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How to Take a Walk

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Re: How to Take a Walk

#61

Post by jonsen »

rdtsc wrote: post #13

This is very important for programmers. You need to take a walk to recharge your batteries. To clear you mind. Well, it works for me anyway. Do it during lunch, after work, after dinner. On the weekend , for a longer walk. Parks and trails work best. Less crowded streets in the city work as well. Don't rush, just walk slowly. Observe things. If you end up thinking about the problem your are working on, that's fine, i…

Observe things. ... , look around.

Also look up. In city streets there are things to see above the horizontal plane we strongly tend to confine our view to.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#62

Post by yason »

kranner wrote: post #50
rdtsc wrote: post #13

This is very important for programmers. You need to take a walk to recharge your batteries. To clear you mind. Well, it works for me anyway. Do it during lunch, after work, after dinner. On the weekend , for a longer walk. Parks and trails work best. Less crowded streets in the city work as well. Don't rush, just walk slowly. Observe things. If you end up thinking about the problem your are working on, that's fine, i…

These are already too many instructions. When someone provides a plan, for some reason I am compelled to follow it meticulously or reject it entirely. I could use an Ask HN on how to loosen up.

How's this: "Be."

Re: How to Take a Walk

#63

Post by dchs »

"Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company."

- Seneca

Re: How to Take a Walk

#64

Post by [deleted] »

jasonkester wrote: post #44
dionidium wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last sentence of this comment makes no sense. Do his neighbors have such acute auditory ability that they can hear the music from his headphones -- the ones he takes on those walks -- through their walls?

There are few things more relaxing than coming home on a Friday afternoon, mixing a nice cocktail, and cranking some truly embarrassing music from your youth on the stereo, at full volume through big speakers. To pull that off, you need thick skin or thick walls.

[deleted]

Re: How to Take a Walk

#65

Post by arethuza »

barrkel wrote: post #60
zbyszek wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something similar happened to me in the US, but then again I've been stopped by the police in the UK too while out for a walk. In the latter case it was about 4 a.m. and I must have looked suspiciously sober.

I find the UK oddly authoritarian / rigid in many of these ways. My GF and myself decided to go to a lake (actually some kind of reservoir) near London on a hot day a month or two ago, and were rather surprised to find out that the lake closed at 6pm. The very concept of a lake closing, never mind at 6pm on a summer evening (easily light out until 10:30), was alien to my Irish mind. Meanwhile, there was an article in…

Och that Guardian article is getting all in a fluster about "wild camping" being banned in a single location (Loch Lomond) that is near to a major city and is seeing some problems.

Just about everywhere else in the Highlands I've never had any problems wild camping or staying in bothies (http://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/).

Re: How to Take a Walk

#66

Post by timknauf »

nhebb wrote: post #30

I grew up in a SW Portland neighborhood with no sidewalks. The road shoulders were narrow, unsafe, and often muddy. I never saw people out for leisure walks. It just wasn't enjoyable. Now I live in the outskirts of Portland, in a place with modern suburbs grown up around a quaint old town. Sidewalks are everywhere. I take walks all the time, and I see other people out for walks daily. It's seems like common sense tha…

Woah, we've had some 'pack 'em in' zoning here in New Zealand but I've never seen anything where they left out footpaths entirely. Has anyone got a representative Google street view link for SW Portland or something similar? (And is this really quite common across the US?)

Re: How to Take a Walk

#67

Post by reneky »

techiferous wrote: post #27

I took a stand-up comedy course a couple of years ago. I found out that it takes a long time to come up with material. You can't just sit down and start writing jokes. They come when they are ready and you'd better be ready to write them down. When I had some time in the evenings to come up with material I would sit at home without much inspiration. However, I found that when I walked to the convenience store to get…

Turns out it's easier to let your mind wander if you're busy with a simple activity, like walking:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/science/29tier.html

Re: How to Take a Walk

#68

Post by robryan »

neilk wrote: post #31

Tangent, on "having a life". I met a woman from New York who was visiting SF. We both had been to Burning Man. She expressed her distaste at how much time San Franciscans spend on their art projects. According to her, New Yorkers "have a life". So, that bar conversation ended pretty quickly. But later on I got to thinking about it. There might be positive senses of "having a life", but I think she meant it in the mor…

I've thought about this, then decided I probably couldn't live a fulfilling life conforming to the standard of this idea of having a life most people have.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#69

Post by nhebb »

timknauf wrote: post #66
nhebb wrote: post #30

I grew up in a SW Portland neighborhood with no sidewalks. The road shoulders were narrow, unsafe, and often muddy. I never saw people out for leisure walks. It just wasn't enjoyable. Now I live in the outskirts of Portland, in a place with modern suburbs grown up around a quaint old town. Sidewalks are everywhere. I take walks all the time, and I see other people out for walks daily. It's seems like common sense tha…

Woah, we've had some 'pack 'em in' zoning here in New Zealand but I've never seen anything where they left out footpaths entirely. Has anyone got a representative Google street view link for SW Portland or something similar? (And is this really quite common across the US?)

There are two separate issues at play - urban planning and neighborhood development. Portland prides itself on being at the forefront of urban planning, but when many of the roads were created in the perimeter of the city, there wasn't much thought put into it. The city has looked at retrofitting sidewalks into some of these areas, but it's prohibitively expensive.

Oddly enough, a lot of the neighborhoods weren't tightly packed. The lot sizes were decent and the house-to-house spacing was ample. I'm guessing it was more of an issue where, if the builders didn't have to spend money on sidewalks, they didn't.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#70

Post by ews »

jasonkester wrote: post #43

I started disagreeing with this immediately, since I take walks all the time. But it occurs to me that I do it a lot more now that I've moved to Europe. It's just a lot more walkable here. In Pamplona I could walk out my front door and be blasted with the fact that I was in a medieval walled city with cobbled streets and narrow alleyways. Any direction I went had some guaranteed Cool Stuff to pass by and probably wou…

I did the opposite. Moved from Spain to California few years ago. I was so shocked for the complete lack of sidewalks on San Francisco's South Bay that I ended up taking a complete collection of pictures about it.

It's somewhat common in some areas in the US, and literally unthinkable in Europe. I am lucky that I live in San Francisco now, where most of the city (besides some areas I found between the Sunset and Glen Park) has sidewalks. In fact, the first think I heard about SF before moving here was that it is 'very walkable'

My impression is that the tendency is somewhat reversing. I am an spoiled Franciscan now, so I don't know how is it on other parts of the country, but I have been hearing more and more people talking about moving closer to their offices (when they can) and walking or biking to work. Again, this is from a pure SF perspective, not sure how is it on other places in the US.

P.S. Gosh, I love Pamplona, you are lucky. The txistorras are one the best unknown meals in the world.

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