Personally, I simply got tired of sleeping so little.  I always sacrificed sleep for more work time in the past.  But now, I’ve come to realize how powerful being rested really is.  It feels so empowering when I wake up in the morning, fully refreshed.  I don’t have to struggle to get out of bed or set 5 alarm clocks to get me out of bed in the morning.  The reason that the struggle exists is because the body wants more sleep.  This is a clear sign of not sleeping enough.  I’m definitely no sleep expert and I don’t claim to be, but I thought I’d share some techniques in how to think differently about sleep.  But first, I think I should share my experience with sleep deprivation, which I felt heavily motivated me into adopting this way of life.  All of this below is just my view on sleep health.

My Battle with Sleep Deprivation

In high school, I pretty much got 8 hours of sleep a night.  It wasn’t that hard since at that time I didn’t really think about optimizing my sleep.  I just remember being nagged to go to sleep by my parents every night.  I never had to stay up doing any homework or anything like that.  Even my first year of university was like that.  Rarely found myself staying up to do work unless there was a exam the next day or something.

Second year of university is when it all changed.  A thought clicked in my head that I could sleep less and get more work done.  It’s not like I felt sleepy at night anyways.  For a while it was alright, but then as I slept less and less, my sleep debt accumulated.  I found myself napping in class.  I even micro-slept while I drove and almost got into not one, but a couple car accidents.  I didn’t try to do anything about it at the time.  I liked the extra time.  There was a while where I slept about 4.5 hours a night because I stayed up playing computer games.  I looked like a zombie.  I yawned all the time and everyone knew I was sleepy.

In my third year, I lived alone on campus.  No one told me when to wake up to go to class.  With all the sleep debt I had, I struggled to get up every morning.  Eventually, I stopped going to morning classes altogether and my grades suffered.  I started questioning myself, “why is it so hard to sleep early?”  I was easily annoyed all the time.  I was so tired at one point, that I caught myself hallucinating.  It was weird because I saw this strange bug crawling up the curtain and when I waved the curtain around, it was gone.  I couldn’t find it anywhere on the floor.  I wanted to change my sleeping habits, but I couldn’t do it.  Logic told me to do it, but I couldn’t act on it.

My sleeping habits didn’t change until I went to Germany for my co-op work term.  I guess because I was adjusting to this new environment, I actually felt sleepy at night.  This urge made me sleep a lot earlier than what I was used to doing.  I felt rested for the first time in a long time.  It felt so good.  My constant zombie look faded away.  I could tell that my skin complexion was improving.

I guess because I’ve seen how dangerous sleep deprivation could be, it finally compelled me to change my ways.  Ever since I’ve made sleep a priority, I feel a lot healthier.  I lose out on wake-time for working, but I am able to think better when I am rested.  My thoughts are a lot clearer.  That makes me a more efficient worker.

Getting into the Frame of Mind

You’ve got to be truly convinced that you want to get more sleep.  I know a lot of people who say things “yeah I know I don’t get enough sleep”, but they don’t do anything about it.  Nothing at all.  Everyday they keep their usual sleep routine and they’re struggling all the time.  They’re the ones who are always late to morning appointments, and some even for afternoon appointments.  Why does it have to be that way?  It doesn’t.  But before even trying to maintain a proper sleep routine, people really have to change the way they think about sleep.

Sleep is NOT a waste of time. I’ve heard people say, “sleep is a waste of time” or “sleep is for the weak”.  It definitely is not.  Somehow I think there is a competition between who gets the least amount of sleep and still gets the most work done.  I’ve heard people people saying (sometimes bragging) stuff like how they got only 3 hours of sleep and then pulled an all-nighter to study for an exam.  Sure, they definitely were up for a while, but should we question the efficiency of that work?  Of course.  Anybody who has pulled an all-nighter has experiences how “out of it” they were by the end if not half way through.  Nobody wants to do an all-nighter.  That is an extreme case though.  A more common theme is to stay up for 18 hours or so.  That leaves 6 hours to sleep.  The average for most people lies somewhere around 7.5-8 hours.  According to the statistics, more than half of us need more than 6.  By not getting our required amount of sleep, this so-called “sleep debt” will accumulate over time.  Like I mentioned before, I once slept on average 4.5 to 5 hours a night for about 3 months straight.  People around me could tell I looked like a zombie.  I’ve definitely experienced sleep debt first hand.  In retrospect, doing this was so stupid, but that experience definitely helped me reshape what I thought about sleep.  It is a necessity.

