No, I’m not taking a vacation. Quite the opposite, in fact.
I’m getting a hotel room in a state where I don’t know anyone, so I can do a bunch of research with no distractions.
I bought a new computer specifically for this purpose - A Dolch portable pentium-II system. The significant thing is that it has full length PCI slots, so I was able to put an Evans & Sutherland OpenGL accelerator in it (not enough room for an intergraph Realizm, though), and still drive the internal LCD screen. It works out pretty well, but I’m sure there will be conventional laptops with good 3D acceleration available later this year.
This will be an interesting experiment for me. I have always wondered how much of my time that isn’t at peak productivity is a necessary rest break, and how much of it is just wasted.
For a more concrete example, you can look to what Richard Hamming had to say about the topic. He noticed a similar phenomenon at bell labs, where there was a difference big difference between people who worked with their doors open, and those who worked with them closed.
The door closed people were much more productive than the closed door people. Of course, he noticed there was a tradeoff there, and saw that the closed door people tended to not be as relevant years later as the open door people.
Code wizards need time on the lonely mountain to learn new spells.