Be intentional about your time
23 Mar 2020
Derek’s been doing a great job of keeping in touch with you all. My specific schtick in these emails has been travel-related tips, and that doesn’t work great right now. But let’s start with a picture from the archives. From simpler times (February 15!), here’s a tuatara photobombing a kakariki (NZ parakeet) at the Otoruhangu Kiwi House.
Something useful I’ve been doing in NZ is coarse-grained daily activity logging. Being on sabbatical is highly unstructured and, before all the recent news happened, I was concerned that my year might just slip away; keeping track of what I’m doing is a way to introspect about my activities. I’ve also been writing and posting monthly summaries based on the logs. You might try it to see if there’s a gap between how you would like to spend your days and how you actually spend your days. You do not have to work hard every waking minute. Instead, be intentional about your time and do what you choose, while also being self-compassionate.
Get Natural Sunlight!
16 Mar 2020
I was thinking of this tip even before things got exciting, but it applies even better now in these times of social distancing.
This week’s tip: get natural sunlight!
It’s easy to be a nocturnal Software Engineering student. I don’t recommend it. As human beings, we do benefit from exposure to natural sunlight and the resulting Vitamin D. In Spring in the northern hemisphere, the associated extended daylight hours would normally be making it easier to do this. Even now, though, regularly taking outdoor walks with your family should be a safe and healthy activity. It’ll help with cabin fever and is a welcome change of pace.
Second month (plus 10 days) in Wellington
8 Mar 2020
We’ve now passed the halfway mark for my time in New Zealand, even with an extra 3 days courtesy of Air Canada/Air New Zealand—they rescheduled my return flight from 29 Apr to 2 May and I didn’t notice until I got the seat change email. I’m totally fine with an extra 3 days in New Zealand.
Classes have started again. I guess it’s like September in the northern hemisphere. Days are only 13 hours now, on their way to 10.5 hours when we go back north.
Beyond Diet: on red pandas and doing better
7 Mar 2020
This week I was busy writing code for a research project I’m working on here in New Zealand, so no travel pictures from me.
Here is a red panda in the Wellington Zoo (photo credit: Marie-Pascale Desjardins, as well as for suggesting this tip).
It turns out that red pandas and giant pandas are not related aside from both being cute animals. Giant pandas have a 99% bamboo diet, while red pandas are at 85% bamboo.
You also have to descend
2 Mar 2020
Following up on last week’s tip, here’s a near-data-disaster from Rollen D’Souza:
I decided when I started grad school that I would always keep track of my research and general course notes in repositories. This wasn’t entirely just for backup purposes. It turns out that when you want to work on three different machines — work desktop, home desktop, surface laptop — making sure they are all synchronized with your latest work is non-trivial without some automated or manual tracking software. I use Mercurial (distributed vcs) because then there is an entirely cloneable copy of all my work on every machine I work on. (Why Mercurial versus git? Another story.) I’ve gotten into the habit of pulling, committing and pushing whatever I have whenever I work on a given machine.
What's Your Backup Strategy?
23 Feb 2020This week’s tip: have and execute a backup strategy for your data.
Here’s a picture of Mount Ngauruhoe (which stood in for Mount Doom). I’m sharing a picture from my phone (auto-enhanced by Google Photos) because the better pictures are on the camera that I spent an hour unsuccessfully looking for, and which my spouse was really unhappy about losing.
Devices get lost or fail all the time. While truly irreplacable data is rare, some data is inconvenient or expensive to replace. Maybe you can’t re-do the assignment in time for the deadline. Every so often this happens to someone’s PhD thesis, which represents years of work. Don’t let that be you!
Bring less stuff!
16 Feb 2020Happy Reading Week! This week’s life tip is, for now, most relevant to those of you not from the Greater Toronto Area, if you happen to be going home for the week. Experience shows that it will apply to many of you in the next few years.
- Tip: Bring less stuff!
There is often a skill versus stuff tradeoff. With more skill you can often improvise for having less stuff. A technical example is being able to use vim versus having to use a heavyweight editor that is tied to a particular operating system. And I say that as an emacs user. But vim works in resource-constrained environments over flaky connections (use mobile shell, mosh, for such connections).
Rock climbing in Wanaka
12 Feb 2020MP and I joined a NZAC Wellington club trip which was planned in two parts: Wanaka sport climbing and Darrans alpine granite. We only signed up for the sport climbing part. The granite part got rained out and people did more alpine objectives around Queenstown/Wanaka. Thanks to Derek for organizing!
Driving
We spent almost 0 time in Queenstown, driving directly to the Pak’N’Save grocery store just outside the airport and then to Wanaka over the Crown Range (highest main road in New Zealand!). On the way back we stopped at the “The Argonath on the Anduin River” (Lord of the Rings) and also apparently the birthplace of bungy jumping.
First month in Wellington
31 Jan 2020Sabbaticals are a large block of unscheduled time. Time always passes. Have I done stuff in my time in Wellington so far?
Professional
I’ve started a number of collaborations with colleagues in Wellington, and am thinking of a survey paper and an essay in particular. I’m excited about contributing to these projects. I hope to have more to report in my February update.
In other news I have a climbing-related submission to the Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism (sadly an Elsevier journal) which got a revise-and-resubmit. Progress!
Look at the Details
26 Jan 2020
This week, we went to the Rangiwahia Hut for a walk (“tramp”) and then to some caves with glow worms. We have seen glow worms at night in Wellington but we were here four hours before sunset, so no glow worms for us.
Today’s tip: looking closely at things can reveal unexpected details.
