How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less - <AUTHOR> https://www.artofmanliness.com/2018/03/21/fall-asleep-fast/ <comment><USER2> Any steady stream of thoughts can stop me from falling asleep, even for hours. I have noticed that long hours of programming or programming late in the day causes this state of constant hard thinking that keeps me awake. It can be really exhausting and even end in nightmares.

I think that the article is right that you need to stop this cycle before falling asleep. Meditation practice helps to stop your thought cycle by focusing on your breath. As soon as your focus shifts away to any new thought, and you recognize it at some point, then you try to refocus again on your breath.

However, meditation is done while being fully awake. You want to feel the mind stopping, being fully present in the moment.

I found a trick, that helped me to find sleep, even when having the hardest thought cycles. Lying on the back in the bed, I try to focus on my breath just like being in meditation. After a while I slow down my breath as much as I can. It does not take long and I'm fully asleep.

I use this trick everytime I have a hard time finding sleep. And it always worked for me. Its one of the most valuable tricks in the toolbox of my life.

<comment><USER3> What works for me is to just put on a documentary and something about the monotone narration voice just shuts my brain down. I don't even pay attention to the words. I'm generally asleep within minutes. I assume audio books might have the same effect.

I guess it might be related to my young childhood as I had parents who would almost always read to my brother and me at bedtime. So possibly there's a part of my brain that has associated falling asleep to the sound of a voice speaking.

<comment><USER4> My girlfriend trained herself to sleep with movies. Now she can't watch movies without falling asleep.

<comment><USER5> Mine does exactly the same thing. If she's on the couch watching a movie, she's a goner, but the moment she moves to bed, "it's too loud! Turn it down!" even when it's at 1/10th of the volume when she was drooling on the couch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have had weird sleeping issues all my life, and the key for me to falling asleep was when I found out that our body gets tired not when it is warm, but when it warms up.

So next time you can't fall asleep, take off the blankets, make sure your room is cold, and then get really, uncomfortably cold, and stay that way for at least 15 minutes. Then, and this is key, cover your whole body only with your sheet, and then pull the blanket just over your legs. You'll warm up and fall asleep. If you pull the blanket all over yourself and "mummify", then you'll risk getting too warm, which will wake you right up again.

I'm sure this doesn't work for everyone, but I think many people get too warm and comfortable, and that will keep you awake.

Get cold, warm up, and snooze!

<comment><USER7> A quicker way to get cold is a really cold shower just before bed. It works really well for me, and I believe there are many other benefits to cold showers beyond just getting to sleep.

<comment><USER8> This makes sense... because muscles contract

The cold water grabs the brain's attention. So the brain doesn't let the mind latch onto thoughts... energy contracts rather than scatters

<comment><USER7> I find there are two ways you can go with a cold shower.

One is to really tense up and to fight the feelings of cold. I don't think this is too beneficial. The other is to really relax and embrace the cold. Taking deep breaths and focusing the mind inwards allows you to accept the cold for what it is. It takes a little practice, but once you are in that zone the shower becomes rejuvenating and relaxing at the same time and really helps shake off the day and get me in the zone for sleep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The relaxation method in the article requires physical comfort, which isn't always available. I used to lie awake for hours when I was younger; now I can fall asleep quickly in all places (bus seats, desk chair, etc). What changed?

I ride a bicycle. That fixed my blood circulation, so I don't get cold feet.

I also read the Bible and pray. It's very easy to fall asleep in church on a hard wooden pew. The same approach works at bedtime.

Sleeping less once a week (CouchSurfing meetup from 9 pm to 1 am on Wednesdays) builds sleep debt. That increases my emotional extremes, but the prayer handles the low points, so I end up happier. It also makes me pretty tired, so I'm able to sleep more easily on Thursday & Friday.

<comment><USER10> Bold move being honest about your religiousness here. I respect that.

<comment><USER11> It's also interesting to hear that the CouchSurfing community still exists. 10 years ago I had friends that used it a lot but left because it got flooded with guys trying to get laid. If it returned to what it was, that'd be pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Regarding falling asleep - I've noticed an interesting phenomenon in myself. Usually it takes me around 30 minutes to fall asleep, during which period I seem to gradually mellow, my internal narrative becomes weaker until I finally fall asleep. During the final stages of that process, I sometimes imagine beautiful and quite complex music or art that I like a lot (unfortunately, I'm nowhere skilled enough to try to create actual pieces based on this). This does not happen to me in any other state - it's as if there's a temporary imbalance between my mental functions (perhaps the logical brain shuts off first) that generates this unsolicited creativity.

<comment><USER13> Sounds very similair to Dali's process. Where he would meditate holding a kitchen utensil on top of a pan. And when he would fall asleep it would fall making a sound and wake him up with i inspration for his next painting.

[http://www.creativitypost.com/authors/profile/33/mmichalko](http://www.creativitypost.com/authors/profile/33/mmichalko)

<comment><USER14> It sound interesting, but I never have heard it before and I can't find it in the link or in Google. Is it in the book? Is there other source? (Creativity advisors are sometime too creative.)

<comment><USER15> This is also mentioned in the Coursera course "Learning How to Learn" ([https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to- learn](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn)). Though I don't recall/know what their source is. "Dali Sleep Technique" turns up many hits in your favorite web browser, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm one of those that can fall asleep anytime, anywhere. The technique I use is to work on my "novel". I guess my mind knows I've been "working" on it for over twenty years, it's not important. At this point it's just a fantasy environment in my head I can drop into where the stresses of the real world don't exist.

<comment><USER17> I can do this too! I was born with a superpower, one that ensures I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime - untreated obstructive sleep apnea!

With obstructive sleep apnea, you too can fall asleep in those stressful situations like driving, in the middle of a fire drill at your desk, and while attending an important work presentation!

(On the serious, I have an appointment to get a CPAP tomorrow and in the meantime I sleep sitting up with my feet elevated and avoid most of the ill effects, but it's only a short term solution because it must be weighted against the possibility of a DVT or other blood clot.)

<comment><USER18> _I have an appointment to get a CPAP tomorrow_

Make sure they give you one of the newer machines that has an SD card in it. And it must be an APAP machine, not CPAP. The APAP continuously adjusts air pressure to match your current needs.

The SD card records details of every breath you take. You then plug that info into SleepyHead software and see what's happening to your body.

This is important, because in general the insurance companies only care that you use your machine 4+ hrs per night. They are happy if your AHI (a measure of how bad your apnea is) is below 5. But that still means you are having 5 serious events per hour. Which is bad, unless you're an insurance company.

