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Ask HN: What should I save for offline reading during 5 weeks without Internet?

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31–40 of 57 posts

Re: Ask HN: What should I save for offline reading during 5 weeks without Internet?

#31

Over the past few years I've spent a total of five months travelling through or living in various remote corners of Africa. My advice would be to forget the Internet and all that is on it. Take a decent camera, learn photography. Take a local dictionary, learn the language. Take some art supplies, learn to paint. Take a guidebook and learn about the animals and plants. Get up for sunrise. Immerse yourself in the cult…

"Forget the Internet and all that is on it" > I think this is very good advice.

I found writing was a very nice activity when you're not connected. When I was travelling, I always carried a small notebook and a pen. It just started as random scribbles, notes and doodles about various things I was experiencing, but after a while my writing started having more substance. I realized it helped me understand cultures, people, languages etc. a lot better.

For example, I'd see/hear a word I couldn't understand, write it down in the original language and phonetically, then would ask various people how they'd explain the word (or expression). Translations are very rarely 1:1, so people have different ways of explaining the same thing, which I find very insightful. Writing these things down was a good way to organize and etch those things in my mind.

Re: Ask HN: What should I save for offline reading during 5 weeks without Internet?

#37
post #30

Why read/watch? I mean... maybe you can enjoy coding offline ? You can git clone many things... the linux kernel, the openbsd source tree, the bootstrap project, whatever you love. And then hack on it ! On my external HDD, I use to bring with me a Debian mirror and a CPAN mirror, so I can hack offline (building system scripts, etc). On the other side, if you want to take a rest of coding, there are free publications…

Who said OP is a programmer?

Re: Ask HN: What should I save for offline reading during 5 weeks without Internet?

#39

Spend those hours in your room writing a diary about your trip, doodling on your own projects, meditating. You're going to be overloaded with new input already. You don't need more.

Seconded. In fact, I'm going to schedule time this week to do nothing but be in a park, sans eBooks, games, or the like.

Re: Ask HN: What should I save for offline reading during 5 weeks without Internet?

#40
post #30

Why read/watch? I mean... maybe you can enjoy coding offline ? You can git clone many things... the linux kernel, the openbsd source tree, the bootstrap project, whatever you love. And then hack on it ! On my external HDD, I use to bring with me a Debian mirror and a CPAN mirror, so I can hack offline (building system scripts, etc). On the other side, if you want to take a rest of coding, there are free publications…

Who said OP is a programmer?

>my areas of interest are the largely the kind of things that get posted about on HN

seems to imply that. Either way, it could be an advice for OP to learn a language. What's wrong with that?

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