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March 2nd, 2003
12:47 pm - Good start to the day
Got to sleep last night at probably about 1 o'clock and woke up at about 11. A friend has a theory about sleep that it tends to take place in cycles of an hour and a half, so when you go to sleep, you need about half an hour at the start to get used to sleeping, then you will find your sleep most restful if you sleep for a multiple of an hour and a half - so eight hours is good, six and a half is good, five is doable and so on. Not sure if there is any science to back it up, or whether it's actually exactly an hour and a half or more like 85 minutes or more like 95 minutes, or even if it varies from person to person. But there are times when I wake up, drop off to sleep and wake up an hour and a half later and then wonder. Probably not more than coincidence at the moment, but there might be something in it.
Weather is pretty clear at the moment. I am very tempted to try to get my bicycle fixed and go riding on it this afternoon. The bookmakers suggest Sunderland are 1/33 (that is, 33-to-1 on) to get relegated this season. No, that last one isn't a good thing.
Oh, and the LiveJournal portal has a list of the most viewed FAQs and how frequently they have been viewed - the most frequently viewed of them all has a number of views which is into five figures for the first time. I had a theory that the popularity of the FAQs was governed by a Zipf distribution, because it looks pretty close. In practice I think it's probably closer to a power law distribution with power about -0.8ish. Well, I thought it was cool anyway.
There's just been an extremely funny ad on ITV now. Brits, try watching ITV for a short time, it's likely to get repeated sooner rather than later and unlikely ever to be shown again after today. It's an advert for The Guardian (a.k.a. Het Grauniad, in accordance with its long-ago tradition for excessive typographical errors). A fairly generic Formula One car pulls into the pits. They have a reasonably authentic set of graphics and either one of the actual commentators or a reasonable facsimile of the same. The pit crew change all four tyres very quickly. The driver gets out of the car and runs over to a marked square where the rest of the crew spin him round three times. The driver then stumbles back towards the car and manages to get back in at the second attempt. He pulls away and we hear the car crash, with the commentator commentating "Oh no, it's all gone pear-shaped".
It's all because The Guardian have a monthly sports magazine and one of the features in this time is about how to make Formula One more interesting. Well done, guys, your very funny advert has just sold an extra copy.
What the advert didn't make clear, but is rather relevant, is that this monthly sports magazine is going to appear in tomorrow's edition of The Guardian. Good. More chance of the ad being repeated later today. Oh, and I'm thinking of the Observer which has a monthly sports magazine; the Guardian's F1 supplement is a one-off. Easy to get the two confused.
Current Mood:  amused
Current Music: Q: moods starting with a or b likely to be overrepresented?
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That theory about sleep. It's from the New Scientist, I've read it there, but I can't remember which issue or whereabouts on the website you might find it. It's quite well known that we sleep in cycles of 90-100 minutes - a quick net search will yield plenty of sleep!information. There are 4 stages in sleep - drowsiness, light sleep, deep sleep, REM. If you wake up during the drowsiness or light sleep phase, you will probably feel OK, but wake up during deep sleep or REM and you feel awful. ![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/11545067/403029) | | From: |  mhw |
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| Date: | March 2nd, 2003 06:07 am (UTC) |
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drowsiness, light sleep, deep sleep, REM
A great pity they couldn't have found a better band. Mmm - I'm going to look into this. Thanks to all for the tips. I vaguely (mis?)understood that the REM stage of sleep is when you tended to dream most and quite frequently that's when I tend to wake up. I have a suspicion that it's only once I've woken up immediately from a REM stage that I actually remember what my dreams were. Normally I find it quite invigorating to wake up just having dreamt, though waking up and remembering a bad dream (rare, but not unknown) can put you in a bad mood for longer than you would like. Maybe waking up and remembering a dream invigorates you for a while but makes you feel more tired later on. I don't know.
I wonder if the painkiller I took last night re: my burn made me more tired at the time? It was 400mg ibuprofen and I don't recall ibuprofen being reputed to have a drowsying effect. Might actually do in practice, though. I completely believe the sleep cycles thing; it's scientifically sound, too, to the extent that science really knows much about sleep. At least the brain wave changes, breathing rhythms, etc. are understood. I am not sure if waking during a dream is a necessarily bad thing, at all times; often when I wake up naturally it is with the sense of a dream just having closed, and a few vague comforting images. It matter when in the cycle you wake up, and I think waking at the end of the REM is nicer than waking in the middle.
