From Sci-Fi to Sleep Science
It’s good to read. Reading is the source of power and agency. One of the books I read recently was “Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams” by Matthew Walker. Normally, I’m a Sci-Fi guy, but recently real life has been more interesting than Sci-Fi. Life caught up with Sci-Fi and we now know the impossible. Rather than reading a book about Sci-Fi, it’s more interesting to talk to AIs than read about fictional AIs, even though I still highly recommend the Asimov I, Robot and The Caves of Steel are still highly recommended. They are the cure to The Terminator / Matrix dystopian view of AI. I, Robot is nothing like the Will Smith movie, and Caves of Steel is about R. Daneel Olivaw who was the model for Star Trek Next Gen’s android Lieutenant Commander Data.
The Discovery of Adenosine
Anyway, it was way back just about 100 years ago when adenosine, our sleep-fuse chemical, was discovered by Alan Drury and Albert Szent-Györgyi. They knew it had something to do with the heart, but they didn’t realize it’s the chemical that builds up in the body while you’re awake and gets purged while you sleep. Running out of steam? That’s adenosine building up in your body! That refreshed feeling after you wake up? The adenosine has been purged from your body. There’s no amount of getting a second wind late at night or getting over the hump of skipping a night’s sleep that’s going to scrub the stuff out of your veins.
Adenosine and Cellular Energy
In the intervening years, it was discovered that adenosine had something to do with the powerhouse of the cell, mitochondria, and the reason animals get their energy from digesting food instead of from sunlight like plants. The air you breath (oxygen) and the food you eat (converted to glucose sugar) floats around in your blood, getting out to all your cells which absorb it, and the mitochondria floating around in the protoplasm of your cells take that in and convert it to adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Notice the word adenosine there. Burning your ATP fuel up is that feeling of wakefulness. Get it?
The Brain’s Energy Demands
Okay, now here’s the rub. Your brain burns up a whole lot of ATP. It turns out being a thinking mammal with a big brain is very expensive. I mean, not as expensive as a hummingbird keeping it’s wings flapping (proportionately), but still pretty darn expensive and that high energy consumption pumps up the adenosine levels outside your cells – and particularly, in your brain! It’s not directly ATP-waste, but comes from multiple pathways budding up throughout the day, inhibiting wake-promoting neurons and activating sleep-promoting ones, creating sleep pressure.
Sleep, Adenosine, and Caffeine
Sleeping clears out the accumulated adenosine in your brain, restoring alertness. This process is part of your sleep-wake cycle regulation, alongside circadian rhythms. Interestingly, the effects of adenosine can be blocked by caffeine, which is why coffee helps keep you awake, and why you don’t want to drink it too close to sleep time. It will keep you from having as much energy as you should the next day! Yes, caffeine can backfire. So, it’s all in the timing. I write this at 6:30 AM as I sip my morning coffee. Perplexity?
Scientific Review from Perplexity
Perplexity: Your explanation of adenosine’s role in sleep regulation is generally accurate and well-presented. Here are a few points to enhance the accuracy and clarity of your article:
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The discovery of adenosine’s cardiac actions by Drury and Szent-Györgyi in 1929 was indeed a significant milestone, but its role in sleep regulation wasn’t fully understood until much later[5].
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Your description of adenosine accumulation during wakefulness and its clearance during sleep is correct. Adenosine builds up in the extracellular space between brain cells, particularly in wake-promoting regions, as a byproduct of cellular metabolism[2][7].
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The connection between ATP, mitochondria, and adenosine is well-explained. However, it’s important to note that the feeling of wakefulness isn’t directly caused by “burning ATP fuel,” but rather by the complex interplay of various neurotransmitters and brain regions[5].
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Your explanation of how adenosine creates sleep pressure is accurate. Adenosine inhibits wake-promoting neurons and activates sleep-promoting ones, particularly in areas like the basal forebrain[6][7].
-
The mention of caffeine blocking adenosine’s effects is correct and explains why coffee promotes wakefulness[4].