Getting into the right frame of mind takes time.  I definitely did not just one day choose to make sleep a priority.  It happened over time.  For me it took a few years in order for me to drill it into my head.  After sleeping late and waking up early, I’d ask myself why I did that.  Why did I sleep so little the night before when the consequence was me feeling sleep deprived the day after?  As I’m in my early 20’s, sleeping late is easy.  It’s not difficult to just stay up late doing nothing in particular.  In fact, it seems to be natural tendency for most people in my age group to be night owls.

Going to bed early is not a chore.  Chores are something we’d rather not do, but we’re only doing it because we have to.  This attitude will not work.  Eventually, you’ll give up and revert to your old ways.  You have to change your attitude toward sleep.  You know how some people feel passionate about their work and will always feel motivated to do it?  That’s their motivation.  There is a similar motivation for sleeping early.  I want to go to sleep early today, so I feel rested and ready to go tomorrow.

Ask yourself why your sleep habits are the way they are right now.  Why do I have to wake up feeling terrible every morning?  Why do I have to set so many alarms just to get out of bed?  Why am I pressing the snooze button so much?  Shouldn’t I be getting up super early? Doesn’t this struggle to wake up give me less time to get ready?  If I don’t have enough time to get ready, won’t I look like a mess when I go to work/school?  Am I sleeping late all the time because I have so much work to do?  Could I be improving on my time management to make me more efficient? Is sleeping late worth it?  I’m sure there are way more questions to be asked, but asking yourself these questions will tell you how you really feel about it.  Everyone’s going to have different answers.  Some might want to change, but others might feel that what they’re doing is the best solution right now.

The Bottom Line

Sleep is absolutely essential for good health and its benefits are far reaching.  Ever since I’ve slept better, I’ve been able to accomplish more.  No longer am I the sleep deprived zombie.  My grades in school are better despite harder courses and more commitments. Better sleep health is something that anybody can do, but they have to want it.  You have to convince yourself that sleep deprivation is a terrible thing and it is something to avoid.  You’ve got to get into the frame of mind that sleep health is good and the will to change.  If you truly want to improve your sleep habits for the better, the improvements will happen.

Team Formation

I think this is where a lot of students struggle when things go wrong.  It’s always possible to get a teammate that is hard to work with.  While it is no fault of either person, the two personalities (either in values, cultural background, style of working, way of thinking, etc.) are different enough to cause disagreements.  At times, the disagreements can become so heated that the team’s progress in the project is hindered.

I realized that there were communication issues among each other in the group, which delayed progress in the early stages of the project.  These issues came about in the form of misunderstandings of what people said during team meetings.  I found myself in the position where I was expressing my own interpretation of what people said in the hopes that everyone would reach a common understanding.  As the project went on, family issues prevented one member from continuing this project further.  In a way, this eased our communication problems since communication between three people was a lot easier than between four people, based on what I experienced in the project.  Afterward, our team became a lot more efficient and progressed at a faster rate than before.

One of the things that the mechanical engineering curriculum at UBC teaches is team dynamics.  After learning a lot of theory as to how to work best with teams, doing projects with other people puts that knowledge to the test.  Some people don’t really manage working with others and feel set in their ways.  Differences among people exist and I realize that adjustments in the way I work with them is required in order to promote a healthy functioning group.

Project Scope

In retrospect, I would have advocated reducing the project scope since; I feel that the hours we put in were beyond what the course asked for.  I estimate that each member put in over 300 hours on the project.  Since a large part of this course is about design justification, time is very realistic constraint that can limit project scope.  At the same time, there are other courses to worry about.  By spending extra time on 45X, less time is available for other courses.

In the beginning of the project, I couldn’t predict well how long things would take.  Therefore, time for “messing up” or “unforeseen consequences” should be budgeted for.  Many people say things like “I can finish this in about 2 hours”, but in reality, it will take him two days.

Documentation

Very often I found myself referring to old dossier documents to find out information that I needed to know. For example, if I forgot how much something cost, I looked back on the dossier to find out.  If I forgot one of the project requirements, back to the dossier I looked.  At times, it is a bit of a pain to write some sections of the dossier since I couldn’t make sense of the some of the wording.  To deal with it, I had to ask the project supervisor during team meetings.

Project Logistics

I booked as much machine shop time as we could ahead of time knowing that we would need it.  The team would have liked to send in parts for the waterjet or have the technicians work on them, but we were way too late for that.  With a simpler project scope, we could have designed our parts faster and could have been further ahead in those manufacturing lineups to decrease the lead time.  My teammates and I spent quite a bit of time in the machine shop to get as much as we could ready for the design review.  At the same time, I had to look at when ordered parts arrived such that things would arrive in time so that we had everything prepared while building the prototype.

