Patrick Lam

This week’s tip is kind of a meta-tip. When you want someone (possibly yourself) to do something, set a deadline for it. Marketing experts know this. This is why there are “limited time offers”. People have intentions of doing something. But if they can do it anytime, sometimes they never do the thing.

The deadline for the survey is Wednesday, though I guess I could have been more explicit about that.

This week’s observation is about boundary conditions. As programmers you have surely run into off-by-one errors. They’re hard to avoid! Somehow New Zealand systemically seems to fudge the issue, as you can see on this sign on Kapiti Island restricting access to the tower. Perhaps one can parse this as being “if you put eight plus one people on the tower it will fall down”, but that’s not consistent with the top display. (As an engineering exercise, you can also think about the safety factors built into the tower’s design).

This week’s tip is about tools. I’ve attached a picture of a replica of the ice axe that Sir Edmund Hillary used on his first ascent of Mount Everest. This was at the North Egmont Visitor Centre at the base of Mount Taranaki, a prominent cone-shaped ex-volcano in New Zealand. Sir Edmund’s original ice axe is in a museum in Auckland, and one can buy replicas of it on the Internet. [1]

Since I last wrote, New Zealand moved to alert level 4 on a 4-point scale. Only essential workers may go to work, and “essential workers” is narrowly defined here: mostly supermarkets, pharmacies, and gas stations. Since I’m not going anywhere, I thought I’d send a picture from the archives. I took this picture close to home, in Waterloo Park, September 2019. I have to admit that I prefer being farther afield, but that’s not always an option, for various reasons. But, one can always explore one’s backyard. (Please do so safely!)

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.

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.

This 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!