Go to cpaptalk.com and apneaboard.com and learn how to interpret your SleepyHead data and fine tune your machine to get your AHI down to 0. Works for many younger people. Old folks tend to have other medical issues that keep them from getting full benefit from CPAP. Even they can still be helped; e.g. there are more sophisticated machines that will even help people breathe in and out if their body/brain can no longer do it automatically.

Here is a starting point: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_airway_pressure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_airway_pressure)

<comment><USER17> Went to my appointment, doctor wrote an order for an APAP machine, called the medical supply company who is working with the insurance and will call me later today (or will receive a call from me tomorrow morning when they open). Thanks for the advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just this year I learned an invaluable lesson about falling asleep. When my brain starts "daydreaming" random chains of thoughts, just let it do that. I used to try to clear my mind, but the opposite seems to work much better for me.

<comment><USER20> I was just about to post the same thing.

Sometime over the last few years I started to notice I was moments away from falling asleep because my stream of consciousness would become nonsensical. I then discovered I could fall asleep faster by purposefully daydreaming nonsensical sceneries.

<comment><USER21> Obligatory XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/313/](https://xkcd.com/313/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'll mention something related, just to see how widespread my experience is. Sometimes when I am just about to fall asleep, I suddenly become very aware of my receding consciousness. It's a strongly uncomfortable feeling accompanied by a rush of energy that wakes me up instantly.

It feels almost like my body thinks it's about to die, so it does a desperate hail mary to stay alive, or something. Very unsettling.

Does anyone know what this might be about?

<comment><USER23> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk)

<comment><USER22> I have always mentally separated what I described in my first comment from what I have come to associate with the term hypnic jerk.

The first is more of a mental, physically still thing. The other is, for me, a sudden motion of a large body part, usually linked to dreaming about falling off something. More importantly, the latter is emotionally neutral. I wake up going "oh, I didn't really fall. It was just a dream."

When the former happens, it is very emotionally uncomfortable. It's a feeling of pure dread, but sort of wrapped in cotton.

<comment><USER23> It's not a terribly precise term, to be sure. The physical jerk and anxiety aspect are often lumped together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've found a simple approach to falling asleep.

I close my eyes, and start trying to hear instruments. I start with the bass drum, add some hi-hats. It's difficult at first, but as my mind drifts off, other instruments start appearing, and I hear a voice singing, a melody. Songs I've never heard before.

I do this every night now, and I drift off nearly right away. Sometimes I'm jolted by the complexity of the songs, and return to reality to check if I'm not just hearing music coming from my neighbour.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have podcast subscriptions to like 10 different history podcasts and they put me to sleep within 5 minutes most of the time. The key is that it has to be interesting enough to engage me, but not so interesting that it keeps me awake.

The History of English podcast is my favorite for that. It's the entire history of English from Indo-European onwards. It's 100+ hours of readings from old English poetry or medieval monastic rule books interspersed with word etymologies (Did you know that 'green' and 'grow' and 'grass' are all from the same root word?). Don't get me wrong, it's absolutely fascinating but I challenge anyone to stay awake longer than three minutes listening to it in bed.

<comment><USER26> This is my favorite podcast of all time. It's completely fascinating and yet, as with other history podcasts, it puts me to sleep in 5 minutes. I listen to them over and over to catch bits in those 5 minutes.

You get to learn thing like the connections between father/pater/vader and brother/frater/bruder (f/p, th/t/d, b/f), the reason many plurals with 'f' become 'v' (elf/elves, wolf/wolves, half/halves), why 'x' at the beginning of the word sounds like 'z' but in the middle of a word like 'ks'. Or how some languages have more than singular/plural [1]

Unexpected word connection: 'c' in Latin/Spanish to 'h' in English: century/hundred, cornu/horn, casa/house, caliente/hot

Unexpected word connection: 'w' in German-to-English words and 'g' in French- to-English words: warranty/guarantee, warden/guardian (also seen in English/French: William/Guillome, war/guerre)

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Localizatio...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Localization/Localization_and_Plurals#List_of_Plural_Rules)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It should be noted that the military and athletics are both areas that tend to select for people with good sleep to start with (since poor sleep has negative impact on the things they look for) and then often overwork people. So the high success rate is not surprising in those conditions. Sleep is not just the result of both physical and mental relaxation, although most people are likely to be able to sleep in that situation. Every self help book on sleep has varitions of this technique and many people find it helpful, but not everyone is able to sleep quickly even with relaxation.

</comment><comment><USER28> I have two 'tricks' to falling asleep (but this article looks better).

The first is to play the 'unrelated words' game, where you think of a word as completely unrelated to the last word as possible.

The second is to count up and work out whether the current number is prime.

Both occupy the mind while minimizing stress, allowing the body to relax into sleep.

I'm definitely going to try the techniques in the article though.

This also made me think of Feynman's sleep experiments:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/comments/1p1107/richa...](https://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/comments/1p1107/richard_feynmans_account_of_his_investigations/)

<comment><USER29> i had trouble falling asleep for about the first 35 years of my life. then i hit on a technique i call "scenarios." i have various made-up fantasy settings, like an island nation surrounded by a sea of mud, and i make up stories about its inhabitants, building on whatever stories i made up last time. this seems to short-circuit the problem i had earlier, where i could not get my brain to stop racing, worrying about various real-life issues.

i have always considered my technique to be so weird and awkward that i have never discussed it with anyone. but now i see, from reading the comments here, that other people have similar techniques. who knew.

<comment><USER8> What a gift!

... to be able to imagine wild scenarios.

I'm guessing you're a fantasy writer...

If not, I've never seen a more obvious sign..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> As someone who falls asleep in roughly 15 seconds of putting my head on the pillow, it's fascinating that people have to adopt strategies to fall asleep. I wonder what's different about me than other people. I know of insomnia of course, and know plenty of people with it, but it still seems utterly alien to me to not be able to sleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

I don't _particularly_ have any bedtime rituals, but I often have a cup of caffeinated black tea right before bed. I don't know whether my ability to sleep at the drop of a hat is physiological or psychological. I'd be interested to figure it out... once I fix the 831 unit tests I just broke by upgrading all the nuget packages in this solution XD

<comment><USER8> Same here.

I'm 31. My mom said... even when I was a baby, she would lay me down at 10:00pm, I'd fall asleep almost immediately and wake up at 6:00am like clockwork.

On the ultra-rare occasions I don't fall asleep...

Instead of trying to relaaax... first I tense the muscles, then relax.

