I think last night was my 4th or 5th night with the Zeo mobile sleep tracker. Each and every night during REM sleep I’ve had my sensor come off. At first I thought it must have fallen off while tossing and turning. However, I’m starting to suspect that I’m taking off in my sleep. The main reason I’m thinking this might be the case is the fact that both my sensor and sleep mask are both off. I’m my own worst sleep enemy. Because of this I haven’t been able to get any good readings these past 2 nights.

I’m tempted to just tie my hands together. But wait. That’s probably not a good idea.

Anyway, here’s the data that I did manage to get.

Last night’s sleep stats:

Last night’s sleep graph:

Day 15 of 30 of No Internet News Challenge

I found myself tempted to check news while waiting for someone. I find that’s when I like to read news. Namely when I’m forced to wait. I fought the urge though.

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Going to sleep has definitely been more exciting since getting the Zeo sleep tracker. Each night I get to try to beat my previous sleep score by just sleeping. It’s fun also waking up to discover what was going on while sleeping.

Anyway, I learned an important Zeo lesson. Always keep your Zeo properly charged. I woke up only to find that my Zeo’s battery was dead and I had lost some data. It turns out while I thought my Zeo was charging during the day that it was upside down so it was receiving no charge. My score also wasn’t helped by once again taking off the sensor in my sleep. I’m going to tighten it tonight.

Overall my sleep last night was not as pleasant as the previous night. Hopefully I do better tonight.

Sleep stats:

Sleep graph:

Day 14 of 30 of No Internet News Challenge

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Last night was another fun night with the Zeo mobile sleep tracker.

Here is the data from last night:

Here is the sleep graph breakdown:

I’ve been monitoring my sleep for the past 3 nights to see my sleeping habits. In 3 nights I’m convinced that this device is doing something special if not reading my brain waves. I’ve found it to be at least relatively accurate in terms of when I was awoken and when the sensor was off (past 3 nights at some point during sleep the sensor has fallen off). If what they say about REM sleep is when you dream then I can corroborate the data measured from last night’s sleep. The smart alarm on the Zeo woke me up around 11AM. I remember waking up from a dream, snoozing the alarm, and going back to sleep. If you look at the graph data you’ll see when this happened and you’ll also see how I was in REM stage, woken up, and then back in REM.

What’s interesting about the data is seeing how even though I got 40 minutes less sleep than the first night (had 6:51 minutes) how I had a higher score thanks to longer time in deep sleep and almost the same amount of REM sleep. The best part was I was only woken up 3 times during the sleep. Most of which was due to the alarm in the morning. The end result is I felt pretty rested throughout the day (especially when you compare it to the first night’s sleep).

We’ll see how tonight goes. Here are some factors that could effect sleep:

• had 12 oz can of green tea
• had a 16 oz iced black tea un-sweetened ice tea
• no exercise

Day 13 of 30 of No Internet News Challenge

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So I used the Zeo again last night.

My score was 106, but that’s not all me. I let Sandy try it out when she went to sleep so about an hour of it is her stats. Even so I slept more than the night before by about 2 hours or so. Waking up was still tough, but overall I felt more rested than yesterday. I also got more deep sleep and REM sleep. I like those patches of uninterrupted sleep. In the morning I used an eye mask as well since it was kind of bright. Going to keep using that. I might also look into ear plugs as well.

Here’s my sleep stats:

Here is the sleep data for the night:

Notes for today’s pre-sleep:

• Had 2 beers
• Had 1 diet coke (about 12 oz)
• I switched to a new set of invisalign trays

Day 12 of 30 of No Internet News Challenge

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2 things I want to include in this post.

First thing is that I finally published the post I had been working on for ELM called “Pornificaiton: The Future of Web Startups“. Initially I had called the post “Porn Startups.” The reason being was that this post started out as some random jokes I had cracked about just turning popular web companies into straight up porn companies. That idea blossomed into the post that now exists. It was a work in progress over several weeks. It wasn’t so much that I was working on it straight for that many weeks, but that I had a draft and didn’t touch it again until weeks later.

