Entrée to Long Weekend

Whoa, just turned around to see the rain. Glad I missed it on the way in, but happy that I had the forethought to bring the brawly from my trunk.

Last night went to a software geek-a-thon event with talks on three programming 'scripting' languages (that moniker is pretty passé these days). The topics were perl, python and ruby. The speakers ranged form okay to poor, but they knew their stuff. One younger guy made the mistake of trying to surf and 'show us stuff' while presenting. Bad idea - nothing says boredom quicker than watching someone surf. But it feels like a great thing to the guy doing it, I guess. Another guy had huge issue with huffy, faux exasperation, and slagging every programming language.

I don't hold it against them too much - they're software guys and relating to groups of people isn't their strong point. There was some good info in there, and it was a nice change for an evening, so I can live with that. And a pretty casual crowd too. I was hoping to network a bit, which I did. Just the start of collecting contacts for the venture - assuming the prototype works out okay.

We're just rolling into a long weekend, but I have a full day ahead of me, and feel pretty positive. I need to do a bit of real-work on my archive of past work this morning, then can get back to my project. Getting closer to seeing a first prototype of the vision in action.

Researchinators dreaming in technicolour.

Contemplate First Real Estate Options

Listen to that - pretty much silent. At 9:08 in the morning (never believe blogger time stamps they're always out of whack). Oh drat, the silence broken by distant chatter. It was just me and the HVAC for a minute there it seemed, even though there are hundreds of desks around me - well dozens anyway.

I'm thinking more about offices these days as I'm contemplating picking up some office space rather than do the work from home thing again. If I could economically do that - say for $3000 for a year. That wouldn't be too bad. Some mini-office with shared reception perhaps. And security. Last thing I'd want to do is set up software-based company in an office and have someone steal the whole thing. Perhaps a robust, firewall protected network drive on my home network would help.

Anyway, I've been through this set-up a company thing before, and it's not pretty. The resources for the initial phase of a business are slim to none. There are multi-million dollar handouts for large firms - like this oceanographic research organization I'm currently sitting in. But as someone trying to start a business that would grow at 1000% p.a. for a few years, there's nothing. Sure the odds are small that it will succeed, but some bets should be placed based on experience and good product concepts.

Meanwhile I struggle away on my concept in the background. There's a downtown event tonight on a few software topics... sounds mildly interesting, but more so as a networking opportunity. Should be chock full of awkward, socially challenged folk with whom I could find some avenues toward collaborators.

Researchinator dreams big...

Instant Accidental Fame

Fun story this morning on the iPhone girl. Whoa, there's some google bait. AP has picked it up and so it's all over the place - unfortunately with the identical wording everywhere. Amazing how news outlets don't do any work. Just pay AP the fees and stick the stories directly into your paper/website etc.

Anyway, someone at a factory takes a pic of a girl across from them and it doesn't get erased from the phone before it's sold. A guy in England buys the phone and shares it.

The best response I saw is that a bunch of people wish they had a pic of a cute Asian factory worker on her phone. It's only a matter of time before they identify her (she's asked her company not to divulge her name).

Beyond the appeal of a story about a cute girl, I'm interested in the reactions to this, as evaluated by looking at the comments on the macRumors site or elsewhere. First, people speculate that she would be fired hy the heartless Chinese company. (Hello? She's sitting at a workstation on the far side of the bench. She didn't take a picture, it's someone else operating the camera feature). Then there is the huge need to know who she is. Even to the point of someone standing outside the factory trying to identify her among shift changes.

The next thing to expect is that her life is now hugely changed. She will become a brief huge celebrity - bigger even if the story gets further into mainstream press. And lets face it, iPhone + cute + China: it's got all the hallmarks of a media feeding frenzy.

Anyway - a brief digression but an interesting insight into pop-culture, random fame and emerging consumer electronics.

Researchinator now goes off to check his AAPL share price...

Ugh, the Archive

Okay, I've procrastinated long enough. As my team of crack oceanographic researchers is being disbanded, I need to archive a bunch of the work, and that's what I'm doing today. Ugh - it is unpleasant work.

In truth, a bunch of stuff was created before my arrival, and just sorting through that was a chore. I wish I'd seen some of it earlier. I actually didn't discover all that right away, but it's just as well. The project was a bit of a big slimy slug all along with lack of funding and weak team staffing etc.