The contrast is key. Tension, release.

It's almost like sticking your hand in bucket of room temp water.

If you would've stuck your hand in an ice bucket for 5 seconds, THEN put your hand in the room temp... different feeling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sounds like meditation techniques. I often practice mindfulness meditation in a dark room for ~10 minutes in the mid-afternoon when I get tired. It usually gives me new energy and focus similar to if I'd napped.

<comment><USER32> After having one course of zen meditation, it seems to me meditation is pretty much the complete opposite of falling asleep. You want to stop thinking about anything, but only to feel perfectly aware of the current time and place. And your mind becomes completely focused and concentrated on.. nothing.

In particular, the part in the OP where you "picture yourself being on lake, etc" looks to me as completely anti-meditation.

<comment><USER33> Anecdotal evidence: meditating in the evening helps me fall asleep. Don't know if it's the breathing part or clearing my mind but it works really well 90% of the time.

The trick is that I do it laying down instead of a more conventional meditation position.

<comment><USER32> i believe it's pretty easy to fall asleep after step 1 . I suspect the uncomfortable sitting position is made to help you stay awake. In the course i took, people could even ask for someone to hit them on the shoulder with a stick, to help them keep themselves awoken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Those who are keen on exploring more should look up various relaxation methods that fall under the umbrella of Yoga Nidra. The technique described here is generally a preparatory exercise for a following 61 point or 31 point relaxation method (usually done lying down on the back).

As one makes progress in their practice they will find that their body and mind will start experiencing deeper rest for the same or lesser amount of sleep.

Some of the relaxation methods can be done upon waking up too -- gets rid of grogginess.

</comment><comment><USER35> There's a new trick I found that's been working out pretty well for me recently.

To backtrack a bit, I've been having decent success with meditating to fall asleep. Namely, the basic technique is to simply focus on my breath -- specifically, on the very point at which I can feel my breath entering and exiting my nostrils (or wherever the outermost point of my body is that I can feel my breath going in and out of), and whenever I notice my attention drifts away from my breath to just gently, without reproach, to focus it back on my breath again.

That technique usually worked for me, if I wasn't too agitated. The problem was that sometimes I'd have thoughts really rushing through my mind when I tried to fall asleep, and then even meditating like that wasn't enough. I analyzed what was going on and decided that just focusing on my breath was too monotonous, and gave me too much time for my mind to drift away to thinking about other things. What I needed was a better way to keep my mind busy with something monotonous, but not too monotonous.

So I came up with a small modification which has worked better. It's basically the same as above, except on every other breath, instead of focusing on the breath, I'd focus on whatever sensation in my body that's most noticeable.

For instance, I might feel a lot of pressure on a body part that I'm lying on, like a certain part of my left arm or something. So every other breath, I'd focus on that. Whatever that is that is most noticeable might change from time to time, so I'd just go with whatever it happens to be. And every other breath, I'd focus on the sensation of my breath as usual. So effectively, I'd be alternating from focusing on my breath on one breath, and on the next on whatever sensation in my body was most noticeable, and then back to my breath.

Wearing earplugs and a night mask (blindfold) helps too.

<comment><USER2> I think I use the same technique with another variation you might want to try out. Focus on your breath like in meditation but, at some point, slow it down as much as you can. So slow that you are on the edge of the body forcing you to breath again. You may calm down and shift into sleep quite easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I use this simple technique, which is a simple technology-assisted hybrid of mindfulness meditation and counting sheep: [http://www.dirk- loss.de/calmyourmind/](http://www.dirk-loss.de/calmyourmind/)

</comment><comment><USER37> How to fall asleep in two minutes or less: Have kids.

</comment><comment><USER38> The technique described in the article is the common autogenic training [0]. I was taught this when I was a child, althought it was never of much use to me, because it didn't seem to help when I tried to use it before tests or when trying to relax. But it is effective for many people and I was even warned not to do it while bathing, because of a risk of drowning.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training)

</comment><comment><USER39> When I have to sleep I just start reading comments in a HN post, or start scrolling 9GAG Cute section with my eyes purposefully half-closed. I don't remember when I fall asleep but most of the times I have only scrolled through less than a dozen posts/comments. Night mode with lowest backlight possible is what helps. This trick is useless in public where there's a chance of losing the grip of your phone; I've been using this technique for several years now after a friend of mine in my Uni taught me.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've had various forms of insomnia most of my life. If this could really be turned into a reliable technique or product for people to fall asleep, they would become rich. Recently, my bigger problem is I wake up in the middle of the night and can't fall back asleep easily. Insomnia effects so many people and it increases to effect more people over time. I have found that reducing overall internet and computer usage has greatly increased my ability to fall asleep.

</comment><comment><USER41> Historically, I had the classic problem of instinctively holding on to some stream of thought which I subconsciously felt the need to unwind before I would let dream consciousness take over.

I figured out a nice trick to fix this. I close my eyes and visualize myself in an absurd, impossible fantasy scenario. It's amazing how quickly you will let dream consciousness kick in, when you subconsciously know _you 're giving it a job it's actually good at_.

<comment><USER42> This is exactly what I do! I just start "day-dreaming" some story with myself as the main character, often with the setting being from a fantasy novel. I never manage to find out what happens in my story though, because I fall asleep before getting anywhere

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Bookmarked in case I ever have trouble sleeping.

I have the opposite problem, I can just fall asleep pretty much anywhere and in any position. Just had a triple espresso or four cold brews, no problem.

I frequently take "desk naps" throughout the day. I'll set a timer for 15 minutes and lay my head down on my wrist rest. I fall asleep in less than a minute.

Does anyone know if there is a name for that? I generally refer to it as controllable narcolepsy or "luck".

<comment><USER44> My son has narcolepsy. When they tested him using a day time sleep study, it was his ability to fall asleep quickly, in just a couple minutes, that was the primary indicator of his condition. I believe the doctor said an ability to fall asleep and hit a certain deep stage of sleep in less than eight minutes is what they look for.

In movies and such narcolepsy is often portrayed as uncontrollably falling asleep mid-activity. Turns out that's not actually narcolepsy but a specific form of cataplexy. They are often present together, but are distinct. My son, for example, has very strong narcolepsy but relatively mild cataplexy.

<comment><USER43> Oh so it could actually _be_ narcolepsy and I've just been an ass making a joke about it for years.

I'm not familiar beyond the movie tropes (that I now know are misrepresentations).

Are there complications or other serious things that it can lead to?

Are people with narcolepsy generally deep sleepers?