Re the burn/painkiller, sometimes even having an injury can be to a degree physically exhausting. Not entirely sure why. Yesterday I recall being woken up from a pleasant but otherwise unmemorable dream by a loud noise in the dream itself. As far as I can tell, there wasn't a counterpart noise in real life, but obviously I may well have not been in a position to tell accurately.
Ten or twenty times in my life, I've felt that I've woken up a couple of seconds before something noisy was about to happen, such as a phone call or a knock at the door. Theoretically I suppose the logical explanation is that I could be waking up due to the loud noises and sort of back-extrapolating waking up a few seconds beforehand, or perhaps the first ring of the phone wakes me up and yet doesn't register, with only the second ring registering as a ringing phone.
Certainly strange in a nice way. :-) That reminds me of how people tend to become abruptly aware of an ongoing noise seconds before it stops. Is it retroactive, or somehow anticipatory, or is it the quality of the noise actually changing at the very end? Anticipatory. :-)
Sometimes I get used to background noises (typically alarms or bells) and don't notice them stopping until some time after they have stopped. ![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/3043489/775687) | | From: | j4 |
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| Date: | March 3rd, 2003 03:53 am (UTC) |
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Normally I find it quite invigorating to wake up just having dreamt, though waking up and remembering a bad dream (rare, but not unknown) can put you in a bad mood for longer than you would like. I often feel more awake if I've been dreaming, in the same way that I feel more awake once I've been up and doing stuff for a while. Although sometimes I feel a bit confused from the dreams. ("Hang on... I thought the kitchen had turned into a swimming pool, and there was a goat who was really my P.E. teacher trying to stop me having any breakfast. Was that not real?") I don't recall ibuprofen being reputed to have a drowsying effect.It certainly does on me. And this page of info about ibuprofen lists drowsiness as an adverse side-effect. I actively enjoy waking up during a dream, especially if I can manage it to happen near some kind of useful ending so I can remember as much as possible.
Brufen and Alcohol tends to make me sleep but not Brufen on its own. Yep; I learned this in Psych class, although we called it Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, and Stage 4. I would *love* to work out what lengths of sleep time are tolerable for me.
I tend not to get my full 8 hours very often at all, and usually I feel like hell in the mornings... but just occasionally I find a routine where, even if I'm sleeping a mere fraction of 8 hours, I feel pretty good all things considered, and it must be due to this sleep cycles thingy.
I should get more scientific about working out what amounts of sleep work for me. ![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/63488894/719755) | | From: | jumbach |
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| Date: | March 2nd, 2003 08:24 am (UTC) |
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I agree with you. I took a nap yesterday for about an hour, and came out of it almost as groggy as when I went into it. Caffeine helped, but I still wonder if I did myself more harm than good. But I slept VERY well last night!
I probably average 8 hours of sleep a night, but it's not consistent: I may get 6 hours one night, 10 the next, then 9, then 8, then 9, then 6, etc. If I were to rank my nights in order of most average hours of sleep, it would be thus (Note that "Mon" means "Monday night to Tuesday morning," etc:)
MOST SLEEP: Fri
2. Tue
3. Mon
4. Wed
5. Sun
6. Sat
AND LEAST SLEEP: Thu Lucky you. I went to sleep at 1am, after taking Nytol (supposed sleep aid) and woke promptly at 6:30am. *growl* I think I fell asleep again around 7:20 and finally got up for good around 8 when my alarm clock went off. Lately, every time I've taken meds (the Nytol or nighttime cold meds) that are supposed to help one sleep, I've gotten far less sleep than I normally do. I despair of ever achieving a proper sleep schedule. (*hand-to-forehead*)
And the weather was gorgeous today. :) Well, fingers crossed that you can stay awake throughout the day and you'll feel more like getting to sleep at a useful time tonight. :-) | | From: | jumbach |
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| Date: | March 4th, 2003 11:42 am (UTC) |
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Yes, as a matter of fact, the A and B moods WILL be overrepresented. It's an established fact that, in the U.S. at least, the first name of the ballot tends to get more votes just because it's at the top. That's why they put the candidates in random order for each election. In my one foray, I was third on the list of five people, yet finished fourth.
I don't know if this holds true in the UK, though, where you don't vote for a person, but for the party.
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