17APR24 / sitrep

It’s snowing a bit in Umeå this morning, and I have somehow managed to find that one cafe which, on the upside, has pretty decent coffee, but somehow doesn’t have wifi? Feels like going back in time… a vibe amplified by the very 80s radio choices.

I’m trying to stick it out anyway, in the hope that being forced to work without connection will actually make it easier to do a last-minute refactoring of this afternoon’s workshop… but also because I’m becoming ever more convinced that connectivity (in that sense particular to reliance on “the internet”, that most unexamined of ontologies) is a thing I need to wean myself off of.

Yesterday’s talk went well, I think, but it also overran—I’ve gotten out of practice at sticking to time, a shortcoming exacerbated by my having access to longer slots in general. Or, more bluntly: I tell myself I’ve got time to detour, and quickly end up in the backwoods. That’s not a huge problem with a small academic audience like yesterday’s: academics like touring the backwoods! But I need to get on top of it for more general audiences… time to buy a few new packs of index cards, methinks.

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One response to “17APR24 / sitrep”

  1. Will Ellwood avatar

    Hope the workshop went well. I frequently hop into the Foodstory coffee shop on campus at Aberdeen because it’s inside a 1960s building that permits no cell phone signal and I don’t have access to Eduroam for the WiFi. It’s good to disconnect, although disconcerting how painful it feels to be cut off from everything and forced to think.

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