<comment><USER44> I think tiredness and ability to sleep quickly are less binary and more of a spectrum. My wife, for example, is often tired and can fall asleep anywhere and relatively quickly. It affects our lives a bit, but it's not life dominating. She can push through it when needed.

My son, when not on meds, is always very tired, debilitating so. It's life dominating. He can sleep 12 hours, have breakfast, and sleep a few more hours, etc. It's not just a matter of being able to sleep or wanting to sleep, he feels exhausted roughly 20 of 24 hours a day. He would not wake up in 15 mins because a timer went off.

I, on the other hand, am rarely physically tired, even when I've not got a lot of sleep.

So, it may be that you are just more on the tired end of the spectrum. If your tiredness and ability to fall asleep quickly has more than a casual negative effect on your life, it may be something to talk to your doctor about.

HTH.

<comment><USER43> Thanks for all the info! I'm generally not tired until nighttime. It started as a way to relax my thoughts when working. I'm going to bring it up at my next physical though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I've been thinking about my sleep a lot more as of late.

I have no trouble being awake and activity 18-19 hours a day, but unless I'm trying to keep going, around hour 18, I naturally do what Mr Winter describes. It's lights out for 5-6 hours.

However, I'm told that I'm a frequent sleep talker and have a habit of standing up, surveying the room, and then lying back down (of which I have no recollection).

As well it's come to my attention (partly from those who happen to live with me) that my body seems to "cycle" different sensory groups on and off. The talking and standing being part of it, but I've also noticed external sounds influencing my dreams, many of which border on lucidity.

I assume this is abnormal (would like to hear otherwise), probably stemming from some deep seated need to be in constant control, but I quite enjoy being able to actively think and remember during my sleep cycle.

Which is a contrast to when I was younger and would have trouble falling asleep and had to actively drill more or less what Mr Winter taught, to no avail. Counting sheep just led to an internal Wikipedia dive into sheep and sheep related topics.

<comment><USER45> A fun extension of this I just associated was that in my school years, I'd fall asleep in class, but my auditory processes would keep piping information into my brain in such a way that when the teacher thought they'd have me "caught" by asking me what the answer to the problem on the board was I could more often than not answer correctly without delay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I can actually confirm this -- my father served in WWII (but in the Army), and he came back with this skill to fall asleep quickly. I, sadly, don't really have it. But this article has given me the idea to work on it more.

The relaxation ideas here, of course, come from Indian yoga techniques, but maybe they didn't mention the history of it when teaching it. Now that would be a selling point, ha!

</comment><comment><USER47> I've started using audiobooks to help me sleep. Listening to the book keeps my thoughts from wandering and I'm usually able to fall asleep within 30 minutes or so this way. Podcasts and even a spoken bible work well too. Without these my thoughts wander too much and it can take an hour or more to fall asleep.

</comment><comment><USER48> Here's a trick I've stumbled over a few years ago:

Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.

Hold your breath for a count of seven.

Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.

[http://www.medicaldaily.com/life-hack- sleep-4-7-8-breathing-...](http://www.medicaldaily.com/life-hack- sleep-4-7-8-breathing-exercise-will-supposedly-put-you-sleep-just-60-332122)

For me, it does not work immediately, but it makes me fall asleep much faster. AFAIK this works by calming the sympathetic nervous system, just like meditation would. A downside I've experienced is that sometimes I'm very cold for a while after waking up.

</comment><comment><USER49> I've never been good at taking naps except when exhausted, so I'll have to try this next time.

I'm very good at getting a good night's sleep, though. I fall asleep within a minute of my head hitting the pillow. The key for me is to go to bed at a consistent time (plus or minus 30 minutes or so) every night, get 8 hours consistently, limit light exposure before bed, eliminate caffeine entirely, and generally adopt a stress-free mental attitude. I can deviate slightly from this, but if I deviate too much I start having sleep issues.

As a result I consistently wake up without an alarm at the same time every day (plus or minus 30 minutes) feeling refreshed.

<comment><USER50> How do you adopt a stress free attitude?

<comment><USER49> That's a long answer, but the short version is introspecting about my fears, separating events from my internal narrative about them, having compassion for others as well as myself, framing and contextualing issues that come up, and living in an authentic and vulnerable way. It has been a long journey (still ongoing) that involved reading, therapy, mentorship, and coaching. The Landmark Forum (a paid seminar) also produced great results for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> When I fall asleep I know exactly when I'm going to go off quick - and when I'll stay awake.

Learning something new of a physical nature (new sport or physical game). That helps. I can see my mind wander and drift quickly.

You just have to let go of mind concentration and you'll drift off. Now if I can figure out how to FORCE the drift then I'll be good.

When I can't sleep - my mind is stuck on one thing or another. Like the brain isn't lubricated.

Sometimes low level pain just perceptible (normally not enough to warrant a pill) enough to keep you awake.

Delayed onset muscle soreness can keep me up as well - but not exercising can keep me up too.

</comment><comment><USER52> Sounds a lot like this:[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training)

</comment><comment><USER53> Counting increasingly larger numbers as I'm trying to fall asleep will sometimes make me feel anxious as I become aware that the numbers are getting large and I'm still awake. So now I just count "one" repeatedly. Works much better.

The next thing I do is search for patterns in the blackness behind my closed eyes. Once I find myself following random images into whatever they become I know sleep is imminent.

Finally, I discovered that mimicking REM by moving my eyes back and forth usually makes sleep come on even faster.

</comment><comment><USER54> I always have multiple books going, and I switch to a boring one when it's time to shut down. Right now that's Robert Gordon's "Rise and Fall of American Growth".

</comment><comment><USER55> This works for me. Half an hour before I go to bed, I have a glass of wine or a shot of whisky while browsing the web or watching youtube/netflix/etc. Boom, it's lights out as soon as my head hits the pillow.

An added benefit is that 8 hours later, I have to pee so bad that it forces me to get out of bed. It's a sleeping aid and an alarm clock all in one.

<comment><USER56> Alcohol will delay and reduce slow wave sleep. Not an ideal solution.

<comment><USER55> If you get drunk, maybe. But having a glass of wine isn't going to affect your sleep. Also, this is about falling asleep quickly, not the quality of sleep. I fall asleep within seconds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> This might sound strange, but if I focus on a point about a foot in front of my eyes and hold it there while breathing slowly, I'll often fall asleep quickly. I don't know exactly how to describe it. It's something like projecting your thoughts onto that point, not just thinking about the point. I use the technique when power napping.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is very similar to what's known as a body scan meditation, which, if performed at bedtime, will usually knock me right out after focusing on just a couple of body parts (you start from the toes of the left foot on up to the head—I'm usually out before getting to the left knee).