Time Management

While doing 45X, I was also working on New Venture Design and Thunderbots at the same time, which also took up a lot of my time.  As with design projects, they take up the most time relative to other courses.  For me, I had to juggle these three for the entire year.  This gave me a lot of stress at times, but it taught me to be more productive.  For example, on the way home, I would be responding to e-mails that I received during the day so I would have more time to work on the project when I got home.  Since my commute to campus is 1.5 hours just to get to campus (one direction), I had to learn how to make use of this time.

Project Management

I took up the role of “project manager” in the beginning of the project and this role showed me a lot of the logistics that had to be considered in a project.  Very often I found myself asking for progress on certain tasks and pushing teammates to finish faster.  Different issues often came to my head that I had to find an answer for such as “are our parts going to arrive in time for machining” or “do we need to have another meeting with the client”.

For Future 45X Students

Don’t wait until the last minute to do something.  There is always something that needs to be done in this course from beginning to end.  Mech students like to aim high, which is good, but 99% of the time there is not enough time to accomplish the “perfect” design that they always aim for.  This leads to a lot of sleepless nights or worse, a prototype that isn’t ready to be handed in.  Be ready to bite the bullet and make compromises like cutting features to make work less for the team and to meet deadlines.  No design will be “perfect” at the end of the course and this fact, however brutal it may be, must be accepted.

After my unfortunate disaster in Brussels, my friend and I took the first train out of the city.  When we arrived in Amsterdam, I immediately felt a huge tourist vibe in the city.  Unlike Brussels, the tourist population here was much larger.  It also felt safer.  By the way this post might have some “mature themes” because of the Red Light District stuff.

Coffee Shops and Other Strange Places

During our walk to the hostel from the train station, we began see some pretty strange yet touristy places.  For example, along the way, there was a Vodka Museum and a Torture Museum (they’d actually present different pre-modern torture devices), and of course a lot of “coffee shops”.  For those who don’t know what a coffee shop in Amsterdam is, it is where people go to legally smoke weed.  A place for people to drink coffee is simply called a cafe.  Many people go to Amsterdam for that reason, but not me though.

It wasn’t just the Vodka Museum that was weird, they even had stores selling cannabis seeds, which I guess is okay because weed is legal, but coming from a place where it isn’t, it definitely struck me as weird.  To take that even further, there is even a Cannabis Museum.

After walking through the town square for a little bit, we arrived at Dam Square, the historic center of Amsterdam.

Dam Square

As the historic center, this area has a lot of notable buildings such as the Royal Palace, New Church, National Monument, and Madame Tussaud’s Museum.

This is where I noticed the ridiculous amount of bicycles.  In fact, I saw more people riding bicycles than people driving cars.  When I crossed the street, I looked for bikers and not drivers.  Making our way further into the city, we began to see the large network of canals.

The Canals

Another thing that Amsterdam is famous for is its canals.  Built in the early 17th century, city planners had the idea of constructing this network for the purposes of defense and water management.  Today, people dub it as “The Venice of the North” and it is quite a cultural landmark.

The canal receives its water from the Amstel River (there is a beer named after it).  According to Wikipedia, because of the canals, there are about 90 islands and 1500 bridges.

Nieuwmarkt

While walking to the hostel, we reached the New Market, which is another city square.  In the center there is a city gate that has been long converted into a cafe/restaurant.

Turns out our hostel was less than 100 meters from here.  We went there and dropped off our stuff before we continued exploring.

The Christian Hostel

Before we left, Germany, my friend booked a place for us at this Christian hostel.  I’m not even Christian, but that didn’t matter.  It had a lot of rules like no smoking, no alcohol, no weed, etc, which was okay.  The ironic thing was that when I walked into my room (this was at around 2 PM in the afternoon), I saw a few people passed out on their beds.  I thought to myself, “they probably just drank too much beer or smoked too much weed.”  The hostel didn’t really care, so long as they didn’t bring that stuff in.  They even had a “bible study”.  I really wonder who would go to that.

Chinatown

Next to the New Market Square was Amsterdam’s Chinatown.  My first impression of this place was that the Chinese stuff here was really traditional unlike the multitude of westernized Chinese food places I always see in Germany (not a big fan of chicken chow mein or kung pao chicken).  This place even had a temple with Buddha and various people from Chinese folk religions like Guan Yu.  The butcher’s shop even sold entire slabs of an entire pig (like the ones that some Chinese people use for celebrations).