I'll be happy to put this behind me at some point. Meanwhile, building an attractive and concise archive with an HTML front end on it is my chore and I'm nearly finished. Soon I'd like to get back to my regularly scheduled side project.

Researchinator out...

Zooey Morning

Up at 2:00 and 4:00 and 7:00 today, so not 100% coherent I don't think. But the morning is in front of me and I had some good brainwaves on the weekend for my side project, which I can start to pursue. At 2:00 I needed to open some windows - a Sunday of canning tomatoes left a lot of residual heat in the house that collects upstairs when the AC goes off for the night. Windows open, the cool air coming in by then I was back to sleep, but at 4:00 my SO needed to get up to catch a plane to Washington. So awake again - the bonus though is listening to CBC overnight service - radio from around the world. Quite enjoyable. Then finally back to sleep after her departure and then it's up for work finally at 7:00... well I stretched it to 7:35-ish. I'm skeptical that that lay around awake thing really does anything more for your 'restedness' but it seems good at the time. Should probably just get up and go once you're awake, I suspect.

But on with my work. I'm also approaching "The Big Read" - that portion of a project where you know you'll need to go off and do a bunch of reading. Probably sometime this week.

In actuality, I've already been reading a bit around the periphery of this subject matter - some specific software engineering techniques. But I'll need to do a much more serious dig into it soon. Best to do it while I'm with my big oceanographic research company, where they have access to the journals etc that will be useful.

My morning tea is a bit disappointing. Probably not hot enough water. Ugh.

Researchinator takes another sip anyway...

Wrapping up the Week With a Peach

It's a peachy morning. Literally - I'm eating a peach for desk-breakfast. Otherwise it's a pretty normal morning. I wonder, in common usage, if the word peach isn't more often used in non-literal usage, either as a simile or a figurative phrase. I guess the combo of the lusciousness and the fuzziness make it 'ripe' for the job. (Ha!)

I had a good day yesterday on a few fronts. I went for lunch with a bunch of colleagues as I wrapped up the collaborative patenting action. Two new oceanographic patents have their paperwork all done, and into the patent group to wrap up. Plus I splurged for a nice lunch for everyone on the company's ticket, so I don't feel so bad getting them to sign over their patents. Plus these folks get their names on patents which is great for their collective resumes in the world of oceanographic research.

In the afternoon, rather than drive back to the office, I set up at home and put the effort into doing some more coding on my exploratory project. It was nice to use my quality apple keyboard - the slim one is such a luxury compared to this clunky Dell one I'm typing this on glgzqieygsh <-- see how hard it is to type! whew! Plus my big monitor - not that my work monitor (also a Dell) is bad. it's a good 19" flat monitor I stare at now, but I like my Samsung widescreen for coding. Side by side screens work out quite well. I think this Dell has better contrast or gamma or something.

I made good progress though, and filled in more UI on the app side of my project. Still another chunk of UI stuff to do. I'm dying to get past the initial coding and into a) the video processing part of my work and b) the business development side. Particularly the latter is in dire need of attention. But given that it is friday, and I've accomplished my main reason (the documents) for being in the corporate nexus, I might just shift to the home office shortly.

The Rewards of Completing Check-off-able Items

Real work gets in the way briefly as I try to clean up some collaborative work with local Universities. I'll be happy to put this to bed, though I enjoy the interaction with the Uni set. It's an interesting thought - working in academia. I don't know that tenure really means that much anymore, but the idea that you can have this job where you research stuff perpetually in your specific interest area without really having to answer to anyone would be great.

But that's only superficially the case. Getting closer to it, I see that there are issues with departmental hierarchy, pressure to publish, funding relationships and the constant need to teach a bunch of ungrateful louts. Plus the pay really sucks from what I've seen, perhaps only 60% of my industrial salary. With all that stuff it's not so pleasant I suppose. Still there's a fair bit of freedom, and only minor schedule pressure. Short of being wealthy enough to do your own thing, it's hard to find many roles like that.

