Insomnia out, Insomniac baby in

For nearly all of my adult life, I have been brutalized by insomnia. About two and a half years ago it vanished, literally over night. Very little compares with that sort of life change.

Now I have an 8-month-old baby, and he has insomnia. No sleep unless I stand and bounce him. If I lay him down, the crying starts. We are weening him off of feeding throughout the night. He is expressing his displeasure. Nobody sleeps.

Hopefully, no one at any of my upcoming talks notices when I fall asleep around slide 24.

My Industry Flame-out

The next couple of weeks in May will be a bit busy.

I'll be giving a talk at Google on May 20th. This came about from a very kind invitation from Martin at Google. Unfortunately, it was recently revealed to me that one of the principal "targets" of my talk, Dick Lyon, hated our Nature paper on this same material. Pehaps he'll appreciate it if I bring a bucket of rotten tomatoes with which he can pelt me during the show.

The Google talk has been on the back-burner for a while, but suddenly, I not only have a talk at Google, but also at Yahoo Research and Starkey Hearing Research (hearing aids), and completely unsolicited. I gave a very small talk at the "Vision Lunch" informal talk series at Stanford last week. Much to my surprise, Malcolm Slaney, a prominent auditory researcher now at Yahoo, showed up. After 1-1/2 hours of miscommunication, he walked up to me a said, "Why don't you come talk to people that will understand what you're talking about." What luck, bongos...

That night, back in Berkeley, I checked my email to find a message from the head of Starkey Research, also in Berkeley. He'd like me to come give my talk for them, along with a meet and greet and lunch. This email is just sitting in my inbox, materialized from out of the ether. Serendipity.

It's crunch time!

Baby stuff just sat up on his own for the very first time!!!

I promise video, maybe later today. Oh and the clapping too...