Happy Merry Christmas!

Brilliant! It's Christmas day! I hope you all have a most fantastically awesome and wonderful day! I shall mostly be with my Mum and some relatives for lots of food eating.

I'm back from Exeter now and I'm living with my Mummy in Merley. We don't have broadband yet, so this is going slowly on dialup. Ooh, the doorbell!

People are here half an hour early. Gotta go now. no time to read over 50 emails. Byeeee!

JCB Song

This song by Nizlopi is really cool. The video (15MB) is cool too. Kind of a mix between Jack Johnson, The Streets and Mr Scruff.

Almost time to go home!

This may be my last post...

...for a while anyway. I'm going home tomorrow and my Mum doesn't have broadband yet! Nooooooooooo! Hopfully some neighbours will have unsecured wirelass access I can borrow. If not then my mobile bill may be quite large.

Pete's birthday happened with no one being over alcoholed, which was nice. We had presents arranged as Nicola from Girls Aloud's body and 2 chocolate rice crispy cakes as breasts. Pete is now a Ninja, tho he has lost all his Ninja weapons. Luckily the Ninjas most powerful weapon is his own body. This isn't good news for Pete tho.

I managed to connect 20 party poppers together, which amazingly went off perfectly one after the other in a about half a second. Now there's a big mess. Next time it'll be 50 at a time.

I don't seem to be able to get up in the morning very well now. I woke up at 8:30 but didn't get up until 10:30. Time for food now.

Blargh

So much work! So little what ever that word is that means I'm not lazy.

• Microprocessor group stuff for Fryday or later if we get an extension (which we hopefully don't really need).
• Lots of networking stuff for Fryday, which will take lots of time. I'll be drinking coffee instead of beer tonight I think.
• Networking report for January.
• Bioinformatics for January.
• Apply for jobs by some time soon.
• Do loads of odd jobs n stuff.

The good news is that I have about 5 hours of remixed Christmas music, with more on its way! More good news is that I have loads of bananas an apples so i wont go hungry.

No strange dreaming last night as far as I can tell.

Can I have 1/4 kg of coffee in under a week? It's a challenge but I think I can do it. Place bets below.

More weird dreaming

I had another one of those weird dreams last night. This is what I wrote on my phone after I woke up:

Just had a dream. Woke at 4:28am. Seems to b when I go to bed late. Only been asleep about 10mins.

Similar experiance as b4 but high pitch noise. Very empty + black. I reied 2 continue it longer, but didn't like it/got bored.

Decided to wate up instead. I think I may have woken up instantly, but couldn't fully open my eyes/move 4 some time, prob over 30 sec.

Next time I'll try to dream longer + change it.

Writing it down as soon as I wake up helps me remember it a lot. I was definately aware I was dreaming, tho it was near impossible to change anything - possibly because it was a virtually empty dream anyway. Reading about lucid dreams just before going to bed seems to make dreams more lucid too. Also not drinking much / anything.

The weird bit this time was knowing I was awake but definately not being able to move. This is called sleep paralysis or hypnagogic paralysis. Wikipedia says it's not too great, as it's geting out of REM sleep too quickly. More stuff here. More Wikipedia says it's actually OK. I've had 2 of the 3 symptoms (apart from the daytime sleep) of nacolepsy. Should I be worried? I'm not.

It seems strange getting into REM sleep in about 10 mins in normal monophasic sleep. There's a chance it was just stage 4 NREM, tho I doubt it.

The paralysis was unusual too. Last time I thought I was alseep but couldn't wake up. This time I didn't try to wake up straight away. I actually tried to stay asleep and change my dream. I believe I managed to wake fairly instantly when I chose to (tho I can't be sure) but was paralysed for around 30 seconds.

The paralysis wasn't scary as I could think what I wanted. I just waited, knowing I'd be able to move in a short while. I think I could open my eyes and bite my tongue first. It was annoying not being able to move my arms.

If this happens again then I'll try really hard to stay asleep. I'll try to create new things in my dream as blackness is a bit boring. As I was getting to sleep before I seemed to be wake inducing a lucid dream (wiki). This seemed like hours before, after I'd woken up, but it must have been just minutes.

If anyone has any similar experiences then please share them. Also if you have any related links or thoughts / suggestions.

I dream of dreaming

Last night I had the strangest dream ever. It's highly confusing so a little difficult to explain but I'll give it my best shot.

Last night on the way to the pub last night I was talking to Looloo about dreams and I told him about a dream I had a few months ago where my room was shaking. Like if you were to look left and right really quickly but thought you were looking straight ahead. Maybe this was REM with my eyes open. Who knows? Pretty scary stuff anyway. I realised it was a dream fairly quickly (my room doesn't normally shake like this) and decided to wake up. I think this is a lucid dream, tho I could be technically wrong. I thought I could wake up straight away after realising I was dreaming. Unfortunately I couldn't. This was really scary as I felt trapped in the dream. Luckily I actually did manage to wake up just a few seconds later.

We went to the pub, did pub things, then came back. We watched a couple of uber-mirthful Whose Line is it Anyway episodes then I went to sleep at about 3am. At probably around 4am I began dreaming. I had the same dream as before, where my room was shaking, so I woke myself up. I woke up quicker than last time but not as quickly as I would have liked. I lay awake for a short while then driftred back to sleep fairly quickly. Soon after falling asleep I dreamt my room was shaking again! This time it was really difficult to wake up, even though I was fully aware I was dreaming.

When I woke up after the second room shaking dream I couldn't quite believe my mind. Now fully awake, I turned my bedside lamp on. It was 4:18am. I realised I hadn't actually woken up after the first room shake: I had just dreamt I'd woken up. This was seriously weird. Fairly Matrixy.

I had dreamt I was having a bad dream, then dreamt I'd woken up. I really thought I was awake and can remember the time I "woke up". I then dreamt I went back to sleep and had another dream, which I really woke up from.

I realise that's really difficult to understand (and possibly believe) but try to visualise it for a moment. I'll draw a diagram explanation later if I can be bothered.

Does anyone who understands sleep / dreams know what was happening to my brain? Has anyone had similar experiences? I'd had just 1 pint of beer and a coke. No drugs or anything, but I did have an odly tasting banana that afternoon.

I always thought I'd know if I was dreaming or not, especially if I thought I'd just woken up. But now I don't always know. I'm pretty sure I'm awake now. I need a good way of checking.

Maybe tonight I'll dream that I dream that I wake up. I hope not though.

Update: After reading wikipedia for a while, I've found it's not unheard of: False awakening.