Thursday March 15, 2007 5:40 am Lethbridge Sunrise 7:46 Sunset 19:35 Hours of daylight: 11:49

A. Morning Musings

5:40 am It is -7 C at the moment with a high of +5 C forecast.

CBC Headline: Suspected 9/11 Mastermind Confesses At Hearing

The man suspected of planning the 9/11 attack has reportedly confessed at a U.S. military hearing. It is difficult to know how much credence to give to the testimony since there is no independent verification of the report.

Canadian Headline: British PM's wife to represent Canadian family

Tony Blair's wife has been given permission to act as legal counsel for the family of a Belleville teenager whose body was found in the Bermuda in 1996. One man was convicted for being an accessory and another found not guilty of the murder. This appears to be an effort to review the case and see if further legal action is warranted.

Australian Headline: (from The Australian): Howard in Secret Visit to Diggers in Afghanistan

The Prime Minister stopped in Kabul on his return from Japan. Such visits by various natiional leaders have become common in the last year. They may be viewed as important political and morale boosts as it shows that such leaders are prepared to make somewhat dangerous visits to show their support for the troops.

My weight is down 1 to 191. Progress.

B. Plan

Immediate
Mathematics	Review Mathematica procedures for graphing equations	2 hr
Model Trains	Follow tutorial for version 8 of 3rd PlanIt	1 hr
Literature	Continue reading "Runaway" by Alice Munro	1 hr
History	Begin reading "Maya"	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
	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	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

6:45 am I am beginning the day feeling a little sluggish. Rather than tackle some maths I have opted for a cuppa and a short story by Alice Munro. It is the last story in the book "Runaway". Much to my surprise it is written as a series of diary entries. That quickly triggered the idea that I still have room to improve the style of these web pages to include a section that is more like a diary. This is my attempt. It is a pleasant, even relaxing, way to start the day. There was a light snowfall overnight and the ground is white. Because of the early switch to daylight saving time, it is still dark outside. I began the morning by weighing myself and was a little disappointed to find that I had only lost one pound. I was hoping for a loss of two. I did my coulee walk yesterday afternoon in an attempt to force the issue, but am still finding a way to have an evening snack, which undoes all the good of the day. Discipline. This is the second time that I have read "Runaway". I think I read it when it first came out in 2004. Rereading it now is fascinating. I cannot recall the details of any of the stories yet at the end I have the distinct feeling of having read it before. I do have a clear general memory of thinking that this is one of the best collections of short stories that I have ever read. She captures the various situations perfectly.

Returning to my habit of noting certain passages, here are two that caught my eye yesterday. Now I am kicking myself for not marking them. Hopefully I can find them ...

"She could not explain or quite understand that it wasn't altogether jealousy she felt, it was rage. And not because she couldn't shop like that or dress like that. It was because that was what girls were supposed to be like. That was what men - people, everybody - thought they should be like. Beautiful, treasured, spoiled, selfish, pea-brained. That was what a girl should be, to be fallen in love with. Then she would become a mother an she'd be all mushily devoted to her babies. Not selfish anymore, but just pea-brained. Forever." [p. 164]

"The thing about life, Harry had told Lauren, was to live in the world with interest. To keep your eyes open and see the possibilities - see the humanity - in everybody you met. To be aware. If he had anything at all to teach her it was that. Be aware." [p. 201]

Finding the two quotes turned out to be easier than I imagined. Strange how one can keep the generalities and forget the details. I was pretty sure of the two stories where they were located, but I couldn't recall the nature of the quote. Yet as soon as my eyes skimmed the paragraph I immediately, and definitely, knew that was what I was looking for. I am still in awe of the early Greeks who could recite the Illiad and the Odyssey totally from memory.

And now for a quote from the story I began reading this morning:

"If ever I am seriously ill I hope I am able to destroy this diary or go through and stroke out any mean things in it, in case I die." [p. 272]

This describes the tension that anyone grapples with if they are keeping any form of diary or journal.

Enough. It is time to get back to reading the story. Then drive to the Ugly Mug for a morning coffee with Frank. Life is good.

7:50 am

2:30 PM

	Mathematics 05 March 15
Mathematics Chronology
2:30 PM I have completed a few problems from section P.2 Linear Models and Rates of Change from the Larson text [p. 11 - 19]. Questions 71 - 73 involve graphing equations using a software package and question 74 involves using software to plot a regression equation. I want to use Mathematica for these questions but there are two technical issues that I will need to address before tackling the actual mathematics. One is how to use Mathematica to complete these problems and the second involves transferring the results from Mathematica (which is Windows software) to this web page (which uses Dreamweaver in a Mac environment). The good news is that I have done this all before, but the bad news is that I no longer remember the details. Using Parallels it is easy to set up the Windows xp environment for Mathematica. I want to make some very clear notes for the future on the steps I follow. The first issue is to recall how to obtain a screen capture of the Windows window. Open Grab from the Applications -> Utilities menu. Select Capture -> Selection from the Grab menu bar. Drag to define the area of the screen to be captured. Save this file as a TIFF file on the desktop. Open Preview. Select File -> Open and select the TIFF file. Save this file as a JPEG file in the appropriate folder within the Dreamweaver site. Insert this image on the notes within the appropriate web page. Here is a sample image from a windows screen: The next step is to open Mathematica and create a new Notebook file. Here is a screen capture of an initial Mathematica notebook file: Now to create a notebook file that presents a solution to a problem in the Larson text. I have successfully created such a notebook file and have saved it as both a Mathematica file as well as as a HTML file. But I am not sure how to get the HTML files from the windows invironment to the mac environment. Success. I copied the folder containing the HTML code to a memory stick and then read it while in a Mac environment. I then moved it to this web site. Here is a link to the notebook. 4:50 PM I am still not sure if there is a better way to handle the HTML files. One alternative is to only work within the Dreamweaver environment and copy all images and results from the Mathematica notebook using screen captures. But my first sense is to copy the notebook files in HTML format as I have done. This gives the viewer a clearer idea of exactly what happened while working within Mathematica.

D. Reflection