February 1

Friday February 1, 2008 6:30 am Lethbridge, Alberta

It is -22 C with a high forecast of -14 C. Sunrise 8:05 Sunset 17:25 Hours of daylight: 9:20

9:45 am

A. Morning Musings

Coffee at The Ugly Mug @8:00.

Today looks to be a good one. I will have a final look at the AusWeb paper and then forward it to the reviewers. Allan has made a number of excellent edits and it is now looking much better.

Apple shipped the OS 10.5 that I purchased a couple of days ago. They indicated that I should receive it today. If it arrives I will have a fair amount of work in front of me as I will need to back up most of my files before proceeding with the install. I also received a warning message on my system this morning indicating that it needed more space to run the virtual Windows environment. This is an incentive to remove many of my iPhoto images from the main hard drive and place them on a DVD as well as on a backup hard drive. I believe OS 10.5 has an improved back up capability so this is all coming together.

I received two phone calls yesterday afternoon. Trains & Such in Calgary will be shipping two MRC Auto Reverse Modules to me. This will allow me to set up the remaining two reversing loops (I have all of the wiring in place). I also received a phone call from Reid's in Calgary. My "fine" fountain pen nib for my Pelikan pen has arrived and they will ship it to Lethbridge.

The model train activities are fantastic. I love the combination of play and learning. The learning is all over the map. One moment I am learning about electricity, then history, then how to make a plastic or wooden model, how to give models a weathered look, how real railways operate, ... I guess I should think of this as a Third Life. All my lives are good.

I plan to cut a hole in the table top at Jasper to accommodate the Coal Loading Tower that I finished building earlier this week. I will have to be very careful to get this right.

Today looks like it will be full. Indoor pursuits are fine at the moment as the cool weather has returned.

Learning Category	Planned Activities for Today	Time
Literature	Read & make notes for today's entry from "A Year With Rumi"	1 hr
Literature	Continue reading "The Ripening Sun" by Patricia Atkinson	2 hr
Technology	Work on revisions to Ausweb paper	1 hr
Technology	Edit iPhoto files; place pre-2007 files on DVD	9 hr
Model Trains	Prepare hole for Coal Loading Tower in Jasper	1 hr

B. Actual Learning Activities

7:20 am

Mia culpa! I just realized while updating my Web pages that I have been forgetting to read a page from "A Year With Rumi" each morning. I will try adding a line to my Planned Activities to remind myself of this. It might also be a good idea to leave the book beside my laptop where I can see it in the morning. I am now up to date. I am impressed with how much I enjoy these short readings. Rumi/Barks says so many things well.

9:10 am

Since I have enjoyed reading the Rumi entries for January, I should add this book to my list of worthwhile reads.

A Year With Rumi (2006)

Coleman Barks

I was introduced to the writing of Rumi about eight years ago. A friend mentioned Rumi's name and said that he thought I might enjoy his poetry. I tried it and agreed.

This book is a set of "daily readings", one for each day of the year. Many of the selections are only a few lines, and none are more than a page.

Here is the entry for February 1:

As Much as a Pen Knows

Do you think that I know what I'm doing?
That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?

As much as a pen knows what it's writing,
or the ball can guess where it's going next.

One more, this time from January 16:

Let the Beauty We Love

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

One of the features of a book of daily readings is that one does not read too much. A short passage and, hopefully, time for some morning musing.

It is worth remembering that one is reading a translation of work originally written in, I think, Arabic. How much credit for the English version is due to Rumi, and how much to Barks, is, as always, an open question. But the combination is superb. I am reminded of a book by Douglas Hofstadter, "Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language" which discusses the nuances of translation, particularly poetry. I recommend this to anyone who finds themselves reading a work that was originally written in a language other than in the one that is being read.

Tags: non-fiction, Sufi, religion, philosophy, poetry.

6:30 PM

This has been a fascinating day.

I decided that it was time to back up my photos before converting to OS 10.5 (Leopard). The good news today was that 10.5 failed to arrive today. That gives me 3 days breathing room. I have about 12,600 photos (not all of them good!). I have just finished burning all of them onto 7 DVDs (double layed DVDs - 8.5 GB each). That took about 7 hours of continuous running. These images were simply the original JPEG images. They were not the complete iPhoto files (thumbnails, keywords, slideshows, etc.).

I have now begun backing up my files onto an iomega hard drive (150 GB). I am transferring the entire iPhoto folder. The initial estimate is that this will take 14 hours (!) (48 GB). I am parallel processing at the moment, with the file transfers going on in the background.

The next task (clearly tomorrow morning) will be to backup all my document files.

Oh oh. I just received an error message and the transfer of my iPhoto files has stopped (with no indication as to the nature of the problem).

10:30 PM

I decided to stop my parallel processing and let the computer focus on copying the entire IPhoto folder to the hard drive. This worked just fine. It only took about 3 hours to complete the job. I then backed up all of my remaining files which took about another hour. This "maintenance" activity took virtually the entire day, but it was necessary.

I decided that I could work on my model train layout while the computer was backing up my files. I managed to cut the hole in the table top for the Coal Loading Tower in Jasper, but this turned out to be more difficult that I imagined. The problem was that the hole turned out to be directly above one of the supporting beams for the table. This meant that I had to chisel a gap in the beam but I have the Tower in place now. I also have a real mess of sawdust and shavings that need to be cleaned up.