Reboot

Anyone who runs Windows on their desktop or laptop will understand that after a while the operating system becomes less and less responsive. You can close all your open programs but the machine still crawls along. Eventually, it becomes so slow that you have no choice but to reboot the thing. The ten minutes it usually takes to close down and start back up again is normally paid back pretty quickly. It is, of course, the greatest scandal of the modern world that so many of us have no choice but to use software which is so poorly engineered. All of us in the business have our favourite Microsoft stories, but I'm not going to offer mine up now. I want to talk about something else today.

It's natural to compare the human brain to a computer, but the analogy is actually a very poor one in many ways. Computers tend to be good at things that the brain is not very good at (like big number crunching) and very poor at things that the brain excels at (like pattern recognition). Computers stop working completely at the merest of software glitches or hardware failures, while the brain can still function at some kind of level even after the most appalling injury or damage. But it did occur to me while running at lunchtime that sleep is very much like that reboot we have to give to Windows - on almost daily basis if our machine it to keep running smoothly.

It's like there is so much going on in our brains that we simply run out of RAM at the end of the day and our processing and reasoning ability rapidly degrades. Sleep kind of clears all those working programs out of memory, archives essential data, does some virus checking, and generally cleans our operating system up ready to be turned on again next morning.

Presented like that I have a renewed respect for the importance of sleep. I didn't get enough last night. I fear I often don't. Trouble is that there is always so much fun stuff that I want to pack into the evening hours when I'm not working. Sleeping valuable time away seems such a waste. I just need to keep reminding myself that this is not the case. Our brains have serious design flaws - just like Windows! At least I did today remember the importance of those partial reboots I get when I run. I followed the same route as on Wednesday but not quite so fast, along the canal and then a circuit of Hirst Wood. This is at the far end of the woods, down below the level of the canal as it is carried over the River Aire by a bridge. The skies cleared today and the sun was quite brilliant.

Finally, thanks for the wonderful feedback to yesterday's shot. I guess I'm going to persevere with the Street Photography. Have a wonderful weekend.

PS If you have time, please take a visit to this blip from Jogging Along for a wonderful photograph and an hysterical write-up. Recommended.