About this site's lack of design: Yes, it's supposed to look this way — I'm helping create a new sandbox theme for WordPress (see it on GitHub).

Dan Rubin's SuperfluousBanter

Suffering from chronic idiocy since 1977

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And The Weather Is Beautiful

There are times when liv­ing in the trop­i­cal paradise/hurricane tar­get range that is South Florida can be quite nice, and today I’m bask­ing in one of those times.

I’m writ­ing this as I sit on the front porch, in very com­fort­able 86 degree not-too-humid weather. A soft breeze is blow­ing through the trees, and I have just enough shade to keep the sun out of my eyes and eas­ily view my LCD screen. This is the per­fect distraction-free envi­ron­ment for writ­ing, which is my task this after­noon.

Cod­ing and design­ing are things I can do with dis­trac­tions; they use a part of my brain which can eas­ily deal with ring­ing phones, new email alerts, or the mul­ti­tude of com­puter screens which sur­round me on a daily basis, all dis­play­ing dif­fer­ent types of infor­ma­tion. But writ­ing, ah, that demands a level of con­cen­tra­tion and focus which requires com­plete sep­a­ra­tion from my nor­mal col­lec­tion of distractions.

It’s not sur­pris­ing that I had trou­ble focus­ing on my writ­ing when­ever stuffed in a class­room. I find I actu­ally enjoy writ­ing when I can focus on it and noth­ing else. Per­haps a daily ses­sion out­side is worth mak­ing time for: it will surely be health­ier than star­ing at a CRT or LCD all day, and it may even increase the flow of infor­ma­tion to this web site.

So, Q&A time: Where do you go to escape the dis­trac­tions of work, whether for writ­ing or any other purpose?

This item was posted by Dan Rubin on Monday, October 4th, 2004.

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25 comments on “And The Weather Is Beautiful”

  1. Posted by Ryan Brill on Monday, October 4th, 2004.

    I’ve found that head­ing over to my favorite cof­fee shop is a nice, relax­ing way to write for my site. Sit­ting there allows me to put other things aside and sim­ply focus on what I’m writing.

  2. Posted by Andrei Herasimchuk on Monday, October 4th, 2004.

    Heh.… come live in the Bay Area and you get that great weather nearly year round with­out all those hur­ri­canes! I sim­ply esc­pae to my back­yard to work, wire­less DSL and all.

  3. Posted by Matthom on Monday, October 4th, 2004.

    I go for a walk down some nice quiet side streets… or sit in my car — but NOT dri­ving — just sitting.

  4. Posted by Dan Rubin on Tuesday, October 5th, 2004.

    That sounds like a good idea Andrei — although the thought of earth­quakes is slightly unsettling…

    I actu­ally had to hook up a new Net­gear wire­less access point to get sig­nal on the porch, damn con­crete walls ;)

  5. Posted by Aleksandar on Tuesday, October 5th, 2004.

    Now Age of Kings. Some­time in the future I will prob­a­bly turn the wheel and do some more draw­ings.

  6. Posted by Pramila on Tuesday, October 5th, 2004.

    hey there

    just stopped by to let you know that your tem­plates for blogspot are REALLY nice… and thank you for your work…

    …am glad i stopped long enough to read! …and artic­u­late artist! :)

  7. Posted by Zachary Blume on Tuesday, October 5th, 2004.

    I find that read­ing a new/unread Agatha Christie or Michael Crighton book and lis­ten­ing to music helps me write and relax. Acually, I some­times get a song and a book linked together in my head because of this, and end up think­ing about the song when I read the book, or vice-versa.

    I’m not as “ancient” as Ryan(Brill) is, so I don’t do cof­fee. I’m still on Coca-Cola!

  8. Posted by Andy Budd on Wednesday, October 6th, 2004.

    Sounds Loverly. So what are you cur­rently writ­ing then?