</comment><comment><USER59> I have done this for as long as I can remember, except I didn't do the physical relaxation.

I just close my eyes and think "sleep, sleep, etc". Slowly and methodically to take away other thoughts. It doesn't work 100% for me. Maybe I will try to add the physical relaxation.

</comment><comment><USER60> 5hz binaural beats may help some lucky people (used to help me greatly once, stopped working some years later). You can generate them easily with SBaGen, just make sure to avoid joint stereo mode and bitrates below 192 kbits if you compress to MP3 then.

</comment><comment><USER61> The mental part is easy, if you can do that: close your eyes and focus on the background white noise that exists inside your head, until it becomes a clearly audible buzz that oscillates in sync with your pulse.

</comment><comment><USER62> [EDIT: I'm afraid this only applies to men]

Sexual activity also triggers hormonal activities related to sleep. Or, to quote someone: "Sure there may be a certain outcome, but that's not why we do it"

</comment><comment><USER63> Easiest method I know: Count up to ten and then down to one again. And repeat. Other way is to count down from 100, if you make a mistake or get confused, just start over again.

</comment><comment><USER64> The physical relaxation technique is more akin to self-hypnosis, while the mental relaxation technique is meditation to clear your mind.

Both techniques require months of practice to get right.

<comment><USER16> Disagree strongly. That could well be true for some people, but it's a skill I picked up in just a few days of effort. Relaxing well enough to fall asleep quickly, that is. You don't need to meditate properly to do that. You just need enough of it to fall asleep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Shit.. that's almost exactly how I've been doing since I was a kid. The difference is that I do the other way around, starting from my feet.

</comment><comment><USER66> This works for me. I've found that it's all in my head.

</comment><comment><USER67> Sleep hygiene worked for me. If I'm not sleeping or having sex, I'm not on my bed.

This way my brain associates the bed with sleep and nothing else.

</comment><comment><USER68> I am in the minority group of fast sleeper but it is more to do with my blood stickiness. sometimes I am a bit scared as it is too quick.

<comment><USER69> Why do you believe falling asleep fast is in any way related to how sticky (thick?) your blood is, and why do you believe your blood is sticky/thick?

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I've always been amazed how quickly people can fall asleep on trains in Japan.

</comment><comment><USER71> Thank you for recommending this article! Just what I needed!

</comment><comment><USER72> Don't worry about sleep too much. Let it be.

</comment><comment><USER73> I guess I'll have to try this...

</comment><comment><USER74> Reading does it for me. I could be high on 200mg of caffeine, tossing and turning for hours, but 5 pages into a book and I'm out.

</comment><comment><USER75> Yes, "Art of Manliness" website, please send me all of your push updates to my browser

<comment><USER76> Honestly the way the page is styled reeks of "overcompensation".

<comment><USER77> Starting from the name.</comment></comment></comment>


Creating memorable and secure passwords - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21550763

<comment><USER2> I am a security layman; whenever I create a password for an account I tend to just use very long sentences. To log into my laptop, I have to type something completely unlike "oh man here i am again logging into this stupid thing".

I've always wondered if this is any less secure than some nice mixed meta characters. "SS7s$@a8" as it were.

I can remember my sentence very easily and type it far more quickly than I can henpeck the pure random mix.

Also, I am very curious - if the encrypted password ends up being a uniform length N, is there any value having a passphrase longer than length N, if by that point the correspondence between the encrypted passphrases might be many- to-one with their unencrypted counterparts?

I feel there is so much more coffee-talk understanding to cryptography I have before I could even begin the barest math essentials of understanding it. Perhaps my naivety is founded by low math self confidence. _shrug_

<comment><USER3> I am also a layman, but I think the answer to your first question is "it depends". Specifically, it depends on the length of our mixed meta password and the length of your passphrase.

I ran the numbers for passwords up to 30 characters long and made a chart in Excel showing the total possible passwords, one to thirty characters long, given a variety of character spaces, using the form s^l (character space to the power of password length). [1] The weakest space I used was lowercase characters only (26), the most complex was "all keyboard characters" (96). (In between are various combinations of lowercase, uppercase, numerics, common punctuation, and all punctuation. It's not entirely relevant to my point though.)

One interesting point I found was that a purely lowercase password only needs to be 30 characters long to beat an "everything on the keyboard" password of 22 characters, and is a _lot_ easier to remember.

One serious point to consider is that passphrases aren't the same thing as "lowercase-only" passwords. If you consider each word as a "character" you could use a dictionary to brute force it, meaning that rather than brute forcing the series as ["a", "b", ... "z", "aa", etc.] you could brute force it as ["an", "as", ... "an account", "an acorn", etc.].

Personally, all of my passwords but one are ridiculous mixed passwords that I don't even know. The last password is the password to my KeePass database, which is a longish passphrase (also the phrase I use doesn't make any damn sense, which is sort of the point). The idea is that long mixed passwords are hard to remember but are more secure than an identically long phrase, so I want to use those as much as possible, but because it's essential that I remember the KeePass password (because forgetting it would lock me out of _everything_ ), a passphrase works as a memorable but still complex password.

I'm not entirely sure I've done any of my work correctly, so I'll just sit here and wait for Thomas or Colin to come in and take me to school.

[1] <http://i.imgur.com/4tMEX.png>

<comment><USER4> Here is some recent research on the strength of a multi word passphrase. [http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2012/03/07/some- evidence-...](http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2012/03/07/some-evidence-on- multi-word-passphrases/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps the future lies more with the "something you have" form of authentication than the "something you know", like passwords, that this article complains about.

For example, Google's two-factor authentication seems very secure, even with a weak password. To log in, I need to enter the ever-changing six-digit number off my iPhone as well as my regular password. Similar to this are other schemes which use any SMS-capable phone: enter your username and password on the web site, then enter the word the system just texted to me. Some banks use this to secure the addition of a new electronic bill payee, for example.

If you think about it, password safes, client-side SSL certificates, SSH private keys, etc., are really all just "things you have."

Computers aren't getting any slower; the gap between what you can remember and what they can guess is only getting smaller.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wrote a tool for this, mouseware: <http://www.fusionbox.com/mouseware/>

It generates a memorable password using entropy from your mouse movements to seed a CSPRNG. It is completely in-browser, no data is ever sent to the server.

