July 18

Wednesday July 18, 2007 5:50 am Lethbridge

It is +16 C with a high forecast of +33 C. Sunrise 5:43 Sunset 21:32 Hours of daylight: 15:49

A. Morning Musings

5:50 am

The first activity of the morning is to open all the windows and let the cooler air into the house.

I have a few chores identified for today: see if I can find a few fountain pens in the local shops and check for pen nib size: do I prefer fine or medium?, check for the first 2 Harry Potter movies in a nearby video rental store, check Samsung manual for possible remote replacement.

I have just realized that I have not been scanning the covers of some of the books that I am currently using. I wonder how the mind works. Where did that come from? This raises the question, again, of whether it makes more sense to embed such images in these daily journal pages (giving a better sense of what I am doing on that day, or including the image in some kind of topical summary web page where I can see what I have accomplished in a given area over time, or both. The redundancy makes a fair amount of sense. Each location serves a different purpose.

Here is the Murakami novel that I am current reading:

Here is the CSS book:

Here is the back cover, enlarged so one can read the text:

mcfarland

And here is the calculus book:

kelley

and here is the back cover, enlarged a bit:

Time to put the coffee on. I noticed that the lawn needs edging along the rock garden boundary. Retirement gives a new meaning to time: before it was a matter of fitting everything in, now it is a matter of enjoying the many little activities that make up a day. I definitely like retirement!

I have just had a look at the Samsung manual for our DVD player. The troubleshooting page suggests removing the batteries from the remote and then holding down one of the buttons for a few minutes to drain the microprocessor and to then replace the batteries and see if that helps.

My new awareness of fountain pens continues to amuse me. I had no idea that some people collect them. I still have notes from 40 years ago for a couple of courses I took that were written with a fountain pen. I recall loving them at the time, but somehow I moved away from them in the 1970's (I think it may have had something to do with having to have an ink bottle nearby.). Now I am curious to see what is on the market.

One problem yesterday when I was working on a couple of calculus problems was that I was continually perspiring and that was making the paper I was writing on damp as my forearm was always resting on the paper as I wrote. I will try working early this morning before the heat builds up. Interestingly, this is not a problem when one is working with a mouse and keyboard.

Here is my plan for today. The Mathematics and the Literature are more interesting to me at the moment.

Immediate	Description	Time
Technology	Continue creating a tutorial web site: general sequence	1 hr
Technology	Purchase & install new DVD player	2 hr
Literature	Continue reading "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami	1 hr
Mathematics	Complete problems 1.9 - 1.20 of "The Humongous Book of Calculus Problems"	1 hr

C. Actual Learning Activities

9:50 am

Mathematics 20

July 18, 2007

3:15 PM

I finished a one-hour session earlier this morning.

The Humongous Book of Calculus Problems (2006) W. Michael Kelley

Chapter 1 Linear Equations and Inequalities

Here are my scans (original at color - magazine, 200 dpi, export at width of 600 pixels) of the problems I completed in a one hour session this afternoon.

calculus

3:25 PM

The simple, careless mistakes are embarrassing. This must stop if I am ever going to get on top of this. However the general ideas are sound and the memory comes back (and so it should). There is nothing really new here, and the review is actually quite pleasant.

I think I could make quicker progress if I didn't try do carefully do each problem, but focused on the ones that give me difficulty. On the other hand, the fact that I am making trivial mistakes is a good reason for continuing on the approach I am using. Hopefully they will disappear.

3:30 PM

As is often the case with technology, what seems to be a simple activity can easily turn into an adventure. I bought a new DVD player to replace the one we currently had which was almost 6 years old. I thought I would simply remove the cables from the old player and re-insert them into the corresponding holes in the new one. Hah! It seems the technology has changed a bit in the last few years. As a result neither the cables nor the holes existed in the new player. That meant having a look at the manual which was full of new words that meant nothing to me. I then sat down and very carefully mapped out where all of the existing cables went from and to. I then followed the same pattern and hooked up the new DVD player. I was more than a little surprised when everything seemed to work just fine! There are still a few tests to make, but basically the DVD seems to work fine, as does the satellite tv. I have yet to check out the CD player (I did move a few of its cables to a new set of plugs). But a promising start.

I also have rented the second Harry Potter DVD, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets". Now to find a copy of the first movie and then we can begin bringing ourselves up to date....

8:40 PM

Culture time in the Burnett house. We were able to obtain a copy of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" from the library. It was in a VHS (tape) format. Fortunately I hadn't moved any of the cables going in or out of the back of the unit and we had no difficulty viewing it. It is a long movie, but we both enjoyed it. Now to move on to "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (tomorrow).

It has been in the low 30's for the last 6 hours - the house really heats up in the late afternoon. Fortunately it cools down overnight.

I was able to touch a couple of fountain pens in the late morning. I made a few scribbles with a medium pen nib and found it too broad. Now to see if I can find a fine nib and see what I think of that. I was surprised and delighted though with how smoothly the pen wrote. I am still thinking I will try to buy a Pelikan but I want to see if I can find one to try out before committing myself. There is something nostalgic about the pen as well as an ink bottle - they are both art forms. I am curious to see if I can find some nice Japanese fountain pens. Back to eBay ...