| Lassitude |
[27 Oct 2005|09:12am] |
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Courseware development is weirdly tiring*. Yesterday I was delving into** how Profile state really works in ASP.NET 2.0 And there is something about following code and trying to figure it out that that puts my brain into a state where it is totally concentrated on one thing. And when i say totally concentrated I mean concious and sub-concious: I met a mate for lunch and found it hard to chat as most of my brain was working on other stuff.
Think what it is like if you are abruptly woken from a vivd dream or really deep sleep: for the next few minutes you feel as though most of your brain is still in that dream and you only have part of your mind to work with. Everything seems like hard work 'cos you've only a fraction of your head to concentrate with.
Only the after effects last longer when doing course development as dreams last for minutes at a time (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/dreams-faq/part1/section-7.html) whereas I'll be doing development all day*** for a week or two at a time.
And yesterday the rest of my body was drained: I felt as though all my muscles wanted to sleep and it took determination to do anything ... only that determination had to come from the small part of my concious brain that wasn't being used elsewhere.
Hence the title of this piece: Lassitude - a state or feeling of weariness, diminished energy, or listlessness. It is a word I came across when I was suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome many years back and describes how I was feeling yesterday. It is one of my favourite words, along with serendipity.
Anyhow I dragged myself off to Tai Chi and glad I did as it got the evergy flowing and the muscle weariness seems to have subsided. Now to clear the brain fog...
* Acutually teaching can be weirdly tiring too, especially when you are teaching a bright group with lots of questions: again your subconcious brain has to go off and work on the answers whilst the rest of your brain carries on teaching.
** And I'm very grateful to Lutz Roeder and his wonderful program Reflector http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/
*** Ok not all 24 hours but i tend to start at 10 (9-10 is ususally spent doing email) finish at 6 or 7 depending on whether I'm off to tai chi. Though if i'm on a roll i'm known to have worked until midnight.
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| Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? |
[27 Oct 2005|07:38pm] |
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A mate sent me this link this morning: http://charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html It is an article based on a talk by Charles Petzold on "Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? Ruminations on the Psychology and Aesthetics of Coding". It is quite an enjoyable read ... well ok if you're a programmer it is.
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