My last 2 years have been pretty free of pressures really, in this Oceanographic research conglomerate. Actually my last 7 years have all been pretty diverse, and reasonably low on stress, though there are stresses of other sorts. Where is my next gig, how's my cash-flow going to turn around, can I make anything of this entrepreneurial kick. But those are in someways better than the work-a-day stresses of my boss is a pestering idiot, or politics has shut down my group - oops, the latter has just happened. But the side-effects include this new entrepreneurial

Anyway, I'm off topic as blogs tend to usually be. Suffice to say that my day will be running around wrapping stuff up, but conceivably I could be finished with the Uni part of the work by this afternoon. One less 'to-do' item.

After that the big issues are a patent and an archive and then I should be reasonably happy with my completeness.

Researchinator looks forward with eagerness, and a little trepidation to boot.

Routine - Does it Wear You Down or Pump you Up?

We start our days with the same routines typically. There would be a great study - looking at divergence in morning rituals - well, ritual is the wrong word. Routine is better. I wonder if you looked at other species if the same thing would be visible. Over the last 25 years, I have gotten up for a shower and grab the keys and wallet and badge 25 x 300 = 7500 times. Man.

Some days I anticipate that first swing of a foot out of bed and think - ugh. I wish there was a better way. I guess I need a big mansion with 3 or 4 full bathrooms, so I can pick a different one every day, randomly, just to get a bit of variety in that part of my life.

But I've said it before and will again, we are creatures of habit, and we crave that sort of structure. When you take it away, as I have a few times in the past, while working from home, you quickly realize that there was personal value in it. That process is somehow life-affirming. It gives you a sense of belonging, a sense of place, and reinforces that you have a role in society somehow.

So what's the solution? I think the first step is being aware both of the routine and of its value. After that you can make some decisions. I'm sure the research would show that most animals have these routines. Being aware of yours gives you a sense of those things on which you are dependent. Running water, the radio (CBC! in spite of the inane morning host on our local version), transportation (vehicles, roads, gas), and the company and co-workers around you.

What if one of these things was unavailable? How difficult would that be for you. I know a morning without radio is really tough, even though the people on it are progressively more annoying, and their writing is deteriorating. I've changed my driving route to remove stress, though there's still one stress point, the timing is good and the pace is more relaxing. Around the office the routine has changed in that I'm no longer leading research for a big Oceanographic research concern, but rather pushing on my own, solitary research project, which is more isolating, but more interesting as well.

We should all be aware of the routines that we live with, and mess with them occasionally just to better understand what makes us tick. Through turning those things off and on we can understand our dependencies and maybe make improvements for the better. Try a different route to work, a different approach to your work and gain some perspective.

Researchinator turns to the routine of a morning cup of tea.

Work

Okay, nothing to say as I am eager to get into my day today, and make some headway. A few days of poor progress are weighing on me!

Mushy Monday

I'm a bit slow getting into my Monday morning. A number of intellectual pursuits took over my brain. I saw a great video on the weekend - an episode of Time Team, the British archeology show, where they did some rather small scale digging on Bodmin Moor, a place my SO and I visited a couple of years ago and really enjoyed.

Picture a barren landscape strewn with obvious markings of neolithic age all around you. As you walk the land and scale the two tallest 'peaks' in England's southwest, you quickly end up with a huge basket load of questions.

Upon return, I found that there aren't a lot of answers out there. Then layer on top of it all structures you can only see from the air (e.g. Google Earth) and you get a bunch of more q's. Oh yeah, and the whole Arthurian legend is based on the area.

What's more surprising is that the area has been so lightly excavated. I'd have thought that any self respecting University in the neighbourhood (which for Canadians means all of the UK) would be out there digging a spot every semester. I'd have though that every stone bigger than a loaf of bread would be in a computer model somewhere and we'd be running plausable structure probabilities out of them. (Hmmm... has anyone thought of doing that? Maybe a thesis in there for someone).

But the questions persist, and I feel very drawn to the place. As research goes, the concept of archeological exploration is a challenging one for me. I could easily imagine consuming my entire lifetime with it, yet the payoff potential is pretty much zero. I'd have to live in a hovel, blowing my pennies on replacement shovels and canned food, but would be pretty engrossed the whole time.

Oh well, meanwhile my other research interests await. With them there is a possibility of both intellectual accomplishment and big payoff that changes the way people do things on a daily basis. That's pretty rewarding. And who knows, if that were to work out, it might give me the ability to buy a little chunk of land off Bodmin moor and set about digging up my garden.

Researchinator dreams of dirty fingernails, a sore back, and a tray full of pottery shards.

