Oliver Steele

My friends have been asking me how important I consider experience (again in the context of the election), enough to write the answer down.

I like to travel in style. Two different styles, in fact: exploratory, and direct.

When I’m late to an appointment, I take the most direct, familiar, route I know. I don’t try any tricks – roads that vaguely ring a bell, or look like they might connect – I stay with what I’ve known.

But when I’ve time to spare, I get lost. Given a choice between a 15 minute route I know, and one that might take twice as long, I’ll take the road less traveled (by me). I’m paying for knowledge, with time.

I discover a lot of good routes this way – not always to the place I was going at the time, but often to somewhere I want to go later, when I’m in a hurry and wouldn’t have time to look for them. And, when I am in a hurry and I do get lost – because I’m coming from or going somewhere unfamiliar, or have to detour – I’m more likely to come across a place I recognize, and place myself back onto my mental map.

Today my office is an airplane. I’m visiting the home office in San Francisco for the week. I get to remind everyone that those of us in the Boston office are real people (insert your favorite joke here), and come back with enough to understand what’s behind the email and phone conferences for another month.

One of the geek games you can play on an airplane is stretching out the battery life of your computer. I have enough batteries to last me through a six-hour flight now, but old habits die hard.

Since I save my files every minute or two, spinning down the hard disk isn’t an option. (I tend to use programs that communicate use the file system to communicate. And I don’t want to be in a position to lose more than a few minutes of work anyway.) I don’t usually use a CD or DVD player, so I’m already optimizing there. The CPU that I’m using steps down to 800MHz when the plug is out, so that’s taken care of for me. That leaves screen brightness.

Welcome to my blog! I’ll be using this space to write about languages, software, and cognition.
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