Saturday, April 16, 2011 Lethbridge

6:25 am

There is light snow falling at the moment. The temperature is -2 C, with a high predicted of +2 C.

From the Environment Canada website:

Today Cloudy. Snow beginning early this morning. Amount 5 cm. High plus 2. Tonight Snow. Amount 5 to 10 cm. Low minus 3. Wind: E 13 km/h Wind Chill: -6. Normals Max: 14°C Min: 0°C

6:45 am tag: Morning Musings

It is almost 20 degrees below normal for this time of year if one factors in the wind. The sky is overcast - we haven't seen much blue sky this winter. There is much more snow than most winters and there is serious concern about flooding in much of the prairies as the snow melt continues. In a sense this is good weather at the moment as the spring thaw is slow. A spell of really warm weather could be a disaster. Farmers are over a month behind normal for spring seeding.

The combination of cool temperatures, much snow, and dull light makes for unhappy people. This has been going on for almost 4 months.

Another good day for indoor activities. I have found a recipe for apple-cinnamon scones on the web. This seems like a good activity for the moment.

Done. Mmmm.

Here is another picture of the snow in the front yard.

Notice how the "warmth" of the cement and roadway kept melting the snow but the ground remained blanketed with the white stuff.

2:50 PM tag: Mathematics

I have read through the material for section 1.3 Matrices. The section has 6 key terms:

• inverse matrix
• difference matrix
• sum matrix
• cyclic matrix
• dependent vectors
• independent vectors.

I feel I have a fairly good understanding of terms 1, 4 & 5. But terms 2, 3, & 4 are new to me and I am not sure I fully understand their significance at the moment. I am also uncomfortable with thinking in terms of the columns of a matrix. I need more practice. I keep thinking there is more going on here than I am realizing.

I need to find the time to sit back and watch the first 2 lectures from the MIT course.

4:30 PM tag: Technology

I have begun serious reading of James Gleick's "The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood". This is an ebook and I am making extensive use of the yellow highlighting feature.

Another intriguing feature of the ebook is the replacement of page numbers with location numbers. There are 12999 such values. There is also another index of progress. The bottom of each page gives a percentage value indicating how far one has progressed. I am currently in the middle of chapter 3 and am 5% of the way into the book. These indices bring to mind work Larry and I did in the early 1980's with a precursor to ebooks. The short stories were specifically designed to emphasize the meaning of the text but one of the valuable components of this was a "page number/total pages" index that gave the young reader a sense of where they were in the story.