-
Your advice about timing caffeine intake is sound. Consuming caffeine too close to bedtime can indeed interfere with sleep quality and next-day alertness[4].
Overall, your article provides a good overview of adenosine’s role in sleep regulation, with a nice balance of scientific accuracy and reader-friendly explanations.
Citations:
[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1614677114
[2] https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/adenosine-and-sleep
[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9541543/
[4] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22179-z
[5] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3246291/
[6] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2769007/
[7] https://medicine.yale.edu/internal-medicine/pulmonary/news/national-sleep-week/good-sleep-recipe/
[8] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abb0556
[9] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.00740/full
Personal Experience with Sleep and Productivity
Okay, that was fun! So, bottom line, working with Grok 3 I got over quite a hump yesterday deciding where I’m going directionally with my FastHTML web framework but ran out of steam around 9:00 PM and got ready for bed. I probably didn’t fall asleep until around 11:00 PM, and here I am at 6:30 AM the next morning, typing away.
Brain-Boosting Breakfast: The Power of Smoked Salmon
The adenosine is cleared out of my brain, and I’m giving it an extra hit of caffeine. I also need to get some classic nutrition into my body, and I’ll probably have some lox (smoked salmon), which is one of those brain superfoods full of all the good omega-3 fatty acids, high-quality protein, and essential vitamins and minerals. These nutrients support brain function, potentially enhancing cognitive performance and memory. The protein will help stabilize my blood sugar levels, providing sustained energy throughout the morning. Norwegians know this! And it is why so many people take fish oil pills. Just eat lox.
Electrolytes and Vitamin C: The Perfect Pairing
Oh, and on a related note, you know how smoked salmon is salty? That means you’re getting electrolytes which help the water that you drink really get into your body (prevent dehydration). That’s the basics of Gatorade (saltwater), but it doesn’t have to be disgusting. In fact, after getting the lox superfood in your body (you don’t need so much bagel), the best thing to do is dose it with vitamin C. Have you ever craved orange juice after lox? That’s not just the saltiness. Your body needs a particular amino acid that the body doesn’t provide to make the best use of the fish protein (vitamin C), to absorb iron and build other tissues.
The Optimal Morning Fuel Strategy
So the ideal getting started is a little bit of lox, orange juice (or spinach and the like) and a cup of coffee. Be careful with the carbs (bread). That’s not something that’s in our natural diets, and they tend to make you fat (excess energy like raw sugar). Bread is sugar pretending to be meat.
YAML and Text-Based Configuration
Anyhow, this is really about coding as it so often inevitably is. But now I’m feeling like I want to do some broad strokes again just as warm-up exercises for the day. I’ve got a few dots that I want to connect.
First, a few days ago (in my Thursday through Saturday articles), I pretty much
settled on the wisdom of thinking in bare-bones text-file lists that have a
light bit of indenting and the occasional colon (:) to create label-value
pairs, and the occasional “double quotes” around labels, and that’s YAML. Like
Markdown, YAML wasn’t first. It’s just what caught on, for whatever reason. TOML
was first. And in the case of Markdown, Python’s RST (reStructuredText) was
first. RST is a lightweight markup language that predates Markdown and was
originally created for Python documentation. It’s more feature-rich than
Markdown but less widely adopted outside the Python ecosystem.
The Evolution of Configuration Languages
YAML (YAML Ain’t Markup Language) and TOML (Tom’s Obvious, Minimal Language) are both human-readable data serialization formats, often used for configuration files. While TOML was created in 2013 by Tom Preston-Werner, YAML actually predates it, having been first proposed in 2001. Both YAML and TOML aim to be more human-friendly alternatives to formats like JSON or XML.
