Xavi's blog

Translating thoughts into words

[xavihead]

Broken meritocracy. Rethinking governance with smart contracts

This document explores why most governance systems fail, and it attempts to create a simple frame to spot some of the problems.

It also suggests how decentralized technologies like blockchains and smart contracts could solve some of the issues and significantly improve the results of the decision-making processes.

Redefining

Meritocracy is a political philosophy stating that power should be vested in individuals almost exclusively based on ability and talent.

Within the context of this document, I won't be referring to political systems or governments specifically but to any decision-making process.

Also, because power is not the same as power for making decisions I'll redefine meritocracy to the following:

Meritocracy is the idea that decisions should be taken by the entities better qualified for it.

Meritocracy as a base

All governance systems are a subset of Meritocracy if you understand merit as the feature that defines the right of an entity opinion to be considered (vote).

The ideal merit

For ease of use and simplification, I narrowed down the relevant merit properties to the following

Defines what's of value to the system in order to make decisions.

Can't be a medium of exchange

Needs to be quantifiable

You can find some examples in this document.

1. Merit defines value

For the system to work, the definition of merit needs to be aligned with the system goals.

It should tell what is of value to the system in order to make decisions. In this sense, merit is used as a filter, only the entities with certain capacities can participate in the decision-making process.

If defined broadly or incorrectly the system is likely to have unintended consequences or be gamed.

I'm using capacities as opposed to skills or knowledge because it can also represent things like ideology, IQ, experience, dedication, intention...

2. Merit is not a currency

It is not a medium of exchange.

If you can trade the merit you end up with a system ruled by the entities that have more economic power and any required capacity intrinsic to the merit is gone.

In consequence, the goal of the systems is reduced to maximizing its profit and the entities that rule it don't have the necessary capacities to do so (other than having economic power).

3. Tokenized merit

This is not a desired feature but a limitation. In order to operate in a system that can scale, we need merit in a quantifiable format.

This should be some sort of (not-exchangeable) capacity-for-decision-making token, although it may have other formats, or be the combination of several metrics.

This value will be used to decide if an entity can vote, and what's the weight of its vote.

In the case of Bitcoin, this is how many times a miner has been the first to find the block hash within a defined amount of blocks.

In the case of nation-state elections, this your ID card.

System failure

Most (I really mean most) systems end up compromising its own interest (#1) in order to make the system usable (#3). And so many others have a direct or indirect way to exchange merit (#2) and therefore compromise its integrity.

Tokenetization problem

Tokenizing merit is very hard, and I believe it to be one of the root causes for failure.

Most governances make use of a mix of certificates, test, recommendations, reputation... to validate the capacity of an entity. Then, a special credential is given to the entity that allows for its opinion to be heard.

This is mostly a manual process, making the system slow and prone to mistakes, and on top of that, extra processes are required to periodically re-evaluate the entity capacities.

Smart meritocracy

Governance has been one of the main use-cases for smart contracts.

The transparency of the blockchain and the programmable and authentication capabilities of smart-contracts make them very suitable.

To my knowledge, though, no project has reconsidered how they approach merit.

Whitelisting merit

As previously described in the analog/centralized world, the voting rights are defined in the identity credentials... not for its current merit. That forces the system to constantly have to re-evaluate these credentials.

By white-listing capacities (merit) instead of entities (usual people), we can have a governance system that is identity agnostic.

This would allow for anyone/anything to be a potential participant (kids, AI, other governances, anonymous entities). And because the system is automatized, the number of participants can be huge without being a problem.

It makes the system more adaptable to the needs and circumstances (just redefine the merit equation) while adhering to the system goals, and still being compatible with old governance systems (you can always make that a required capacity is to be someone).

Accessible metrics

How do you abstract all the necessary capacities to make a specialized decision and represent them in a single number while being in a decentralized/trustless environment?

Some capacities are easy to tokenize: time spent working at X, age, IQ, ownership of Y, citizenship. The ones that really matter are too abstract: knowledge, intentions, insight, fidelity, trust... Those are relatively easy in the analog world but a little harder on a trustless environment.

Reputation systems

Like in the analog world we can use the past as an indicator of the future. We can quantify proven capacities, and use them as merit.

Within this context, merit defines a required capacity of an entity to make decisions, while reputation is a proven record of a capacity.

This makes reputation systems very suitable for governance.

Finding consensus

Whatever metrics the system uses to define merit all the participants need to agree on the state of these metrics.

Blockchains

Blockchains are an instinctive answer. For proving identity, projects like UPort and Blockstack make it already possible.

Currently though, for most of the metrics, the data is unlikely to be available in the blockchain. Current blockchains are too expensive, and most of the decentralized platforms tend to minimize what they write in it.

Most importantly, most of the platforms are still highly centralized, and so is its data.

Trusted third parties

An alternative approach is to use a trusted third party to provide the required metric. Just by digitally signing the required data, we can have a bridge to the centralized world.

Subjective reputation

In general, when we talk about reputation, we refer to subjective reputation. How does an entity feel about something? This means that not all the entities may feel the same way.

But the fact that it is subjective doesn't mean it can't be useful. Like the above, participants just need to agree what entity will be used to digitally sign the reputation metric.

Tokenization solution

There is no need to explain how good smart-contracts are for creating tokens.

A smart contract can validate the necessary metrics, compute them and generate a none-exchangeable token that represents the merit of an entity.

If a system can migrate or upgrade the token, we can tweak the system goals in real time.

Now we can use this token to represent the voting rights within a system.

Conclusion

Different systems need different capacities to make decisions. Most governances are corrupted in some way due to the lack of tools to evaluate merit properly.

It is up to each system to decide what metrics to use to compute its own 'ideal' merit token, one that represents the system values and the required capacities to make decisions on it.

By whitelisting merit instead of identities we can:

Keep the goals of the system transparent and clear

Eliminate the process of evaluating the entities capacities.

Make the system identity agnostic, making it open to anyone/anything

The system is backward compatible (the list of whitelisted identities is a subset of the result of the whitelisted merit)

Smart contracts are extremely well suited for it. - Allow the system to easily adapt to new circumstances - Keeps the system transparent - Make the process maintenance free

With the new decentralized paradigm, we can now build systems that define merit with an accuracy that we never had before. This should allow for a substantial increase in the quality of governances.

Additional notes

There are some subjects I naively believe are worth mentioning and/or exploring.

Prediction markets

There has been a lot of talk about the role that prediction markets could have on governance.

If the results of the decisions can be easily measured and the pool of participants is high, futarchy seems a promising idea but it's an approach limited to a very specific type of governances.

These systems are especially interesting because they add a very strong incentive layer. I believe similar incentives could be designed for the proposed model.

Proxy voting

Proxy voting or Liquid democracy are commonly suggested improvements that the new paradigm makes easy to implement.

The way I see it, it makes merit exchangeable, therefore breaking property #2.

Governance for governments

The previous model fits well on voluntary governances, where you participate because you agreed on the principles and goals of the system (an open-source project, a company...)

Nation states and certain types of communities are none-voluntary by nature. Its citizens never agreed on the foundations that drive their nation (maybe a small representation of them, their ancestors, but not the current citizens).

A Constitution represents these pillars. An immutable document that roughly describes the principles that drive an ever-changing society.

These principles are at the very least outdated or unclear, making the government gameable.

The presented model could be used to improve this situation.

It may seem hard to apply because there are no clear values, therefore we can't define merit.

Instead, we could crowdsource what merit means. Each citizen could vote on its own principles and values regarding certain subjects. The aggregated results could then be used to automatically compute the definition of merit on each of the subjects.

