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How to Take a Walk

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Re: How to Take a Walk

#81

Post by sili »

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.

In older cities it's amazing how much great architecture goes unnoticed. New York city has buildings from turn of the century with most intricate decorations and reliefs and only recently I started noticing it (in a "they don't make 'em like they used to" way).

Re: How to Take a Walk

#82

Post by torpor »

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 live in Europe, and I walk to work. And home again. Those walks are awesome .. my mind is clear and free of cruft each and every day.

I think the better advice would be "don't commute to work". People need to get away from their cars. 2 hours a day spent driving is misery defined ..

Re: How to Take a Walk

#83

Post by wccrawford »

lars512 wrote: post #80
smutticus wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the American suburbia I know best. Falls Church VA. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&#38... Portland is not a good example of American urban planning gone awry. As it's probably one of the most sensible cities in the US. And yes, unfortunately neighborhoods without sidewalks are all too common in American suburbs.

Wow. I've travelled to many countries and lived in a few, but I've never been somewhere without sidewalks. I looked at that street view and thought: "that's weird, grassy sidewalks". I had to pan 360 degrees a few times to realise it was people's front gardens, not public space. It feels very alien to me.

Around here, there are laws now that prevent someone from building without providing a sidewalk. Old lots are grandfathered in, I think, but any new development has to also provide a sidewalk.

I suspect it's that way most places, and that's why you find so few without sidewalks. They do exist, though.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#84

Post by AndyKelley »

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…

I think I can remember three different times I've decided to look up and I saw someone watching me. I waved "hello" to them and continued on.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#85

Post by limmeau »

Elcho wrote: post #45
derefr wrote: post #3

A re-quote from the comments: > If you need to listen to music while walking, don’t walk; and don’t listen to music. I tend to never listen to music unless I'm taking a walk. I have no anxiety about idleness, but I do have an acute anxiety about others' opinions of my taste in music—it is such that I can only stand to enjoy music when there is no one close enough to me to hear it. Seeing as I live in an apartment wit…

I like taking walks and listening to pod casts, the problem is the opposite; I'm laughing and muttering to myself as I walk along, unnerving all those elderly immigrants. However it is a good idea to walk without ipods/mp3 players as much as you can bear, walking helps your mind wander or meditate without having to 'learn how to breathe'.

I enjoy taking good podcasts along with me on my walks because then, streets get associated with topics. The corner next to the ugly second-hand store is now all about planning the European high-voltage power grid, and the flower shop at the hospital is about self-made bicycle computers and OpenStreetMap.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#86

Post by LiteralPolice »

ews wrote: post #70
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…

Incorrect usage of the word "literally." Please remove it.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#87

Post by AndyKelley »

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.

Two weeks ago I was hacking away in my apartment. It was a normal Arizona summer day, clear skies and 106 degrees F. All of the sudden my window started rattling and I had no idea what was going on. Peering behind my blinds I observed sheets of water falling from the sky. We get rain like that maybe once every year. I promptly undressed, donned my bathing suit, and went for a walk in the rain.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#89

Post by newmediaclay »

Amazing read. This also demonstrates another benefit of living near a college campus - acres and acres of beautiful land and architecture just begging to be walked through. It is no surprise to me that one of the few places he saw Americans walking through was a university. I live in Chapel Hill, NC just two blocks from the college and I find time almost every weekend to just stumble through campus to clear my mind, check out new buildings, and enjoy myself.

Re: How to Take a Walk

#90

Post by michael_nielsen »

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…

Cory Doctorow has a very thoughtful blog post that expands on this theme and really picks out what's wrong with accusations of "too much time on your hands": http://boingboing.net/2002/02/03/too-much-time-on-his.html It's good enough that I periodically reread it, and recommend it to others.

(Just submitted it as http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1591218 )

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