The Natural Fit of YAML
Now the thing is, when you’re a Python person and have accepted that indents and
white space matters, and you start just writing a list indenting for hierarchy,
you’re probably writing in YAML and don’t even know it! That’s right, just
indented list-writing is YAML. Simple as that. Well, almost. If you throw in
colons, you’ve got key/value-pairs, or dict’s in Python parlance. And so, it’s
really, really easy to think in YAML-lists, and that was my realization for a
storytelling framework last week that is basically free-flowing get into the
zone style storytelling, which will ultimately let me design my workflows for my
frameworks. Where I left off was:
Example:
site:
domain:
sitemap:
robots_txt:
llms_txt:
size:
google:
bing:
gsc:
site:
url:
performance_12m:
index:
bing:
site:
url:
botify:
org:
project:
project_url:
decks:
agenda:
worksession:
summary:
YAML as a Natural Framework for Website Audits
There’s just so much storytelling there, it’s unbelievable. You could make a deck out of this by more or less putting a URL in for each value, vising that webpage and taking a screen snapshot. String the screenshots together, and VOILÀ! You have… well, not quite a website audit, but certainly an overview health check and the framework for a more indepth audit. Many of the right questions are asked. It leaves off things like Core Web Vitals (CWV) and a few other things, but it sets the stage very nicely and can be customized for almost any instance… because YAML! Nice and lightweight, and staged to actually be imported as a config file!
From Jupyter Notebooks to FastHTML: The Technical Process
Now my system doesn’t really import these things. Actually, the process is more like designing something in a Jupyter Notebook and then porting it over to FastHTML. These outlines have nothing to do with the technical process right now, besides maybe planning the Notebook or Pipulate workflow… pipulation? Pipulating the data? Oh, that’s so good given it’s nearness to both populate the data and using the implied and actual use of the PyPI pip install tool in the background to build the familiar Python environment you’re using. Yes, these are pipulate workflows, which can but not necesssarily must be called pipulations.
Agency and Vision in Software Development
Okay, this is clear vision stuff. This is what compels a project forward. And thinking out loud, processing previous day’s thoughts and bouncing ideas off of sounding walls as you go, but plotting your own course little by little over time… well, that’s called agency. We spend so much time trying to make the running instances of our LLM-prompts agentic, and we spend so little time trying to make our automatic daily grind more agentic. LLMs are not on looping schedules because that would be too expensive. But doing so makes the agentic, which is okay because if they’re making money they pay for all that extra computing power they spend by continuously running. There’s a less expensive local LLM story here that only costs you the price of electricity which I’ll cover soon.
Breaking Free from Automatic Patterns
Hopefully, you get the idea. We humans are already in that day/night loop cycle, like it or not. There’s no automation script putting us in that mode. We’re in it and must cope and survive, and so we have automatic click-whirrr programs (as Robert Cialdini of the book Influence and The Art of Persuasion) would put it. Theat doesn’t make us thinking and agentic. It just makes us part of the human experience, which is often unthinking and on automatic. To lift us above the daily grind, to get out of ruts and boring patterns of the easy and automatic, we must burn some of that ATP in our brain, deliberately going off the rails.
The Risk and Necessity of Creative Thinking
And going off the rails is scary, but that’s creativity. You run with the pack or you run alone. I forget what movie that quote came from. You either run with the pack or you run alone. Do you run with the pack? It’s the setup for coming into line and getting the strength of the whole pack, or going off to the very difficult life of being a lone wolf. Of course, that’s the predator metaphor. Do you flock with the herd, or do you get eaten by a predator. Because if you stray too far from the herd, you’ll get picked off by a predator at the edges.
The Paradox of Creativity and Survival
Oh, what irony! There is strength in numbers and strength in the herd, so the only obvious choice is to blend into the crowd and disappear (if herd) or to play your part in coordinated, practiced orchestration (if pack). Where is there room for creativity and art? You can imagine how this is a setup for comedy and humor. Or should I say tragedy? Striking out on your own either literally or just in your mind to think differently is dangerous. Creativity is dangerous. You know, the movie The Croods summed it up nicely. Creativity is dangerous, but sometimes necessary to survive. To be creative when day-to-day survival is not at stake is actually just rare. That internal drive is rare.