The voting wouldn't have to be time-framed. Instead, a citizen could at any given time, change its own values, and the merit for governing the system would be updated in real time.

The definition of merit could be considered some sort of constitution. And the values that each citizen has voted could be used as reputation metrics for other systems.

The idea of the citizens voting on what they are experts on (which is about themselves) is borrowed from Ralph Merkle's draft DAOs, Democracy and Governance

Note: I’m from Catalonia, where according to the Spanish constitution, we are forbidden to express our opinion about our sovereignty.

Another example

I used nation-states as an example because I believe is the most intuitive thing to think when talking about governance. The example is naive in few aspects, but mainly because it underestimates the complexity of a state.

Another example could be a DAO that controls the water supply network of a community. The users could vote on the things they care: price, flavor, added chemicals, health impact, environmental impact...

Depending on the results, the merit will morph adding or subtracting requirements.

In this case, maybe the necessary knowledge to take decessions will remain constant, but a metric representing the intentions or incentives could vary.

A certification agency (some sort of Greenpeace) could be used as a trusted party to hand green-tokens to quantify how much an entity cares about the environment, for example.

Axiarchy

I used the term meritocracy because is a word that is familiar to most, and it almost describes the basics of the described idea.

But as stated, it is not the same as the described model.

Meritocracy makes specific reference to 'power'

Merit, from Latin mereō, and -cracy, from Ancient Greek κράτος kratos "strength, power"

To differentiate the two concepts and to have more accurate description, I suggest using the term Axiarchy

Axía "value, merit", from Greek αξία, and -archy, from Ancient Greek -αρχίᾱ arkhíā "rule, government"

Maybe a philologist could make a better suggestion.

Work in progress

This document is part of the Uumm project.

We're currently trying to set the foundations to design and build better governances.

This document is an attempt to expose the ideology behind it, so the community can iterate and point to any flaw, before moving to next stages.

You're very welcome to join us on this exploration. No merit required.

This document was published simultaneously on my personal blog and Medium, and the full change log is available on Github.

This document was possible thanks to the stress tests, constructive feedback, and support of the following people Daniel Armengol, Greg Albritton, Xavier Vives, Assumpta Riba and Lydia Law.

[xavihead]

Six days of water-fasting under stress. Round-up.

Intro

This post refers to the experiment I did last February. I've been distracted with other stuff and until now I didn't find the time to summarize the experience.

The previous updates I wrote will give you a much deeper insight:

Starting an undefined period of fasting.

48h fasting update. General feelings, blood sample and run.

92h fasting update. Hunger, rock climbing and gluconeogenesis

139.5h fasting final update. Insomnia, run, comfort

I make several references to "the previous fasting" or the "previous experiment", I'm referring the experiment I did last November:

Running 50km after 82h of fasting. My conclusions.

Original goals

The idea was to do a distilled water fasting for an undefined period of time, while keeping a "normal" lifestyle and moderate exercise.

This is what I wrote on the first post of this experiment:

When I ran the 50k after few days of fasting, the experiment was pretty much to see if it was doable or not from an energetic standpoint. This time it’s about everything else. But there are few things I'm specially interested in finding out:

General feelings, body reactions and what feedback it provides.

Effects on running when there is a lack of electrolytes.

Effects in general when no micronutrients are ingested.

What's my fat burning rate on my daily basis and in consequence what it’s my daily energy expenditure.

Conditions

Water fastings are usually done for spiritual or healing reasons and under a very controlled and ideal environment, with no stress, no work, no exercise, good weather... The purpose of this fasting was very different, and as mentioned, having stressors was desired.

During the week I averaged about 9-10 working hours per day. I did a 23.8 km +666m run just before the last meal, a 11km +600m two days later. And a 8.5km +318m hike (that supposed to be a run) on the 6th day. I also did a short 1.5h bouldering session and a 20min high intensity workout. The weather was about 15ºC with 80% humidity and cloudy all the time,with few rains.

You can see the full log here

The intention was to do a lot of running mileage, at least have a +25km run, but I really couldn't keep up. Last day I could barely get out bed.

Expectations

Previous experiment couldn't have gone any better. It was just brutally satisfying to accomplish it and because of it I was very optimistic on how long I could stand the fasting and the results that will come out of it.

Reality

It turned out to be an awful experience. Nothing went as planned. Hypothesis couldn't be tested, and the fasting lasted only 6 days.

I felt bad since the very beginning. Initially I attributed it to the lack of sleep. It didn't make sense to be related to food intake (or at least not all of it) since I've done +48h fasting several times and never felt that way.

Things got worse each day. I started feeling very tired and with no energy, cold, and couldn't sleep properly, I didn't want to move, my attention span got reduced and my mind was constantly thinking on food and the comfort it will come with it.

The problem

I've been thinking a lot why there was such a big difference between the previous fasting and this time, specially the first days. My believe is that my body entered in into a state of "power saving mode" slowing down my metabolism, when it realised that my brain was running out of glucose. In an early post of my previous fasting I mention that I didn't understand why no one was doing long distance running without food intake. My only hypothesis was that if done so, our brain will run out of glucose and... something bad will happen. That was the only bad outcome I could imagine for the previous fasting and it never happened.

Wrong approach

This my only intake was distilled water while previously I allowed myself other beverages, mostly coconut water.

My argumentation for drinking coconut water was because I was afraid of being low on electrolytes and have to deal with cramps to early on. Coconut water is quite rich on Sodium and Potassium, but also on Sugar. As user Anon pointed out on the comments this could've made a huge difference.

The Hypothesis

In retrospective seems very obvious but I didn't realise about it until after I ran the 50k:

On the previous fasting the sugar on the coconut water just kept the glycogen stores full enough for my brain to rely on them, while my body was running on ketones.

This time glycogen was never replenished. I also started the fasting right after a 23k run and no carbs other than an apple juice few hours before was consumed. So, I started the fasting with very low glycogen stores already. On top of that I was lacking sleep...

It seems that even if I was in full ketosis my brain didn't have energy, and if the brain doesn't have energy it doesn't really matter if my body has the fat stores full, the brain closed the tap.

Sugar addiction

I've been wondering why we love sugar so much. High concentrations of energy in carbohydrates and fat is an established argument for why we evolved to like them. But sugar stands out over everything else. It’s been proven dopamine is released by our reward system when sugar is ingested. But why?

While planning how to deal with my last run on the 6th day of fasting, I had zero energy and no mood for anything, I was thinking that I should try to get a shot of glucose, just to prove if the lack of it was actually the source of the problem or not.

I had to eat something that won't alter my post blood analysis in a substantial manner (no macro nutrients of any kind other than glucose). It feels super obvious now, even dumb, but I don't recall coming across this explanation before and never thought of it: Glucose is a sugar.

Sugar (let's say table sugar, as sugar is a generic word) is pretty much the purest form of glucose, and the single source of energy our brain really needs. It makes a lot of sense to have evolved to love it.

This thought had changed perception of sugar.

Blood analytics

I got a blood sample before and after the experiment. I did it for obvious reasons but also to not get bashed for not checking with the doctor.

The first analytic was just to have a base line to compare. Everything was great except Urea, which was well explained due I was dehydrated from a 23km run the previous day. Doctor showed a lot interested on my diet.

The second one (6 days later) was te real deal. I was expecting the sodium levels to be low due to sweating. This was not the case and they were within the reference points. The doctor was very surprised as well. What freaked him out was the very high levels of Uric Acid. It seems to be a clear indicator of kidney malfunctioning. He begged me to stop the experiment right away (I couldn't keep up anyway). The high concentration of Potassium confirms that something was wrong on my kidneys.

The rest of indicators were great!

By no means I'm someone qualified to understand the results. If you have any feedback it will be greatly appreciated.

