Spaced Out ::

Wanted to point people in the direction of a friend of mine back from the dim distant days of my PhD in Sheffield - Paulo was on a funded PhD from Brazil and I distinctly remember working long hours in the remote sensing lab, with “After 8” breaks in the afternoon.

Anyway, enough nostalgia!! Paulo works as an engineering geologist in the government, but has reduced the number of hours to allow him to work more as a musician. The soundcloud embedded player below links to his latest EP, URBANA IDADE. If you like Satana, then this is very much in that style. I particularly like tracks 1 and 4, with some cracking guitar riffs. Great for an evening of mellow chill.

….can always count on a good geography blunder from local government!!

and marketing!!

I was asked to fill in a customer satisfaction survey today using a fairly normal 1-10 symmetrical likert scale. Except that below the scale values 1-6 were noted as “negative”, 7-8 as “neutral” and 9-10 as “positive”. This psychological bias means that if you are satisfied you should be scoring 9-10…. this will naturally inflate any averaged values which can then be validly used in any marketing.

Clearly even big companies like Aviva aren’t too worried about pushing the boundaries of acceptable.

After my trip to Argentina over Easter I’d thought I’d briefly blog about jet lag, the bane of all travellers. Wikipedia has a useful succinct definition

“Jet lag, medically referred to as desynchronosis, is a physiological condition which results from alterations to the body’s circadian rhythms resulting from rapid long-distance transmeridian (east-west or west-east) travel on high-speed aircraft.”

Or, more plainly, if you travel east or west rapidly your body clock becomes out-of-sync with local time. So what’s to be done about desynchronosis? My brother recommended Overcoming Jet Lag, a short book which is primarily filled with schedules to follow depending upon the number of time zones you are jumping. However the basis of it is relatively simple - your wakefulness and hunger become desynchronised to local time and the trick is to find rapid ways of resynchronising them. Here, for example, is the timetable for a 3-4 hour westward time zone change:

Travel Day - 3: STOP consuming caffeine (tea, coffee, choclate etc).
Travel Day - 1: FAST day (max 800 calories) with high-protein breakfast/lunch and high carb dinner.
Travel Day: drink 2-3 cups of strong coffee BEFORE 11am. Consume no more caffeine. Set watch to destination time and eat breakfast at destination time, making sure you are physically awake/active. Its a FEAST day so high-protein breakfast/lunch and high carb dinner. Sleep by around 8/9pm destination time.

The basis is to rapidly change the biological cues caused by wakefulness and eating, which can be assisted by taking caffeine. For my trip to Argentina (4 hours behind), my flight left at 7.30am - I stayed close to Heathrow and got a flight to Madrid. I woke at 5.30am and as I was still sleepy, went back to sleep on the plane, but managed to sneak two breakfasts just before arrival (high protein!). I switched on to the flight to Buenos Aires where they served coffee at 12 allowing me to (slightly late) take on board the caffeine. This was followed by “lunch” at around 3pm which was now closely synchronised to Argentinian time. The plane landed 7.30pm local time which allowed me to get to the hotel for 8.30pm, a rapid high carb dinner before crashing at 9.30pm (1.30am UK time). I slept through until 8am when I had a full breakfast.

What was amazing was that other than occasional hunger pangs over a few days I suffered no other jet lag symptoms and was virtually fully functional. Clearly the routine is highly dependent upon the timings of the flights. In this instance, travelling through the day and arriving in the evening was beneficial, far more so than travelling overnight. However it was notable that the airline (Iberia), after lunch, closed all the windows to get people to sleep. This is exactly what you DON’T want to do - it was imperative to stay awake so that you aligned to local time as soon as possible. Airlines are clearly interested in having sober, manageable, people rather than minimising jet lag. The timing and style of food is also critical, something you don’t have any control over in economy!!

Coming back was more complicated due to the timing of the flight and the (harder) eastward time zone shift. Here the recommendation is:

Travel Day - 3: STOP consuming caffeine (tea, coffee, choclate etc).
Travel Day - 1: FEAST day with high-protein breakfast/lunch and high carb dinner.
Travel Day: get out of bed earlier than usual. Its a FAST day so high-protein breakfast/lunch and high carb dinner (max 800 calories). Drink 2-3 cups of strong coffee BEFORE 6pm. Consume no more caffeine. Sleep by around 8pm local time (12pm destination time).
On Arrival: Its a FEAST day so high-protein breakfast/lunch and high carb dinner. No caffeine and stay awake!!

My problem was that this was an overnight flight that arrived at 5am local time! The fasting aspect, coffee and sleep worked very well. The book is quite clear that you should do everything you would normally do to go to sleep even if you feel you aren’t fully asleep. Your body will still rest and start the process of resetting itself. In order to maximise this (on a small uncomfortable seat!) I used a neck pillow and sleep mask (critical to supporting the head and reducing the stimulus of light), along with getting in a down sleeping bag I had brought. Yup - I got in a sleeping bag!! This all worked amazing well - however the poor seat, located opposite the toilet, made for a poor nights rest which was only 5 hours long! The rest of the day went fine, but by the end I was just sleep deprived and it took a few days to recover that. Lesson… choose your flights and seat location carefully!

Call me sad, but I’ve been on a minor mission searching for the “ultimate” keyring. The humble keyring has served its purpose but - sorry - it’s not longer fit for use. I can’t tell you how many finger nails I’ve broken trying to get keys off, using screwdrivers to prise them open and don’t get me started about “oversize” keys!! And the number of pockets that I’ve put holes in….

So the alternative?? Well I wondered if there was steel cable (2-3mm) with a lock that would allow you to easily slide keys on and off. I did manage to find some short 1mm cable with a screw lock, but the cable has a tendency to kink and the screw lock come undone. It is better than a keyring but I still wondered if someone had gone better…. and I’ve finally found the Flex-o-loc. Yes, 2.5mm aircraft-grade steel cable with an ingenious ball-and-socket locking mechanism. See this review at the gadgeteer. Buy your’s on Amazon for only £3 and, if you want a leather pouch to cover the keys then head on over to Campbell Cole for a luxurious fob.