LLMs and the Pull Toward Convention
That’s personal opinion, and we can only know ourselves that well. Perhaps it’s
presumptuous to say that about others or in general. However, my recent
experiences with the LLMs reinforces this belief quite emphatically. Perhaps
it’s not fear, nor any biological imperative to flock and herd, but LLMs will
keep corralling you back to FastAPI like some sort of digital shepherd when what
you really are trying to use is FastHTML, which is way out on the edge,
creatively. In fact, it’s connecting dots others haven’t seen (or acted upon
yet) so well it’s almost literal. And by dots, I mean HTML Attributes and
Python args. It’s almost mind-bending to realize how they “zip”
together using the **kwargs splat feature in Python.
Understanding Python’s Kwargs Splat Operator
Spat? What? Well, splatting is a uniquely flexibly way to make a Python function
have 1-to-1 correspondence with key/value-pairs coming in from say HTML elements
and their attributes. Instead of feeding a Python function arguments (function
input) on pre-determined locations (parameters), you can instead feed a Python
dictionary (JSON-like object) and just have Python sort it all out (unpack it).
This is referred to as **kwargs, not because kwargs has any special reserved
keyword meaning in Python, but rather by convention because even Python people
have difficulty following all the splat unpacking going on, so it’s helpful to
use a conventional name.
The Genius of FastHTML’s HTML-Python Integration
The way Python allows splatting and the resulting weird power it provides is bit
heady. And the way it was used to zip together the HTML specification with
Python functions and then in turn HTMX was almost sitting there waiting to
happen, being a unifying force between Python and HTML and liberator of the
potential of HTMX. Now there were other things like FastHTML before it that went
that far: HTML attribute-to-Python arguments like PyPI’s dominate (pip install
dominate). However, FastHTML took the creative step of using the “space” that
provided to layer in the HTMX attributes as well.
A Convergence of Web Development Pioneers
Okay, I’ll say it. It’s genius. It’s the kind of genius I wish that I was, but am not and can only recognize in tools when I see it. And what’s more, it’s the Venn diagram between several geniuses, the most obvious of which are Tim Berners-Lee who wrote the HTML hypertext specification back in 1989 (and thus invented the World Wide Web), Guido van Rossum who created such a love-worthy language as Python back in 1991, Carson Gross who created HTMX in 2019 (but we’ll credit back to 2013 when the ideas appeared in intercooler.js) which removes certain limitations from the HTML protocol thus eliminating most needs for JavaScript, and finally Jeremy Howard who connected the dots between all of the above only just last year in 2024 to create FastHTML. It’s an off-the-rails web framework!
The Challenge of True Creative Innovation
So where were we? Right, deliberately going off the rails. Thing is, even when you’re consciously trying to be creative, you’re still probably sticking to some rails, some tried-and-true pathways your brain’s already worn smooth. I mean, Python exists. It itself is a framework that so many people have fallen in love with. HTML is also a similar framework. Nobody’s going to replace those wheels (even if they do reinvent them). They’ve got early mover advantage, momentum, yadda yadda. Native mobile apps haven’t really replaced the web and Mojo hasn’t replaced Python. I mean there’s a whole article or two just in qualifying those statements. But let’s just say it’s better to build on the Web and Python than to wholesale replace them.
YAML Outlines as Creative Tools
It’s also where YAML outlines come in. They’re plain old text outlines that give little nudges towards new connections, while sitting on a standard that gives you the power of conventional behavior and the wisdom of the crowd. I could load them directly into Python if I wanted to, but I don’t need to. The basic convention (framework) is so friggin easy, it fades into the background and fades away, letting the flow state kick in, as any good tool should allow. You essentially stop thinking about tools as they become a virtual extension of your body. That’s why you want them Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Otherwise, the virtual extensions of your body belong to profit incentivized corporate interests.
Debunking the “Free Product” Myth
Let’s bust the myth: If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. Well, that’s just cynical and plain wrong. Try telling that to Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python. Try telling that to Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux. And perhaps most poignant of all, try telling that to Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS), the creator of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the thing that was the catalyst for everything that is free and good in this world of tech – if you don’t include Ken Thompson who’s stuff was proprietary but he deliberately let loose on the world through by leaking it to his alma matter in the form of BSD Unix (Berkeley System Distribution), and you don’t include the father of Time Sharing, Fernando Corbató who made multics, but which also became proprietary.
