exercise
06:30am - Shower and dress.
07:15am - Some 'productivity' time.
08:15am - Set off to work earlier.
08:45am - Start work.
17:30pm - Finish Work.
18:00pm - Arrive home and have tea (Dinner).
18:30pm - 1 Hour Nap.
19:30pm - Wake up and go out.


This will give me a total of 5 Hours sleep per day compared to my normal 7 and a half although I'm fairly confident that after the first week 5 hours will be more than enough, if well balanced.

More entries to follow... I'd be interested if people have thoughts or have tried this before to let me know below...



Tuesday 10 April 2012

Time Machine Full Not Deleting Backups Mac OS X

See, I said this would happen didn't I.

I managed to break every element of Windows and now I'm even managing the same with MAC OS X!

This one got me for a while though, basically I found that my 500GB External Passport Drive was full, it made sense because the day prior I moved 200GB of data from one location to another, so I guess the time machine simply presumed it would backup the same data but in different locations hence running my drive out of space.

The issue was that Lion (to my understanding) would delete old backups in order to fix the space issues on my drive, apparently this seems like it isn't quite accurate. You have to go into Time Machine and Delete the old files you don't want anymore. So here's how I did it, I spent ages in that stupid Time Capsule Preferences window with barely any settings to change and just shy of chucking the machine through the window i noticed that in the top right where you locate the Time Capsule icon you can actually hit Enter Time Machine which takes you into the Backup Program. Now if you navigate to a point in time or to a set of files that you perhaps don't need anymore. Right click and hit delete all backups of... This will clear out your old data on the backups and allow the program to continue.

Obviously this won't apply to everyone, 50% of you will probably actually have a full disk. In which case, go out and buy another! The remainder however; this should help you out hopefully.

Hope it helps :)

Kris

Did I solve your problem? Buy me a virtual beer by clicking on a Google ad :). Thanks!




Saturday 7 April 2012

iMac 27" WiFi losing connection intermittently

In the aid that this helps anyone I thought I'd post it up there with my normal helpful stuff :).

This week I decided to finally bite the bullet, you can see through my exhaustive blog that I have found and fixed my fair share of Windows OS problems and it's only fair I give MAC OSX it's shot. So I invested in a brand new 27" iMac, Quad Core 3.4Ghz i7 with a 1TB hard drive I was more than looking forward to working on this bad boy.

I was incredibly disappointed when I took it home though, to find that at least three / four times an hour I was having frequent drops in Wireless Connection. I have a decent wireless router (Yes I'm perhaps 30ft away) but I can sit in my car outside (60ft away) and still get a good signal on my iPhone.

I found a few 'hot fixes' online, something about in Network Preferences, set it to a new name and not Automatic. I gave it a try, no joy.  So amongst my troubleshooting steps I took note of every change and tested and tested and tested until eventually JACKPOT.

The problem I have is that my wireless is running WPA-PSK encryption; although my Windows PC, two iPhones and iPad have NO PROBLEM whatsoever the iMAC does! The second you change it to WEP it works like a gem!

I have to say I am very, very unhappy about having my network open to WEP. So I went into my Access Point and locked my network down to mac address access only, so I have to approve anyone coming onto my wireless. It gave me that extra piece of mind.

To be fair, I'm not entirely against WEP and it will work fine for a lot of people, I just know from my own technical understanding of 'hacking' etc that it is fairly easy to break!

Hopefully this post finds those in need well and let me know if it helps.

Kris

Did I solve your problem? Buy me a virtual beer by clicking on a Google ad :). Thanks!




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