It is three days to Christmas Day and I am in digital detox [see ‘Digital detox with a deep vacation’ on August 10th, 2016] after a long term. So, only a picture this week of ice on Lake Michigan near Traverse City in December 2004. Happy Holidays to all of my readers!
Traditionally in Easter week, I go to the Lake District for a week of hill-walking with my family and a digital detox [see ‘Eternal non-existence‘ on April 24th, 2019 and ‘Gone walking‘ on April 19th, 2017]. For the second year in succession, we have had to cancel our trip due to the national restrictions on movement during the pandemic [see ‘Walking and reading during a staycation‘ on April 15th, 2020]. I am still attempting a digital detox but the walking is restricted to a daily circuit of our local park. While Sefton Park is not on the scale of Central Park in New York or Regent’s Park in London, it is sufficiently large that a walk to it, round its perimeter and home again takes us about two hours. It might not be as strenuous as climbing Stickle Pike but it is better than repeatedly climbing the stairs which was the limit of our exercise last year [see ‘Virtual ascent of Moel Famau‘ on April 8th, 2020]. We might not be allowed to leave our locality but we can switch off all of our devices, do some off-line reading (see ‘Reading offline‘ on March 19th, 2014), slow down, breathe our own air (see ‘Slow down, breathe your own air‘ on December 23rd, 2015) and enjoy the daffodils.
Along with many people, I have been working from home since mid-March and it seems likely that I will be doing so for the foreseeable future. Even if a vaccine is discovered for COVID-19, it will take many months to vaccinate the population. For the first few months of lockdown, I worked on an old workbench in the basement of our house; however, now I have an office set up in the attic and the picture above is the view from my desk. It certainly has eye-stretching potential but it is also frustrating because I can see the roof of the building in which my university office is located. However, the lockdown in the UK has been relaxed and so we are going on holiday to Cornwall where we will be walking sections of the South West Coastal Path and reading a pile of books. If you want experience the walking with us then I recommend reading ‘The Salt Path‘ by Raynor Winn [see ‘The Salt Path‘ on August 14th, 2019]. Although I will be indulging in a digital detox [see ‘Digital detox with a deep vacation‘ on August 10th, 2016] combined with some horizon therapy [see ‘Horizon therapy‘ on May 4th, 2016], the flow of posts to this blog will be uninterrupted because lock-down has allowed me write sufficient pieces in advance to maintain the publishing schedule.
I noticed that both of the posts cited above about the importance of relaxing were published in 2016, along with Steadiness and Placidity on July 171th, 2016. 2016 must have been a stressful year!
I must be losing my sense of time as result of spending most of everyday communicating with colleagues via my laptop because I published today’s post yesterday [see ‘Professor soars through the landscape‘ on April 27th, 2020]. Even when a helpful reader pointed out that the accompanying video had not been published, I simply thought that I had failed to synchronise the post and video properly – see my comment on yesterday’s post. It was not until my editor asked me why I had published a post on Tuesday that I realised my error. Perhaps I am suffering from dyschronometria brought on by the COVID-19 lock-down in force in the UK.
Realize Engineering 