The day before I had been working on the images for the post (finding and photoshopping images…my proudest image is the Instaporn logo…looks almost spot on). I’m not a photoshop expert so I was happy the way the images turned out. Either way the images took some time as well as edits that I did for the post. I’m not a good writer so it took me some time to figure out how to organize the post. To compensate for lack of verbal ability I added the images. I know people don’t like to read too many words (especially my words) so I’d give them images of scantily clad women and screenshots with the words “fuck” on them.

It’s funny how the writing process goes. It wasn’t until yesterday when I was working on the post that I decided to change up the tone of the post to include the “gamification” angle. I made the connection and thought that the parallels between gamification (which makes some technologists jizz in their pants) and this made up “pornification” concept would be pretty funny. After I found the wikipedia article for gamificaton I did a search for pornification. Nothing showed up. That was my inspiration for doing the post as a pornification post.

…Man…i’m pissed. This post I was writing didn’t post properly and I lost about 300 words I had written. That’s not cool. I don’t feel like writing them again.

The other thing was the My Zeo Mobile sleep tracker. Going to test that out now.

Day 10 of 30 of No Internet News Challenge

I did go to hacker news, reddit, digg to submit the post I wrote above. But i didn’t stick around and browse, but just submitted the post. I should be in the clear still.

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I’ve had Invisalign since March of this year or 7 months. The first few weeks of Invisalign was the most difficult time for me to get accustomed to them. The biggest surprise to me when I first got them was how I needed to have parts of my teeth shaved and also needed to have attachments glued on to my teeth. My dentist neglected to tell me any of this when I went in for my initial consultation. I thought I’d get some clear mouthguard things, easily pop them in my moth, and a few months later my teeth would be perfectly straight. Instead I was shocked when they started gluing this attachments to my teeth and using a circular drill to shave off parts of my teeth to make more room for the eventual movement that would be happening in my mouth.

Aside from the drilling the hardest part about Invisalign was getting used to the pain and new routine. I was accustomed to my teeth not being sore and when I got my first few trays and experience pain when eating it shook up my worldview. You would think I would be used to handling the pain since I had braces as a child, but the body doesn’t really remember the actual pain just the fact that it hurt. This pain definitely wasn’t as bad as braces as I remember when I would get a new wire (which happened every month) that my teeth would be sore for 3 or 4 days afterwards due to the wire pushing in my teeth. Here I still had a similar pain, but an added new one. When I have to eat I have to take off the trays. The first tray I got I had issues putting in and taking the trays out. Added on top of that difficulty is the extra pain that I experienced when taking off a new tray. It felt like I was pulling my teeth out. In addition because my teeth hadn’t yet fully adjust to the shape of the new tray everything was sore. Now it’s not so bad as I’ve gotten better at taking them off. However, I still dread switching to a new set of trays (that’s when the pain starts).

The other part that was hard to adjust to was just the routine of taking on and off my trays. I’ve become more anal about my tooth care since getting Invisalign. The thought of eating food, not flossing or brushing, and putting the trays back on didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t want all the food remnants to be trapped in by the trays thereby allowing bacteria city to grow. Because of that I make it a habit to floss and brush my teeth after eating and before I put back trays back on my teeth. When I can’t brush I floss. The annoying part about this ritual is that it’s kind of time consuming to do this after every time you eat something. I learned quickly that snacking wasn’t worth it. Now I eat about 2 meals a day. Partly this is because I get to wear my trays longer (which makes the correction better faster), but the other part is I’m lazy and don’t want to go through flossing and brushing just to eat one gummy bear.

Eating out is definitely more annoying than eating at home (mostly because I have access to my toothbrush). Even more annoying are multiple course meals. I like to eat my main dish and be done with it. However with Chinese wedding banquets where they have like 12 courses it drags the meal on forever which puts me in limbo on whether to put my trays back in or not while waiting for the next course. There were issues I never really thought about before getting Invisalign.

Sigh. The things we do for vanity.

Day 8 of 30 of No Internet News Challenge

Had a debate with Eric on whether Twitter counts as news as sometimes I click on people’s links to stories. It’s definitely a grey area.

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This post will be barely readable thanks to the bad habit of writing when I’m tired and ready to go to sleep. But as I’ve promised to write everyday for 30 days I’m fulfilling my obligation…to myself. I normally have such great ideas and topics to write about, but I can’t think of much so I’ll just write about getting rejected by Y Combinator.