See it on Google Docs

Fat loss

I lost a total of 4kg since the start of the fasting.

You can check the logs here and the summary here

I was hoping to find out my daily fat burning as well as my daily caloric consumption, but I don't think it makes much sense now:

If we consider only the data after the last poop (4 days of measurements), the total fat loss should be very close to the total weight loss. That's not the case. My weight loss (measured with a scale) was 3.2% while my fat loss (measured with a body fat caliper) was 0.73%. This is a 4x factor... Unless there is a major flaw in my argument that means that the body fat measurements using the caliper are completely wrong.

On my first update I explain the procedure I've followed to get the measurements.

Also considering that my metabolism was running extremely slow and the Thermic effect of food was null, makes finding the fat burning rate on this context a little pointless.

Visual evolution

I took a picture every day to see if there was any relevant visual change on my body. I don't see any.

With a longer fasting I guess something would come up but...

I also have side pics but I don't think they are much relevant.

Cramps and electrolytes

I tend to get cramps quite often (usually on my calf muscle), running or after hanging out and drinking to much. Sometimes leaving muscle pain that can last over two days.

It’s been clear to me that dehydration and muscular fatigue play a big role. What wasn't that clear was the role of the electrolytes. It’s been pointed out as cause for cramping. The imbalance of minerals created due to water and sodium loss when sweating.

The current experiment presented a unique opportunity to throw some light to it. By having no input source of minerals I should be able to see how big of a role electrolytes play on cramping.

Reality is that I didn't run enough to test any hypothesis. Not far, not fast.

Usually I may start getting cramps past 20k (depending on intensity and hydration) but I felt so weak that I couldn't get nearly close to that point. To bad...

Hunger and comfort

One thing I believe is quite relevant but hard to summarize are all the different sensations related to hunger (specially in this experiment but also in other ones). There is big spectrum of them. Feedbacks that our body use to tell us what it needs.

We tend to simplify our desire for food with the word hunger, but I believe some extra vocabulary for it will be of great use.

It is no secret that food gives us comfort, but in this experiment it became crystal clear to me. Most of the time I wouldn't describe my feeling as being hungry, but my desire for food was immense. Sometimes so big I couldn't think of anything else.

When I broke the fasting, I wasn't that hungry but I wanted to eat so so bad... This "must eat" idea stayed with me during the following days.

Within the 5 days after finishing the fasting my weight went from 69.5kg to 76.7kg, the heaviest in my life. I did eat a lot, but still, it seems quite incredible to me that the body can absorb that much in so little time.

Changelog

[xavihead]

Un àpat al dia, gana, i la percepció del menjar

[You can read the english version of this post here]

Problemes Socials

Una de les coses més difícils quan es segueix una dieta completament diferent a la resta són els events socials. Quan vivia a Catalunya, durant la setmana, podia cuinar excactament el que volia. Els caps de setmana però, tenir control de la meva dieta va esdevenir un problema. Moltes vegades podia trampejar la situació evitant alguns plats o fent que la gent del meu voltant s'adaptés a mi, però no sempre era possible ser-hi fidel. A més m'encanta la pizza, pa, pasta gelat... I a vegades simplement estava cansat de ser el raret o no em semblava correcte refusar un menjar.

Personalment no tinc massa objeccions en consumir aliments rics en carbohidrats, gluten o altament processats si és de tant en tant. Són l'excepció no la norma. El meu problema és sortir de cetosis. Depenent del què i quant he menjat puc estar varis dies a tornar-hi. Durant aquest temps, em sento cansat i mentalment borrós, i els baixos nivells de glicogen m'impedeixen fer qualsevol activitat prolongada sense pillar una pàjara.

Dejuni

Per sort hi ha una manera més ràpida per entrar en cetosis. Dejú. Per exemple: el dilluns (després d'un cap de setmana abusant d'aliments amb alt índex glicèmic) no menjo res, llavors, en algun moment del dimarts o dimecres reprenc la ingesta, estant ja en cetosis.

Això va funcionar fantàsticament, i em va permetre ser més flexible amb el menjar en general, a la vegada que reduir el temps exposat en un estat de no cetosis.

Ràpidament, superar el període de dejú sense "patir" va esdevenir una tasca fàcil. La gana es va convertir en algo circumstancial, totalment ignorable. A més el temps que necessitava per tornar en cetosis es va reduir en cada iteració.

Gana

Quan estic en una dieta rica en carbohidrats, sempre tinc gana. I un cop començo a menjar, sempre puc menjar més, especialment amb el sucre, en soc adicte. Però en cetosis, la sensació de gana és completament diferent. Mentre que el meu cos em continua dient que vol menjar, és més un estaria bé... que no pas un Vull menjar ara mateix! I no sembla anar a pitjor quan el dejú es prolonga.

La gent es sorprèn quan explico que no he menjat en un parell de dies. Des de la seva perspectiva, sembla una cosa extremadament difícil de fer. I ho és; però només en el context d'una dieta "normal". En cetosis, no menjar durant uns dies és tan difícil com esquivar un àpat.

Percepció

Un fet interessant és com el desig per diferents tipus de menjar canvia. Els aliments rics en carbohidrats no fan tanta bona pinta, i verdures que normalment no vénen de gust semblen una opció més preferible

La sensibilitat per les olors també canvia. Ho noto especialment després de un parell de dies de no menjar, o després de córrer llargues distàncies. En aquest moment oloro menjar a tot arreu. I fa mooolt bona olor. He trobat aquest fet súper intressant, especialment tenint en compte que el sentiment de gana resta baix i estable.

Reduir quantitats.

Amb tot aixó vaig començar a qüestionar-me: Quant hem de menjar realment? El meu cos funciona perfectament. Em sento extremadament energètic i amb la ment clara. Així doncs vaig començar a reduir la meva ingesta fins al punt en que em vaig adonar que un àpat al dia era més que suficient.

En els útlims 6 mesos, la norma ha estat menjar un sol àpat al dia.

No tinc dades quantitatives ja que ha estat un experiment molt orgànic. De totes maneres apostaria que la meva ingesta en termes de pes, és com a mínim la meitat del que era anteriorment. Tot i així, aquesta no és la millor manera de expressar-ho ja que el qué i no el quant he menjat és el que realment importa. Menjo molta grassa, per tant, en termes calòrics, la diferència potser no és tan gran.

Conseqüències

Algunes conseqüències indirectes han sorgit del fet de menjar únic àpat.

No tinc son després de dinar. Pel fet de no haver de digerir res ni patir cap punta en els nivells d'insulina, el meu cos poseeix tots els recursos necessaris per continuar treballant.

Estalvio bastant. Temps i sobretot diners. Especialment ja que a on treballo actualment tendim a menjar a fora. Per contra perdo una bona oportunitat per socialitzar-me.

El sopar ha esdevingut una part molt important del meu dia. Em passo més temps preparant millors àpats, i em deixo més calers en millors ingredients.

Puc fer trampes casi quan vulgui. Estar en cetosis i a sobre mantenir una ingesta molt baixa em permet consumir carbohidrats en generoses quantitats sense pràcticament cap conseqüència.

Passar de majoritàriament glicòlisis a majoritàriament cetosis és trivial. Puc entrar completament en cetosis en un termini de poques hores sense fer casi res.

Què ve ara?

Com he mencionat anteriorment, quanta quantiat és una forma enganyosa d'expressar l'experiment. El què és el que realment importa. Tot i que el model actual em serveix fantàsticament i em proporciona el millor dels dos móns la idea és continuar jugant amb les proporcions dels diferent micronutriens. Per exemple, en les últimes tres setmanes, mentre que he continuat menjant una vegada al dia, i mantenint les mateixes proporcions, he augmentat considerablement la ingesta de grassa (especialement en fruit secs, mantega i oli de coco), i també ho ha fet el meu pes. D'aixó dedueixo que és perfectament possible menjar inclús menys (en termes de quantitat total).

