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Isolation June 18th 2009, ricardo
If you had 2 weeks of holidays in September you would probably get a nice apartment in a Sunny island at 5 min of the beach. I would too. But not this time.

Instead I will be going to a Reykjavik hotel for 15 days. Why Reykjavik? Because 15 days in a hotel in UK it's about £1,000 and in Iceland it's £300 (breakfast included)... and the flight from London to Reykjavik costs £200, so that's why.

The idea is to stay inside the hotel room with my laptop all the time (Carmack's style). Hopefully with no distractions. Although I won't lie, I'll probably do a break at some point and visit the blue lagoon... Still, I think I've never been 15 days isolated. I'm much more productive when I'm alone (like everyone else I guess). So I'm very much looking forward to it.

You may think that this is wrong. But you need to understand this... The list of ideas I note down every day keep growing and the fact that the daily life doesn't give me enough time to materialise 99% of them really frustrates me.

Right now I don't know what I'll be working on, need to go through the list of ideas and do a selection... maybe xplsv.tv v2, maybe an android game, maybe a javascript demo... I really don't know.

Any suggestions/requests you may have?
20 comments

Is it really so cheap? I was told Reykjavik was quite expensive, which was a disappointment as I really want to go. This is excellent news!
June 18th 2009, Chris Davies
@Chris
Iceland's economoy just collapsed a few months ago. Somethings may be expenseive ( like imported tropical fruit ) but I would guess housing and transport should be über cheep.
June 18th 2009, Alan
Yes, it even makes me feel bad. Iceland used to be quite expensive. Now is way too cheap. Another cheap option was Hong Kong, but that was too far :P
June 18th 2009, mr.doob
2 years ago a pint of Gull (great Icelandic beer) cost me £7. Now it's only £3. Result! Although that's still not massively cheap huh?
June 18th 2009, Mike
Sounds exciting - I'd love to go to Reykjavik!
I know what you mean about getting frustrated over lots of ideas and no time.
I'd like to see more Actionscript Experiments and Javascript stuff - if you get the time. Cheers.
June 18th 2009, Lawrie
Oh man. Oh. Hmm. I dunno, there's so much stuff you could do! Personally I'd love an open source xm player for Flash, just because... or a fully fledged demo for ASM.

But then there is XPLSV TV, you could have some experimental postfilters for it, perhaps the first experiments with postprocessing video in Flash or HTML5...
June 18th 2009, Ruairi Fullam
Sounds like the perfect holiday. Just wondering where you found that hotel for £20/night - all I've found so far are starting at £100/night and look pretty uninviting.
June 18th 2009, Mario Klingemann
Found it on random hotel search site. It's what they call a "budget" hotel, so not swimming pool or anything. It was specially cheap because I booked it way quite a bit of time.
June 18th 2009, mr.doob
Have fun!

One thought: Have you considered developing a new physical hobby during that time? Jumping rope, juggling, pitching pennies, carediovascular, something that involves another section of the brain, and that takes some concentrated time to learn?

Could be a nice break activity during the intensive concentraton you'll be enjoying in Reykjavik...?

cu, jd
June 18th 2009, John Dowdell
That's an interesting idea John.

I have a friend that used to juggle and/or play with the yoyo as coding break. I have never tried it, but considering that most of the ideas come when I'm on the shower, it may work.

Thanks a lot for the suggestion, I'll give it a go :)
June 18th 2009, mr.doob
What a great idea, I hope it's productive for you.
I'm sure I read somewhere that there's some science behind why the best ideas happen in the shower - something about the water making the brain more active or something. Probably just 'bad science' though.
June 18th 2009, James Docherty
make photo of you like this one from Blue Lagoon :)))

http://www.bluelagoon.com/resources/Images/Galleries/Visit-to-the-Blue-Lagoon-Heimsokn-i-Blaa-lonid/Blue-Lagoon-5-net.jpg
June 19th 2009, den ivanov
Re:Any suggestions/requests you may have?

bring on the list of your ideas to public vote.
June 19th 2009, makc
@den
Haha, I have one similar to that one already. You don't want to see it...

@makc
Uhm, I don't think I'm that "opensource" yet ;) The question was more for random thoughts.
June 19th 2009, mr.doob
If I was at Iceland, I'd probably be shooting pictures all the time and not stay on the hotel at all :-)

Iceland has some of the best landscapes to photograph in the world! :)

Whatever you do there, just have fun :)
June 20th 2009, Jcl
Great idea. I just booked a trip from Australia / USA / London ending up in Germany at Evoke demoparty... so I am very much looking forward to all the travelling / coding time! Especially with power on planes these days. I'll have no internet or phone : just my two laptops and a whoooole heap of time with em! I was supposed to be working on a demo today - got 5 mins in before the distrations and other crap kicked in. Good luck on your quest mate.
June 20th 2009, cTrix
Jcl: Yeah, I've done that already :)
June 22nd 2009, mr.doob
Hi there !
I've done that, isolating,3 weeks, far from home, that was about 6 years ago. I had a program similar to yours : achieve the exiting things that were taking to much space in the back of my mind(including art, music, design..). And the thing I learned is :
When you're alone, isolated for more than 3 days, DO NOT try to follow a goal or a plan!!!! NEVER!!!!
JUST GET EXCITED !
Well, if you plan to do so, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Prepare for time distortion, and to learn more about yourself... ;-)
June 22nd 2009, benjamin foucaud
Very interesting benjamin. Yeah, I can see myself with some kind of plan, but not following it at all. As long as I get something done :)
June 22nd 2009, mr.doob
Good idea. I'd love to do that sometime - I have the same issue with the ideas and plans building up but real life and or other peoples work getting in the way. And it is really frustrating... To really have no distractions you'll need to make sure there is no internet at the hotel though (which is annoying when you need to look something up!).

You should maybe take a look at v8-gl - that might be right up your street. Javascript and 3d:

http://github.com/philogb/v8-gl/tree/master

Although I guess there is o3d as well...

Whatever you work on, have fun and looking forwards to seeing the results :)
June 30th 2009, Kelvin Luck