For those of you who don’t know who Y Combinator Google them. In short they make your entrepreneurial fantasies come true. Have you seen the movie the Social Network? Getting into Y Combinator will make  your company famous and wealthy beyond your wildest dreams (and of course you will get lots of sex in bathrooms). Also if get selected into a Y Combintaor class you get a $150,000 prize (aka a convertible note). So in addition to having sex in bathrooms you get a boatload of cash. As you can imagine everyone and their mom want’s to be part of “Y Com”.

Yes, this means that myself and my mom have applied to Y-Com. I think I’ve applied at least twice now. And both outcomes were the same. Rejection. No sex in bathrooms.

Am I bitter about not getting in? Not really. The first time we applied our application wasn’t that strong. The second time we got rejected (which I just found out about today) we knew it was a long shot. After all, we do run and operate an adult website. And of course anything that has to do with sex is evil, dirty, and wrong. Could you imagine what Demo Day (Y Combinators day where the class presents to investors so they can scramble to stuff cash in their pockets) would have been like if we had gotten in? Vaginas and penises everywhere! Yeah, it was a longshot for us to apply. But I figured why the hell not? Maybe they’d like to try helping out a company in a different industry…and something different for a change. If anything I’ll just assume Paul Graham looked at our application and looked through some porn on our site. Hope you enjoyed it Paul.

Luckily the application didn’t take too long for us to put together (maybe that’s why we didn’t get in!). So there’s always next time. Maybe that will be my next challenge. How many times can we repeatedly get rejected by Y Combinator? We’ll see you next time PG.

Good night.

Day 7 of 30 of No Internet News Challenge

Still in my blissful ignorant state

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This is more of a rant on Android than it is about all smart phones in general. I know people are normally pretty entrenched in either the iPhone camp or the Android camp. As a user of both iPhone (iPhone 3GS) and Android (MyTouch 4G – my current phone) I can say that iPhone is heads and shoulders a above Android in terms of a  better phone experience.

The iPhone not only looks good as a phone, but it’s intuitive to use. Apple made it easy to setup mail, text a friend, add a contact, etc… The user interface is top notch. Android on the other hand is a clusterfuck of icons and “widgets” which vary depending on what flavor of Android you have and what carrier you are on. When I first got my MyTouch 4g I started seeing these cryptic icons along the top tray of the phone’s screen. I understood the battery icon, cell phone signal icon, etc… but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what the other random icons were and more importantly I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of them. At one point i got so frustrated I started just rubbing my fingers all over the screen until on accident I figured out you can drag that top part down to see the most recent apps and also “clear notifications.” Just not intuitive at all. I don’t like having to use the Rosetta Stone to translate how to use my phone.

The other thing that was annoying was how to copy and paste phone numbers too dial. Let’s say I found a phone number through the Yelp app or from a web page page. I can copy the phone number, but then when I go to paste the number to dial I find that there’s no way to paste it in. Retarded.

My biggest gripe about the phone is the fact that every so often I have to reboot the phone because it’s slows down. The phone does a poor job at managing memory. Unlike the iPhone which manages which apps are opened and what happens when you switch to other apps Android keeps everything opened. Over time things get bogged down and really slow. Often times I’ll have to force quit these applications or dig through a task manager to stop different services which are taking up resources. Some might say that’s not a big deal, but the bigger issue I have is WHY DO I EVEN HAVE TO FORCE QUIT APPS? It’s a frickin’ phone. I’m not looking to carry a full functioning PC in my pocket. Do I have to run defrag as well?

Don’t get me wrong. There are certain things I like about the phone and Android:

• Google Maps / Google Navigation
• Google Voice Integration
• Wifi HotSpot

Day 6 of 30 of No Internet News Challenge

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My recent soapbox issue is the state of software patent law in the United States. Most of it stemmed from a This American Life news story that investigated “When Patents Attack”. In others words when people and organizations use broad weak patents to extort money out of companies. The whole thing upsets me.

As much as the state of patent law upsets me , today I had a glimmer of hope that things were moving in the right direction. I saw a comment about the Patent Reform Act that Obama had signed and passed in September. The comment didn’t say much, but from the name alone I believed in what Obama had once sold me on, “Hope.” After all patent law is pretty shitty now and any act to reform it would be a positive thing, right?

WRONG.

