On Sunday night after dinner, Denise noted that both my father and I tend to stand up and pace when we think.

Walking, I think, is the closest I come to meditation. I'm sure it annoys heaps of people at work, too - the first thing I do when I come up against a problem when programming is to get out of my seat and walk somewhere, maybe to the other end of the office and back, or downstairs to get a coke, or in extreme cases up the road to sit on top of Observatory Hill and watch the harbour.

You can put your feet on automatic pilot, and your brain goes into this strange mode where some part is devoted to navigation and making sure you don't walk into anything (cars, people, lamp-posts, trees), and the rest is free to think about anything you want. But the part that's doing the navigating seems to be the same part that gets in the way when you're just sitting down.

Also, uncharacteristically for a nerd, I like the Big Blue Room (although I don't go out in it as often as I like, partly because I'm lazy, but mostly because the people I'd most like to go out in it with are all tied to my computer). The best thing to jolt me out of a "sitting in front of the screen trying to solve a problem" rut is to feel weather on my skin, whether it's the warmth of the sun, the touch of the wind, or the rain falling on me.

Today's Task for Readers: Go for a walk around the block. Make sure it's a big block.