I hate sleep.

I now have a smile on my face, because in the blog statistics, I had 5 views before I came on. That means that some people are actually reading it without me asking them to. (Or there is someone who views my blog 5 times in a row via proxy)

Now to the topic at hand, sleep sucks. It's a waste of time. For all the good things it does to your body, I feel like our species would be better if we were able live like deer, who only sleep 5 minutes a day.

I find it interesting that scientist still don't know exactly why we sleep, or why we have to sleep for as long as we do. [1][2]

But, sleep is something special. It's not a dormant state, where we would try to conserve energy. All animals have dormant states, even plants. But sleep, especially in us. Is *not* a dormant state. We actually use *more* energy sleeping then when we are ideally awake. And our brain is much more active. Which suggests it is doing something.

Of our best guesses are:

• Enforcing memory, our brain runs through the same things we remember doing that day over and over, so that the synapse is stronger, and we will be able to remember it longer.
• Regenerating cells and fighting infections.

The first is the reason scientist's (and teachers) say to get a good nights rest before an exam. And there has been studies that verify that sleep makes a difference in that respect. (But we are only guessing as to *why*)

The second is the reason that people tell you to get lots of  sleep when you are sick. Which also has evidence that it helps.

But the parts of sleep that we have no good guesses about are much larger, why we dream, why we need to sleep a certain amount of time to feel rested. etc.

On that last point, the cracked article below says a man claimed to have not slept for years, he is wrong. (In case your wondering, the record for longest time without sleep is 18 days) 

A little research says that it turns out it was a misunderstanding. Because he thought that getting below recommended sleep meant "no sleep". In reality, he got 2-3 hours of sleep a day. Which we already know is possible with Polyphasic Sleep.

I'm rather interested by the idea that I could be awake for 22 hours a day. Even 4 would be a great improvement. A few sources say that it does not necessarily increase your productivity, but it is really something I have to try for myself.

My current sleep schedule is a 6 hour Monophasic sleep cycle. I go to sleep at 1:30 AM, and then get up at 7:30 AM, I switched to this schedule from a 10-hour sleep day.

Here are a few noticeable differences compared to 10-hours:



• I feel more awake in the morning. (But still feel like sh*t)
• I feel more awake and focused during the day.
• I feel significantly more sleepy at night (starting around 12:30), and I feel that I would not be able to pull an all-nighter on this sleep schedule.
• It have to try slightly harder during my morning class to stay awake, but not that much, and I still find myself more focused.

I'm not sure what effects it will have in the far future. But so far it has been positive. Scientists say that 3% of people have certain gene that allows them to do fine on 6 hours. [3]Here's to hoping I have that gene. 

Citations:
1. http://www.cracked.com/article_19442_8-simple-questions-you-wont-believe-science-cant-answer.html
2. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/bigquestions.html?pg=3#sleep
3. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2009-08-13-sleep-gene_N.htm

New Youtube, New blog. Some ideas.

Hey look at me, I'm actually posting.

Anyway, I was thinking to myself, about this blog, and my youtube channel and thought to myself.

"It's generally not that interesting to watch(or read) people just talk about themselves, at least unless I know the person personally"

So that means that the maximum about of people that will probably watch those is just people who consider me their friend. Which, is maybe 15 people.

So, what do *I* like to watch? Well, I like funny videos, and seeing funny stuff. But I don't know if I'm the kind of guy who can come up with that on the spot. I like informational videos, but creating long how-to's is hard, and I need pretty good video editing skills to keep people entertained for more then a couple of minutes. So, what do I spend my time viewing, that is short and interesting.

Well, I think back to the time I spend on reddit, and besides the funny stuff and ask science, my favorite part of it is the todayilearned subreddit. So I decided I would make a blog and a youtube channel based of this idea.

I'm not going to copy what is on the subreddit, but rather the idea of a TIL, some short interesting factoid.
Here are some basic idea's of the channel:

• I plan to have videos 1-2 minutes long
• Talk about some interesting fact, along with some extra info about it.
• Try to get idea's for videos naturally, as in stuff I incidentally learn. 
• Research the topic to get more info, and share it.

Along with the youtube channel, there will be a companion blog, that will talk about the same thing as the video, not exactly a transcript but similar, and will also give people sources to whatever I talk about. I will likely write the blog post first, then post the video. 

With short 1-2 min videos, I hope for them to be rewatchable and interesting. And good enough to share.

I will continue to update this blog and my original youtube channel with more personal stuff, as well as introducing new projects. I will also post here when I make my first TIL video.

An exercise in blogging.

So, I have not written a single blog post in about 2 years. That sucks.

But the best way to get started has to be by writing something. So I will. I will try to, a few times a week, write *something* to the blog. And hopefully it will be interesting. As I get better, and the task of writing itself becomes less of a big deal, I can devote more time to content.