Tornada a la societat

En les societat del primer món, el principal propòsit del menjar és de de proporcionar-nos plaer. La salut només comença a jugar la seva part quan els problemes sorgeixen. Els nostres cossos han evolucionat en un món d'escassetat durant milions d'anys. Només en les últimes decades hem viscut en els regnes de l'abundància, i amb aixó ens hem convertit en capritxosos animals sobre-alimentats. Hem perdut els instints naturals, tot per aquesta petita cosa que sembla dirigir les nostres vides- gratificació instantània.

Proofing by Assumpta Riba i Xavier Vives (Mama i Papa) Changelog

[xavihead]

Eating once a day, hunger and food perception.

[Llegeix la versió en català d'aquest article]

Social problems

One of the hardest things about maintaining a diet that is completely different from everyone else’s is attending social events. During the week, when I was back in Catalonia, I cooked exactly what I wanted. But on the weekends, while eating out in restaurants or at someone's place, having control of my diet became a real problem. Though a lot of the time I could get along by just skipping some dishes or having the surrounding people adapt to my diet, I wasn't always able to stick to it. Plus, I love pizza, bread, pasta, ice cream... Sometimes I was just tired of being the weird one, or it didn't feel right to refuse a meal.

To me, it’s okay to eat rich carbohydrates, gluten, or highly processed food once in a while. They are the exception, not the norm. My main problem was getting out of ketosis. Depending on what and how much I ate, it could take me few days to get back to it. During this period, I felt tired and mentally blurry, and the low glycogen stores prevented me for doing any prolonged exercise without hitting the wall.

Fasting

Luckily, there is a faster way to get in to ketosis, and this is fasting. So, I started to experiment with fasting after cheating with carbohydrates. That means, on Monday (after a weekend of feasting on high glycemic index foods) I don't eat anything. Then, at some point on Tuesday or Wednesday I'll start eating again, being already in ketosis.

That worked really well, and it allowed to be more flexible with the food in general while reducing the time exposed to a non-ketosis state.

Rapidly, it became very easy to go through the fasting period without any "suffering"." Plus, the time needed to get back into ketosis got reduced with each iteration.

Hunger

When I eat a diet rich in carbohydrates, I'm always hungry. And once I start eating, I can always eat more, especially with sugar. I'm a sugar junkie. But when in ketosis, the feeling of hunger is completely different. While your body still tells you that it wants food, it’s more of a nice to have than an I need food right now. And it doesn't get worst the longer you fast.

People are surprised when I say that I haven't eaten in two days. From their perspective, it seems like something extremely hard to do. And it is—but only in the context of a "normal" diet. In ketosis, not eating for few days is as hard as skipping a meal.

Perception

One interesting thing is how the desire for different types of food changes. Rich carbohydrates are far less appealing, and vegetables that usually are less likeable felt more and more like the preferred option the longer I was in ketosis.

Smell sensitivity also changes. I especially notice it after more than a couple of days of fasting, or after running long distances. At that point, I smell food everywhere. And the smell its reeeally good. I found this super interesting, especially taking in to account that the feeling of hunger remains low and stable.

Reducing intake

With all that, I started asking myself: "How much do we really need to eat?" My body works perfectly still. I'm feeling extremely energetic and my mind is sharp. Therefore, I started reducing my intake to the point that I realized that one meal a day was just fine.

For the last 6 months, the norm has been eating one single meal a day.

I don't have any data, since this has been an organic experiment. Still, I could bet that my intake in terms of weight is at least half of what it used to be. Although, this is not the best way to phrase it, since what and not how much I eat is what really matters. I eat a lot of fat, so I think the difference in terms of calories may be not that big.

Consequences

Some interesting indirect consequences came up by eating once a day.

I don't get sleepy after lunch. By not having anything to digest, staying in ketosis provides my body with plenty of resources to keep working.

I save a lot of money (and time), especially since we eat out for lunch at my current work place. As a drawback, I lose some precious time to socialize.

Dinner has become a very important part of my day. I take more time to make better meals, and I spend more money on better ingredients.

I can cheat pretty much whenever I want. Being in a ketogenic diet, plus having a very low intake, allows me to consume rich carbohydrates in generous quantities with almost no effect.

Transitioning from mostly glycolysis to mostly ketosis is trivial. I can go back into full ketosis in a matter of hours without doing anything.

Next

As I said before, "how much" may be a misleading way to express this experiment. What is what really matters.

While this current model serves me fantastically as I can get the best of both worlds, I'll keep playing with the portions of micronutrients. For instance, in the last 3 weeks, while still eating once a day and keeping the same portion sizes, I substantially increased the amount of fat intake (especially with nuts, butter, and coconut oil), and so did my weight. From that I assume that I can eat even less (in terms of total amount).

Back to society

In first world societies, the main purpose of food is to please us. Health only comes into play when problems arise. Our bodies evolved to survive in a world of scarcity during millions of years. Only in the last decades have we lived in a world of abundance, and with it we have become overfed, spoiled animals. We no longer know what or how much is right or wrong to eat. We’ve lost our natural instincts, all for this little thing that seems to drive our world — instant gratification.

Proofing by Creativemaine Changelog

[xavihead]

Córrer 50km després de 82h en dejú. Les meves conclusions

[Read the english version of this post]

Aquest article fa refrència a aquest post anterior (en anglés): Made it! 50k in complete starvation. [Aconsseguit! 50k en dejú total]

En els últims mesos m’he format sòlides opinions sobre el que és correcte o no en les dietes actuals. Una part important té a veure amb l’evolució humana i amb el córrer.

La hipòtesi de córrer llargues distàncies [The endurance running hypothesis]

“La hipòtesi de córrer llargues distàncies  és la hipòtesi en què l’evolució de certes característiques dels humans poden ser explicades com adaptacions per córrer llargues distàncies. La hipòtesi suggereix que la capacitat de resistència per córrer llargues distàncies va tenir un rol important en l’adquisisió de menjar. Investigadors han proposat que el fet de córrer llargues distàncies va començar com una adaptació per fer de carronyers i per la caça de persistència. (traducció literal de la wikipedia en anglés)

Daniel E. Lieberman proposa aquesta hipòtesi en una publicació el 2004 i llibres com  Born To Run [Nascuts per córrer] o Why we Run suporten la mateixa idea. Si aquest fos el cas, significa que en el passat caçàvem perseguint antílops durant hores, fins que l’animal colapsava degut a una hipertèrmia. 

Els arguments exposats tenen molt sentit en el meu coneixament limitat. Però no donen cap explicació en com aquests homínids podien tenir la suficient energia per sustenir aquestes ultra-distàncies.

En el mateix article de la wikipedia diu:

Aquestes llargues caceres requereixen de grans quantitats dietètiques d’aigua, sal i glicogen.

Per emmgatzemar el màxim de glicogen els atletes de resistència fan l’anomenat “Carbo loading” [carga de carbohidrats], que significa menjar generoses quantitats de e carbohidrats en les hores anteriors a l’exercici. En cas de córrer, aquesta càrrega durarà al voltant de 2h o uns 24km abans que a aquesta persona li agafi una “pàjara”, que bàsicament significa quedar-se sense energia (jo he tingut “pàjaras” en més d’una ocasió).  Per això s’utilitzen barretes energètiques i gels per reomplir aquests enmagatzaments i continuar amb l’exercici.

