Author: Ianforrester

Senior firestarter at BBC R&D, emergent technology expert and serial social geek event organiser. Can be found at cubicgarden@mas.to, cubicgarden@twit.social and cubicgarden@blacktwitter.io

Dec 21: Diabolo advent calendar

Day 21: Diabolo Genocide
We are getting much closer to the edge of my skill set now.
The suicide can be difficult and the duicide was tricky to learn, but they all pale in compared to the genocide.
While in the suicides and duicides, the diabolo is still realistically on the strong.
In the Genocide, the Diabolo leaves the string and you are left holding one stick. Check out the side view to see it fully.
Its insane and I find it hard to pull off.

Dec 20: Diabolo advent calendar

Day 20: Diabolo stick suicide
One of the key tricks in the Diabolo world is the suicide.
I kinda skipped over it but in short if you let go of a sticks mid trick its a suicide move.

The stick suicide creates a suicide by crossing the sticks to control the speed of the trick. I have seen someone this trick turned into a infinite stick suicide.

Working with my night owl self

Over the last 9 months I changed by work hours from 1000-1800 to 1100-1900. I use to get up out of bed at 0800, giving myself 2 hours to wake up, shower, have  breakfast and get to work on the bike. Generally I would be a sleep about 0100 meaning 6.5-7 hours of sleep. If you feel like you heard this stuff before, you most likely have, here and here and even here. Now with the change in work time, I’m sleeping by 0200 and awake just after 1000. Meaning 8 hours of sleep. I can’t tell you how much better I feel! Some have asked what if I slept 8 hours but shifted your hours towards the morning? They misunderstand what it means to be a night owl vs a morning lark. As explained in this business insider. There are big differences.
Staying awake well into the night and having to wake up early for work can be problematic for people who identify as night owls. As the AsapSCIENCE team points out, most societal activities occur between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., putting night owls at risk of sleep deprivation.
Its not something you can not just simply switch. Even more importantly is the direct effect of the time.
At the very beginning of a workday, the difference between morning and night people can be obvious; morning people seem to be getting everything done, while night owls are slow to get going. But that difference may not last. One hour after waking, early birds and night owls perform equally well in reaction time tests, AsapSCIENCE reports. Ten hours after waking, however, night owls perform significantly better than morning people in similar tests.
I mentioned to colleagues I was recording and editing podcasts at midnight without too much of a problem. Heck I’m writing this blog at midnight right now.I scheduling blogs, microblogs, emails and texts (before I switched back to Google Messages) has been a great way to going unnoticed. Not that I really need to but people always worry when there is a email sent at 0100. Simple as this, 8 hours of sleep starting at 0130, for me is better quality sleep than going to bed earlier at 000 and waking up earlier at 0800. I have 5 years of sleep data which also points in the same direction. I’m a night owl and theres little at this stage which is going to change. The pandemic has been good to me on this front.

Dec 15: Diabolo advent calendar

Day 15: Under leg grind to whip to duicide
Its a impressive trick, the under leg part is quite straight forward when you have the stick grind down. The tricky part is flipping up the diabolo high enough and getting the stick into position for the whip.
Its got to be done pretty quickly and then your pretty much straight into the duicide if you whip the diabolo hard enough and let it follow through.