David's Blog

Occasional insomniacs would do well to read this.

On occasion in the evenings, I manage to have a coffee a bit later than I normally would, then go to bed earlier because I need to get up for work the next day. The end result being that I find myself lying in bed wide awake trying to get to sleep.

I’m no fan of taking any sort of tablets to sleep, so clearing one’s mind is usually the best bet. However, when you have nothing else to focus on, just the darkness, that can be easier said than done. My mind is usually whizzing along at a million miles an hour, and I can’t ‘unfocus’ to get to sleep.

But I’ve found a foolproof method. And it seems to work EVERY time. I heard it on the radio a few weeks ago, on Chris Evan’s drive time show. As I recall, it was Rebecca Pike who mentioned it.

The method is really simple. Try and come up with a list of things, going from A to Z. For example, a list of band names starting with the letters A – Z. Or perhaps a list of British towns from A – Z (I did that one last night). I found it helps to make it harder too. My list of British towns was only places I thought were actually towns (not cities or villages). So that took a bit of thinking.

You might think it wouldn’t work, but it really does. So if you’re lying in bed getting frustrated, just try and come up with an alphabetical list of something, and you’ll have dozed off in no time!

Apparently, some art students put together a map of zone one of the London Underground, but put times between each station for how long it would take to walk instead of take the tube.

A good proportion of them seem to be under ten minutes, which really doesn’t surprise me. I’ve often looked to see if I could walk a bit longer round somewhere, just for the wander (I quite like ambling around aimlessly) but often don’t know how long it would take. This map will be useful!

London Underground Tube Diary – Going Underground’s Blog

I love this song for two reasons. Firstly, it’s lyrically, very dark. It’s a song about a guy who beats his wife, so she kills him. Not nice! The second reason I like it, musically it’s so upbeat! It’s the ying and yang of song writing.

Awesome!

The video’s not bad, quite a few ‘real’ actors in it, which makes a change!

On Saturday on the way back from town I decided to take the car to the car wash for, as it was pretty filthy. Mostly it was the usual dirt and dust, but I think the birds had also taken a liking to my car; suffice it to say, I think I’d probably parked under a tree. Anyway, I got the car cleaned, and it looked quite nice. I parked up, and that was that.

This morning I went out to get in the car, and what did I find? It’s FILTHY! It looks like somebody ran at it with a bucket of sand and water. The whole car is covered with a layer of sand and water. All over. It seems that overnight it rained. I’m guessing that rain probably was carrying some sand it picked up from somewhere else. It could have been as far as Spain or even Africa for all I know. It’s not the first time it’s happened anyway.

So yeah, I’m a wee bit miffed. That was £7.50 well spent.

A story about how the ‘first’ digital camera came to be. It wasn’t much like the digital cameras we all know today, but the concept was there, even if it was a bit ahead of its time.

I like the closing statement though:

But in reality, we had no idea …

It was nothing more than a fun project – they weren’t trying to change the world!

Kodak: A Thousand Nerds – We Had No Idea

So a friend of mine has a new blog. He’s blogging about ASP.Net stuff (C# mainly).

Go here: read it!