Tuesday January 17, 2006 6:00 am Ballina NSW

A. Morning Musings

6:00 am The coffee is in the plunger. A good time to check email and the web. I had a couple of replies to my posting of this web site. The birds are attracting more interest than the food or the beaches. I really need to review my web sites for my Learning notes and get them reorganized for putting on the web. The coffee tastes good in the morning and a nearby currawong is singing up a storm. One possibility is to up date the bird web site. I am trying to get in the habit of taking some pictures of daily events. I just took three pictures of the view from the front porch of the unit. Such pictures tell a better story than the "noteworthy" ones that capture rare or special events.

Here is the daily morning view from left to right:

The ocean is just beyond the trees on the last picture. The coffee tastes very good from the porch. Life is good. 7:10 am

B. Plan

6:35 am Top priority is to spend some solid time on Stylus Studio. I hope to use Skype later this morning to contact the university about my password difficulties. We also need a few groceries. We have yet to go out specifically to look for birds. The path to the lighthouse at Byron Bay is one possibility.

With the above preamble, I find it worthwhile to list the main categories and then add some detail. This reduces the chance that I will totally overlook a category. Time management is critical.

Exercise: Tummy stuff and a beach walk.

Technology: Stylus Studio (3 hours), update birds website, update Skype account.

Literature: Make Web notes for chapters 12 & 13, read chapters 14 & 15.

Food, Mathematics, History, Art and Drawing will not be active. 7:00 am

C. Actual

6:30 am Web: Mostly sunny. 40 % chance of light showers (1 - 5 mm) for the coast. High of 29 (31 in Lismore).

9:40 am I have spent about 2 hours on Stylus Studio, Learning how to add a new element to an internal schema. I think I have this pretty much under control, both conceptually as well as Learning the steps with Stylus Studio. It is a great feeling to finally be making progress! 9:45 am

9:45 am I will celebrate by doing my tummy exercises. Done. 9:55 am

7:40 PM We followed a recipe on a jar of Authentic Thai Red Curry Paste (red). It was a touch too hot for our taste buds. Delicious but it did leave a burning taste in the mouth. The walk on the beach during the late afternoon was quite enjoyable. We never get tired of this aspect of our lives.

Just before the walk I spent about an hour downloading and installing updates to Windows. Time consuming, but essential. However it was an unplanned activity. I was able to use Skype to contact the University of Lethbridge and reset my password for accessing the administrative system.

I did spend a good hour reading a couple of chapters from "Dr. Riemann's Zero's". The book is interesting for its description of the key people that have contributed, and are contributing, to this mathematical problem. The mathematics is necessarily light, but it does give a broad sense of the nature of the problem and the complex mathematics underlying it.

Much of the afternoon was spent shopping for groceries, having a lovely large cappuccino at the Pelican cafe, and a nice lunch at a cafe in the Ballina Fair shopping mall. We visited a new grocery store called Aldi which appeared to have fairly good prices on a number of items. Each day we learn something new. 7:55 PM

8:05 PM Now to try adding 10 Euros to my Skype account. Done. The process was straighforward. 8:20 PM

8:20 Now to see if I can submit a reimbursement claim for Stylus Studio. Nope. It still doesn't recognize my password. I will have to phone the university again tomorrow and see if I can get this fixed. I continue to be impressed at how much time I waste getting this technolgy to work. I guess it build maturity. If not that, then old age. 8:30 PM

D. Reflection

8:30 PM A fairly good day. I didn't accomplish all that I set out to do, but am pleased with the progress I made with Stylus Studio and I am glad to bring Mathematics back onto the screen. I hope to continue this tomorrow morning. Exercise is also being maintained. Literature slipped today but Mathematics reappeared.

I want to look into restructuring my content area web sites so that they only contain 2006 entries, and that each subject is self-contained with no links to other personal web sites. As I accomplish this I will open up the link on the Learning Chart web page to the appropriate subject area web site. The first such site will be the one for Technology. 8:45 PM