Things took a quick wrong turn the moment I googled “Patent Reform Act”.  The first result to show up reads:

“Mostly pointless patent reform bill goes to Obama for signature”

“Mostly pointless”? That doesn’t sound very promising. It turns out this act is pretty pointless. Actually it’s dreadful, unless you are a rich and powerful company. The “reform” is two fold. The first change is granting patents to the first person who files the patent application as opposed to the first person to invent. It used to be the other way around. The original law was there to allow someone who had already invented something to be able to claim a patent rather than letting another individual see his invention and then decide to patent it himself. The original law sounds pretty smart. However, the new reform flips it around and allows the first person to file the patent (and who is granted the patent) to call dibs on the patent. Who does that benefit? Big companies who have the money to hire patent attorneys to file patents all day long. Who does it hurt? Everyone else.

The other major change presented in the reform act is the ability for the USPTO to set their own fees. Before only Congress could set their rates, but now the USPTO  is free to raise their rates (because why on earth would they lower them).

No where in the Patent Reform Act does it address outlawing the use of software patents. That’s the kind of reform I’m looking for. But of course it’s no surprise. Too many companies with lots of money don’t want the status quo to change so they send their lobbyist off to DC to make sure things don’t change…or change in ways to benefit them. Obama sold me on his “Yes we can…change” platform, but I’m not liking the changes I’m seeing. Looks like more of the same.

Reasonable patent laws seem like a pipe dream. Depressing.

Day 3 of 30 of No Internet News Challenge

I feel myself slowly being disconnected from the world. What will I do if I can’t keep up with the Kardashians!?

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I was talking with my roommate today about how upset I still am about the state of software patent laws. Specifically I’m pissed that companies like Intellectual Ventures even exist. Their entire business relies on having more money and more patents than the people they shake down. They don’t succeed by innovating or producing a great product. They win by by having more money than the people they sue, who don’t want to undergo a costly legal battle.

I started thinking of potential ways to combat an Intellectual Ventures type business. One way requires I be rich. If I was rich (like a bazillionaire) I would hire a massive force of offshore writers. I then would train them on how to write software patent applications and then I would proceed to generate as many broad inane patents as I could. This way I can cheaply amass even more ridiculous patents than they have. Then I would sue them into oblivion.

The problem with this idea is we’d just end up making a bunch of lawyers rich and we still aren’t contributing anything positive into the business ecosystem. That’s where I came up with both a better solution and maybe even a brilliant tech startup company.

Since I can’t stand software patent litigation why not stop it before it happens? Instead of reacting to lawsuits what if we could prevent them from happening in the first place? The solution is to kill anyone who brings a software patent claim to court.

Yes, this is extreme, but it will be effective. Just like Intellectual Ventures is a mafia type organization we will fight back with mafia type tactics. If we execute everyone who tries to sue another company for a software patent violation at the end of the day potential plaintiffs will sit back and think “hmmm, while the money could be good, it’s no good to me if I’m dead. Maybe I should go do something productive now.”

That’s the solution, but there some problems. How do we find people to kill these software patent plaintiffs and how do we raise enough money to make it worth their while to do so? Also how does everyone avoid going to jail? The solution is the next VC fundabale idea, KillStarter.

KillStarter is the KickStarter for raising money for assassinations. On the site people post people they want dead, why they want them dead, and other evidence supporting any wrong doing this person has committed. All assassination projects will be curated. We would only want truly bad people killed.

After a project is approved people can start anonymously funding it through BitCoins. The site only accept BitCoins so you better stock up on lots of them. BitCoins are used since we want anyone who contributes to remain anonymous as most civilized governments don’t take kindly to assassination (unless you are a terrorist, then it’s ok). The funding is used as the bounty or reward to the successful assassin. To claim the reward any would-be assassin has to download the KillStarter location based app. After a successful assassination they have to take a picture or video of the body using the app. Based on the time, geo-location, photo, and 3rd party new sources we should be able to confirm a successful hit. After that the BitCoin reward is transferred that individual.

We’re looking to raise 5 million dollars bitcoins.

My solution to the software patent issue boils down to good old fashioned murder. This post is whack. However, you have to admit KillStarter does have some good ideas in there. Maybe I can get this built in Afghanistan.

Day 1 of 30 of No Internet News Challenge

First day of no news. I can feel myself becoming more ignorant as I type.

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