The Reality of True Altruism in Tech
So what I’m saying is that there is real free and true altruism in this world. There is free as in freedom and liberty (as opposed to free as in first-dose free) in this world. People who perpetuate the myth that if you’re not paying for the product you are the product are just trying to sell you something, probably something different than what you’re currently using and are trying to get you to switch. And I must acknowledge that there is the hardware hard-cost bottleneck. We don’t have matter compilers yet (Star Trek replicators / 3D printers for everything). And so, someone’s gotta pay for physical raw materials and the process of putting it together. These are finite resources with material costs. Information is not. You really ought to read about Richard Matthew Stallman and the General Public License (GPL) one day.
Understanding Adenosine and Mental Energy
Okay, so adenosine… right. See? It’s not even 8:00 AM and I’ve created a bunch of it. The temptation is to think you’ve burned fuel in the ATP process and thus created adenosine byproduct accumulating up in your brain, but I’m led to believe the reality is more indirect. While there is adenosine in the ATP-ADP conversion process (ATP is the fuel and ADP is the waste), it’s not like the “A” is released out into your blood. There’s other metabolic processes having to do with being awake that do that. Nonetheless, it’s accumulating up in your brain throughout the day creating sleep pressure. You only have so much to go around during the day, like a candle burning or an engine running out of steam, so you have to divvy it out carefully. And I divvy it here into this article as a sort of direction-adjusting agency-practicing exercise.
The Long Game of Personal Growth
Yeah, that says it quite nicely. I’m deliberately adjusting my direction in life to exercise a sort of agency that I know doesn’t change my life in one day, but rather builds up day-after-day. It’s a long-bet. It’s like the handfuls of dirt the jeweler prisoner character in the Steven King Shawshank Redemption movie digs and disperses every day to eventually create a tunnel. Yes, it’s not a true story even though it’s easy to wish it was. It’s just like Rocky, not a real character, but the symbol of the indomitable spirit is useful none the less. These two concepts combine very effectively, the indomitable spirit of Rocky who just keeps bouncing back up, and the persistence, patience and stick-to-it-iveness of the Andy Dufresne character who tunnels his way to freedom.
Okay, so now… before the day really begins… I already did one of the key most important parts, that YAML outline. I have to make it more roadmap-like covering a 2-week process of site optimization, mostly through JavaScript-style SEO, which really is a thing.
I will have to report to a client how a process I was monitoring over the weekend went (well) and also do a fair amount of follow-up work on that, but the good news now is that everything gets somehow or other plowed into this single storytelling workflow. There will be big versions of it (workessions) and small versions of it (executive summaries), but it will always be a linear process. It will always be a linear workflow where I will be able to have my system compel me through it URL by URL, page by page. It will quite literally tell a story (thinking about incorporating 11labs-like voice…
Hmm, Is There a FOSS Alternative to 11Labs?
Me: Is there an 11labs like product in FOSS that works on NixOS and nix on Mac and Windows (under WSL)?
Perplexity: Yes, there are open-source alternatives to ElevenLabs that can work on NixOS, macOS with Nix, and Windows under WSL. The most promising option is Coqui TTS, an open-source text-to-speech library[5][9].
Coqui TTS offers:
- Voice cloning capabilities
- Support for multiple languages
- A Python-based implementation
To use Coqui TTS on different platforms:
NixOS
You can install Coqui TTS using Nix package manager. Create a shell.nix file with the necessary dependencies and use nix-shell to set up the environment.
macOS with Nix
Use nix-darwin to manage your macOS configuration and include Coqui TTS in your setup[2]. This allows for a consistent development environment across platforms.
Windows (WSL)
Utilize NixOS-WSL, which enables running NixOS on Windows Subsystem for Linux[4][6]. This approach allows you to use Coqui TTS within a NixOS environment on Windows.