Aquestes teories tindrien tot el sentit del món si no fos perquè els aliments necessaris generar tal enmagazament de glicogen eren pràcticament inexistents, o si més no inaccessibles. Pots buscar-ho al Google. A més caçaven perquè tenien manca de menjar en primer lloc.

La única forma per explicar aixó és si estiguessin en un estat de cetosis.

Recerca

Hi ha recerca en el camp de la cetosis i esports de resisència. Peter Attia ha estat el meu referent principal. Hi ha moltes altres pàgines sota el nom de Paleo, i també experiments amb cetosis i curses de llarga distància.

No he trobat res publicat sobre curses d’ultra-distància amb varis dies de dejú. Aixó, sumat a l’exit en experiment de dejú que he fet, i la incapacitat d’entendre les teories previement mencionades em van motivar a fer l’experiment.

Competició

De cap manera sóc atleta professional. He participat en 3 carreres en tota la meva vida. El meu objectiu no és ser ràpid, pero disfruto de la pressió i la preparació que implica una cursa. Segueixo el mundillo de prop.

Des  del meu últim àpat fins que vaig començar a córrer vaig perdre 4kg. No vaig cremar-ho en grassa. La meva última cagada va ser després de 48h des de l’àpat. I des de llavors fins que vaig començar a córrer el meu pes només va reduir-se 0.5 kg. Aixó significa que tenia aproximadament 3kg de menjar a l’estómac…

Fer servir glicogen en comptes de grassa és més eficient. Utilitza menys oxigen per fer la conversió a energia, ara bé si el teu cos pesa 3kg menys… és molta la energia que estalvies en una cursa de llarga distància.

Alguns es tornen bojos comprant calçat que t’estalvia uns grams. Bé, si no menges et pots estalviar uns quants kg? A més no has de carregar amb els gels. I no tindràs problemes estomacals, i aixó inclou no haver de cagar durant la cursa.

Conclusions

No sé quina quantiat de lo aconseguit és degut a un procés d’adaptació  (en els últims mesos he estat menjant un sol àpat al dia) i quant es deu a alguna cosa que tots tenim dintre, en els nostres sistemes, i que simplement es dispara en les circumstàncies adequades.

La meva argumentació pot semblar extremadament simple, i segurament ho és. He estat seguint la recerca en aquest camp des de fa temps i amb prou feines entenc els tecnicismes.

El punt clau per mi és que ÉS POSSIBLE. I probablament fites molt més llunyanes a l’aconseguida. No sóc nutricionista, ni atleta professional, i ni tan sols va ser tant difícil. La meva argumentació és senzilla, basada en preguntes fonamentals que trascendeixen els detalls.

Que ve ara?

Suspito que hi ha grans diferències entre la cetosis nutricional (induïda quan es redueixen els aliments amb alt índex glicèmic) i la cetosis induïda pel dejuni. En altres carreres en què he corregut amb cetosis nutricional no m’he sentit tan energètic (però es fa difícil de comparar ja que no havia corregut 50km). Aixó és quelcom que m’interessa explorar.

Crec que uns quants dies de dejuni ofereixen una oportunitat única per explorar certes àrees. Ara mateix hi ha un parell de coses que em piquen la curiositat.

Ja que no hi ha entrada ni sortida de menjar, i puc controlar la hidratació molt fàcilment hauria de poder tenir una idea clara del ràtio en què cremo grassa.

Un altre tema és relacionat amb els electròlits. Hi ha moltes teories que relacionen els electròlits amb les rampes. Traient el menjar de l’equació hauria de tenir control total dels minerals que consumeixo i obtenir algunes respostes clares.

I evidentment (amb entrenament extra). Intentaré veure quant de lluny puc arribar menjant  sense menjar.

Proofing by Assumpta Riba Change log

[xavihead]

Running 50km after 82h of fasting. My conclusions.

[Llegeix la versió en català d’aquest article]

By no means this post should be treated as medical advice. Nothing here has been done under medical supervision. It’s just a personal experiment.

I recently ran an ultra after almost 4 days of  fasting. I wrote about the experience here: Made it! 50k in complete starvation. The current post is its continuation.

In the last months I’ve built up a serious opinions about what its right and wrong about our current diets and a lot of it has to do with human evolution and running.

The endurance running hypothesis

“The endurance running hypothesis is the hypothesis that the evolution of certain human characteristics can be explained as adaptations to long distance running. The hypothesis suggests that endurance running played an important role for early hominids in obtaining food. Researchers have proposed that endurance running began as an adaptation for scavenging and later for persistence hunting.”

Daniel E. Lieberman proposed this hypothesis on a 2004′s paper and Books like Born To Run or Why we Run support the same idea. If this was the case, it would mean that we use to hunt by chasing antelopes for hours until the animal collapses from overheating. 

The exposed arguments make a lot of sense in my limited knowledge, but they fail to explain how these hominids could have enough energy to sustain these ultra-runs.

In the same wikipedia article it says:

Such a long hunt requires high amounts of dietary sources of water, salt, and glycogen.

To build up glycogen stores endurance athletes do the “Carbo load”, that means eating generous quantities of carbohydrates in the hours prior the workout. If running, this load will last about 2h or 24km before this person “hits the wall”. That means, running out of energy and collapsing (I’ve hit the wall few times in the past). That’s why they use energy bars and gels, to refill these storages and keep going.

That will be a beautiful theory if it wasn’t because the type of food necessary to build up this storage was pretty much nonexistent or at least not accessible. Just google “carbo loading foods”. And they were hunting because didn’t have food in the first place…

The only way to explain it if they were in an state of ketosis.

Research

There is research going on in the field of ketosis and endurance sports. Peter Attia was the first reference I found on Ketosis, through a Tim Ferris tweet long ago, and I’ve been following him since. Recently, also through Tim Ferris I discovered Dominic P. D'Agostino  who also has a lot of publications that I still have to go through. There are lots of other sites under the Paleo flag too, and some experiments with Ketosis and long distance running.

I couldn’t find any publication about ultra distances and significant amount of fasting. This, the success in other fasting experiments I’ve done, and the inability to to comprehend the mentioned hypothesis engaged me to do the experiment.

Competition

By no means I’m a professional athlete. I’ve been in 3 races in my whole life. Its not my goal to be fast when I run, but I enjoy the pressure and preparation that comes with a race. I follow this world quite closely.

Since my last meal until I started running I lost about 4kg. I did not burn that much fat. My last poop was 48h after the meal. Since then until I started running my weight just decreased 0.5kg. That means I had about 3Kg of food in my guts…

Using glycogen instead of fat its more efficient. It uses less oxygen to do the conversion into energy, but If you’re body weights 3kg less, that’s a lot of energy savings in a long distance race…

People get crazy buying shoes that can save them few grams. Well, how about saving few Kg? Plus you don’t have to bring any gels. And you won’t have any gut problems, and that includes not having to take a shit during the race.

That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

Conclusions

I don’t know how much of what I accomplished its due to a process of adaptation (for the last months I’ve been eating once a day) and how much is something that we have built in our systems and we can just trigger with the right circumstances.

All my arguing may sound over simplistic, and probably it is. I’ve been following the research on this field for a while and I can barely understand any of the technicalities they talk about.

The key point for me its that IT IS POSSIBLE. And probably way beyond of what I did. I’m not a nutritionist, nor an athlete, and it wasn’t even that hard. My reasoning was simplistic, based on fundamental questions that transcend the details.

What’s next

I’m suspicious that there are big differences between nutritional ketosis (induced by reducing the intake of high glycemic index foods) and ketosis induced from fasting. In other runs done in nutritional ketosis I didn’t feel that energetic (but it’s hard to compare since I’ve never done it that far in distance). That’s something I may explore.

