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How to Take a Walk

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Re: How to Take a Walk

#151

Post by rikthevik »

jonsen wrote: post #61
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.

1.) 99% of the time, the people looking up are tourists.

2.) It is really funny to look straight up at the sky in a busy street and then watch twenty other people start looking up, wondering what could possibly be going on up there.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#152

Post by timwiseman »

Tichy wrote: post #75
simonw wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get really infuriated by the phrase "too much time on their hands", when used to dismiss acts of creativity (like building a model of the Eiffel tower out of match sticks). At least they weren't watching TV.

Some TV shows might be more worthwhile than building an Eiffel tower out of match sticks.

I am not sure if you are being sarcastic, but I will say I very much doubt it. There are many TV shows I enjoy watching, and a few that are either inspirational or infomrative. But never have I accomplished something by watching TV.

Building something, even an Eiffel tower out of match sticks, is accomplishing something. How valuable or useful that something is is debatable, and there are probably better things to build then a match-stick tower, but it is still an accomplishment it adds to the world in a way that watching TV never will.

I will admit to watching TV and enjoying it, but I consider it an indulgence. I always have something better to do, and I think that is true of nearly everyone.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#154

Post by olliesaunders »

smutticus wrote: post #72
simonw wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get really infuriated by the phrase "too much time on their hands", when used to dismiss acts of creativity (like building a model of the Eiffel tower out of match sticks). At least they weren't watching TV.

Amen to that. I also get terribly infuriated by this. It reminds me of being in high school when any display of creativity or intelligence was frowned upon.

Posted for relevance: http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html This is one of my favorites.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#155

Post by rue »

Me, I like walking. Or going by bus/tram/train/airplane.

I think what I really like is the going somewhere part in general, although not necessarily somewhere in particular.

Walking in itself is one of the more pleasant ways of going somewhere nonparticular.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#156

Post by jordyhoyt »

JacobAldridge wrote: post #15

There's a quote that comes to my mind, on occasion, which I love, and which sums up the attitude I want toward life and that which is expressed here. "Some people walk in the rain, and some people just get wet." Be someone who walks in the rain.

I'm with you. In college - being in Seattle - it would frequently pour down rain while I was walking between classes. At first, I would run and find cover like everyone else, but after awhile I gave up and started walking, head uncovered, treating the falling raindrops as thousands of gentle reminders that I'm alive. Once or twice, I couldn't help but just bursting out laughing.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#157

Post by brianpan »

vgr wrote: post #116
brianpan wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disliked the part where he assumes he can tell where someone is born by looking at them. :( I wonder if he thinks he looks like a native-born or an immigrant?

I am sorry that part offended you, but I usually can, with pretty good accuracy. There are studies (see Robert Levine, "Geography of Time") that use normal walking pace as a very characteristic indicator of geographic origin. The FBI caught Adolf Eichmann in Argentina partly because they noticed his dissonant walking pace :) Venkat

So you used people's walking pace to determine that most native-born people do not take leisurely walks? ;)

I am not offended, that sentence rubbed me the wrong way. I agree that most certainly culture affects our activities, even to the point of how we do seemingly simple things. But the culture you have and the place where you are born are very different things. Ask anyone who is born into a displaced family that preserves their original culture.

I am an American-born Chinese person that takes walks. When you see me and my wife strolling, at that moment, you are seeing my culture (that enjoys "san-bu") not my birth place.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#158

Post by brianpan »

philwelch wrote: post #96
brianpan wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disliked the part where he assumes he can tell where someone is born by looking at them. :( I wonder if he thinks he looks like a native-born or an immigrant?

Can't you? People throw off subtle cues all the time, and whether they're native born or not is something that isn't hard to pick up from that. Conversely, take a native born person of Japanese or Indian descent, and send them to Japan or India. The natives there will be able to tell he isn't native born.

You can see culture, not birthplace. Those are different things.

If you see me on the street, I believe you will see my family culture (Chinese) and where I was brought up (American Midwest). You will not see where I was born (East Coast).

Re: How to Take a Walk

#159

Post by cconstantine »

smutticus wrote: post #73
jonsen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No one ever looks up. No really. No one ever looks up. I used to have a balcony over a very crowded alley with constant foot traffic. I would stand there quietly and watch people think they were alone in this alley all the time. Drunk people were the best. One corner of the alley was constantly getting pee'd in so they installed a metal skirt that bounced the pee back on the pee'r. You could watch drunk people pee in…

Oddly enough if you play through Portal with commentary on they talk about this constantly. Test players never looked up and they had to do elaborate things with the level design to simply get people to look up.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#160

Post by [deleted] »

vgr wrote: post #132
michaelfairley wrote: post #21

"You will not sweat." The author has clearly never lived in Texas during the summer. (A decent-length leisurely walk around Austin at midnight during this time of the year will inevitably result in more than enough sweat.)

Actually, I did spend a year (and parts of 2 summers) in Austin. I used to go for late night walks near my apartment, which was just off 183, well north, in strip-mall land. If you walk slowly enough, you won't sweat. Or maybe that's just Austin.

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