Source available here: <https://github.com/fusionbox/mouseware/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Passwords do not need to be memorable. You need one very secure master pass phrase[1] and a good password safe.

[1] Use diceware to generate it. Avoid swapping words out for something easier to remember (see the article for examples) and, if you need to, write it on a piece of paper while you learn it, but treat that piece of paper like a high value item.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://xkcd.com/936/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Thanks.</comment>


Spaceport: Javascript to iOS/Android/HTML5/Flash Framework - <AUTHOR> http://spaceport.io/

<comment><USER2> For some reason I can't check out the demos. I keep getting this error <http://d.pr/vCk1>

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like viewing many of the pages require you to register for an account.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but wow: "The change you requested was rejected"

I didn't ask for a change, I clicked on a game's name.

Case study 'Spaceport': When generic messages go bad.</comment></comment></comment>


Engineering community portal for industries product data - yn-coder http://www.naiveshark.com/product/product/43/

<comment> yn-coder Engineering community portal for industries product data are open now for beta-testing.

Help to build the world-wide database of structured technical information.</comment>


Ask HN: Boston meetup? - <AUTHOR>

Would anyone be interested?
Unsure of time or place, but am thinking the middle of August at a bar in Cambridge/Somerville area.
Comment or email me if interested. <comment><USER2> I'm always down for meeting other Boston startup folks, particularly on the Cambridge / Somerville side of the river.

You'll usually find a lot of HNers at OpenCoffee, by the way: [http://www.meetup.com/OpenCoffee-Cambridge- Meetup/calendar/1...](http://www.meetup.com/OpenCoffee-Cambridge- Meetup/calendar/14109537/)

<comment><USER3> also check out the venture cafe every thursday from 3-8pm at the CIC.

<http://www.venturecafe.net/></comment></comment>


Help Clojure Eclipse Plugin author going to Clojure/Conj 2011 - cgrand-net http://code.google.com/p/counterclockwise/wiki/ConjTripFunding

<comment><AUTHOR> This is definitely worth putting money into. Building these kinds of tools is so key to user adoption and yet it is such difficult and (hopefully not in this case) thankless work. Even if you aren't a CCW user, there are plenty of potential workplaces for you that might consider clojure in as much as it fits into their current workflow (ie eclipse).

</comment><comment><USER2> Not to be a jerk, but you don't _have_ to go anywhere.

That said it makes me sad that open source authors should be relegated to begging for handouts like this.

Those who wrote 'closed, commercial programs' for a living probably won't shed tears over it but I can see that if you have to go and ask for handouts after giving the world a chunk of your life that it feels a little weird.

<comment><USER3> Hello,

It was an attempt (from a non-native english speaker, so maybe the literal translation from french did not have the same exact meaning) to feel like "There's a sense of urgency for me to go there, I can feel, I know this will be good, for me, for the project" => the "have to go" has since been replaced / complemented by an explanation on the page.

<comment><USER2> Maybe you should give your actual reasons why you need to go there, what you intend to accomplish?

On another note, you may wish to consider hooking up with a corporate sponsor, I'm sure there is someone out there that sees enough value in what you provide for who $1500 is pocket change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A call for donations is always fair, but I'm confused by:

       I *have* to go to the (clojure/conj), but the total cost of the journey is above what I can reasonably afford right now.

Why _have_? I don't get it.

<comment><USER3> Yes, this was confusing, and is now hopefully addressed in the new version of the text. Thanks for pointing this out,

Laurent

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please don't use the term kickback. Very negative connotations.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, as a non native english speaker, such subtleties can escape. Correctedn thanks!

<comment><USER5> Sure. Good luck with the campaign.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi, Laurent. I don't use CCW much, though I do have it installed. Mostly I hack Clojure in Emacs.

Nevertheless, I sent a few bucks your way because I think it's a great thing to be able to introduce Java developers to Clojure via Eclipse. Your work helps to build the community, and I appreciate it for that reason.

Cheers and good luck!</comment>


Harir – Reducing Noise in Arabic Script - <AUTHOR> https://www.typotheque.com/articles/harir <comment><USER2> For comparison, I just pulled up [http://arabic.cnn.com/](http://arabic.cnn.com/)

The headlines are a bit stylized and difficult to read as I'm not familiar with the font. Getting accustomed to a font is either more difficult in Arabic, or there are greater extremes in fonts -- I've never figured out which. Certainly I have to learn a new style of writing every time I read a hand written letter.

Most of the text on cnn's site is easier to read but feels mechanical compared to the harir font which feels like a significant improvement.

Harir is very easy to read, with few peculiarities. I don't claim to know fonts or which is better/worse, but I would say Harir is very good, at least for my sample size of one. You would have to ask a native speaker who might be more comfortable with script than type their opinion.

<comment><USER3> I don't like the Arabic font used on CNN either. I don't know why they used such an inelegant font for everything on their website, it looks very ridiculous and unfriendly to the eyes.

I have better examples that you might find interesting:

\- [http://www.madamasr.com](http://www.madamasr.com) $$ Give it some time for the webfont to load $$

\- [http://www.dw.com/ar/](http://www.dw.com/ar/)

\- [http://www.bbc.com/persian](http://www.bbc.com/persian)

<comment><USER4> I am not a fan of the cnn font but I don't see Harir as a major improvement (it's too thick). The BBC and dw fonts look the most natural to me. Al Jazeera ([http://www.aljazeera.net/portal](http://www.aljazeera.net/portal)) is also very readable.

<comment><USER5> All the examples of the Harir typeface from this post are the bold and bold caption fonts. Do you also think the regular and display regular fonts are too thick? [https://www.typotheque.com/fonts/harir/regular/sample/arabic...](https://www.typotheque.com/fonts/harir/regular/sample/arabic/12?s=webfonts) [https://www.typotheque.com/fonts/harir/display_regular/sampl...](https://www.typotheque.com/fonts/harir/display_regular/sample/arabic/36?s=webfonts)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find it exceedingly interesting how Latin is so easily and often broken down into simple geometric shapes, whereas things like Arabic and Chinese when digitized still try to emulate the subtleties of brush strokes.

<comment><USER7> There's folks who maintain that's why Europe entered the Industrial Revolution way before people out East did - non-Latin languages didn't take too kindly to be broken up into the pieces that could be used on a printing press!

<comment><USER8> That's quite an interesting theory. Do you have any good books on the topic?

<comment><USER9> One of the better discussions of this is probably in [http://blog.gatunka.com/2008/05/05/why-japan-didnt-create- th...](http://blog.gatunka.com/2008/05/05/why-japan-didnt-create-the-ipod/) , which makes a much weaker claim about the 8-bit era of computing in particular, which I'd think is easier to discuss for a lot of reasons.