I think few days of fasting offer unique areas of explorations. Right now there are a couple of things I’m curious about.

Since there is no input nor output of food, and I can control my hydration very easily I should be able to get an idea of my fat burning rate.

The other thing its related to electrolytes. There is a lot of theories out there that relates the lack of electrolytes and cramping. By taking food out of the equation I will be able to control my minerals intake and I should be able to get some straight forward answers.

And of course, (with extra training) I’ll try to see how much far I can go with nothing but my legs and water.

Hacker News discussion 

My response on Quora: Has anyone ever run a marathon while in ketosis? 

Change log

[xavihead]

On November 2015 I migrated this blog from Wordpress to Tumblr. Comments and formating have been lost. If you want to access the original one you can do it at xavivives.com/blog. 

[xavihead]

Uberman failure. My conclusions

On the Poliphasic society website it states with an underline style:

No one has EVER adapted to Uberman without the help of others, often in the form of a human alarm system.

I was no exception. Five weeks ago I posted my purposes on doing the Uberman sleeping schedule. At the time of writing it I was three days in to the experiment. If you had asked me how long I felt it will take me to adapt, I'll probably have said "less than a week". Well, I've tried for over a month, and finally a week ago I dropped out. The first 3-4 days felt promissing, then I got stuck on a limbo for the next three weeks. I ended up doing some sort of unwanted Everyman schedule (not Uberman). For 4 of the 6 blocks of the day I felt great, like any other "normal day". On The fifth block I felt sleepy and quite zombie. For the last block I was basically in another world. My brain couldn't perform any kind of logic activity, my memory just remembered chunks and the perception of time was completely altered and afterwards I had no clue what happen when, and the whole thing was just a painful fight to stay awake. I lost almost every single time. Falling  asleep  and waking up hours later... (once I fell asleep with a chunk of pizza in my mouth and a slice on my hand and woke up three hours later, with the chunk still on my mouth...) This wasn't a regular pattern, it was competely different every day, what I'm describing is just some sort of average. You can take a look to the logs for more detail. The good. What I'm more proud of is the alarm system. I've created calendar events on my computer and used as alarms. When was time to wake up, an AppleScript played repeatedly, at max volume, the most terrible sounds I've found, to the whole house audio system. The best thing is that my bed is down stairs. So, I had to wake up and go to the upper floor to stop it. There is no way anyone can keep sleeping with this thing playing. I believe thats all I've done right... So, waking up haven't been the problem. The bad. Staying awake was the problem. And I failed almost every single time. I have different excuses for it.

I work with an standing desk. Adding almost 6 hours of extra time everyday its a lot. My legs got very tired and the only thing (beeing also very sleepy) that appealed to me was to sit on the couch. Here I've already lost. Sitting in the couch meant an instant dead. Every single time, my brain convinced me that it was a good idea and I could stay awake. No way.

These days were cold enough that I had to keep the fireplace running all night. The dry air and the added extra hours of computer made my eyes dried and wanting to close.

My will. As I don't have a normal job to go to, and no one is waiting for me, nothing really happen if I screwed it up. So I had no pressure. :/

If I was sleepy it was mainly because on some of the previous naps I wasn't able to sleep. Sleeping when I had to was another problem

Previously starting Uberman I had the strong believe (and still have) that it is possible to teach the body to sleep whenever I tell it to, not when is time to. During the past weeks I found numerous situations were offsetting the nap would allowed me to do some activities. So, attaching myself to the previous believe I thought I may just directly try to teach my body to sleep at random hours. That was a terrible idea. I was not able to sleep on the nap time and then I was felling sleep when I couldn't.

Wrong environment. I failed several times when I didn't slept at my place. I slept in some friend's car few times (while waiting the food to be served at the restaurant ^^). It was to unconfortable, to noisy and I didn't spend enough time to relax. At my parents place (without my super-alarm system) I failed few times to, as the phone's alarm proved to not be enough. I just turned it off and kept sleeping.

After four weeks I've decided to drop out for several reasons:

The frustration of being unable to adapt joined a couple of other personal an emotional problems that were causing me some stress.

Although most of the people I had to interact on my daily basis were positive and colaborative on my experiment, some important ones opposed to it. This added rush, or to succeed or to finish it, and consequently stress.

The main reason to try Uberman was to optimize time. Probably I was working at a similar efficeny rate but the added stress wasn't worth it.

I realized that I have more social live than I thought. At least, while adapting, they don't get along.

Having someone phisically next to you to keep you awake during the zombie hours its a must. I didn't.

Even if having enough time is a problem I realized that I probably have other things to fix and to optimize first.

Notes and things I find out.

The third week I decided to start working on a normal desk to avoid the fatigue on my legs. I also took the couch out to feel tempted to sit on it. It was necessary but it wasn't enough and I still felt asleep in the weirdest positions (on the chair, floor...)

The key is to fell asleep in all the naps. Dugh...

Spending time relaxing before the nap is really helpful. If I'm very awake I go to bed half hour earlier and I read until is time. I believe to have learned a lot on how to relax my body.

I eat at least 20% more.

Running its been the best trick to stay awake. The problem is having enough will to start when is cold outside and all you want to do is to sleep.

On the "limbo" state my eficency working was about the same. Maybe even heigher.

On zombie mode I can't trust none of my thoughts. My brain belives him self, and he's a liar... Previous work on setting up a favorable enviroment is key.

Three times happened to me to wake up and start noticing a warm feeling all around my body and specially my head. I was also noticing some waves that the third time I identified as my heart beat. I didn't want to move and it felt like my body was regenerating. After this nap I felt great. I haven't find references to this weird state, I would love to know more.

For the first two weeks I paused my workouts and runs to avoid extra fatigue. I restarted them later. It didn't seem to effect my sleep to much unless I finished them just before going to nap.

I never got into the "Uberman state" described on my previous post.

Doing 20 min naps (if you can do them properly) it have almost no impact on most activities. As I said, a couple of times I did it while waiting the food to be served. Once I even left a night session while vjing. 20 minutes is no time.

What's next. I totally believe Uberman is possible. Its extremely hard to adapt, specially after a life sleeping monophasic. I learned how important the right preparation and context are, and I'll probably will try at some time in the future when conditions are more favorable. I think I've learned quite alot about sleep, how to relax myself , the sleep cycle, the circadian rythms and how weird and complex the whole human mind and body are. I'll take some weeks to settle down few personal things and probably I'll start trying Everyman 3 schedule as it should be way more easier as well as more flexible. Will see.

[xavihead]

Starting poliphasic sleep. Two hours of sleep per day. My reasons.