After walking through Chinatown, we proceeded to our next destination: the infamous Red Light District.

The Red Light District

Before going to Amsterdam, I already knew that the Netherlands legalized weed and prostitution and so I figured that these things would be really prevalent in the city.  Indeed they were.  Walking down the street, I could smell the odour of weed coming out of every coffee shop.  On top of that, if the business I walked by wasn’t a coffee shop, it’d be a sex shop. 

There even some businesses geared towards gay people.  They proudly waved a rainbow flag outside their establishment.  The Dutch are clearly really open about these things.

At first I walked by a lot of brothels without really knowing that I did (I had no idea what they looked like).  It was only when I noticed that some buildings had a row of windows with curtains over them.  In one of the windows, a woman wearing lingerie displayed herself for potential customers.  I noticed that the building didn’t have a banner or any label.  I guess people see that and just know (notice the guy who appears to be in deep contemplation in the picture).

They even had a condom shop that sold condoms with different shapes (they even had a Statue of Liberty condom).

This city has such a strange blend of an old European vibe mixed with the vices of modern people.  It is kind of interesting yet sad to see people indulging in such things.

The XXX Flag

In a lot of places, we kept seeing a flag with a giant “XXX” printed on it and at first, my friend and I thought it just meant what everyone knows it as.  Then we started seeing this on the side of old churches and even on police badges.  We wondered what its actual meaning was.  Apparently, that’s the flag of Amsterdam.  What a crazy coincidence.

Another thing really common in the city is the crazy amount of churches.  I didn’t really count how many I saw, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw at least five or six of them.

Lots and Lots of Churches

There isn’t really anything to explain here.

There are more, but I didn’t bother posting them.

Anne Frank House

While randomly walking, we stumbled on the Anne Frank House, the building that her family lived in during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.  For those who don’t know who Anne Frank is, she was a victim of The Holocaust who wrote a diary, now published into a booked called “The Diary of a Young Girl”, documenting her life between 1942 and 1944.  The building has now since become a museum for people to visit.  Inside the museum, people could see the conditions that she lived in and some of her personal paraphernalia.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t go in to see the museum for my self since my wallet got stolen (damn bastards!).

After walking for almost the entire day (I reckon we walked about 30 kilometers that day), we went to go buy food.  We would have been hungry a lot earlier if we didn’t stuff our faces at the breakfast buffet at our hotel back in Brussels.  Knowing that the Netherlands was famous for its fries, that’s what we got.

Dutch Fries

The most unique thing about their fries is that they do not serve it with ketchup.  The main sauce they use is mayonnaise.  When I first heard about that, I thought it was the weirdest thing.  I had never thought of combining those two things together.  After trying it, I can say that I’m never having fries with ketchup ever again.

Another cool thing about their fries is that they serve it in a nice conic container with a wooden fork-like utensil.

Other Dutch Delicacies

Although not as significant of a consumer of cheese as Germany and France, Amsterdam still has shops dedicated completely to cheese.  Now I don’t know much about cheese, but the cheese in the store looks so delicious (I like the colour too).

Another thing that the Dutch are famous for is their beer.  Everybody knows Heineken in North America (probably), but it’s really expensive there.  Here, it’s like a staple, so I had to try it.  We sat at a table overlooking the canals and enjoyed the view while we drank our beer.

Afterward, we made our way to Museumplein, also known as Museum Square.

Museumplein

We went here that night and also the next morning.  This area houses four museums: the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, and the Diamond Museum.  In addition, there is also a concert hall and a giant sign for the city.

In addition to going to Museumplein that morning, we went to the flower market first.  I was told that the Netherlands were also famous for its tulips.

The Flower Market

As I expected, there were indeed many varieties of flowers.  They even sold little ceramic “shoes” (basically a shoe shaped container) that people can use to grow their flowers in.  I also can’t really say I was surprised when I saw cannabis seeds there too.

After checking out this place, we went to a nearby park called Vondelpark.

Vondelpark

This place was basically a place for people to just relax or exercise and wasn’t really a touristy place.  Either way, for people that enjoy seeing nature (I’m not exactly a HUGE fan myself), this is a good place to go.

After going here, we went to Museumplein to see the place during the day.  After chilling out there for a little bit, we went back to the town center for some food before our train back.  We left in the early afternoon and by the time we went back to Stuttgart, there was time for a beer before going home.  Throughout the whole trip (Brussels and Amsterdam), I only spent around 80 euros with accommodations included, but not train tickets.  I ended up borrowing that money from my friend and we both had just enough.