One other point I'd make is that I think people may be accidentally overestimating the friendliness of English for printing, to some degree, because sometimes it sounds like that people think that Japanese, Arabic, or whathaveyou people are just completely unwilling to make any practical concessions to the fact that technology might have some problems reproducing their language. But it's not as if English was not itself compromised by technology.

How much of this discussion sounds like "No English-speaking country would use a typewriter because English is written with a different amount of space allocated to each letter, which typewriters of the era could not reproduce."? English speakers adapted to the tech. Telegrams historically looked like crap... they couldn't even have _punctuation!_... but they were popular even so.

Granted, English may have a particularly easy time of it (it is, admittedly, quite nice to fit a quite usable subset of your language into five bits), but I'd like to see some more concrete evidence that all these other cultures were unwilling to bend for a while, because they were so much more concerned about... whatever it is they were concerned about.

(Also, to be clear, I'm speaking about day-to-day usage. Being particular about the Koran is one thing, being unwilling to bend in an text message on your 1998 phone is quite another.)

<comment><USER8> > One other point I'd make is that I think people may be accidentally > overestimating the friendliness of English for printing

I don't think so to be frank. When compared to Japanese or Arabic, once could say English was created solely for printing. I'm a native Arabic speaker, so I can appreciate why people would claim it's a difficult language to print. Word processors and some browsers, to this very day, sometimes have trouble rendering Arabic properly, especially when it comes to linking characters and Arabic punctuation.

> Telegrams historically looked like crap... they couldn't even have > punctuation!.

English punctuation does not significantly alter meaning in my opinion. You have sentence-ending punctuation, which is used to differentiate mainly between a statement and a question. Then you have separator punctuation, like commas, semi-colons, and colons. I don't see them making much of a change either. And finally, the apostrophe and quotation mark. In addition, telegrams are short messages, so there usually is no need to convey complex meanings. Therefore, it would have been a slight inconvenience for telegram users at most.

In Arabic, changing a punctuation mark above a single letter in a word can change the word's meaning entirely. Furthermore, letters are linked together to form words - this is not essential, but would make things much more difficult to read. Also, the position of a letter in a word dictates its "shape". This introduces a ton of variation to the letters of the language, making it difficult for even modern keyboards to get right. I'd imagine it would have been even more complex at the beginning.

Of course, I think that the main barrier to widespread adoption of the printing press in the Arab World was more related to demand than anything else. At the time of the Industrial Revolution and slightly before it, the Arab countries' least concern was printing books, as they were too busy dealing with the imperialist occupation.

<comment><USER10> > letters are linked ... get right.

That whole section applies equally well to many written forms of English. I'm not an expert but I think modern Latin "print" forms (i.e., the only forms an increasing number of Anglophones can read or write, aside from very similar modern italic) are as much a product of the limitations of the printing press as anything. Look at the archaic forms of the letter /s/ for a start.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Beautiful font! I can't read the language, but have done some software work in the middle east, and Harir looks much cleaner to my eye than the helvetica knock-offs in arabic.

If you want a real challenge in il8n, try ensuring that all the ligatures are correct in generated PDFs.

</comment><comment> finance-geek I think a great test for the font would be to have Quran readers read the Quran with it, and perhaps test their speed. It is a pretty good benchmark. I have a HUGE problem with reading the Quran electronically because i'm used to the Indo-Pak script and become almost illiterate when reading the traditional Arabic script. Unfortunately most electronic materials are in the traditional Arabic script.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does "elementary school" mean something other than school for 5-11 year olds in other countries? I am having trouble imagining 10 year old me being concerned with a font's "inelegant spacing and minimal kerning."

<comment><USER13> As I understand it, this is not "somewhat unpleasant" or something a pedant would notice, but absolutely horrible.

Most elementary students would notice and dislike kerning like this [https://static.flickr.com/55/134612871_dd482da6a2_o.gif](https://static.flickr.com/55/134612871_dd482da6a2_o.gif) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Incredible!</comment>


Code History Miner - <AUTHOR> http://codehistoryminer.com/index.html <comment><USER2> Interesting project. Serious question: Have repo analytics actually given you any useful results? Especially pertaining to a business? There are no case studies here. So many companies / people say "we'll help you analyze and view your data!" but then come up short for how that data practically affects anything. Looks like you're going down that path As A Business™. What sorts of results are you expecting to see?

<comment><USER3> I'm not the poster but I've done some grad research on software metrics and it is a hot topic, but if you look at it objectively, it does offer value. What has stuck with me the most in my research is, metrics should be used to gauge risk and quality and not performance.

Microsoft's research division has published a bunch of academic papers on code churn related metrics like the following:

[http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=6912...](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=69126)

And if you do a quick google search, you'll find others like:

[http://web2-clone.research.att.com/export/sites/att_labs/tec...](http://web2-clone.research.att.com/export/sites/att_labs/techdocs/TD_100504.pdf)

However looking at what was posted, I'm not sure the product calculates code churn in same the way that I've learned it to be. My understanding of code churn and as it is used in academic research, describes code churn as the total number of lines added, changed and deleted between two points. The ability to distinguish between line additions, changes and deletions are important.

For example, as you get closer to a release milestone, you would expect the churn to be line changes as opposed to adding or removing lines. Adding/removing lines is an indication of restructuring, while line changes would be modifications to existing source.

There also does not appear to be any obvious way to drill into the churn data to see what files are creating the churn. Maybe this is information is in the database, but being able to identify areas of churn is important. Having churn in your documentation is definitely not as risky as having churn in your core code as you get closer to a certain milestone.

I'm currently working on better integrating my code churn technology with GitHub and I have some examples at

[http://imgur.com/a/d4avE](http://imgur.com/a/d4avE)

which goes over how code churn metrics can be used to better understand repo changes.

Edit:

I didn't realize the charts were interactive, but it does appear to recognize lines added, changed and deleted. However it is not clear how the churn is calculated. Not sure if it is a cumulative churn or if it is diff churn.

<comment><USER4> That sounds really interesting. You seem to know a lot about this matter; if you would create simple istructions about how to (1) gets stats from the typical production repo, (2) interpret these stats and (3) take actions based on these stats, I think that a lot of people would find it very valuable. So far, I've only seen solutions offering 1 and 2, but not even suggesting 3, and they were typically focused on wow factor than being useful for business. Personally, I would definetly pay for a reasonable subscription for SAAS that would do that for me with minimum setup hussle: while I have vague ideas about how to interpret repository stats, I don't have enough experience of doing it to be sure and certainly not enough time to set it up.

