Sunday May 6, 2007 7:30 am Edmonton

A. Morning Musings

7:30 am I do not have Internet access this morning.

B. Actual/Notes

7:30 am I am hoping to talk to someone this afternoon about digiscoping and how to attach a digital camera to my spotting scope. However before that I will divide my time between reading "The Brothers Karamazov" and working on setting up my notebook pages for the Mexico trip last February and March.

8:30 am One of the advantages of being away from my books and resources in Lethbridge is the opportunity it gives me to sit back and think about what I am doing, without actually doing anything. For example, when I return home I have identified the following tasks:

• Burn a DVD for my iPhoto images, one for pre-2006, one for 2006, and one for 2007.
• I need to do a serious cull of my books and match that against my database for Fiction and Non-fiction.
• I need to seriously review my 4 "Projects" (Literature, Mathematics, Technology, Trains) web pages and bring them all up to date.
• I have a piece of loose paper where I sketched out an outline of a book I bought on a previous trip to Edmonton on why good people do bad things. I want to use that as a model for for all of my books. I did this a few months ago for my Mathematics books. I should do this for all the major categories of Learning that interest me (i.e. the headings for my Chronology tables) and to resort all of my books on shelves that correspond to these categories. This sounds like it might be a major undertaking, but I think it will be worth it. From a chunking perspective, the first level of chunking would be these categories. Then within each category I need a second level that makes distinctions on the sub-categories. This should all be done with appropriate new fields in the database so I can then maintain these files in the years ahead.

For example, here is the table for my Mathematics books (taken from the Mathematics Project web page):

The table reveals that I have 8 major sub-categories of Learning within Mathematics. Clearly many books have overlapping content but this still works as a major way of conceptualizing what I am interested in.

Let's play with this a bit more. I have many books that discuss how children and students learn mathematics. This could be a sub-category under Psychology. What would be some potential other sub-categories? I liked the way I developed these categories with the mathematics books. I gathered all of the books that seemed to belong under the major category of mathematics and then tried to sort them into 7 plus or minus 2 sub-categories.

In the process of doing this I could also do a cull of books that appear to me to not longer be of interest or value. In a way this is much like my early days as a graduate student, only this time I have the resources in my own home. But it is worthwhile to get the categories organized into such a system so I can review, at a glance, the overall structure of the topic.

In principle, one should be able to do this without actually having the books at hand. For example, what are the major categories for Literature? One easy first category might be nationality of author: Canada, Australia, England, USA, Japan, Russia, Other. Then within each country I might sort them by date of publication, or by author's surname (this would allow me to see at a glance how many books I have by a particular author). By having all of this information in a database I could produce a few lists such as all the books sorted by year of publication, or by country, or by author.

This is fun. With no recourse to what I have, I will try to create a preliminary structure for all of my books:

1. Psychology
2. Technology
3. Mathematics
4. Science
5. History
6. Art
7. Philosophy
8. Literature
9. Trains
10. Birds
11. Go

Now lets try expanding these categories.

Mathematics

1. Calculus
2. Number Theory
3. Groups/Symmetry
4. Chaos/Fractals
5. Infinity
6. Mathematica
7. Statistics
8. Special Topics

Literature

1. Canada
2. Australia
3. Japan
4. Russia
5. England
6. USA
7. Other

Birds

1. Field Guides
2. Bird Lists
3. Identification
4. Behavior
5. Organizations
6. Photography

Psychology

1. Cognitive
2. Learning/Studying
3. Development
4. Personality
5. Education
6. School Mathematics

Science

1. Physics
2. Cosmology
3. Biology
4. Biography

History

1. Prehistory
2. Europe
3. Asia
4. Africa
5. New World

Philosophy

1. Western
2. Tao/Buddhism
3. Ethics

Technology

1. Web
2. Mac
3. Software

Art

1. Western
2. Japanese

Trains

1. CNR
2. Western Canada
3. Steam
4. Diesel
5. HO Scale

The next task will be to revise the above lists when I review my books.

C. Plan

Immediate
Technology	Convert LPs to MP3 format
	Learn how to attach a digital camera to my spotting scope	1 hr
Birds	Update database to include 2007 Mexico trip
	Create notebook pages birding in Mexico
Literature	Read & make notes for book 7of "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky	1 hr
Later
Technology	Make notes for chap. 4 of "Switching to the Mac"
	Burn backup of images onto DVD
Mathematics	Read & make notes on The Humongous Book of Calculus Problems
	Continue reading "Algebra: Abstract and Concrete" by Frederick Goodman
	Read "Symmetry" by David Wade
	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
	Follow tutorial for version 8 of 3rd PlanIt
	Continue assembly of coaling tower
	Purchase DCC system
History	Begin reading "Maya"
	Read Watson "Ideas"
Philosophy	Read & make notes for "Breaking the Spell"
	Begin reading "How Are We To Live?" by Peter Singer
Literature	New York Times easy crossword puzzles
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
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.

D. Reflection