Each to their own (wave)

Earlier today I stumbled across an interesting article over on mashable.com. In it the author, Ben Parr, asks: Google Wave: Is the World Ready?

(In case you haven’t heard about Google Wave [wikipedia entry]: It’s a soon to be launched service that aims to combine e-mail, instant messaging, social networking and wiki-like features into a single coherent package. If I remember correctly one of the tag lines at its introduction was something along the lines of: what e-mail would look like if it were invented today)

The article makes some good points about Google Wave breaking many of the currently established online communication patters which might not necessarily fly with many users. Subsequently the author draws the conclusion that Google Wave will either succeed spectacularly or completely bomb.

In my mind this is somewhat of an odd statement to make given that on the Internet many forms of communication are used in parallel. I for example use e-mail, blogging, twitter, forums, wikis, IRC, (to a lesser degree these days) instant messaging and (very seldomly) Facebook. All of these communication tools have their specific up- and downsides, yet at the end of the day I use all of them.

Now even if Google Wave turns out to be the best thing since sliced bread it won’t completely replace all of these other tools. Initially it would probably find a niche (e.g. communicating with my more geeky friends and university colleagues) and then slowly start taking over some of the other communication tasks. However each technology / platform has its set of advantages which will result in it being used.

I therefore view Google Wave as an additional offer that, based on what I’ve seen so far, could be quite attractive for many purposes. But it won’t take over as my single way of communication and I believe the majority of the other 1.5 billion using the Internet today will feel the same way. Hence Google Wave will probably neither be a total failure nor an astounding success but rather something in between (like most other technologies).

Missing those nights...

Now here's something that sucks. It's past 11 p.m., I just finished dinner and I'm slowly settling in what could be a productive night. Except that it won't be because if I don't want to be a complete train-wreck when I get up at around 7 a.m. I should probably head to bed in about 2 hours.

Normally the hours roughly between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. tend to be my most productive ones. Plus that's also what I generally consider me time. For others me time might consist of doing sports, listening to music, doing something artsy, cooking, gardening, whatever. However for me it's the time of the day when I can really focus on the things I'm working on without too many external distractions. This is when it's easiest for me to hit a flow:

"Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity."

A large proportion of the articles and code that I have written in the past few years were produced during such a flow state which more often than not makes me go to bed at dawn. With my university lectures hardly ever starting before noon I can easily work until 4 or 5 a.m., still get enough sleep (4 1/2 ~ 6 hours) and get lots of stuff done.

My current situation forces me to get out of bed at 7 a.m. each day which cuts down my nightly flow-hours to often less than 3 hours. And that's simply not enough time to even come close to getting all the things on my many to-do lists done. Especially with all the increased activity via OLPC lately I often barely manage to answer all the e-mails I'm getting before having to call it a day.

Some (I know who you are!) might suggest adapting my rythm accordingly but that doesn't work. No matter how much I sleep, I'm pretty damn useless in the morning. Due to the current circumstances I've actually attempted to adjust a bit by getting up earlier than I'd really have to. That gives me time to quickly browse through my e-mails and reply to the 2 or 3 most important ones. But beyond that I can't get anything done (right) and so I'm actually reluctant to hit 'send' in the morning. More often than not I'm not thinking clearly at 7.30 a.m. so I've gotten into the habit of drafting e-mails but not actually sending them before 9 a.m. or so.

Anyway, before I spend more time ranting about the whole issue I better get this post out the door and focus on the 3 ~ 4 things I still want to get done today. Needless to say I'm very much looking forward to July when I'm done with my internship and will again be able to cherish all those nights that I'm missing these... nights.

My mind is racing...

I'm looking at the clock in the lower-right corner of my screen and it tells me that I have to get up in less than 6 hours because I'll be helping out at the IT'n'T tradeshow (aka nano-CeBIT) here in Vienna for the next three days. That means having to get up at 6:30 a.m. to be there at 8 a.m. You honestly don't want to know how messed up I look when I get up at an insane time such as 6:30 a.m. (Should I post a mugshot first thing tomorrow morning? I didn't think so.) Now extrapolate how messed up I look when getting up at 6:30 a.m. after having slept only ~3 hours because with my current routine I normally don't go to bed before 4 a.m.

So being well aware of all these facts I actually started the process of preparing for those cruel three mornings today by getting up after 5h of sleep, normally I try to clock in ~6 hours. After a very productive day and a great dinner I decided to go for a 35min run at 9:30 p.m., hoping that this would make tired.

And now? It's close to 1 a.m. and my mind is racing. I've spent the last 3 hours working on various projects and ideas, reading websites and skyping with lots of people so naturally I'm in full-throttle fl0w-mode, ready to work until the early morning. So how on earth am I supposed to go to bed right now and fall asleep? It simply won't work. I'll be lying there, thinking about a million things, thinking about all the things I could be working on instead of lying there and slowly becoming angry about such an utter waste of time. Because that's what always happens. And this is the reason why I normally work until I'm fairly tired because that way I just go to bed, turn out the light and fall asleep immediatly. (Which of course results in the occasional dream about Java exceptions and 1's and 0's, I'll leave it up to the audience to decide whether those are signs of healthy sleep.)

Anyway, enough with the ranting already, I'll now check my e-mails for the last time and then I'll go and try get some sleep. In case you see another blog-entry appear within the next few hours be prepared for some serious ranting, b!tching and complaining, definitely NSFW...

ARGH, stupid blog-entries via e-mail

Now those submissions via e-mail are really working well, hm?

Ah, screw it, if possible I'll post new entries the plain old-fashioned way and in case I can only do it via e-mail, well, then we'll all have to live with a shitty looking text-formatting.

And now I've spent enough time with this blog, back to real-life...

Blogging via e-mail: 2nd attempt

The reason why the formatting on the post below is messed up is that I
submitted that entry via e-mail. Somehow my e-mail client (Thunderbird
2) seems to like screwing up the formatting.

Anyway, here's another attempt to blog via e-mail, this time I'm
writing the message via my university's webmail service...

We'll see how it goes!