....to the sound of music. Not to the horrid movie of the same name but once again to classical music. As most of my friends know my music tastes tend to fall into one of two area's, new techno style trance or classical music. For a long time I got carried away with the beat and immediate satisfaction of working to something high powered, but the more I thought about it the more I realised what was happening was that I couldn't really work that effectively as I kept getting distracted by the music I was listening to. That lead me to the stage where I just didn't listen to music at all when I was trying to learn something and while I still believe that is the case for the most absorbing of tasks, I have found the joy of listening to classical music in the background while doing anything less then serious thinking. I find that with classical music it doesn't impose on what I am concentrating on, and keeps me in a pleasant focussed mood. On the note of focussed, there has been a few articles making the normal news rounds claiming that email is bad for your intelligence. Actually the study that they are basing this off doesn't claim that as far as I can tell, but rather it makes the interesting conclusion that they way some people deal with email and other communication channels is that they drop everything that they are currently doing and refocus on the new piece of communication. This in turns causes problems with long term ability to focus and severely impacts whatever it is you were doing before the new communice came along. I found the article interesting simply because at various times I have been guilty of this, though not to a serious level. It also rang a couple of bells as I have heard other people whom I respect, namely Umberto Eco and Donald Knuth who said something very similar (read it here). So given that I currently don't have the ability I had to focus, most notably back when I was studying chess, I am going to make a concious effort to NOT context switch and try to give something I start doing my attention for a reasonable period of time. I have been unconciously trying to do this for a while, but clearly stating will help me achieve this I believe.
On a different note my other tasks are coming along nicely. I have been put forward as a gentoo developer finally, as you can see from this link. It's about time really, I have been loitering around doing dev work and generally being interested and active for a while, but being loath to commit time to something I have always held off. Now, thanks to my two mentors things look good for me to get CVS access shortly and to become accepted as a full developer.
My business idea's are coming along nicely, and my bet with Aaron progresses nicely, since we started Aaron has put on 0.3 of a kg and I have lost 2.5kg. I am going to the gym a minimum of four times a week now and I hope to really start sloughing off some of this fat shortly. My fuji is almost here, and for those that regularly read this blog you might be interested to know that I eventually decided on another Aeron chair rather then the mirra. The mirra is a nice chair, but its definitely not in the same category as the aeron, which I firmly believe is the best computer chair on the market. Both should be arriving in the next couple of weeks, which I have to admit, has me a bit excited :)
Ofcourse as usual to see my latest geek style posts check out my blog on Disciplina Networks.
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