One of the best things about being an entrepreneur in San Luis Obispo, Ca. is that your not alone…there are quite a few other young men and women who are all making their own thing happen right here in my home town. Here in one example: Rich Ferugson, founder of Official Poker, Inc., has released an incredible set of DVD's demonstrating his skill and passing the knowledge on to us lay non-magic folk. Check it out, and go digg it.

Finally, there is a DVD Series that teaches Everyday people Everything with Poker Chips and Playing Cards. Why am I "DIGG'n" this so much?! This box set appeals to just about everyone I need to buy a holiday gift for! Poker, magic, card games, etc are very popular and this DVD Set works for all ages and skill levels. An incredible deal too! A must.

read more | digg story

My roommate got one of these so he could sit on the couch and use his computer hooked up to his HDTV. Naturally I could not resist and had to play with it (it is odd when things like a keyboard start to seem like a toy). And I must say…this is the most amazing keyboard I have used for a Macintosh. The keyboard is super slim and very light to the touch, and the mouse is very accurate (it jumps around far less than the Apple Optical mice).



What most impressed me was the buttons on the far left & right of the keyboard. With the control panel that is installed with this keyboard you can set any one of the buttons to run an AppleScript or Automator workflow that has been saved as an application. Oh the possibilities! This is a major benefit to a company such as BIG Images where a single button on the keyboard can be programmed to send files to print, or initiate a pre-flight check, or update the FileMaker database based on the currently selected Finder items. As far as a tool to increase efficiency this keyboard is awesome. With a single click of the keyboard you can hide all open applications and open only those needed for a specific workflow. That side of me that seeks to be ever–more organized is seething in anticipation. Now I just have to buy one for myself.

I noticed that a few of you were searching for my iPhoto Keyword Tool application. It has been moved, along with Remote iTunes, to delicious:suite. This is the home base for all of the bits of technology that my business partners & I have developed over time. It all started as an attempt to learn AppleScript & a couple other computer languages to help BIG Images embrace an automated & computerized workflow. As we developed our technologies further they took on a life of their own and we are collecting them all at delicious:suite.

Sleep. If only we could do without!

Sleep is not my friend. As a budding young entrepreneur I have a desire to go about life with less sleep and more waking moments in life. I always feel like those moments in bed are moments that could be used for a more noble purpose. I had such a strong desire to sleep less that I set out to do something about it.

As any good Industrial Technologist knows—for something to be controllable it must be measurable. So I wrote down the time I went to sleep and time I woke up every morning for a year. Measuring it gave me a good benchmark to improve upon.



To summarize — I slept an average of 7.40 hours each day and was awake for 16.6 hours of each day. This is a total of 112 days asleep and 253 days awake. Or, to put it another way, I slept away 31% of the year, and was awake for 69% of the year.

After the above graphed year I tried a few experiments with my day to see if I could reduce the time I spent sleeping. For example, I once tried strictly limiting my sleep to 5 hours each night … it lasted about 2 weeks and I gave myself a fever. Then I tried pulling an all–nighter once a week for as many weeks as I could manage. That did not last long either. Most notably because the 2nd day after the all–nighter was always so unproductive that the extra time I was awake did not produce a net increase in my productivity.

I guess I should feel privileged though. I slept 7.40 hours per day on average. That is 1.20 hours less than the average person my age in 1910.

Today, average young adults report sleeping about seven to seven and one-half hours each night. Compare this to sleep patterns in 1910, before the electric lightbulb, the average person slept nine hours each night. This means that today's population sleeps one to two hours less than people did early in the century (Webb and Agnew, 1975). — Stanley Coren, Ph.D. Psychiatric Times. 1998

So to make a long story short — I have yet to find a good way to sleep less on a consistent basis. Any ideas?

5:30 am

Wake up — normally with the assistance of an alarm.
Read in my Bible.
Eat — a small snack to start the day.
Read news — I am an avid RSS news reader.
Clean & dress.
Head off to work — approx 10 minute commute.

7:00 am

Make Coffee — this one is important.
Check email & servers for incoming work.
Respond to emails (make quotes, answer questions, update the to-do list, etc).
Continue reading news.

8:15 am

I am joined by my business partners and we normally talk for about 30 minutes about the past, present, and future. This is a fun time of day — we often muse over crazy ideas that we have drempt up and outline how we are changing the world for the better.

9:00 am

The real work starts — this could include any of the following:

• Web Page updates
• Sales & Marketing
• Computer Programming
• Print Production
• Research & Development
• Finance management
• Networking & contact building
• Project management
• Answering phone calls
• Meetings

1:00 pm

Lunch — often eaten at work where I read more news & emails.

1:30–2:00 pm

Continue with the work from the morning. I often shift focus here, devoting the rest of the day to projects other than what I worked on in the morning.

4:00–5:00 pm

At some point during the day we have to have our moment of comedy & story-telling. Normally this is during the end of the day as things wind down.

6:00-8:00 pm

Head home between 6 & 8 to make dinner.
Read something...more news, a novel (mostly sci-fi or philosophical orientated content)...watch BattleStar Galactica or FireFly...something like this.

9:00 pm

Write. This could be in my journal, a blog, a story, or another project...I just like writing and know that I need practice so I do it in when I can.

10:00 pm –12:00 am

I go to bed.