My wife always tells me when I'm "programming with my eyes". She says my eyes get this look and she can tell that, even though we are having dinner or a discussion, that in my head I'm looking at code. She's almost always right.
Here’s a TED talk by Csíkszentmihályi (2004): http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.htm...
Also worth reading: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig, 1974), The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche, 1872)
> Everybody in Silicon Valley seems to be talking about Charlie, the gourmet cook at Google who used to work for Jerry Garcia.
In 2000, Spolsky still felt the need to make the word "Google" a hyperlink to the (then-nascent) search company's website.
I think she said something along the lines of "you just had such an evil look, what was you staring at?" I didn't know I was staring, because to be honest my concentration had receded from the visual. Similarly when I write I can completely zone out audibly to the point I get pissed off and people around me can, because I'll have a playlist going and I miss my favorite song so I'll skip back to play through it again and I'll zone out and miss it. I think in one day I put the play-count of a dozen songs up by like 5 points on iTunes via this.
I think 'crazy eyes' is when you zone out visually, and I guess 'crazy ears' is when you zone out audibly. It's like there's a lack of processing power in the brain and its CtrlAltDel'ing a wasted function.