<comment><USER3> Interpreting the metrics is always going to be a hard thing and I really can't see how this can become a SAAS business. The metrics generation part can certainly be, but how you should react to the numbers will depend on the software being developed, the people developing the software, and so forth. Basically there are a lot of variables to consider.

However, if step 1 (collecting the metrics) is done poorly, you'll have no real way of making sense of what is going on and people tend to use this to push some agenda. The most important thing in my mind, is being able to capture information in a non-objective way. Developers, manager, project managers, etc. should be able to scrutinize the numbers. And to be able to do this, you need to be able to capture every line change and be able to abstract this change in a way that makes sense to upper management.

For example, since GitLab is a hot topic right now, I've decided to index it to see what is going. If you goto

[https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/graphs/contributors)

you'll find GitHub's metrics for GitLab development. I like GitHub, but none of their metrics, provides any indicators for code quality or gives you any indicators of where to look for potential code quality problems. The closes thing is this:

[https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/graphs/code- frequency](https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/graphs/code-frequency)

but their date range is way too great to provide any meaningful metrics. Those large spikes in the past are creating way too much noise. However if you goto

[http://imgur.com/lTW3lZh](http://imgur.com/lTW3lZh)

you'll find a screenshot that shows the code churn for the master branch for the last 30 days. And that large spike not too long ago should make you wonder what's going on, and this is where being able to dig into the number is important.

Since everything is captured in a SQL database, a simple query shows the following:

13376 (total), 13376 (add), 0 (chg), 0 (del), fixtures/emojis/index.json

which explains everything. What this means to you will vary and it's why I don't think you can really make a SAAS business out of interpreting the numbers. The best you can do is capture everything under the sun and make it as easy as possible for them to make sense of the numbers.

<comment><USER5> Cool, we're thinking of adding code analytics features to GitLab 8.5, what do you think of [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ee/issues/112](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/112) ?

<comment><USER3> I was actually going to fire off an email to you or comment on the issue at GitLab to further discuss GitLab's metrics plans/ambitions. Having spent years refining my indexing engine, I know being able to capture data accurately is not a trivial thing to do at the enterprise level (hundreds of repositories with 10's of thousands of branches) and the bullet points in the issue are certainly lofty if you want to make the numbers meaningful and drillable.

I also can't overstate the importance of branch level indexing, as this is what people always neglect to do, since it doesn't scale well. However with branch level indexing, you can answer questions like where do we stand with release x and y very easily.

Using GitLab development as an example, if a project manager wants to know how aligned release 8.4 and master are, the only options they have right now is to do a compare, which results in this:

[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/compare/master...8-4...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/compare/master...8-4-stable)

which can be quite overwhelming. Or you can tell them how many commits they are behind and ahead of one another which is interesting, but doesn't put things into perspective.

However, if you've indexed things at the branch level, you'll be able to provide them with a higher level picture like this:

[http://imgur.com/lzHlk2P](http://imgur.com/lzHlk2P)

which shows the deviation didn't start until around the 12th. And with further manipulation, you can show them something like this

[http://imgur.com/yewQJBc](http://imgur.com/yewQJBc)

which shows the unique commits per branch. And from there, you can start drilling into the data like so

[http://imgur.com/58FExxL](http://imgur.com/58FExxL)

to see what commits they were and what issues they fixed.

Without branch level indexing, providing this type of metrics would not be possible. And as I've stated before, if you are focused on capturing the smallest detail, you'll be able to make the metrics meaningful for everybody.

Let me know what is the best way to get in touch, as making my technology available for GitLab is definitely on the roadmap.

<comment><USER5> Looks cool, good point to make provide the analytics per branch. I would love to get in touch, please email sytse@ company domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please don't use an auto-carousel, _especially_ for interactive features. There's nothing more annoying than clicking a drop-down only to have the carousel move.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've considered doing something like this myself for fun. I thought something like "code ownership by file" could be useful for example.</comment>


Ron Graham has left us - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Graham <comment><AUTHOR> A few years ago I wrote up the story[0] of how I not only met, but became first colleagues, then friends. He was absolutely lovely. Phenomenal mathematician, wonderful juggler, and a lovely person to be around.

We didn't meet often, but I'm sad to think I won't see him again. I'll miss him.

[0] [https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/MeetingRonGraham.html?tg07hn](https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/MeetingRonGraham.html?tg07hn)

</comment><comment><USER2> [https://www.bradyharanblog.com/blog/the-day-i-met-ron- graham](https://www.bradyharanblog.com/blog/the-day-i-met-ron-graham)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fabulous story, thanks.

FWIW, the David Eisenbud mentioned there is one of the other authors on the paper I co-authored with Ron, and via which I got my Erdos number (of the first kind) of 2.

But that piece by Brady exactly reflects the kind of person Ron was. Enthusiastic, engaging, personable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Ron Graham on Numberphile - "How Big is Graham's Number"

[https://youtu.be/GuigptwlVHo](https://youtu.be/GuigptwlVHo)

</comment><comment><USER3> I couldn't find anything corroborating this claim, and the entry seems to be removed from Wikipedia for lack of source, so is this really true?

<comment><AUTHOR> We get this every time. The wheels of official announcements grind exceedingly slowly. Feel free to reserve judgement until you see it on Wikipedia. I went through the same clog dance with Berlekamp, Guy, and Conway.

There have been no official announcements in print that Wikipedia are willing to accept as definitive. I've got my information from professional research mathematicians who have worked in related areas, and knew him well.

<comment><USER4> I heard the news this morning from a close friend who I know to be a close friend of Ron Graham's wife. I was pretty upset (still trying to grapple with him being almost 85!) and I wanted to see if there was another announcement, so I went over to Wikipedia and saw that it hadn't been updated so I plopped over and added it. For my effort I get this screeching achtung warning sign accusing me of vandalism. I tried clearing it a couple times and an "editor" comes back and adds it again. What a bunch of jerks.</comment></comment></comment>


Derek Wise, CTO at Pricline.com explains why it's important to reward failure - <AUTHOR> http://www.venturi-group.com/podcast/cto-guide-rewarding-failure/ <comment><USER2> Title might need changing - he's the CTO of Grapeshot, not Pricline.com (which I think should have been Priceline.com anyway.)

> In this episode Andy Davis talks to Derek Wise, the CTO at Grapeshot.</comment>