[qychtkd]

Master of Doom contains an anecdote on this aspect of John Carmack's life. On page 252, it mentioned how he had sequestered himself in a "small, anonymous hotel room somewhere in Florida" as he researched Trinity. He had a dolch portable computer with pentium II and full length PCI slots, while subsisting only on pizza and Diet Coke. That bit for some reason made a big impression on me when I read it on the bus ride to school. To be able to let yourself go and research and code what you truly believe in or curious or excited about (w/ room service and not have to clean up after yourself haha) seemed incredible. I wonder if John still sticks to Florida, or if he goes to different places each year; in a city or just a hotel off of a highway or near an airport. My favorites have been Hyatt - Place Amsterdam Airport, - Regency Charles De Gaulle, and - Lake Tahoe. Something about sterile rooms, room service, a hotel near, but not too close to beautiful and historical landmarks just center you and allow you to think.

[yitchelle]

Agreed, I guess that the trick to selecting a location is to be in a location the the inside the hotel/cabin room is much more attractive that on the outside.

I had a colleague that told me that his most productive period was when he was stuck at the hospital for a couple of weeks but was able to do some coding.

[nemo1618]

There was a post on HN years ago advocating coding on a cruise ship -- it's like a nice hotel, but the internet is so crappy that you'll only use it when you really need it (e.g. finding docs, syncing git), which is great for productivity!

[wittjeff]

Post may have been by Tynan (http://tynan.com); he's big on working while on transatlantic cruises. Following his advice, I have done the same thing several times.

Here are some tips: - Find the best cruises most easily on cruisesheet.com (disclosure: it's Tynan's project)

- Royal Caribbean has the best internet at sea through O3b. In the Caribbean or Mediterranean it's about 70ms latency. In the middle of the Atlantic it's about 220ms latency. So Skype may work but the delays are annoying. Plenty of bandwidth now though. You may have only "one 9" service on average though. So scheduled conference calls are always a gamble.

- Repositioning cruises (many ships move from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean and back seasonally) in April/May and October/November are the cheapest cruises you'll ever find. 5-8 days at sea means plenty of time to get some work done, as well as goof off a bit during the evenings. For the second week (Europe or Caribbean), I find it easy enough to get an hour or two of email catch-up in on port days after getting back from a shore excursion, but it's easier to just say port day = vacation, sea day = work and great food.

A 2-week repositioning cruise may cost as little as $600 per person including taxes and fees. Add another $200pp for gratuities, a few $hundred for shore excursions, and a few $hundred for airfare to get back home. Depending on where you go, you may get the benefits of a 2-week vacation for the price of one on land.

Similarly, if you want to do a one-week offsite with your startup (particularly if you're all remote most of the time anyway), this is probably cheaper than flying your crew to any big city.

The seminars-at-sea model was also well proven out by geekcruises.com, now renamed insightcruises.com

My wife and I have been renting an off-season beach house near Boston for 8 months out of the year for less than the price of a basement studio in Cambridge, then traveling during the summer. This means our repositioning cruises are further discounted by the fact that we aren't paying rent or mortgage on an empty house. It's hard to beat if you both have good schedule flexibility.