Britt's Blog

The groundbreaking cyberpunk literature of William Gibson was almost as much about fashion and style as AIs and the ‘Net. More integral to cyberpunk than any particular technological doodad was that cyberpunk was cool. It was trenchcoats and glowing tattoos and punk haircuts and shiny cybernetic implants and combat boots.

Finally, the real world catches up, in a small way, as thinkgeek offers animated T-shirts that just scream Count Zero.

Order one of these puppies and don a pair of mirrorshades, and you will be mind-numbingly resplendent in an 80′s paleofuture kind of way.

According to ACT, the majority of students who take the high school “core curriculum” are not prepared for college work.  (For you east-coasters, the ACT is kinda like the SAT, often required for admission to midwestern institutions of higher learning.)

Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, another Washington-based group that advocates standard-setting, said that as she traveled around the country, she found many schools not offering challenging work.

“When you look at the assignments these kids get, it is just appalling,” she said. “A course may be labeled college-preparatory English. But if the kids get more than three-paragraph-long assignments, it is unusual. Or they’ll be asked to color a poster. We say ‘How about doing analysis?’ and they look at us like we are demented.”

I’m afraid to ask what they’re learning in math.

In Study, College-Prep Classes Left Many Unready – New York Times

Grades have been submitted, paperwork has been stowed securely at the back of the file cabinet, and seniors have been marched across a stage in alphabetical order.

I’m suffering from the same syndrome that struck at the beginning of winter break, namely restlessness that makes slacking off almost impossible. I try my best to sit around and do nothing, but the back of my mind starts volunteering stuff I probably ought to be doing, which pretty much defeats the purpose of relaxing. Luckily putting in a day of work at the office seems to scratch the itch, and I can slack off in the evening without feeling compelled to be productive.

For the moment I’m going with it. I mean, I feel like working. No sense in forcing myself to slack off, ’cause I suppose I’ll get fed up with working and feel like slacking off later.

To be honest, I’m apprehensive that having all these vast stretches of time to work on a huge scary projects (figure out how to get the 22-inch working again, figure out how to build an observatory, write an article out of my thesis, write labs for Physics 101) is going to kick me back into überprocrastination mode.

I’ve tried breaking up my summer, using on various events as artificial starting points and deadlines, just to create some kind of structure. I’m using GTD, of course, to keep track of all the things I might possibly be doing, and I’ve been using an unschedule so that I have a realistic idea of how I’m spending my time. That’s basically the system I used for last summer, while finishing my thesis, so I guess it should work. One change I should make compared to last summer is to schedule more time for relaxation and not spend quite as much time with my nose to the grindstone, so I don’t end up collapsing with a catastrophic sinus infection in August. :/

I’m adding the Printable CEO, or more accurately, the editable Excel version so that I can fill in my own concrete goals. I plan to customize these for each week, based on what I hope to accomplish. I did 13 points today. :)

Here’s hoping for a productive summer. I’m trying to stay focused on getting a paper written, but there are a few other things I need to look after, too. I’ve been warned, if you try to do too much with your summer, you’ll accomplish nothing. I have six different projects to work on. Probably not smart. Well, I guess all I can do at the moment is ride the momentum left over from the semester and see how far that takes me.

According to an article in the New York Times, a recent study finds that exercisers at all levels of performance, from couch potatoes to athletes, can significantly improve their endurance and cardiovascular conditioning through interval training.

I’ve been a big believer in intervals for quite a while.  I was only able to start running by alternating 2 minutes of running and 2 minutes of walking, and slowly increasing the time spent running, and I saw great gains in my speed by doing interval workouts on the treadmill.

But this article comes at a good time to remind me of the importance of intervals.  It has been a rough couple of weeks in terms of stress and fitness, and I’ve had to buckle down and persevere just to meet my distance goals.  I’m proud to say that I have met those goals, but I have basically just been slogging through the workout and not making any attempt to push for speed.  I may have been doing myself a disservice!

Looks like it’s time to get back to my usual practice of throwing in some speed intervals on the days when my distance goals are shorter, and I’ll make it a goal to do one interval workout a week.



A Healthy Mix of Rest and Motion, NY Times (free registration required)