Seeing a post on Joi Ito's site reminded me how horrible aspartame is for humans. I have a good friend in Denver who drank tons of diet soda and always felt like crap. He thought it was just fatigue or something — he always felt tired and had cold symptoms.

So I came across this book published by disinfo.com called "You Are Being Lied To." You can buy it from them, or off Amazon. Anyway, I bought the book for my Mom, and it came with a PDF version that I read. It has an extremely disturbing but detailed story about the history of NutraSweet (aspartame), and people who have died from it. One man died in his mid thirties after having felt fatigue and cold symptoms for a long time. He died suddenly, and it was found that his body was overflowing with formaldehyde.

So I got my friend to read the article and he quit drinking it right away, and felt like a new man. Felt way better all around. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but you can't deny what this stuff breaks down into and creates in your body — very very bad for you.

This is disgusting stuff, guys. You can read the article Joi linked to here too. Please, anyone who is drinking this stuff, think twice about drinking a diet soda. There are other solutions. Diet RC Cola uses Splenda, a new sweetener that is totally safe for the body. You can buy packs of Splenda in most stores, or you can also buy stevia, a root from the amazon that's sweet but contains very few calories. It's something like 100 times sweeter than sugar for the calories...

Update:

This is by no means a clear-cut issue. Check here for an analysis and further links supporting the proposition that aspartame is perfectly safe for most people (thanks to Richard Heggland for the link). As many of you have said, "everything in moderation" is a good motto.

Hmmm. What is this lad thinking, you might ask... Yes, I was/am a programmer by trade, but more and more, I'm thinking that 'programming' as it was is going away.

Give me one good reason why I might need to use a text-based programming language to produce a program. You might say the most obvious answer, which would be that that's the only way you can do some things. Sure. But it doesn't have to be this way.

You may need to enter formulas or mathematical functions for special applications, but since VB everyone knows that UIs don't need to be coded. 99% of other tasks are similar. They can be handled by machines. The user need only manipulate a code-generating application.

I am constantly frustrated and dismayed by the sight of numerous programmers writing complex buggy code to access a SQL database. Doesn't this strike anyone else as a total waste of time? Anything as simple as a database should simply communicate automatically through a protocol to other software components. The code-generating application should handle all details of the protocol, unless tweaks need to be made, in which case they should be made as settings in the code-generation app.

Money is wasted whenever humans do something that machines can do, regardless of how well the machines do it. I could hand-code assembly routines to do a number of things, or let a compiler do it worse. In the end, it really is a waste of my time unless the difference between my code and the machine's code is significant to humans. Currently, it's not.

Is the difference between human-coded and automatically generated data objects that hide a database layer significant to the end user? Absolutely not. Must we hack macros and templates in C++ to avoid all runtime calculation, making our programs scream? Almost never.

Humans should only be coding the things that machines still cannot do at all. Once they can, and no one can tell the difference in the end product, we should move on and apply our expertise somewhere else.

Programmers don't want to think this is true. Unfortunately, the trend is undeniable. The future of programming is VB, Cold Fusion, Flash, etc. 99% of the work in a design app, 1% in code. This is the only way to leverage our knowledge and stop rewriting algorithms. We let the machines do it. I want to say it's really a shame, but I'm not sure exactly what will happen to all the programmers out there today... Maybe all the good ones will just end up writing games, doing research, writing code-generation apps, or doing something else...

Good luck, amigos...

So I hadn't really been paying much attention to this sniper thing... The only annoying thing about it was that in the beginning, every single channel was running live shots of some cop saying he didn't know squat, 24 hours a day.

That's what I really hate about TV in the U.S. When a story somehow passes a critical 'sensational-ness', it blocks out every other story in the world, and we can't even find out whether Europe has another strike, or that China bullied Taiwan again...

But yesterday this butt-nugget actually shot someone at a shopping center where I had been hanging out earlier that day. This has made it more personal. It makes me want to get myself a gun.

I had actually been thinking about registering for a concealed carry permit in Virginia and learning to shoot, since we may be living here for a while. I firmly believe that the only way to catch this guy is for him to screw up, or for someone on the scene to go after him with a gun. If we can trust most of our citizens to be good people, we can take advantage of them to stop crazies like this guy.

Sure there should be regulations, but years of the toughest gun laws have failed to produce anything in D.C. but the murder capital of the world. Do they have anything to lose by allowing upstanding citizens to carry handguns, allowing them to defend themselves, allowing them to stop crimes?

Welp, I'm trudging through my law school applications as we speak. I've rewritten my personal statement once, and now I have to do it again. I'm lining up recommendations all over, and meeting with intimidatingly successful people to try to get advice and help wherever I can.

The funniest thing is that I recently talked to another Carnegie Mellon alumnus who is now a professor of Intellectual Property law, and he thought that law school was a piece of cake if you could get through Computer Science at CMU... It was actually pretty funny to hear him talk about it... According to him, since most of the people in law school studied history or English or something, they have no clue what it's like to stay up all night coding in Prolog or solving differential equations... ;) He may have a point. I hope it's true, at least... ;)

Well, I just knew it would have to happen — I had to sleep all night to be lucid for an important meeting today... Don't think this means I'm giving up! I still have hopes that I'll get this thing down, but I may have to wait a while... Argh.

This reminds me of when I started learning the dvorak keyboard layout, which is what I've used for years now. I was in college, so I had to constantly go back to typing in qwerty for papers and programs I was working on... Finally, I got to a point where I could get real work done in dvorak, albeit very slowly... So I made the jump at that point.

Unfortunately, when it comes to interviews and such, I doubt I can make the impression I want without a full night of sleep... I'll try to start again tonight, and see how far I get... :)

Crazy jingus, dude. Expect me to become more and more delirious as I progress in this absurd experiment. Last night I failed to sleep at 6pm and 10pm, although I garnered some much needed rest... I felt great until 2, and had high hopes. The following events are kind of blurry though, so I can only relate what I think happened... ;)

I overslept and was awoken by my wife around 4am, I think... I got up and was ok but kinda groggy... I tried to read a bit, but had a hard time, so I watched some anime until 6, when I went back to sleep again, attempting to stay on schedule. This time, I again overslept, and was woken by my wife... actually, maybe the first time I just woke up on my own... I'm not sure anymore... Anyway, I finally ended up getting in bed and sleeping for probably 3 hours or so..... argh.

I'm pretty dead today. I skipped my 10am spot, and I'll try to sleep again at 2pm... This is extremely difficult.

Well, last night, after finishing the essay for my law school applications, I decided to finally try the Uberman sleep schedule. The plan is to sleep anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes every four hours, which comes to 1.5 to 3 hours of sleep per day. :)

Of course, my first night was an utter failure. I decided to try to sleep 30 minutes at 2, 6, and 10 o' clock each day. So last night at 2am, I tried to nap on the couch, and didn't sleep at all. I then made the mistake of getting into bed, thinking that I'd be able to just sleep half an hour and get up again with an alarm... hehe. Yeah, right. I finally woke up around 9:30. Oh well, I'll just have to try again tonight. :) If this works, it will be worth all the effort... ;)