Party Like its 1234567890

I witnessed this awesomeness first hand, today.

Today I witnessed history — Unix history, that is. At 3:31:30PM today, the Unix epoch timestamp passed the 1234567890 mark.

So, what exactly does this mean?

Essentially, computer time starts on January 1st, 1970 at midnight. We call this time zero (represented by 64 zeroes in binary) and count up from there. Ever since the beginning of 1970, this little 32-bit integer has been counting upwards (in seconds) to keep track of time in computer systems everywhere. Servers, phones, traffic systems, planes, and many other electronic devices all use Unix time. Unix time can be found everywhere, certainly not just in the Unix operating system. Read the rest of this entry »

3 Smart Things About Sleeping Late

My parents are always bugging me about my sleeping habits. They say I need to go to bed BEFORE MIDNIGHT (their definition of a “reasonable time”).

Throughout high school, I routinely stayed up past midnight working on my homework, websites, or just reading articles and listening/watching podcasts.

Despite my best efforts to sleep early, it was all too easy to find justification for staying up just one more hour. I would stumble upon some cool video or article, have an idea for a website feature — and that always took priority over sleep.

Take tonight for instance. I’m posting this message at 5:00AM. And you know what the best part is? I have psuedo-scientific evidence to prove that my night-owl habits are actually good for me.

I stumbled upon this short piece in the January 2009 issue of Wired Magazine, which proves that being a night-owl is AWESOME, and good for you too:

1 // You may need more sleep than you think.
Research by Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders Center found that people who slept eight hours and then claimed they were “well rested” actually performed better and were more alert if they slept another two hours. That figures. Until the invention of the lightbulb (damn you, Edison!), the average person slumbered 10 hours a night.

2 // Night owls are more creative.
Artists, writers, and coders typically fire on all cylinders by crashing near dawn and awakening at the crack of noon. In one study, “evening people” almost universally slam-dunked a standardized creativity test. Their early-bird brethren struggled for passing scores.

3 // Rising early is stressful.
The stress hormone cortisol peaks in your blood around 7 am. So if you get up then, you may experience tension. Grab some extra Zs! You’ll wake up feeling less like Bert, more like Ernie.

P.S. Mom and Dad: if you’re reading this, then you should know I am totally, completely, absolutely kidding about this article… you know I would never, never, never, stay up so late at night… right?

575 Users Waiting For StudyNotes.org Activation Email

575 Inactive Forum Users on StudyNotes.org

When I launched the the StudyNotes.org family of websites in mid-2008, I created a discussion forum so that members could interact with each other. The sites got off to a great start — the AP section alone received 150,000 page views and 55,000 unique visitors from its launch in mid-2008 until the end of the year. Pretty impressive for an incomplete site that I did not promote at all.

The discussion forum, however, was a different story. The forum didn’t see much activity at all, with less than 70 posts at the end of the year. Unfortunately, part of the reason for the forum inactivity was due to an error on my part.

The Damage

Users were registering for the forum, but not receiving activation emails. Thanks to one user who emailed me, I was prompted to investigate. That’s when I discovered the problem: misconfigured SMTP (email) settings in phpBB (the forum software that runs the StudyNotes.org forum).

So, when I checked out the “Inactive Users” section of the Admin Control Panel, I was amazed to see 25 pages of inactive users!

That’s 575 Inactive Users! Read the rest of this entry »