Tuesday, June 10, 2003

On Sleep..... I have what you could call a love hate relationship with sleep.  On the one hand, I am a college student, and like all college students, one of my favorite past times is catching some zzzzz’s.  On the other hand, it takes me forever to get to sleep, and that is where the hate comes in. Its not that I’m never tired, in fact when I go to bed I’m usually very tired.  It’s that I think too much.  From the second my head hits the pillow, my mind starts running full steam.  Generally there are three streams of thought, so to speak.  I have what ever I am actively thinking of, problems to solve, things to plan, whatever.  There is also a song which runs through my head in the background, something I heard that day, or one of my favorite songs.  Then there is background stream of thought, which is almost transparent, but still there.  This is seemingly entirely random words or phrases, however, when I bring that stream of thought to the front, so to speak, and “listen” to the “random” words and phrases, I can almost instantly link them to something that happened that day.  It’s almost as if that third stream is my subconscious beginning to dream, although I’m not quite sure that happens.             It’s that third stream that I find most intriguing.  When I think on my dreams, usually they are based off of something that happened, or that I saw or heard that day, or very recently.  I can almost always figure out what my dreams are based on.  This third stream of thought is the same way.  This stream doesn’t start right away, but rather a bit after I’ve laid down, when my mind has had a change to relax somewhat.  It almost seems as this is the beginning of the sleep process.  As if my mind is already beginning to assimilate everything that happened that day, which, as I understand it, is what dreaming does.             Unfortunately, even though the dreaming process may begin early, I still am exhausted when I wake up.  J 9:45:06 PM    Talk to me! []

A poem from the other side of the pond. NIGHT POACHERS   Full moon bold as a cry. Clean as new ice.   Two men running noiseless across frozen fields.   Gin traps in canvas bags rattle like teeth.   They fall laughing in clouds into the lee of a wall.   A dog barks; a man calls. The sounds curl away.   The men sleep wrapped around their prey like lovers.  Dick Jones' Patteran Pages] 7:29:11 PM    Talk to me! []

How stupid am I, and how to make a good tv show.... So I watched tv today, and rather then lowering my IQ, I actually figured out what it is!  According to FOX( to be fair, they did have a mensa guy and a guy who actually writes the test working for them), I have an IQ of 129.  I'm not sure how totally valid this is, as their scale only went up to 135 (at least in the 2 seconds they gave you to look at it thats what I saw), but some guy in the audience had a 138, go figure.  And now, just in case anyone from FOX or any other network might actually read this (ya right), here is what you DON'T want to do when creating an interactive TV show: 1:When asking the audience at home to Participate in a times manner, TIME IT RIGHT.  Before every set of questions, there would be a example question.  The web version we used at home would be timed at 30 seconds for example, and you can't speed up, but they would spend 10 seconds on it on the show, and then immediately go to the questions.  As a result, I had to mute the tv to not get ahead of myself, AND missed part of the talk after the question set, which I assume they wanted me to watch. 2: When presenting something that is crucially important to the show, such as the grading scale, leave it on the screen longer than 2 seconds.  I don't want to just glance at my conversion, I want to see what I could have gotten had I answered one more right, one more wrong, or been 15 years older(You get bonus points for being older!)  3: Actually use the web to its full potential!  Once the show is over, you should immedietly be able to access the grading scale and all other fun facts online.  Not tommorrow, as the host so elliquently put it.  If I took the test online, I should have a page with my score, and comparisions to others, like the show did. Not only will this make me less mad at your network, but it creates buzz.  I can post in my weblog a link to my score page.  That page will give FOX facetime, as well as the ability to promote other shows.  Its a win-win for all. Thats all I can think of for now.  Stay tuned for more!  :-) 12:00:40 AM    Talk to me! []

© Copyright 2003 Kurt Hines.