Attaching the electrodes of knowledge to the nipples of ignorance.

By the time most of you read this, we’ll be on our way off to Algonquin Park for a some seriously needed R&R.

Here’s a list of what I’m bringing up with me to read/listen to:

Books on paper:
The Stand by Stephen King
2600 Magazine Summer edition
Color Correction Handbook by Alexis Van Hurkman
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Majestic by Whitley Strieber

AudioBooks
The WWW Trilogy; WWW: Wake, WWW: Watch and WWW: Wonder by Robert J Sawyer
What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Richard Feynman
Tell Me a Story: Science Fiction One by Arthur C. Clarke, William Gibson, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Robert Sheckley, Terry Bisson, Avram Davidson
Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA’s Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda by Robert Wallace, H. Keith Melton, Henry Robert Schelsinger

Audio Podcasts
Dr Kiki’s Science Hour
The Edit Bay
Get-it-Done Guy
Grammar Girl
The History of Rome
The King Cast
Learn Japanese Podcast (all 176 episodes)
MacBreak Weekly
The Math Dude
Nova ScienceNOW
The Nutrition Diva
Scientific American’s Science Talk
Search Engine
That Post Show
White Coat, Black Arts
60-Second Earth

Now, the podcasts (with the exception of the Learn to Japanese one) are part of my “normal” listening, and have just piled up somewhat as I’ve been quite busy with work this summer.

The Stand will the the book I read the first three or so days I’m up there. I haven’t read it in probably a decade, so I’m looking forward to seeing how the story feels now.

The next item I’m excited to read is (finally) Robert J. Sawyer‘s entire WWW series – I’ve been eagerly awaiting this for .. years, but now the last novel is out, so I can plow through all three books one after another.

Yes, I consider listening to an audiobook reading, but I listen to podcasts. Go figure.

We’ll see how much reading I get done this year.

While working tonight I was listening to the latest epiosde of i can haz podcast (Episode #27) with with Stefan & @suzemuse, when Stefan brought up the next question of the week (~1:14:00ish), which made me chuckle aloud as he’s not a fan of Apple products:
“Are you an Apple or Mac person”, in the context of the your next computer purchase.  Quickly enough, Sue pointed out that he meant Windows or Mac, but it got me thinking.

While the question isn’t what Stefan meant, I think nonetheless it is valid if you take Apple to mean an iOS device. With the power available in iPads running iOS5, (and, I suppose other tablet devices, but it appears that consumers overwhelmingly want iPads), more and more people do not need a home computer anymore, so why bother buying one and leaving it sit at a desk?

I know, I know.  It sounds like crazy-talk, but for an average use (I don’t believe I qualify), an iPad meets all of the requirements to do what people want to do with a computing device; Email, surf the web, watch Netflix and YouTube, create & edit documents, and play games.

We have already seen substantial numbers of users shift away from desktops to laptops – they want to be portable, able to work anywhere, so the next reasonable step to me is to move to something nearly as (if not as powerful as) and is lighter *and* easier to use.  Enter the iPad.

So, I think asking the question if someone’s next computer will be an iPad or Mac (or tablet / laptop or desktop) is fair  and we will see a surprising number of people moving away from computers to iPads.

Now that my bike is back from the shop, it was time to get out on it, for the first time in at least three years.

When I hit my mid-day low, I decided it was time to get out on my bike to see if I could remember how it worked.

As the saying goes “It’s just like riding a bike”. I got onto my bike, and headed out onto King Edward, successfully navigated traffic to Sussex, and then started southward on the Rideau River Eastern Parkway all the way down to Hog’s Back Falls, and then down the east side of the Rideau Canal to Sussex and then home again.

I was particularly pleased that my average speed was around 20 km/hr, and the burning of over 800 calories certainly didn’t hurt either. Once I hit a reasonably straight, flat section, I made a run for it to see how fast I could get up to. Pedal, pedal, pedal. Faster, faster faster. My bike computer hit 41 km/hr and then I coasted for a long time, and resumed cruising along at my regular pace.

Now, it’s time to head off to badminton, and see if my legs will still work there.

Maybe it’s time for you to get out walking or cycling instead of napping or watching TV.

Today, I was supposed to be working on the rest of the videos that will be following the World Hand Hygiene Day Teaser video that debuted on Thursday, but I just wasn’t connecting to it, so I decided to go for a bit of a walk to clear my mind and let the job percolate.

The route ended up being a bit over 25 kilometres, including a stop at the shop that had my bike, and walking to Confederation Park, noticing something was wrong, going back to the shop, letting them fix it, heading back home, and then to the nearby Metro to grab some dinner.

The walk started around 1:30 and ran until about 6 PM, with me actually walking around four hours, including stops at the Arboretum, Galaxy Camera, the Silver Snail,  and the bike shop twice, to fix something they’d missed.

My long walks are something that I don’t get to do enough, but really enjoy.  It’s (largely) quiet, my mind gets to wander, I get to watch the world, and as a bonus, I get exercise.  I consume podcasts and audiobooks by the dozen, or just listen to the sound of the world.

For the past few years, come spring, I start getting out on longer and longer walks, and one of these days, I’ll get up to my goal walk, 45 km. This year? Maybe. Who knows?

A few times in the past people have joined me for portions of the walk, but I believe that will remiain largely solitary as many people aren’t used to the distances I walk, nor the speed at which I tend to travel.

When I’m out, I tend to post my photos to Twitter and Flickr thanks to a handy app called Echofon (thanks, folks!), and down the road I’ll try to ensure that walk-realted photos are tagged walkabout to make them easier to find.

But do I ever love a good long walk.

About a month ago, I read an article *somewhere* on the Internet (I haven’t been able to locate the specific page since then) about how starting off your day with immediately reading your work email once you wake up is a bad idea  The article suggested that one should get up, putter around, have breakfast, and then when you’ve sat down at the computer, to *then* check email.

Seeing as I normally check email within seconds of becoming conscious, this idea struck me as both odd and worth giving a shot.  So, I did.

Fast forward to three weeks later (to today).

For three weeks, I have been carefully resisting the urge to check email while I’m still in bed. Sometimes that urge is amazingly powerful, but so far, I’ve managed to not do it.  I check Twitter, listen to the CBC news at the top of the hour, read the news on a few apps (Globe & Mail, BBC News, NYTimes, CBC, National Post…), and jot down any ideas I’ve had. Then I get up and get my tea started and otherwise putter about before getting to the computer to check email.

Will I continue?

To be honest, I don’t think so, but I do believe that I’ll just shift email to the last thing that I do before getting out of bed, which, I think is a fair balance for my brain, and as you can imagine, your kilometreage will vary.

Oh, that brain of mine.