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Friday October 27, 2006 5:45 am Lethbridge Sunrise 8:12 Sunset 18:19 Hours of daylight: 10:07
A. Morning Musings
5:45 am It is -2 C at the moment with a forecast high of +14 C.
I finished reading the collection of short stories by John Metcalfe called "Standing Stones" yesterday. Yet, once again, I do not feel that it is worthwhile to prepare a brief report. Rather, I was eager to begin my next book, in this case a 'classic' whodunit written almost a hundred years ago and which I bought while on our trip to Virginia in August.
There are three major components to my daily Learning activities:
- Planning my overall activities in a variety of interests
- Doing the actual activity
- Keeping track of what I have done.
It is the third component that makes use of this web site. The Journal entries provide a daily record of the Learning and the Project and Notes pages provide a detailed record of the actual content. At the moment I am only making detailed notes for Mathematics, Model Trains and Technology. There are only a finite number of hours in a day, and I am continually reflecting about this overall web site and how it might be improved.
Here is a summary table taken from the 2006 Chronology Tables web page (link at top of page):
I like to use color to highlight important aspects of a structure. In this case I use green to identify areas that are close to my professional interests (Education, Psychology, Research and Technology). Even though I have no entries for Psychology or Research this year, I am still interested in them and have a number of books on these topics that I still hope to read. The blank entires are a reminder to not let this go.
I use red to highlight Mathematics as this is the one area that is a top priority for me. This is simply a desire on my part to return to the area of study from my undergraduate days that I enjoy the most. It is my primary hobby.
Yellow refers to other topics that have a strong academic flavour: Science, History, Art History and Philosophy. I am surprised that Science is not more active but this is largely a result of not having enough time to do everything at once.
Literature is another "special" topic that has its own color. I want to maintain a regular reading habit and this category helps me keep track of this.
Finally, I originally added 5 topics that were areas of personal interest: Model Trains, the strategy game of GO, Bird Watching, Learning to Draw, and Food. Of these, it is only the last item - Food - that I would like to drop from the table. I am still interested in cooking and trying out new recipes but I find that I do not have an interest in describing what I have done. Taking the occasional photo of a meal, yes. But writing about it seems to be a poor use of time. I will leave the category until the end of the year, but when I begin a new web site in 2007, I will drop this category.
It is tempting to drop those categories that fail to reach a particular cut off point, but I am reluctant to do this at the moment. Even GO and Drawing are still of interest to me and having them in the "big picture" helps remind me that I should return to them at some point.
The above table provides a full year image of my Learning activities. As such this information, which is available at a glance, provides me with a form of explicit feedback that I may use to modify my behavior in the future. In that sense, it is identical to the graphs and tables provided by FitDay for monitoring weight and nutrition. I believe that such feedback is useful for anyone engaged in self-directed activities. Certainly this applies to people who have retired, but it may also apply to anyone who wishes to keep better track of how they actually spend their time. In my case I do not provide information on much of my daily life but only on activities that are more directly related to Learning. Much of my day remains highly unstructured and serendipidous. I also do not include details of my personal or social life - I value my privacy.
It has been awhile since I actually sipped a morning coffee and reflected about this web site. Now to move on to the activities of the day. Model Trains are at the top of my list. I want to begin gluing the foam roadbed to the track around Black Diamond. This will be the first area to become "permanent". I want the track to be as close to perfect as I can make it. Attention to detail at this point will pay huge dividends later as I do not want to have derailments when I begin using the layout for prototypical operations. This means that both the track and the condition of the rolling stock must meet exacting technical standards. I also want to continue to spend some time working on my rolling stock - particularly the new SD40-2 diesel locomotive. Hopefully I will be able to buy the appropriate couplers for this unit today and get them installed.
B. Plan
Immediate Health Walk & exercise 1 hr Model Trains Assembly of CN 5930, an SD40-2 with a NAFTA logo 1 hr Begin gluing down the foam roadbed for Black Diamond 2 hr Mathematics Read "Fearless Symmetry" chap 7: quadratic reciprocity 1 hr Continue reading "The Equation that Couldn't be Solved" 1 hr Literature Begin reading "The Mystery of the Yellow Room" by Gaston Leroux 1 hr Later Chores Investigate water softeners for home Technology Read manual for cell phone Make notes for chap. 4 of "Switching to the Mac" Begin reading "iPhoto" digital photography - learn about using the various manual settings
Literature Read "The Art of Living" by Epictetus Read "The Song of Roland" Mathematics Larson "Calculus" Read "The Computational Beauty of Nature" Chap 3 Gardner "The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles" History Continue reading "Citizens" Watson "Ideas" Model Trains Build oil refinery diorama: add ground cover Assemble second oil platform kit Puzzles The Orange Puzzle Cube: puzzle #9
C. Actual/Notes
D. Reflection
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