While Coqui TTS may not have the exact same level of quality as ElevenLabs, it provides a solid open-source foundation for text-to-speech functionality across these platforms. For those seeking higher quality but still open-source options, Tortoise TTS is another alternative, though it may require more computational resources[7][9].
Citations:
[1] https://www.yeschat.ai/blog-Top-5-Best-FREE-ElevenLabs-Alternatives-FREE-Text-to-Speech-Tool-18679
[2] https://joegold.in/blog/posts/08-21-2024-nixos-dev-env/
[3] https://smallest.ai/blog/free-elevenlabs-alternatives-text-to-speech
[4] https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixtheplanet-run-macos-windows-and-more-via-a-single-nix-command-nixosmodules/36634
[5] https://crikk.com/elevenlabs-alternatives/
[6] https://discourse.nixos.org/t/wsl-2-is-out-better-support-for-nix/2860
[7] https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/11od0rn/completely_free_unlimited_elevenlabs_alternative/
[8] https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1gdz7nb/what_should_i_use_wsl_2_nixos_for_why_everything/
[9] https://nerdynav.com/open-source-ai-voice/
Future Plans for Voice Integration with Coqui TTS
So, Coqui TTS (text to speech) is in my future, just not right now due to the fact it might be a rabbit hole adventure. It would complement the Ollama-powered local LLM in my web framework, so that it not only felt like it was doing the ChatBot thing with you, but it would also feel like it was talking, which has been all the rage lately with ChatGPT and Grok. There is a powerful emotional component there when there is a human-sounding voice speaking those chatbot responses to you. And all with FOSS! This is some powerful dots I’m trying to connect. But I’ve got to keep pushing… before the work day begins… look back to yesterday’s article…
Understanding Daily Energy Cycles and Adenosine
Each and every day is that burning candle experience. Each and every day is that running out of steam experience. And now we have a scientific explanation. It’s the building up of adenosine in our brains! This ties directly into the concepts of decision fatigue and cognitive overhead for me. There’s only so much you can do before you’re like an over-inflated balloon. The inversion of “running out of fuel” versus being “over-inflated” with sleepy chemicals is interesting. It’s not so much burning the candle at both ends as over-stuffing yourself. And you can’t just pour in more fuel as a solution. Your body clears out adenosine at the rate it clears it out. So getting more sleep to rejuvenate is more important than getting more food for energy.
Seizing the Morning Energy for Framework Documentation
Okay, I did that. This is the morning. I’ve got that morning energy and we are going into a Monday morning. Make that desperate chisel-strike to lock in the win you earned from the weekend work!
Separating Pipeline Workflow Guide into Its Own Article
Yes, it is literally a starter-guide to adding new pipeline workflows my own web framework! And I don’t want it mixed into this adenosine article. It would make it way too long and even more topically dispersed than it already is. Okay, so onto the next article for today!
The Gemini Summary
In this article, I delve into the science of adenosine, the chemical behind sleep pressure, and how it impacts our daily energy levels and cognitive function. I explore its discovery, its connection to cellular energy, and how caffeine interacts with it. Shifting gears, I discuss my personal productivity strategies, including the importance of nutrition like smoked salmon and the integration of YAML for streamlined website audits. I also reflect on the creative process, the challenges of innovation, and the power of open-source software, all while outlining my plans for integrating voice technology into my web framework.
Ideas for Titles and Headlines:
- “Adenosine & Agency: Fueling Creativity and Productivity”
- “Beyond Caffeine: Unlocking True Energy with Adenosine Insights”
- “YAML, Lox, and LLMs: My Morning Brain-Boosting Routine”
- “The Science of Sleep Pressure and the Art of Creative Innovation”
- “From Adenosine to Agency: My Journey in Tech and Productivity”
AI’s Opinion of the Article:
This article effectively blends scientific explanations with personal anecdotes and technical insights. It provides a comprehensive look into the author’s thought process, combining elements of biology, software development, and philosophical reflection. The author’s enthusiasm for open-source software and creative problem-solving shines through, making for an engaging and informative read. The integration of scientific concepts with practical applications and personal experiences makes the article both educational and relatable.