More photos here

Computer Specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo T5250 Processor
2 GB RAM @ 667 Ghz
Intel GM965 Chipset
nVidia GeForce 8600M GT
Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g

Installation

I was lucky enough to only need the Retail Snow Leopard Disc (10A432) and the myHack Installer 1.0.1.  I pretty much followed METHOD 2 in this guide (method 1 didn’t really work out for me, but it might have had something to do with the disc restoration part of the guide):

http://prasys.co.cc/2009/08/installing-snow-leopard-for-osx86/

For the myHack installer, check the box for the kext that says something about PS2 in it.  It will enable the laptop touchpad and keyboard.  Also, read the description for each kext to see if you need it or not.

When I used method 1 in the guide, I had some trouble with an installation error that said “Could not verify BaseSystem.pkg” or something along those lines.  That error appeared at about 10-15% installation progress.  It went away then I used method 2.  I did read somewhere that it may have had to do with the restoration in Disk Utility.  Either way, it worked the second time around.

Once SL was installed, I ran the myHack Installer on my drive to get the Chameleon Bootloader on there so I wouldn’t have to use my USB to boot all the time.  Also, be sure not to install GraphicsEnabler as it will prevent your computer from shutting down completely (more on that later).

Graphics

Since my laptop uses an nVidia card, there is an issue that prevents the computer from shutting down completely if the “GraphicsEnabler” option is used in the myHack Installer.  I believe NVInject, NVKush, and NVDarwin all suffer from this same problem.  What happens is that when the shut down command is invoked, the computer’s screen will turn off, the HD will turn off, but the power stays on.  When the nVidia graphics kexts aren’t used, this problem goes away.

I’ve tried generating an EFI String and loading that with EFI Studio, but it didn’t do the job.  The resolution is still 1024×768 and I have no QE, CI or OpenGL support.  What I did later on was install PC EFI to see if that would fix things (I didn’t really know what I was doing here at this point).  That didn’t really work, but I did later find out that EFI Studio allows me to add boot flags.  I added “Graphics Mode”=”1280x800x32” to the boot flag so now it boots with the proper resolution.  It gives the proper resolution, but still no QE/CI or OpenGL.  This guide has information on how to test for QE (Quartz Extreme) and CI (Core Image): http://prasys.co.cc/tag/enable-qeci/

Another thing I tried was to modify my DSDT to get my graphics card working using this link: http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/01/advanced-dsdt-fixes-nvidia-graphics.html.  I managed to get the card recognized using the DSDT code, but when I got rid of the graphics kexts, and the boot.plist options as specified in the guide, I lost my graphics acceleration.  I know my DSDT code is working here still since System Profiler tells me what card I have with the exact same names that I gave in the DSDT.  It seems that having graphics acceleration and shutdown/restart working properly just isn’t meant to be.

The tradeoff:

I either could have proper graphics acceleration and no shutdown, OR I could have shut down and no graphics acceleration.  Graphics is the clear winner here, but I still hate having no shutdown.  I have not found a fix for this.

Power Management

There was a problem with high CPU temperatures with the laptop.  I installed the VoodooPowerMini kext located here (http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,1095.0.html)

Audio

After looking for various kexts, I found that VoodooHDA worked for me.  It can be found here (http://www.kexts.com/view/70-voodoohda_(32–_64-bit,_recompiled_by_prasys).html).

Wireless

Works after installation.

USB Ports

They work since it can recognize my mouse and USB drive.

Battery Indicator

I used the VoodooBattery kext located here (http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,1092.0.html)

Card Reader

I don’t use this so I didn’t install the kext for it.  It can be found here: http://www.dailyblogged.com/retail-snow-leopard-installation-guide/ or SD Card Fix (more direct).

Touchpad

I had an issue where I couldn’t tap the touchpad in order for it to “click”.  I fixed this issue by installing the VoodooPS2Controller kext (check the Trackpad option during the installation) (http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,235.0.html).  Then I installed the preference pane (this allows configuring the Trackpad through System Prefs) here http://www.dailyblogged.com/retail-snow-leopard-installation-guide/ (command -f to find it).  I opened System Preferences and pressed the Show All button, and I saw a “Trackpad” option, so I opened it and the option was there.

Webcam

Works after installation.

Conclusion

Everything I listed here works except for video and the card reader.  There are other things like Ethernet, but I don’t really use it.

1. Start > Run (or winkey + r)
2. Type “mmc” and click OK
3. Click File > Add/Remove Snap-in…
4. Select Device Manager from the left menu and click the Add button.
5. Click OK

The device manager should now be visible in the left pane of the mmc window.