The New York Times has a rather gloomy piece on how bloggers are dropping dead like flies, apparently overcome by the strains of the 24/7 global internet culture.

Personally, I’ve not known a blogger who has slumped lifeless over a keyboard (touch wood). I imagine people pass away at inconvenient moments in many professions. Blogging and writing from home must have its share of dicky tickers like any other walk of life.

However, the NYT has chapter and verse :

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December. Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

From these few examples you would have to subtract the number of deaths and heart attacks in the general population to arrive at a guesstimate of internet publishing’s real rate of attrition.

No doubt there are serious stresses and strains working in the new online environment. However, a word of caution. Anyone who has worked for newspapers to tight daily deadlines will recognize the same pressures and symptoms. Journalists are not notorious for their alcohol consumption for nothing.

And try slaving in a factory, repetitively doing the same tasks thousands of times a day. Or surviving the water-cooler politics of office life. Worse, the back-breaking toil of farm work. There are no easy options in “the world of work”.

Methinks the problem lies, as ever, with meetings, travel, networking and other inconsequentials of the wired-up sector. Networking for the internetizen means Twittering and Tweeting incoherently to hundreds, maybe thousands, of “followers”, mostly without a shred of benefit to the bottom line. Email is another source of stress and should be stamped on ruthlessly, as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch wrote a day or two ago.

The Times has this quote from him, “‘I haven’t died yet,’ said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. ‘At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen. This is not sustainable,’ he said.”

Syntagma’s advice : drop the Tweets, do the paid work efficiently — a three-hour morning should suffice — then get out of the house on a long Photowalk, or maybe to the golf course or coffee shop (preferably without a Hotspot), and forget about the Labours of Hercules. He was a mythical character and is not one to emulate.

I’m going to be a bit self-indulgent this Saturday and show you a few shots of Syntagma’s new environment at Exeter’s Quay. The weather is amazingly spring-like right now — just like last year — so I decided to spend the morning ambling along the river and canal taking photographs. The time for Photowalking is upon us once again.

Our old Customs House, and a pair of cannon

The Customs House was built in 1661 and is the oldest brick building in Exeter. It was used by Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise as recently as 1989. Its magnificent interior reflects the wealth of the West Country’s wool trade at the time it was built.

View across the canal to the bridge and the 11th-century Cathedral

There’s an almost holiday resort atmosphere here at the Quay right now with people sitting out for lunch at the many pubs and restaurants. It can’t surely be mid-February — but it is.

Regency view across the river

Now here’s a perfect cluster of Regency buildings, straight out of Jane Austen. Apart from the car and the couple in fluorescent yellow togs, it could be 200 years ago.

A pair of medieval houses, now used for commercial purposes

As much of old Exeter was destroyed by bombing in World War 2, it remains a miracle that so much from the medieval and Elizabethan periods remains standing.

Click on the Flickr logo in the sidebar for a complete and growing set of Exeter photos. Click the thumbnails for more detailed shots.

It may be crisis point in the world of financial markets, banks, Treasuries, Exchequers and Kings’ Counting Houses but, here in the South-West of England, spring has truly sprung.

A carpet of daffodils heralds spring in the northern hemisphere

I’m aware that the weather can be as treacherous as the stock markets, but no-one can doubt that there’s a bullish mood in the bulbous population just below ground.

With flooding and mayhem elsewhere in the country, we at least have a sign of what is to come.

Let us hope it’s a metaphor for the world economy.

A few moments ago there was an enormous racket outside Syntagma Towers. People passing were looking up in the sky as if a giant asteroid was about to hit us.

I rushed outside with the new camera (12X zoom) and found our police helicopter hovering directly above our little haven of peace.

Darn, I thought, they’ve caught up with us at last.

I’m now hoping it was just a training exercise, or maybe a criminal gang was hiding in a neighbour’s garden.

It’s gone now. We live to fight another day.