  9. Posted by Dan Rubin on Wednesday, October 6th, 2004.

    Andy: I’m in the process of writ­ing case stud­ies for the “so-close-to-launch-it-hurts” Web­graph site, as well as updat­ing some of the bio text on this site, plus some non work-related writ­ing. It doesn’t seem like much per­haps, but it always helps to shut out all the distractions.

  10. Posted by mrkranky on Wednesday, October 6th, 2004.

    Wire­less iBook on the deck in the backyard.

  11. Posted by Zachary Blume on Thursday, October 7th, 2004.

    Wow, love you redesign, except I think you might need to tweak some of the col­ors neer the head. They stand out oddly; other than that, I love it!

  12. Posted by yafujifide on Saturday, October 9th, 2004.

    Wow! Nice redesign!

  13. Posted by _Del.Real. on Saturday, October 9th, 2004.

    Really cool redesign. This con­firms that the dark back­grounds are cool also.

  14. Posted by Anne Oneimus on Tuesday, October 12th, 2004.

    So, you head out­side, get your­self com­fort­able and work hard to clear your mind of all dis­trac­tions in order to be able to attain the mag­nif­i­cent clar­ity needed to write… And this entry is all your could come up with?! ;-P

  15. Posted by Vinnie Garcia on Wednesday, October 13th, 2004.

    It’s days like that that make me miss liv­ing in Florida. Now I live in Philadel­phia and while the autumn is nice, the 39-degree nights could use some work.

  16. Posted by Scott on Saturday, October 16th, 2004.

    I find that when I blast my music, and just sit and think. I have the best results. Some­thing about music inspires me to write, design, and code. Heck, music makes my day.

  17. Posted by Zachary Blume on Sunday, October 17th, 2004.

    Del.Real:
    http://www.nundroo.com
    Hehe :)

  18. Posted by Dan Rubin on Monday, October 18th, 2004.

    Del.Real/Zachary: It’s inter­est­ing to note that Didier and I came up with our respec­tive designs com­pletely sep­a­rate from each other, and only rec­og­nized the sim­i­lar­i­ties after show­ing our comps a few months ago (I had designed this new look for SB some­time around Jan­u­ary, prior to the recent wave of dark back­ground sites with sim­i­lar looks, I just didn’t put time aside to build it until last month). Design trends find their way into design­ers’ heads one way or another…

  19. Posted by Zachary Blume on Friday, October 22nd, 2004.

    Yeah. Right now I’m lovin’ the 9Rules.com white back­ground thing :) Plain yet cool.

  20. Posted by Zachary Blume on Friday, October 22nd, 2004.

    http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/135/135.css&page=0
    Heh :)

  21. Posted by jharr on Friday, October 29th, 2004.

    Liv­ing in Orlando I can cer­tainly under­stand what you mean, makes all the headaches worth it when the breeze turns a lit­tle cool.

    Work­ing from home means that some­times it’s nec­es­sary to just get out and away from the machine, usu­ally in the morn­ings I wak to clear my head. For my money libraries are a good place to find inspi­ra­tion and relax. I’m guess­ing that sounds quite geeky, but oh well.

  22. Posted by Nice Design on Friday, November 5th, 2004.

    I some­times go out­side to a park, but most of the time if weather allows, I go to my bal­cony with a nice view.

    PS Nice design!

  23. Posted by David on Saturday, December 4th, 2004.

    Has this site died?

  24. Posted by Dan Rubin on Sunday, December 5th, 2004.

    No David, the site hasn’t died — it’s just been on the back­burner for too long :)

    I’m work­ing on some bet­ter per­sonal time man­age­ment that should hope­fully allow me to get back into post­ing reg­u­larly soon. The agency has also been tak­ing up a lot of my time lately.

  25. Posted by David on Wednesday, December 8th, 2004.

    That’s good to hear. After such a beau­ti­ful redesign, I was wor­ried the blogs were deserted! Glad to hear you’re still home.