Wednesday February 7, 2007 6:30 am Lethbridge Sunrise 7:56 Sunset 17:35 Hours of daylight: 9:39

A. Morning Musings

6:30 am It is - 11 C at the moment with a high of -7 C forecast. There was light snow overnight with more forecast for the next few days.

Here are the news.

CBC Headline: Canadian Involved in Global Child-Porn Ring: Austrian Police

Austrian police have uncovered an international child pornography ring involving over 2360 people in 77 different countries. There have been no arrests yet but police in the various countries have been notified and the information has been shared with them. The Austrian police have not indicated how many Canadians are involved. The ease by which such sites can be created and then accessed is a world wide problem. In this case it appears that the videos were created in east Europe and then distributed from a place in England. Surely there is a way to prevent this. I would think that software could be developed that would identify web sites with particular types of traffic patterns and then automatically access them to preview the content.

Canadian Headline: see above

Australian Headline: (from The Australian): Heads Need Power to Sack Teachers, says Bishop

Julia Bishop, federal Education minister, has said that school principals should have greater autonomy, including the power to hire and fire teachers. Her plan includes offering incentives and rewards for meritorious service. The idea includes merit pay based on performance, and idea that has been opposed by teacher unions at the state level. While the idea appears to make sense, the difficulty, which is huge, is to establish a system of measurement and criteria. I can imagine certain test scores being substituted for the actually very complex range of skills needed by teachers. I do like the idea by beginning with a positive focus to reward good performance before tackling the problem of how to fire undesirable teachers. I would start by tackling the extreme situations, both good and bad, and then slowly work toward the more difficult grey areas.

From rear window	South patio
Both images taken at 1:30 PM

B. Plan

Immediate
Technology	Review & edit iPhoto files for 2006	1 hr
	Continue reading & making notes for "iPhoto 5"	1 hr
	Digital photography - learn about using the various manual settings	1 hr
Literature	Continue reading "The Big Why" by Michael Winter	2 hr
	Begin reading "The Tale of the Heike"	1 hr
Later
Technology	Read manual for cell phone
	Make notes for chap. 4 of "Switching to the Mac"
	Burn backup of images onto DVD
Mathematics	Make notes for "Mathematics: A Human Endeavor" ch 1
	Read "Fearless Symmetry" chap 9: Elliptic Curves
Model Trains	Add ground cover to oil refinery diorama
	Continue assembly of coaling tower
	Follow tutorial for version 8 of 3rd PlanIt
	Purchase DCC system
History	Read Watson "Ideas"
Philosophy	Read & make notes for "Breaking the Spell"
GO	Complete reading "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go"
Puzzles	The Orange Puzzle Cube: puzzle #10
Major Goals
Learning	Review week's pages each Sunday
	Review all pages for the month at the end of each month
Technology	Become proficient with iPhoto software
	Review & edit iPhoto files for 2006
	Become proficient with cell phone
Model Trains	Become proficient with 3rd PlanIt software
	Install DCC on model train layout
GO	Learn to play GO at something better than a beginner level
Drawing	Learn to draw!! (I keep saying this, yet I have yet to put a pencil to paper).
Mathematics	Continue to play with mathematics.
Literature	Continue to read Literature
Bird Watching	Continue to engage in bird watching activities.

C. Actual/Note

7:00 am No weight change - I am still at 192.

7:40 am While sipping on my first cup of the day I suddenly realized that the mind set for my planning table is not to complete various activities, but to engage in those activities. Completion will follow logically from engagement, although many tasks may take days, sometimes weeks, of engagement before they are completed. The daily goal should be one of progress.

A second early morning thought: I should keep a daily list of birds seen on that day. For example, yesterday I saw a blue jay, numerous grackles, a few magpies, some Canada geese, a house finch and many house sparrows. Keeping the bird (bean?) count is not the point - the point is to pay more attention to what I am seeing.

Another: one of the most important principles of Learning is review/practice. I create a daily journal of my Learning activities, but I rarely go back and review them (or make some notes based on this review). This would make a good activity for the first of each week, as well as the first of each month. I will place this in my planning table as the first major goal. Done.

1:50 PM Birds seen today: Northern Flicker, house finches (including an orange one!), house sparrows, magpies.

	Technology 13 February 7
Technology Notes
2:00 PM I am now about to begin making notes for chapter 6 "Editing Your Photos" of "iPhoto 5". Here is my concept map for chapter 6: The remaining chapters are interesting, but I am not motivated to pursue them at the moment. SUMMARY of the session: 3:30 PM I think I now have the basic features of iPhoto under control. The specific skills for advanced editing, slide shows and movies are best left until a specific need is identified.

D. Reflection

7:50 PM Another successful day. I am getting better with the camera each day. Today I realized the importance of the ISO setting, particularly under poor lighting conditions. I am getting better at moving among the different settings. I continue to plug away at the 2006 iPhoto images. I seem to be able to eliminate about 100 images in an hour . I am now at image #635 out of 4173 photos ( I began with 4536 photos).