For a few months I have been considering the idea of trying out polyphasic sleep. Steve Pavlina has a lot of great information on his website (latest post here, with links to earlier posts at the bottom). The basic idea is that you sleep for 20 to 30 minutes at regular intervals throughout the day, usually every 4 hours. After an initial period, your body learns to enter REM sleep, the deepest and most-needed of the three sleep cycles, immediately and to wake up at or before the end of your sleep periods. Instead of getting about 1½ hours of REM sleep every 24 hours (the normal amount for a night's sleep) you end up getting 2-3 hours or REM sleep. I have been working a lot lately (3 jobs, about 60-70 hours each week), so my sleep schedule was already kind of messy. I figure that now is as good a time as any to try polyphasic sleep out.

So, I am officially on my first day. I am sleeping at 2AM, 6AM, 10AM, 2PM, 6PM, and 10PM for 30 minutes. This schedule allows me to still participate in all of our various activities (shul, Hebrew class, Bible study, etc.) while also giving me 21 hours every day in which to get work and other projects done. I started with my first nap at 2PM Monday February 27 (yesterday), and I hope to be over the hump within the next week or so. If you notice me acting weird during that time, don't worry, it's normal. Adjusting to the "non-hibernation" sleep mode can be a bit taxing, but, according to those who have made it through that adjustment period, it is well worth it.

I have noticed so far that my body is definitely used to sleeping for longer periods. In my first 4 sleep cycles it has taken me at least 10 minutes to fall asleep, mostly because my mind continues to run. It is kind of funny, too, because I am excited to be doing this, so a decent portion of the thoughts running through my head when I am laying there are things that I should add to my to do list now that I have time, and excitement that I will be getting up in 30 minutes.

I will post more as time goes by and I adjust to the new cycle. This should be interesting...

Labels: Health

I have become increasingly curious about who actually reads this blog. Please do me a favor and add a comment to this post with your name (first name is fine) and where you are from (state or foreign country is fine). If you want to add more info, you are welcome to do that, too. I would just like to see who (and how big) my audience is. Thanks and Shalom!

Labels: Personal

One of my jobs in recent months has been creating CROSS eBooks for a company called Doxa Digital Press. Pretty much all of these eBooks have to be OCR'ed from scanned images inside PDF files, which means that I have to have an OCR program that handles PDF files reasonably well. The main problem I have run into on this front is cost. I could go out and spend $500 for ABBYY FineReader, but I don't have that kind of cash just sitting around. Unfortunately there are not many other options on the market, especially for a guy on a budget, and especially ones that I can download a trial of.

Enter Readiris Pro 10. This OCR program was really the only other option I could find that fits the bill in the main ways. It handles PDF files and it is only about $100. SO, I tried out the trial version and noticed that it is not as full-featured as ABBYY, but it is usable. I also noticed that the Demo version did not allow me to open more than 50 pages of a PDF document at a time, which was annoying but was an understandable restriction for a demo program. So, I purchaed the full version from Amazon.com.

After installing the full version, I loaded the PDF file for my next project and came to the realization that that 50-page limit is actually a PROGRAM FEATURE. The idiots who designed this program did not consider the idea that customers would want to open documents that are larger than 50 pages. After playing around with the progam more, here are all of my observations on this total waste of money.:

• The program does not input more than 50 pages at a time: This means that if you have more than 50 pages in the PDF you want to OCR, or if you have more than 50 pages in any other source that you want to OCR, you have to split them up into groups and save the groups individually. Additionally, this issue is not revealed at all on the company's website or in the documentation. As a matter of fact, I found this "Tip" in the Help files related to working with multipage documents: "Tip: when you're loading multipage images and PDF documents, you can define the page range! (Why load an entire book into Readiris when you only need a specific chapter...?)"
• The program does not allow you to save a batch or project: If you want to come back to a scanned document or project you have to do all the work over. If the program or your computer crashes you have to do all of your work over. I guess this could be the reason IRIS decided to limit projects to 50 pages...
• Every time you change pages the tool you are using changes back to the default: This is an annoying function. The default tool is the text block tool, and the programmers decided that you should always use this tool first when you go to a different page.
• The program does not use keyboard shortcuts for tools: I have yet to find any keyboard shortcuts that will let me change between the tools. This is really annoying when you consider the point above. I end up having to use my mouse a lot more than I should.
• The program does not offer a Preferences or Settings list to allow the user more control over their workspace: I guess I can understand setting up a program with a certain user base in mind and making the default functions cater to that crowd. However, not giving users the opportunity to make changes to this defualt behavior and customize their settings is illogical.
• The program does not export clean HTML: Since I am a web developer and an eBook editor, this is something that I feel very strongly about. If a program creates an HTML document for you it should at least attempt to follow the recognized standards. Readiris Pro 10 saves each page of a project as an individual HTML page—complete with headers and inline styles—even if you are explicitly saving the project as one document. You end up with lots of HTML documents thrown together into one file. In addition, the source code is so messy that I have to go in and make major changes to the the document just to get the code clean enough to actually make into a useable eBook. Saving the same project in the three different "Text Format" settings only changes the number of styles added to the style attributes in each tag (yes, they put styles in every tag, not just in the style list in the header...), not the actual layout of the HTML. To beat it all, the DOCTYPE tag at the top of each document is the XHTML Transitional doctype! I ran Tidy on samples of all three formatting types and got errors on all of them.
• The program does not tell you what errors, if any, it found in the OCR process: Unlike ABBYY, which highlights possible OCR problems in a separate frame and allows you to actually edit the text that you will be exporting, Readiris Pro 10 does the OCR and automatically opens the Save As wizard. There is no possibility of seeing what words it had problems deciphering.