I've just started sleeping following the Uberman's sleep schedule. "Uberman" is just the name of one of the diferent types of polyphasic sleep. And polyphasic sleep just means that instead of sleeping once a day (monophasic), you'll sleep multiple times a day. So, the Uberman schedule consist on sleeping for 20 minutes every 4 hours. That means you go to sleep 6 times a day. Ending up sleeping only 2 hours every day. I've been aware of the Uberman sleeping schedule for several years. I remember, frustrated for not having time to do all the stuff I wanted, googling: "How can I sleep less?". And finding PureDoxyk's original post on the subject. At that time, I even did a impulsive attempt to try it. It didn't quite worked out. Uberman requires a very strict sleep schedule and consecuently that means you need very flexible life style. I'm not going to cover the details of Uberman or Poliphasic sleep since there are lots of stuff out there. If you are interested on the subject there are some links below you can check out. Instead I'll just try to explain my reasons for doing it, and in a while, my experience: Its life! As far as I know the time I'll be alive is kind of limited (although I really believe our generation or the next one will be able to reach immortality). Oversimplifing things, the only time during the day that I'm not really living, and for living I understand experiencing things, is when I'm sleeping (I'll put dreaming aside for now). Sadly we spend one third of our lives on this "useless" state. I don't think I'll ever be satisfy enough with the time I have. There are so many things to experience, so many people and places to meet, and so many things to build. Time is my currency. So if someone tells me there is a way I can live 30% more, and you can do it while you are young... I'm sold. This is the reason I'm doing it on the first place, but it comes with some other ones that makes the whole thing even more appealing to me. Organitzation While in monophasic when you wake up every day you have 16 hours ahead of you and lots of things to do. This is a problem to me. So much time for so many things. I end up procastinating. Is like new year's eve resolutions. Although is something to be tested, it seems to me that waking up and knowing that you just have 3h and 40min until you go back to sleep again, will make you pick up a couple of things and just get them done. For the last three years I basically had not tight schedule. I went to sleep when I was sleepy and I woke up without alarm. Uberman schedule is the antagonic piece of it. I'm a little scared of how this unflexibility can effect my freedom and lifstyle. Euforia!!! Let me just quote PureDoxky:

This euphoria is a sense of very sharp clarity, of fluid mental acuity, and in general feeling at ease - literally, as if things are easy. It is, to be cutlural and silly a moment, somewhat realizing you're in The Matrix: Everything slows down; you feel like you're functioning much faster and better than the world around you

This effect doesn't seem to happen all the time nor to everyone but is a very common report. I believe there are no much to say about it. Time perception I try to do an effort to not label concepts. We simplify an experience or a thing to just a few words to allow our heads to think about complex stuff easier. Way to often this simplified label end up replacing our understanding of reality. I have the feeling that we have a similar relationship with time. We are so use to experience it in a very specific way, defined by day and night that it seems to me that our brains have labeled (and somehow faked) our perception of time. By removing the "sleep block" that defines a new day, time becomes a continuos stream. I have no clue what I'll get from it but it feels very intriguing to me. Lucid dreaming It seems to be another comon report from Uberman users. I've never experienced it but sounds awesome to me. A the time of writing this I'm on my third day following Uberman. So, still in the middle of the adaptation phase. While adapting to the new schedule you go to a long states of sleep deprivation and lots of people give up. One of the reasons of writing this blog post is to add myself some social pressure to go over this adaptation phase. Also, I'm interested that people who surrounds me know about it due the high social implications this schedule have. I'm keeping a Google spreadshit with logs of my current experience as well as a general schedule of what to do and few lists of things to fill the 30% of extra time I have every day. Check it out here, comments are enabled. My intention is to do a follow up of the experiment on this same post after I get a significan experience on it. I mention a couple times PureDoxky. She has the credit of comming up with Uberman's schedule, experimenting, sharing and exposing it to the rest of us. On her website you'll find all the resources you need to know all about polyphasic sleep. She also have a book were she covers all the ins and outs and give ton of resources and tips to succesfully adapt to a polyphasic schedule. If you want to save some time resarching, just read this.

[xavihead]

I'm not going to get privacy. So, here is my life.

The war for the internet privacy is very hot. We must fight it to keep our freedom, but, times have changed and I'm wondering if we are fighting against nature. Let me explain. We need tecnology. Technology makes our life easier but a lot of times it needs to know about you to do so. If we want technology to keep serving us we will have to keep exposing more and more data about our lives. I quantify myself with anyway I can. I track, food, sleep, steps, money, geocalitzation, my runs, workouts, what I read, what I watch, what I listen to, even my back posture... and I keep adding more systems. I do this because they allow me to have a better understanding of myself and my surrounding so I can improve, take better decisions and at the end have a better life. All these data sets that I generate are available at least for the company that is providing the service, but to get all the juice from it we need to combine them, and that means exposing it to others. We can't control our data When we talk about it they are always the same names: Google, Facebook, credit card companies, government agencies... We must fight to control this data, bu,t there is an important player in the game that we often forget about. People. Our data is not only the one we generate and give away to this companies in exchange to great services, is also the one that our friends, family and contacts generate for us. Everytime you are tagged or referenced somehow, this moment of your life is registred. Right now this is not very relevant as just few parts of or lives are there. But what happen when a photo where you were tagged is converted to a video? And when instead of a 5 min video this is 24h stream? Oh! Before you had this video camera attached to your glasses but this new version of Goolge Glass is so small that I didn't know you are wearing it and recording. Electronics keep getting cheaper and smaller. Is just a matter of time to have cameras and sensors will be everywhere. Walls, gadgets, forniture clothes, implanted in our own bodies, maybe a personal drone following us and veryfing our enviroment is safe. Or maybe it will be a dragonfly, recording all your life from a a third person point of view. We are old. For us the whole privacy thing is new and is shocking. Our lives data use to be available only to the people we could phisically interact with. Now is avilable to everyone. We still getting use to it. This won't be the same for our kids. This will be natural for them. So, what can we do? Well, I think we just have two options.

Run away. I can see the rise of new communities that are technology free. Not only because the privacy issues but also becouse every time is harder and harder to understand and handle that many technology and information. Live without this amount of technology I believe is a totally valid option. I thought about it many times: Fuck this! I'm going to the live in the woods! ... and I may do it eventually.

 If you can't defeat your enemy, join him! This is my main point. If can't hide myself I just will assume that any event on my life can be known to anyone. I don't know the consequences but if everytihing is going to be public I better start being totally transparent.

Transparency Every action we take is done because we have an expectation of what would happen. Most of the times trust is what is defining this expectation. I buy a brand X because i know the product is more durable, I hire this guy because I believe he will deliver, I explain this to you because I know you are going to use this information properly... Without trust our lives are miserable. Trust is built with knowledge and transperency. And this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to expose my life. I'm going to tell you were I'm right now, what I'm seeing and what I've been at any given time, what I read and what I listen to... My life feed experiment. While facebook provides you with a life feed of all your interactions and makes them social. This will be more like an stream of all the objective data of my life. For now I'm displaying where I am and where I've been plus some pictures. I'll be adding more data in the future.

Check out my life feed: xavivives.com/world/

This is an experiment. In two days I may find out that someone robbed my place because he figured out my moving patterns. Well, this is part of the deal. We will have to deal with this in the future anyway. I'll better get ahead of it and start preparing and understanding this crazy future that is coming. I'm really looking for feedback about this idea. Any input will be welcome.

[xavihead]

Ludovico, the audio-reactive GIF visualitzation

Grab a bunch of animated gifs. Speed up their velocity 10x. Bind the their brighness to the volume of the microphone. Tint them depending on the sound frequency. Rewind them back when beats are detected. This is Ludovico. Ludovico was created as an art project for  CODAME 2012 art + tech festival, and I've been improving it since then. Since Ludovico is coded using Haxe targetting Flash it runs on the web to. Check it out:

[Ludovico online]

  If you would like to know a little bit more checkout this presentation at CODAME awards. [vimeo]https://vimeo.com/58081820[/vimeo] Ludovico still in progress. This is the current road map.

Add more gif sources. Currently I'm stealing the gifs from MaxGif.com. I'm working on support for Tumblr, Reddit and their subreddits as well for any other external text file (DONE) . The idea is you can have your own customized playlist.

Improve performance. For an audio-reactive visualitzation the delay latency between sound and images is key. Decoding the gif with Flash is not very optimal. I'm working on alternative ways to decode it. (DONE)

Corrupted gifs. If you play the online version you will see there are lot of gifs that have some weird lines on the bottom. Even if sometimes it looks cool, this is not a desired effect. For the same reason the gifs are not vertically centered. I'm working on this to.

