Tad Thorley

The subtitle for my blog has been "Projects and Pastimes" throughout all of it’s various incarnations.  My original intention was to blog about the things I do in my spare time.  In practice, though, I’ve just been blogging about whatever happened to catch my attention (and with irregular postings).  It’s time to change that.  I’ve decided to start a project, which incorporates a pastime, that I will write a weekly blog post about.

I’ve been peripherally aware of Go (a.k.a wéiqí) for a while now.  However, I recently began investigating it in ernest and I found it to be a fascinating game.  The rules are simple, but the strategy is subtle and complex.  The game has been around for thousands of years, but still has a large and active following.  I first tried playing against other people online, but I was handily trounced in every game.  I figured I should practice on my own for a bit first.  I found a facebook application that used GnuGo.  It was nice because I could gain experience by playing a lot of games against a computer, but the interface was a little awkward and buggy.  I installed gnugo on my laptop, but playing it from the command line in ascii mode is still akward.

Here’s my first project for this blog: create a nice jruby interface for gnugo.  This project will incorporate several things I’ve wanted to learn about for a while now.  First of all, I’m interested in jruby.  I’ve heard a lot of good things about it.  From what I’ve read, you can leverage the benefits of java while programming in ruby (my current favorite programming language).  Jruby also allows you to create your own application (with a Swing interface).  Second, I’d like to learn git and I figure the best way to learn is to create a project and use it.  Lastly, everything I do is web-centric and I’d like to explore some other types of programming.

I really enjoy playing board games. I’ve been puting together a calendar of where and when people are getting together to play so I can get out and play more.  I figured I should make the gaming calendar public. Enjoy!

I recently came across this quiz.The results were:

Score: 30
MELATONIN ONSET OCCURS AT ABOUT 11:30 PM
YOUR "NATURAL" BEDTIME IS AT ABOUT 1:15 AM

which confirmed what I already knew: I’m very much a night owl.  Many of the questions are phrased like "if you could choose any time you wanted to do X, when would you?" which got me thinking: I work for an awesome company that offers a lot of flexibility in our work schedules, why don’t I schedule my time to work with my natural circadian rhythms?

In college I’d usually save my programming homework for late at night because that’s when I felt the most alert and it was easy for me to get into the flow of what I was working on.  I quit doing homework during the early afternoon because that was the hardest time for me to focus.  I like to have a long enough time to get into something, but not so long that it’s hard to maintain a mental effort.  Upon reflection, four hour chunks seemed about right.  I do need to spend some time in the office to coordinate with the other people I work with.  This week I’ve been working in the office from 10:00 AM until 2:00 PM and from 8:00 PM until midnight.

It is interesting how it has affected the rest of my life. I’ve been eating breakfast right before I go to work and I haven’t been hungry at noon; I’ve been skipping lunch altogether.  I do feel hungry after I get home and I’ve been having a small meal.  I eat dinner with my family at 6:30 PM.  I do get hungry late at night and I’ve been eating another small meal around 10:30 PM.  My kids go to bed around 8:30 PM and my wife likes to go to bed around 9:30 PM (she’s very much a morning person) so I have the house to myself to work without distraction.  I really enjoy having my afternoons free.  I’ve been running errands, playing with the kids, taking afternoon naps, etc.; many which were difficult to get done before.  I have really enjoyed the schedule change so far.  I’ll provide an update in a week.