Brain Taken-over By Alien Forces

There's a side-effect of software development you only notice if it's something you do sporadically. You start to think differently, and your social interaction skills begin to wane. Now there's no use arguing with me. If you're a software guy, it's too late, you can't see the forest for the trees, you're in too deep. This is of course a generalization, but it's just what I've noticed.

In general the large teams of software people and the individuals I've hired or inherited are characterized by a social awkwardness that also binds them together. As well as thinking logically about things, or at least from their perspective, and within their bubble, they have trouble with the niceties of human interaction. I'm comfortable with it, a couple of decades into my career, but I'm sure it creates challenges interacting with the outside world. Outside their brains that is.

These are little things mostly, not understanding some of the basic boundaries in conversation, laughing too hard at a joke, minor frustration in expressing thoughts about everyday things, in ordinary language that others don't seem to get. I've also noticed an inordinate number of references to their childhood families. "My Dad says...", "My mother was doing...", "My sister..." even though they are married with kids and (hopefully) long since moved out of their parents homes. (The unmarried SW guys have a propensity to avoid that well into their 30's, but that's another topic).

Anyway, I hope I'm not doing any of that stuff. But when I'm immersed in software development for a while, as I have been for the last several weeks, pushing on this new entrepreneurial project, I start to notice some changes in my behaviour. I start to get more non-verbal with other people. There are more periods of silence when my wife and I are out driving somewhere or something, where I'm lost in thought on my current program or module. I laugh and ask her "whoa, how long was I out?" Also in conversation, my speech doesn't seem to keep up with my thinking like normal, and I'm not getting the words I want when I want them.

I don't know why these things happen - I can probably take a few guesses with my scientist hat on, and my closet psychologist's theory. It's mostly interesting, as one observes groups of people who do software do it day-in, day-out for their careers. Thus, it's a luxury to experience it for a block of a month or two every few years. It lets you see how you change when your brain goes into a different mode, and helps you understand the reason for some of the bizarre, awkward conversations you hear in the hallways.

I just hope I can wrap up what I'm doing, and hand it over to a software team sometime in the near future, and get back to running an organization. But I think getting into another's mindset occasionally is a good part of seeing things from a broader perspectives.

Researchinator turns to his neighbour to relate an awkward story about his parent's bathroom habits...

Globe in Disarray, Researchinator Hangs Tough

There is another layer to life that the average person doesn't see, but which was exposed a little more this week through some good media work. I recall my August Wired magazine had reported on the so-called cyber-attacks on Georgia. There was just a good NYTimes article that updates the situation, and outlines how the military action was presaged by a cyber attack.

I see the CBC read the NYTimes yesterday too. There's this pecking order, it seems. Journalists read wired, write an article, then other journalists read that and write another themselves.

I wonder if one of the global internet performance sites could be a tool then to predict global conflict. At least where the shady Russian military and their pals in organized crime are involved. I'd imagine that the investment community is probably up on it already - no doubt big movers selling short on anything connected to the war zone before the shooting starts. Actually that's an even better indicator of pending war: the insiders dumping shares or taking up short positions.

This makes you wonder how much work is going on on the other side of the coin, with industry protecting against big DDOS attacks on commercial and government infrastructure. We minor users of technology are mere pawns in the activity I guess.

As I sit at my computer in the morning and craft some future product idea, I'm just one of the potential victims, as my eggs get put into the same basket as everyone else's.

Today is the anniversary of the big blackout in 2003. It was rather a pleasant affair really, for us. However, I recall while going for a warm evening walk in the pitch black with my wife how tentative is that veneer of civilization. The only piece remaining was the information. Without radio/TV access through batteries etc, nobody would have known what was going on. How far from panic in the streets would we have been then, I wonder. Instead it was a bit of a break-up of the ordinary summer week.

I remember though that there were frustrated people trying to find cash given the dead ABMs. I was OK but I remember thinking it a good idea to put a couple of hundred bucks away somewhere for such contingencies. Perhaps that is a good idea.

Oh well, such are my deep thoughts on the fabric of society and the worries of global disorder. Meanwhile, Canadian "athletes" continue to fill out the competition in Beijing, to ensure that the medal winning athletes have a good time. We aim to please!

Researchinator looks around for tea-making apparatus.

Morning Passes With Lightening Speed!

