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| Links to Notebook Pages: | Technology |
Model Trains |
Monday July 10, 2006 5:45 am Lethbridge Alberta
A. Morning Musings
5:45 am The sky is clear and bright blue this morning. The temperature is +12 C with a forecast high of +25 C and afternoon showers.
I have a clear head this morning about the many little activities that lie in front of me:
- coffee meeting at 8:30 am Done
- phone RV dealer about 5th wheel maintenance Done
- phone uni about health care decisions Done
- add about a dozen CDs to iTunes (Leonard Cohen, Rankin Family, ... ) Done.
- remove canopy from truck box
- mount 5th wheel hitch on truck box
- parge area around rear step
- test saw blade for cutting 3/4" plywood (for book boxes project)
B. Plan
Immediate Health Walk & exercise 1 hr Technology Make notes for chap. 2 of "Switching to the Mac" 2 hr Literature Continue reading "Mr. Palomar" 1 hr Later Chores Take cement blocks to landfill 2 hr Take 5th wheel in for maintenance 2 hr Investigate water softeners for home 2 hr Parge area around rear step to garage 1 hr Build 4 more book boxes Technology Read manual for cell phone 1 hr Transfer music to iPod 2 hr digital photography try using extender lens and monopod 2 hr Mathematics Larson "Calculus" Read "The Computational Beauty of Nature" Chap 2 1 hr Gardner "The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles" History Continue reading "Citizens" Watson "Ideas" Model Trains Add blue backdrop to layout 2 hr Review layout for under the table turnouts Wire lower mainline track for a power block Fasten lower mainline track to layout Draw schematic diagram of track layout 2 hr
C. Actual/Notes
6:15 am
One weakness with my system of note-taking is that I only use it when I have a block of at least an hour to devote to the activity. Yet sometimes, now for example, I will have an idea about one of the topics and have no place to put it other than on these journal pages where it will likely be lost. One option would be to create a notebook insert for even such short items. The main weakness with this is that the amount of time setting up the links would be far more than the amount of time taken to make note of the idea. Another option would be to create a "weekly" page for each topic. Given the amount of time I seem to be spending on these topics this might even be a "monthly" page. I continue to be bemused at how often I change my mind about the best way to handle this. This last 6 months is an excellent example of how such ideas evolve. I am also reminded of a great book by Steven Brand called "How Buildings Learn" which describes the various modifications to a building that occur once it is occupied.
Yesterday was also the very first time that I sat down and listened to the music on my iPod. I was impressed with how easy it was to locate songs. I have 1449 songs on it at the moment and could quickly play songs by searching by artist, title or genre. In fact I am playing the music at the moment using iTunes, although I am not sure this is a good idea. I think the music interferes with my train of thought. Yet I recall usually studying with the radio on. Maybe I am losing my ability to multi-task.
Back to thinking about note taking. Perhaps the solution is to create a very simple box for the entries as they occur to me, and then copy the contents of that box to a monthly page. This would capture the important temporal aspect of the notes while also providing a place where one can follow the thoughts without the distraction of the daily detritus.
The primary weakness with my present system is that of the discrete nature of the notes caused by having a link to each separate occasion. Having this separate identity is fine for the daily journal page but I need a continuous format as well where I can easily scroll through the material. This raises the question of ordering the collected material. Should it be natural (i.e. in the order it occurs) or blog (i.e. reverse order, with the most recent at the top)?
Such a system would also do away with the need of links to 'previous' and 'next' entries.
I will try this for this topic. I need to create one page for Technology for the month of July. Here it is: 07Technology.
My first impression is favorable. I think I still want to keep the Notes Index page as it provides a superb overview of everything I have engaged in.
Focusing on these notes has made me realize how few I actually have. I am very good at creating a daily journal page when I first get up but I need to become more attentive to devoting a 2 hour block each day to some form of note creation.
Categorizing these efforts on the format for online notes could equally easily be categorized as Education or even Psychology. But I prefer Technology since it is primarily about a suitable structure for online note taking.
7:15 am
I am now going to try to update my iTunes library. Spectacular! I simply placed the CD in the computer and it immediately opened iTunes and showed a table of all the songs on the disk. I then tried dragging the CD icon to the library icon and voila, the songs were copied in the time it took to play the first song. This is so cool. I can eject the CD as soon as it is finished being copied, but the song it is playing continues (since it is using the copied version). I can even work on this entry while a CD is being copied and another song is being played. Multi-tasking is alive and well. I seem to be able to copy about a dozen CDs in an hour. I also noticed an icon in the top right corner called "import CD" that accomplishes the same task as dragging the icon of the CD to the Library. Another nice feature is that I can be working on another program (like Dreamweaver) and when the CD is finished being copied I hear a beep telling me that it is finished. A quick click and I am back in iTunes and another click ejects the disk. In goes another disk and the process continues.
It is very tempting to go out and buy some Apple shares.
I have remembered to turn my cell phone on, and take it with me as I go for coffee. For me, this is new territory. I can even set it to "vibrate" so I will know if there is a call while I am listening to my iPod. Scary.
8:20 am
10:00 am Coffee was great. Here are a couple of images:
We will take the 5th wheel in Wednesday morning. They may not be able to look at it for a few days, but they should be able to have a quick look at it and determine what needs to be done. That works fine for us as well. I can wait a bit before removing the canopy from the truck. With showers forecast for this afternoon, I will put off the parging as well. I am continuing to add CDs to my iTunes library.
4:30 PM At the moment I have been thinking about how I will actually be operating this layout. I envisage two primary control panels, one for the lower level mainline and the second for the upper level mainline. The lower level will have 2 additional secondary control panels for the two switching areas (very tentatively called A & B). The upper level will have 4 additional control panels (C, D, E & F). I have placed small 2x4 cards to indicate where these will be located (i.e. the secondary control panels will overlook the switching areas they control) and two 3x5 cards that will indicate where the mainline control panels are located. These control panels will operate the turnouts. The turnouts on the lower level will be numbered from 1 to 11 for the mainline and 20 to 49 for all the secondary areas. The turnouts on the upper level will be numbered from 50 to 63 for the mainline and 64 to 99 for the secondary areas.
Now that the overall control operation is specified, I can begin to do the wiring for both motive power and turnout control.
The trains will be controlled by DCC.
The next step will be to tack down the lower mainline track and attach a few terminal tracks for the motive power. Then I will begin wiring the turnouts and verifying that the overall system works as I envisage it.
I am quite pleased with the conceptual progress I have made this afternoon.
5:00 PM
D. Reflection