Those are just the most egregious issues I found with this program. How can this be the 10th version release?? I have contacted the company's support staff by e-mail to find out if there is a way to get around the 50-page limit. If there is not a way to open more pages as part of a project, I will most likely demand that the company buy back the CD that I purchased. I can overlook the other functionality problems if necessary, but having to break up my documents into pieces for no reason is a design flaw that should have been remedied before the product was released for sale. At the very least, the company has a responsibility to alert potential buyers of this restriction before they spend their money.

UPDATE: Well, here is an interesting bit of info: The e-mail I sent IRIS came back to me undeliverable....

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
support@samson.irislink.com... Deferred: Connection timed out with 
samson.irislink.com.
Warning: message still undelivered after 4 hours
Will keep trying until message is 5 days old

UPDATE: Here are further updates to this situation and its resolution: I, II, III, Final Resolution.

Labels: Technology

Well, I have been back from Norway for a few days, and I have published my pictures from the trip for everyone to look at. I also decided to add an entire Photos section for your enjoyment. There you will also find photos of Chaya, photos from Beth Chaim's Chanukah parties from the last two years, photos from last year's Purim Party, and (when I actually finish making the album) photos from my trip to Israel last month. Enjoy!

Update: You should also note that I have added a "Photos" item to the navigation menu at the left. You may need to refresh your screen (hit F5) if you do not see it.

Labels: Personal, Work

Rabbi Brody also posted a great discussion on praying for the Messianic redemption in the Amidah. He shows that at least 10 of the 19 prayers in the Amidah are asking G-d in some way for redemption (the Geulah). As he notes in his post, the Talmud says that one of the questions the hevenly court will ask on our arrival there will be "Did you wait in hope for the Messianic salvation?". As you probably know, that is one of the Four Questions this site is based on. Find out more on my About page and in my Moshiach section.

Labels: Judaism

Rabbi Lazer Brody posted on his blog back in December about the rate of assimilation in modern Judaism: "Will your grandchildren be Jewish?". The fact of the matter is that we are losing future generations of Jews because Judaism has been allowed to become irrelevant to them (for a plethora of reasons).

During the Austin Jewish Film Festival a few weeks ago, Lindsey and I saw a movie called "Mixed Blessings". It is a documentary about intermarriage between Jews and Christians and the struggles those couples face raising their children. Most often the families choose to go with one religion over the other or to make religion irrelevant to their daily lives. The result is children who are utterly confused about their heritage and their religion, and parents who are unable to share one of the most important aspects of life together. I think it is telling that both in the movie and in the question and answer time afterwards with the local Conservative rabbi and a local Baptist minister the idea of a syntehsis of the religions never came up. Messianic Judaism has a lot to offer the wider Jewish world, and one of the best things we can offer is a place for intermarried families to feel at home. If nothing else, we can offer a place for such families to find some dialogue about the problems they face.

We had a good discussion on the topic of intermarriage at shul on Shabbat. We came to a concensus that Messianic Judaism needs a valid conversion process for intermarried families, but there are apparently two views in the congregation about the idea of Jews and Gentiles marrying. Some believe that intermarriage is about marrying outside of the same faith, while others (myself included) believe that we should keep the distinctions between Jews and Gentiles in regards to marriage. I believe this in part because of the statistics Rabbi Brody provides in his post. Just like children whose parents are only nominally Jewish are very likely to step away from Judaism, children who have one Jewish parent and one non-Jewish parent are much more likely to have identity issues than children whose parents are both one or the other. I do not advocate "higher" or "lower" positions within the community or within wider Israel. I am just aware of the fact that children need structure and stability. They need to know what their parents are and what they are.

One of the other members in the congregation also brought up an important point in the Messianic discussion of intermarriage. Kohanim are requred by Torah law to only marry Jews. We cannot allow the kohanim in our movement to break this command, and that requires us to keep a tight reign on intermarriage. There are other reasons, of course, but I see this as one of the most compelling reasons for discouraging intermarriage and for providing a viable conversion process.

Labels: Judaism

I have been unwilling to go see Steven Spielberg's newest film, Munich because of some of the troubling things I have heard about it. After reading Commentary Magazine's thorough and informative editorial/review on the subject, I have decided I will never spend my hard-earned money in support of that film.

I think Spielberg should be ashamed of himself as a Jew for his unwillingness to tell the truth about such an important point in modern Jewish history. His desire to be evenhanded has resulted in comeplete moral equivalence, and that is unconscionable. I heartily encourage you to read this editorial/review and mention it to your friends.

Labels: Israel, Politics

I am sitting in the hotel lobby at 5:30 in the morning local time. I am not usually up this early, but I'm having trouble with the whole jet-lag thing. When I was in Israel a few weeks ago this was not a problem. I did not get any sleep the night before I left, I slept little on the plane flight (I find it impossible to sleep sitting up), we landed at 8:00 local time, and we spent the whole day touring and stuff. I was able to go to bed at 8:00 that evening and get a full night's sleep, waking up refreshed and adjusted.

Not so with this trip. For some reason I have just not been sleeping very much. I got about 4 hours of sleep the night before I left, and had a hard time sleeping any time during the 23-hour trip (including during the two 3-hour layovers). I got a nice nap yesterday afternoon in the most comfortable bed I have slept on in a long time, and I slept for about 2 hours last night. However, i woke up at about 3:00 this morning and was unable to go back to sleep. I went ahead a took a shower and tried to go to sleep again, but that did not work. Then I tried watching some TV to bore me into sleeping, but that did not work either. Now here I sit, posting some long-needed blog entries from a computer in Norway with a keyboard layout that is frustrating to adjust to... Maybe my body is deciding to move into polyphasic sleep mode of its own accord. That would be cool.

Labels: Personal, Work