Morning slowly merges into lunch time, and I'm not feeling like I got much done. My side project is a software one, and productivity is so fleeting with new software. Some days you can write dozens of lines of code and get a bunch of features in place. Others you can spend the whole day trying to figure out why a window won't resize. Today seems like the latter.

Yesterday, I figured I'd get some chores done in the afternoon, and was rather successful. My passport was due to expire soon, and so I set out to do that. I also remembered an engine light on in my car, and so dropped it off for some diagnosis. Both things went well, got my diagnosis (evaporator leak -ie equiv of loose gascap... more likely a rust hole emerging somewhere, or dying sensor). The passport was lightening fast - less than a 5min visit. A far cry from the huge rush they had in the past for Cdn passports.

So back home in good time, I was able to finish a cake project I started on the weekend, and satisfied a chocolate cake urge I had been fighting for weeks. My briefcase contains another fix, so I'll be saving that for the mid-afternoon fade period.

I did divert a bit from my project this morning to push on some real 'oceanographic research' work. Some patent stuff needed progress, as did some tax credit stuff. So that's pushed along. I even put in plug for my future consulting services to another consultant, just in case I find myself putting that shingle back up in the coming months.

Then back to my project and the frustration of trying to find a hidden feature of UI window management. Such is the fun of my day so far. But the week looks wide open so far, and so I'll push forward and hope to show some progress.

Back in the saddle on Monday morning. This is a great time of year to work in an office, as the infrastructure is much more lightly loaded as the vacations reduce the numbers of commuters, 'park-ers', and co-workers in the building. I did work with a small company once that was in a lightly-occupied office building, and there's a bit of that sense.

But the grass-is-greener-... syndrome (GIGOTOSS?) applies of course. When working with a small firm of 5 or 6 people, you yearn for the clout, budgets and facilities of the big corporation. When employed at BigCorp, GIGOTOSS kicks in and you yearn for the small office, everything you do counts situation, where you have an idea, it's put into practice and the impact is tangible.

Meanwhile, where ever you find yourself working, I hope the summer holiday season is making your daily routine a bit more enjoyable.

Researchinator turns to his project, unencumbered by the distraction of deliverables.

Herculean Olympic-Like Development Effort

Big news story of course is the Olympics, and you can't help but be aware of it with all marketing machines pumping out the juice for that spectacle. One must wonder if today's incursion of Russian and Georgian forces into a clash was merely coincidentally timed with the Olympic Ceremonies, where many foreign leaders are attending?

I also wonder how many governments queue up bad news and sleazy deals to await a big news story and then dump them on the wire, knowing the media's attention will be elsewhere. There are only so many minutes in a newscast,and a lot of them will be on Beijing.

Meanwhile, around our little research group office space, things are quiet. I'm picking away at my software project, made some first progress on defining a UI and now starting to craft the application. Nothing beats pencil and paper for drafting a UI. Well, perhaps a whiteboard, when many people are collaborating. But so much can happen without needing to articulate it into words when you craft something on paper with pencil. Scribbles get captured as meaningful things quickly... well, as long as you write it up quickly.

A thought as I craft a new business idea is always about my implementation role. Seriously, I am not going to be the guy who writes all the code for this venture, but to capture my vision quickly I need to do it. You'd think the mere fact that I can do that would be a big value to me, as many people who lead organizations can't actually implement an idea. Sure I don't do it in my regular day job - and I wouldn't want to. But I don't know that my career of 20-some years has gone anywhere further because of it. Hard to know I suppose. I do know that I can have a much bigger impact directing 15 or 20 guys coding and building HW/SW stuff than I can just doing it all myself. The battle then becomes keeping people 'on vision' rather than roaming wildly based on personal interests. But you also have to balance that against valid better-path options that might arise from their expertise. Not easy to do, especially as every one of them will have an alternative path, whose failure may not come about until well after your going-in vision has been thoroughly trashed and diffused.

The benefit of experience, though is that if you've pushed back on such influences before, to see that your vision was in fact correct, it gives you good strength to stick-to-it in future go-arounds.

But then, doing it yourself, you're down in the weeds and wearing both hats is tough. Writing lots of notes can serve to remind you of where the forest starts and what is just random trees.

Researchinator wants to squeeze in a few more minutes of coding before lunch.

