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Learning:
The Journey of a Lifetime
or
A Cloud Chamber on the Mind

Tuesday October 14, 2008 4:40 am Lethbridge

It is +10 C with a high forecast of +8 C. Sunrise 7:51 Sunset 18:43 Hours of daylight: 10:32.
See current Lethbridge forecast here. See current Lethbridge news here.

This page last updated on: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 7:48 AM

A. Morning Musings

I am awake and alert - much too early. The weather forecast is for a mix of rain and possible snow. At the moment it is raining, with a strong wind.

I sent the URL for my Earth Cache trip in Edmonton to the creator of the site and received a nice reply.

I have also received a hint for GC16ZFP NS West #2 from the creator of that site. He indicated that it was in a magnetic container. I went over to the site last evening (try #4) and looked and touched everything that was metallic at the east end of the bridge, and that was under the bridge, but still no luck. This was the location my GPS gave on my third attempt. On my second attempt it seemed to give me the west end of the bridge. But this end was totally buried in leaves as a result of the strong winds the last few days. The physics of the turbulence that gives rise to such a "drift" is fascinating. Now that the weather has become miserable for outdoor activities I may wait a few days before giving this another try.

Here is my report of the activity.

I have been thinking about the stand that our friends use when geocaching. It simply sits on the dashboard of their car without leaving any marks. I think I could make a similar one using a mousepad and some metal weights than I would normally use to add weight to my model train rolling stock. I like the idea of using stuff from two other activities (computing & model trains) to help with a third (geocaching).

I have also been thinking about the Preparation Sheet I have been designing for geocache activities. It is relatively easy to create these web pages in Dreamweaver and post them to this web site. Then it is easy to view them in a Firefox browser and save them as pdf files. Finally, it is easy to use Adobe Acrobat to combine these files into one "binder" file. I am not sure that it makes much sense to print these. The pdf binder file is the ultimate form.

The Southern Alberta Model Railroad Club meets this evening at 7:00 PM.

Learning Category	Planned Activities for Today	Time
Literature	Continue reading "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie	1 hr
Geocaching	Play with Preparation Sheets and pdf files	2 hr
Model Trains	Complete building kit for drop end gondola car	1 hr
Model Trains	SAMRC meeting	2 hr

B. Actual Learning Activities

1:00 PM

While shopping at Costco, I bought 5 more books. The prices there are irresistible.

• A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada. (2008). John Ralston Saul.
  • John Ralston Saul is one of my favorite authors. There is a lovely play on words in the title.
• Through Black Spruce. (2008). Joseph Boyden.
  • I have seen reviews of this book and am looking forward to reading it.
• October. (2007). Richard B. Wright.
  • Wright is another Canadian writer that I admire.
• The Book of Negoroes. (2007). Lawrence Hill.
  • All three of the above books have been longlisted for the Giller Prize. I have some very exciting reading in front of me.
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. (2007). Junot Diaz.
  • This author won the Pulitzer Prize in the United States.

There are so many good book out there! I review of the books that I have bought this year (see link at top of left margin) indicates that my running totals for 2008 are:

	Literature	Non-fiction
Bought	47	62
Read	14	9

Clearly, and not to my surprise, I am falling behind.

5:00 PM

I have been making good progress with the Preparation Sheets for my Geocaching activities. I now have 7 sheets that describe my first activities over a 4-day span in August. These are all in both HTML and PDF format.

I just realized that today is our federal election (we voted last week in an advance poll as we were not expecting to be home today). I will forego the SAMRC meeting to watch the results unfold on television. There seems to be a general consensus that not much will change and we will have another Conservative minority government.

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