Thursday January 19, 2006 6:00 am Ballina NSW

A. Morning Musings

6:00 am The coffee is ready. It has been raining most of the night and it is still coming down this morning. Mmm. The first sip of hot coffee is a nice way to begin. I want to try the dial-up connection immediately and hopefully get the revised web site up and operational.

Nope. The dial-up connection still drops every couple of minutes. I'll give it an hour and see if there is any change. This is a good opportunity for a little musing.

After I logged off last night, I settled down to a very enjoyable hour with the Peter Watson book "Ideas". Other than he has Queen's University located in Toronto instead of Kingston, I find it a very enjoyable read. Since the book is about a history of ideas, he naturally begins with a consideration of what the best candidates are for the first idea. Philosophers would have a field day with that question. His leading candidates are bipedalism and hunting, followed by the making of stone tools. Then comes the idea of making fire.

I did manage to get a quick glance at my email before I lost connectivity. Allan suggested that I add some multimedia (aka video) to the site. While I agree in principle, there are a few technical details to sort out yet. One is to find a way to get the video file in a form that Dreamweaver can handle. I either need to find a way for it to use avi file (which are the only ones my camera produces) or I need to find a software program that easily converts avi files to another standard that Dreamweaver can handle. My little Canon Powershot S400 can take video, but I have little experience with this. I may need to buy a Camcorder yet. I wonder if they have an option for formats other than avi? I also need to look into seeing whether the standard University of Lethbridge web server provides a streaming capability or whether I need to begin posting my sites to a different server. Details...

I should get a picture of me while I am doing my exercise routine. I have received a couple of email enquires about this and a picture would likely help convey the idea of what I am doing. I can hear Allan saying "video!" already.

One of the important components of Learning is review. Another is practice. Practice is particularly valuable when Learning to use a new software package (e.g. Stylus Studio). I should review all of my entries for January and make a separate web page where I simple keep track of these so they don't get lost.

Not being able to work on this web site has definitely been advantageous. I have already had a couple of new ideas (multimedia, ideas web page) for this web site. Here's a third: I wonder if there is a way to take Watson's idea of a history of ideas and apply that to an individual (e.g. me). Essentially this web site provides a beginning for a basis of some form of analysis. And the effort may reveal ways in which the web site could be improved to provide better data for such an analysis. 7:00 am

B. Plan

6:40 am Chores: None come to mind.

Exercise: Tummy stuff and a beach walk. (The latter depends on the weather.)

Technology: Revise and upload Technology Notes web pages. Depending on how long this takes, I would like to continue some Learning with Stylus Studio.

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

History: Complete reading and making notes for chapter 1 of Ideas.

Food, Mathematics, Art and Drawing will not be active. 6:50 am

C. Actual

7:00 am I am going to act my idea of reviewing my Journal web pages and listing the ideas and todos that I may have mentioned but which look like they are being lost in the detritous of the moment. This was an eye-opener! It took almost three hours to review all my journal web pages for this month, plus a small notebook where I had made a few jottings. There were a total of 60 items on the list: 14 cannot be attended to while in Australia as they require resources that are at home, 10 have been completed, leaving 36 that I should be able to make progress on. 9:50 am

9:50 am I am trying the dial-up connection again. No luck - it keeps dropping the line within a couple of minutes. I must learn some patience and take advantage of the situation to do something else. 10:00 am

11:00 am I am in an Internet cafe in Ballina's CBD. ... I have been able to download my email messages (three of them had a copy of my scanned bill which was a large file and was plugging up my system). I was also able to upload the current version of my Learning Journals web site without any difficulty. However I was not able to send an email reply to the University of Lethbridge as the cafe does not have provision for changing the SMTP setting. And I couldn't use webmail as I was reluctant to delete all of my Southern Cross University proxy settings. We still have a way to go before this entire Internet/Web system is transparent and seamless. 11:45 am

12:30 PM Home again. The rain is still coming down. When I was in town earlier this week picking up some fish & chips, I ventured into a CD store and realized that it had some excellent Cds. I went back after I finished my session at the Internet cafe and found two classical CDs that I have been looking for: Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 "Choral" and Haydn's Symphony No. 94 "Surprise". I am looking forward to some pleasant music while watching the rain fall. They also mentioned that they had a 3-CD package of Woody Guthrie music due in next week, called (I think) The Machine. I am definitely interested in this.

Looking at my list of goals for the day, I think I will pull away from the Technology and enjoy reading more from "Ideas", with Haydn as a background. 12:40 PM

1:30 PM The rain is just pelting down at the moment. Haydn does provide pleasant music to read by. I have finished reading the first full chapter of Ideas, "Ideas Before Language" [p. 21 - 38]. This is an excellent overview of early prehistory at a level that one can understand. I enjoy the fact that Watson tries to present opposing views and does not require that we necessarily need have definitive answers. This is, in my view, a more profitable perspective than that of most experts, who are proponents of one view or another. 1:40 PM

2:15 PM I will try dial-up again, but I am not optimistic. Nope. The line drops after about a minute. This is a good day for staying home and curling up with a good book. 2:20 PM

2:20 PM I will try making some notes for chapters 12 & 13 of "The Story of the Stone". Done. 3:00 PM Now to continue reading. I completed one chapter, number 14. 3:30 PM

8:45 PM I have spent about three hours this evening putting the finishing touches to the Technology Notebooks web site. It is ready for uploading but I am still experiencing line drops with the dial-up service. There was a substantial amount of rain in the Northern Rivers area today with over 250 mm at Byron Bay just north of here! I expect it may be a day or so before everyone assesses what flooding has occurred and what repairs need to be undertaken. Perhaps the dial-up service may also be affected. 8:55 PM

D. Reflection

9:00 PM I am feeling genuinely pleased with getting the Techology Notebooks web site working. It is a great feeling to have completed, as it has been pulling me away from Learning more about Stylus Studio. I cleared off a number of tasks that needed to be handled and should now be back on a more relaxed pace of Learning and enjoying Life. Tomorrow will tell. 9:10 PM