Politics and Research Clustering Challenges

So a flashback: United Oceanography got taken over by Oceans International - that's where I joined in. UnOc was on their last legs - a sinking ship, whereas OcInt was stable in a depressed market. How would you move forward in such a situation? Well, how about putting UnOc management in charge of everything? We're suffering from that now. Go figure, the guys with the bad track record aren't doing so well.

Meanwhile my research group is eliminated in the politics around the joining of the two companies. My research cluster incorporates a number of groups like mine around the world, however of them all, I was probably the most participatory and positive of the directors. So there's this delicious irony that my leader faces disbanding the only positive participating contributor to the group, and is left with a bunch of turf-protecting silos to wrangle.

But this is just introductory to my question today - which is, how do you take a multi-national group of research projects and turn them into a constructive, cohesive cluster? I think part of it is in running the cluster more like the OcInt approach, which had been a loose clustering where the group directors really ran their day to day work independent of any cluster leader, and their success was judged by their conversion of research to product-incorporated elements. A new crustacean detector is released using our shell-calcium spectroscopy: that's a success, the company is getting cash from it.

The UnOc approach was more to judge success based on papers published and conferences attended to talk about sell calcium studies. Both groups valued patents, though OcInt ranked patent value. Again, a better approach. Now the UnOc leadership attempts to manage the mixed projects closely isn't really going so well.

Combining both organization's respective research, gives you a bunch of silos with their existing projects. What do you do? Each will protect those projects at all costs. You can cluster the projects together and track their progress like that, singing their praises to anyone who'll listen. But I think the toughest move is probably the one that ultimately will work best. Pretty much tear up the whole thing, getting mixed teams on the projects that are worthwhile, and cancelling the other ones.

I'm glad I'm getting out of the loop on that, as I think the multi-national politics will be a long on-going issue. But without any remaining constructive participators must be a blow to forging ahead. Then again, the fact that I didn't have any long term alignment with either previous organization probably helped. But that's not for me to worry about anymore.

Researchinator sez whew, freedom is good.

Planning a Days Work When Brain is Slow to Turn-Over

Trying to impose the structure of the day upon my free-wheeling brain. As might be apparent in my recent entries, I'm a bit distracted these days. Lots of time off, and some travel and time around home makes you shift your career into the background somewhat, and getting back into the pace, even on a 4day workweek, a bit tough.

My side project is software based, with both a web-based and stand-alone components. I have a good basic structure for the web-based element, and now the other part - an executable app with some network capability needs to get going, and I'm very slow jumping in. I've got a rough document taking a swag at a UI based on the stuff that has to happen. The app will need several different personalities. I want to think about those a bit before I start anything, but I don't want to get too distracted doing the whole thing. Rather I need to make one personality work (while not precluding the others) and then move forward on getting that up. My need is to get an end-to-end solution in place for rough demos, then to start polishing,improving performance etc.

The blank page, the tyranny of the blank page, I often call it, is the scourge of creative endeavour. Many people don't realize this, and I often direct my staff to just start with creating some shell documents, some application shell, to get the project moving forward. The planning document can go on for ever, as it's often used as an excuse to not get started, even though it's 99% there.

Don't misconstrue this as advocacy for designing stuff without documentation - seems like every start-up I deal with has taken that route. I'm all about planning before action. But I like to have a thorough, generally complete document, rather than a polished book with dust-cover, before starting to build/code stuff.

Anyway, that's my goal for today. Put my planning doc into some basic sense, and get a shell of an application in place so that I can start to fill in gaps.

Researchinator attempts to bridge his blog-based enthusiasm into some actual work for the day...

Still Here!

Another brief summer hiatus in my blog entries, after the series of days on and off described in the previous entry.

Successful in that in has been a relaxing time, but perhaps stressful in that when one is away from work for a while, you start to think about big picture stuff. So while I'm not technically at work just now, I am laying on a couch thinking. Today I was back in the office, but feeling migrainey and so given all that's been going on figured why persevere in the office and instead packed up to have lunch - and the afternoon - at home.

A conference call this morning, and a flurry of emails, so I feel I'm somewhat productive.

This is one of those rare days when I can give in to my circadian (or should I say 'circasemidian') rhythms and doze off if the urge arises. (Here's an interesting paper on that). So I think I'll take advantage of it and do just that.

Researchinator lets the velvet arms of sleep begin to enfold him.