Trying to calculate all day long. Lunch break. During this moment of procrastination, I thought I’d tell you about the product of yesterday’s procrastination. At some point in the morning I decided that I was not thinking straight about aspects of my computation (like what it all means), and that this could be helped by having a bigger space to work on that I have at home right now.
I don’t know about others, but sometimes in addition to the need to change venues during research thoughts, I also need to change the medium I’m writing on. So at lunch I went shopping and after visiting far too many stores (art supply for one part, office supply for another) to get the right things, look what I got (see left picture)!
I know, you were expecting something fancy and probably electronic, weren’t you? Sorry. Well, I’m an old-fashioned type at the core. It might not seem like much, but such things are in fact the main tools for my type of research. I don’t have a lab with fancy equipment like lasers and vacuum pumps and microscopes and the like. I just have a tiny office, notebooks, pens and pencils, etc. So one has to maximize these assets (as it were) as much as one can. It’s good to have a bigger board for working at home (although it is not as big as the one I thought about getting but changed my mind at the last minute!), and especially good to have a good easel for this and other purposes. The easel setup allows me to move it around easily, either stand at it or sit at it, and it can go outdoors onto the patio or into the garden with ease.
I set it up this morning and sat at it for a while, and in no time, I put it into the more satisfying scribbled-on state on the right. It’s now full of conformal field theory!
Oh, and the computations are flowing more nicely now… although that might be as a result of sitting in Barnes and Nobles’ cafe at the Grove for three hours on the way back from the shopping trip yesterday. Kick start brought about by a change of venue instead of a change of medium. One can never tell which it is…
-cvj
Candace, sometimes I forget that you are now more English than I am! 🙂
-cvj
http://www.twochapstalking.com/dictionary/2003/04/old_ball_and_chain.html
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I remembered this post while I was reading about Alan Kay’s bio at work earlier today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay
Apparently he just got a NSF grant to pursue a project to simplify computer languages. The summary of the project is given as “The conglomeration of commercial and most open source software consumes in the neighborhood of several hundreds of millions of lines of code these days. We wonder: how small could be an understandable practical “Model T” design that covers this functionality? 1M lines of code? 200K LOC? 100K LOC? 20K LOC?”
I believe this applies to physics as well. May I suggest that the problem of not “thinking straight” is not you, but it is physics? The language of physics is a complex and archaic code invented in the 18th century and is getting more and more complex every second. I think the problem is that the language of physics is coupled to natural language (e.g. philosophy, principles, conjuctures…) and “computations” are not computations but derivation. So How small could physics be? I think is a good question.
When I’m trying to get serious work done, I like to use A3 landscape paper. I like the idea of using an easel. Perhaps I should find a way of combining the two.
OBC?
-cvj
Good call. I have an el cheapo but fairly big whiteboard from Ryman on the wall next to my desk at home. It comes in handy when the OBC and I have arguments involving equations…you know, as one does.
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I spend a great deal of time sitting and working on things that are stunningly boring the vast majority of the time. Even my hobbies are like this. And I also have to regularly change venues to make progress. I have changed the writing medium every now and then, but often, especially when writing LaTex, one has to use the same old thing. I listened to rock and roll while designing logic for so many years that I temporarily lost the ability to enjoy music. It came back when I abstained from listening while working for a year.
When my buddy managed engineers at Boeing, every now and then the group would spend the day taking the ferries back and forth across Puget Sound. He said these days were always very productive. I have no doubt that this is true.
I really don’t think that the human brain was designed to work physics problems or to engineer designs. That the species is so good at this is one of those mysterious things that are a triumph of will over nature. We are designed to do things that require at least a little physical effort. Perhaps the rocking of the boat fills part of that requirement, as the body adjusts to the change in posture.
Yes… I spent far too long trying to get the wood on the frame to match the wood of the easel, while at the same time not being too much of a clash with the floor. Er…Yes, I’m a little nuts… 🙂
-cvj
I like the new tool! Very practical, and it’s attractive too. I find that it’s not the change of venue or medium, but the change of focus, or the type of thinking, that helps me get the juices flowing again. Maybe shopping was the key for you… ; )