Add more control for the user. Probably you don't like the current behavior of the app when classical music is playing. You would like to slow down the gifs velocity, bind the volume to a zoom effect (StarPause's idea) or show the gifs on a gray scale... I'll try to make it happen. This is a lot of work, but I would love to create an interface were the user can have total control over the visualitzation.

Mobile and desktop apps. If the previous stuff gets done and enough people seems to like it I'll probably going to work on native apps. Will see.

I'll love to hear your feedback!

[xavihead]

Roots

[xavihead]

Rubik's cube, 50.000 downloads in the Android Market

After 166 days in the Android Market I've got finally 50K downloads with the Rubik’s Cube app. Here is all I’ve learned and know about. General data: 50311 Downloads 14825 Active downloads (29.47%) 3.62 Average rate 144 Rates 58 Comments In the last three days, I don't know why, the app was uninstalled 3K times (see the graph below). Very strange. Full stats

I've reviewed all the bad comments  (1 or 2 stars) and I've got that:

47% don't like to install Adobe Air runtime.

31% don't know how to control the app.

18% protest for a problem or  for a feature request.

2% are having problems with performance

2% say the app is boring

People don't like to install the Adobe runtime. The 16 Mb size after installation and the impossibility to move Air to the SD doesn't solve the problem... Luckily seems that Adobe are working on integrate the Air runtime with the app.

The other big problem the users are having is understand how the app works.  That's why I made this video:

The Rubik's cube was just a test to check out what is possible to do with Adobe Air and understand the Android Market. I've got a little bit more. :)

The app have been selected by Adobe and Motorola as a featured app for an upcoming campaign to promote the Motorola Xoom.

The app won the price of the app with best design at Adobe Flashcamp  San Francisco 2011 (an Adobe CS Master Collection 5.5)

Selected as one of the best Adobe Air apps for Android by the spanish blog elandroidelibre.com (I'm absolutly not agree with that selection, there a lot of Air apps better  than that selection).

I've also ported he app to the Blackberry Playbook, so I get a Playbook for free.

You can download the Rubik's cube for Android here You can download the Rubik's cube for Playbook here

[xavihead]

Seeking job and friends!

About a year ago I decided I had to leave Spain. Why?

New cultures, new people, new projects ... ambition.

Analyzing my profile I decided that San Francisco Bay Area should be the first option because  it is known for cultural diversity, its tolerance and to be the cradle of numerous start ups and projects of all kinds but especially in the internet world and technological.

So 3 weeks ago I landed in SF in search of new opportunities and experiences. And I'll be here until my visa ends in June.

I am aware of the difficulty of finding a job without the appropriate visa (I need sponsorship) and with a non conventional technical background.

At least if I have no success I want to use my stay to meet as many interesting people as possible.

This post is therefore to appeal to anyone who would like to meet with me and talk about anything (Flash, Internet, new technologies, San Francisco, life, the world...) or want to go running, hiking, rock climbing, partyng, start new projects, whatever! (cheap)

And, of course,  is a call to anyone with a job offer for me (in SF or the other side of the world)!

Xavi Vives - Curriculum Vitae.pdf

Xavi Vives - Portfolio.pdf

Please, share this post (especially if you know people in SF Bay Area or know of someone who could be interested). Thanks.

If you want to know more about me you can also find me on Linked-in and Twitter.

[xavihead]

How to insert and properly display AdMob on Air for Android

Notice that this is just an extension of the work made by Terry Paton (@terrypaton1) in his tutorial AdMob adverts in AIR for Android applications. Check it for an introduction.

I 've made a simple class using Terry's code and adding some extra functions.

You can download it here: AdMob.as

Basically all you have to do is create an instance of AdMob class passing  the URL where your adMob html is placed and an stage reference.

var ad: AdMob =new AdMob("http://yourAdMobURL.com/",stage);

you can also use updateAd() function to change the adMob html or refresh the previous url.

ad.updateAd("optionalNewURL");

You can download an html adMob template here. Just change the publisher ID and the colors.

How to make  the ads are always displayed?

When the ad is already working,  there is a big deal because sometimes the ad is showed and sometimes not.

I was dealing with this for a while. I tested the html page where the ad is placed with an iPod  Touch and the ads was displayed all the time. In Android devices the ad was displayed only sometimes but when runs in one, runs with the rest. If the adMob was in test mode the ad was displayed without problems.

So, what is the problem? It is quite simple. There are no enough ads.

If you are a publisher you can choose where you want your ad be displayed. You can choose between iPhone apps, iPhone sites, Android apps and Android sites. Seems that there are not enough publishers interested in sites visited with Android phones.

The best solution I found to this problem is to create a "House ad" in the adMob "Sites and Apps" menu.

This is an ad that we can link to where we want and will be displayed when there is no "normal ads" to display.

Once you create it, go to "Sites and Ads" page , click edit on the "House ads" column. Turn "House ads" on, and save settings.

[xavihead]

Google TV y el futuro de los videojuegos

Google TV corre Android. Ésto ya puede hacernos una idea de las posibilidades de disfrutar de este sistema operativo en una pantalla gigante. Sí. Hasta la fecha son muy pocas las aplicaciones de las que podríamos sacar provecho debido a que están optimizadas para dispositivos móviles y éstas tienen una pantalla pequeña. Sin embargo el ejército de tablets que se acerca va a ayudar a que se desarrollen contenidos optimizados para pantallas más grandes. Lo mencionado anteriormente creo que sería suficiente para prestar más ∫atención a esta plataforma, sin embargo hay una tipo de software que creo que tiene la posibilidad de revolucionar el futuro de las consolas a favor de Google TV. Desde hace algún tiempo han ido apareciendo distintos servicios de juegos que funcionan mediante cloud computing (o sea que el juego se procesa en un servidor i no en nuestra máquina). Ésto permite que un dispositivo mediocre en cuanto a hardware se refiere pueda ejecutar juegos con requerimientos altísimos sin el menor problema, simplemente con una conexión a internet notable. La empresa que encabeza esta tecnología es OnLive, que ya tiene el servicio plenamente operativo desde ordenadores. Ha presentado un visualizador para iPad (sólo puedes ver partidas que se están jugando) y tiene en beta el visualizador para Android. Por otro lado la gente de GameString ya nos enseñó hace algún tiempo un Android ejecutando WoW mediante streaming. Sin duda éste es, sólo, un primer paso para su inclusión en Google TV donde realmente podremos gozar. Cuando esto ocurra tendremos una consola  a un precio ridículo (si es que no nos viene integrado con el televisor) capaz de ejecutar el juego más avanzado. Puede OnLive y sus competidores acabar con Playstation o XBOX? Además GoogleTV puede utilizar cualquier telefono Android o iPhone como mando a distancia (y estos tiene accelerómetros y giroscopios) por lo que prácticamente tendríamos un Wiimote.

[xavihead]

Mis futuros proyectos con Adobe Air para el Android Market

Paralelamente a las actualizaciones del Cubo de Rubik voy desarrollando varios proyectos. Cuando me canso de uno o me encuentro bloqueado salto a otro. Las imagenes superiores pertenecen al que he puesto de nombre "DinoPollo". Es un juego de plataformas utilitzando CitrusEngine y Box2D. El proyecto lo tengo parado porqué no tenia nada claro sus objetivos. Este es el proyecto que tengo mas avanzado. La idea base era la de reproducir el mitico juego "SpaceImpact" de los Nokia pero con buenos gráficos. Finalmente la cosa se ha distorsionado hacia algo mas gore... Las imagenes superiores pertencen a los primeros esbozos para lo que quiere llegar a ser un libro para niños. La llegada de los tablets y la carencia de este tipo de aplicaciones me han animado.