As I Xi It v2.3

On Sunday I came across a pond with some Lemna minor (duckweed) and Riccia (crystalwort). Being the biologist (& fishkeeper) that I am, I scooped up a sample and took it home.

Once at home, I filled up my tiny tank and floated my newly collected specimen. When I dropped it in, there were all these teeny tiny worms (possibly flatworms of some sort) which dropped to the bottom. They were very thin and about 1 mm long. Then there were some tiny worms, perhaps nematodes or some of annelid thrashing about. Of course, there were the obligatory Daphnia and some isopods and coepepods.

I stirred it with one of my ice lolly sticks and a leech dropped out! Further disturbance made some more drop out. Anyway, here’s a vid of two of them in motion. Perhaps I’ll do some photomicroscopy later. No doubt there’ll be some algae in the sample.

It was another Lee Valley afternoon yesterday. We went to some of the private hides and well, it was slim pickings. We put food out in the hope of getting some birds, but it just attracted the squirrels. A few birds did pop along for an afternoon snack, but I think the hides are over untill the autumn/winter. I really wanted a pic of a blue Jay. Anyway, there’s a montage of some of the squirrel shots.

Also a few stills. In the last photo, we trialed our floating camera platform. There are still some logistical issues to work out.

After an interview this morning, I strolled on over to Tottenham Court Road and popped into Paperchase to have a browse. They had some nice diaries, I quite liked the Moleskine and National Geographics ones. One of the other things I saw was a Travel Accessories kit. I looked at it and instantly thought “ooh, that looks ideal for collecting specimens!” There’s two dropper bottles which could hold C₂H₅OH and H₂O₂ for specimen preservation in the field and lichen ID; two round, flat containers to hold specimens or samples; a spray bottle for some other liquid (distilled H₂O) as well as a pipette and a spatula! It’s all held in a nice transparent zip bag so you can easily find things and there’s space for a x10 handlens too.

Wednesday and Thursday were quite busy days. I zonked out pretty quickly on Thursday night. Got up at 8.40 am Friday morning, but didn’t sleep till around 3.00 am in the wee hours of Saturday. But this morning I did get out of bed at 10.00 am.

I’m doubtful that this uberman sleep schedule works for me. There are plenty others out there in the blogosphere that have written about their experiences, I for one will be calling it quits here. I know its just shy of a week into a two week “adaptation period”, but I’m better off with one chunk of sleep (monophasic sleep) rather than a mix.

Day 1 was a bit of a flop. I’ve come to realise that I can’t take naps. All I do is have my eyes shut for half an hour, when I almost fall asleep, it’s time to get back up. So really, I only had 5 hours sleep.

Day 2 I had to head into uni so there were no times for naps. I got home and didn’t feel like much napping. There’s much yawning, but no napping. Probably had a fragmented 4 hours or so.

At the moment, I don’t feel as tired as I thought I’d be. I don’t think this whole uberman sleep schedule will work with me. In the past, I’ve managed to survive fine with just 6 hours of sleep each night for 8 years or so.

I intended to start off with a core 4 hours sleep but this morning I slept for 5 hours (6 – 11am), its now almost 3pm and I’m feeling rather sleepy. The thing is if I have a nap now, I’m likely to go past my 30 minutes.  Perhaps if I have a snooze in my easy chair rather than go to bed.

For the past few days I’ve tried to kick start my sleep experiment, but it’s really not going very well at all. When the alarm goes off after the first sleep session, I’m awake, but because I’m still tucked up in bed, I drift off back to sleep again and wake up some hours later. I don’t seem to have the discipline or mentality for it at the moment.

I’ll give it a few more tries and see what happens. The problem might be the “core hours” of sleep or just difficulty waking up on these dark wintery days. It should be easier when its sunny. Unfortunately, the weather’s just wet and miserable for the rest of the week.

At the moment I’ve got some free time so I thought to myself, why not give the Uberman Sleep Schedule (USS) a go? It’s basically a way of reducing your overall sleep time through an initial adaptation period of having a series of naps. There’s more info on the Wikipedia site – click here.

From my initial literature search, it seems that no one knows what the long term effects are and the first couple of days are the worst. From this, I’m hoping that I’ll be feeling less fatigued throughout the day having only had a few hours of sleep overall.

The method I’ve devised for myself is to get 4 hours of “core sleep” then have three 30 minute naps spread throughout the day. Hopefully I’ll adjust to this regime in a week or two and find it easier to wake up and fall asleep. Ideally, I’d like to have a few hours of “core sleep” and a 30 minute nap when I get back from a 9-5 working day.

Let the experiment begin!