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Friday November 10, 2006 5:20 am Lethbridge Sunrise 7:35 Sunset 17:56 Hours of daylight: 9:21
A. Morning Musings
5:20 am It is -5 C at the moment with a high of +4 C forecast.
There is some fresh snow on the ground this morning but it seems destined to disappear later today.
This past week has been a bit of a disappointment as I am losing some of my focus for both this web site as well as my exercise/eating routines. I expect this to happen a few times during the year, and am aware of it when it does occur. The trick is simply to work through it. I must remember to take a couple of photos of the weather around noon for the pair of standard images at the top of the page.
Yesterday was actually a bit of a joy. I needed a small book to take with me to coffee in the morning and happened to pick up Ian Stewart's "Letters to a Young Mathematician". Although I didn't look at it while at the coffee shop, I did when I returned home and I ended up reading the complete book and yellow highlighting passages that appealed to me. I hope to make a few notes about this later today.
Early morning is my prime time. And it is when I am most comfortably into my daily routine of setting up this web page for the day. I begin with a review of the three index pages:
The first of these is a quick and easy clerical task.
The Notes Index is slightly more difficult as I have to recall whether I made any notes the previous day and if so, did I remember to update this index page. A glance at this page also reveals where I am actually making notes: Model Trains (55 entries), Mathematics (17 entries), History (9 entries) and Technology (9 entries). I am surprised that the numbers are this low.
The ToDos list is a compendium of the tasks that I have identified for the month with an indication of progress (or lack). This acts as a reminder of what I hope to accomplish and helps provide a guide for the day. If I wish, I can review the entries for previous months. In this case I feel that I am maintaining a fairly steady pace.
I then examine and update three additional Project pages. This is where I try to identify the sub-tasks involved in my various major Learning activities and where I try to monitor my progress. I tend to review these pages only when I know that I have been active in a Project during the last day or two. At the moment I am keeping track of three major Projects:
In reality, only the Mathematics and Model Trains activities require a Project mentality. My remaining Learning activities are sufficiently light and sporadic to not require a "game plan".
The Technology category is more problematic. I often forget to make note of something here as it is simply a pervasive aspect of using the technolgy. I am often upgrading software (eg. Dreamweaver, Mathematica, MathType, MindManager, ...) or I am Learning about some new development (e.g. YouTube). I still have to learn about some of the features of my digital camera and my new MacBook Pro laptop. This might be an area where I should be more meticulous.
Even though I spend a regular amount of time reading Literature, this is an area where I find that I only want to make note of titles of books read rather to provide some form of detailed analysis or commentary. I have flirted with doing more here, but so far it has failed to materialize. Perhaps that is as it should be, for me. I do not want to spend all day in front of the screen making notes.
Finally, I check my monthly chronology page to make sure that I have the previous day's Learning activities chronicled. This allows me to keep totals through the year which I may review once in a while to see where the peaks and valleys are.
I then move on the create the potential plan for the current day. This is often simply the same as for the previous day with a few minor adjustments. When I complete one of the activities I try to remember to color the time cell in with a bright green background to indicate that i actually did it. However I am not a slave to this list. For example, yesterday I ended up reading "Letters to a Young Mathematician" which was not even on the list in the morning. Since that is what I ended up doing, I added it later.
Now to refresh my coffee cup. Done.
6:30 am Decision time. Should I work on my model trains, do some math (either make a few notes on yesterday's reading, or immerse myself in quadratic reciprocity), read more on the French Revolution, or begin the novel "Empire of the Sun"? Or just sit back for a minute and enjoy the coffee? The coffee is good.
7:00 am I quick check of my email showed a message announcing a new version of a software program called GO++. I have the previous version but have not looked at it in over a year. I have spend the last half hour looking at a few web pages on GO and am very tempted to purchase this new upgrade and return to spending some time playing the game. I love the way I ricochet through life.
B. Plan
Immediate Health Walk & exercise 1 hr Model Trains Begin assembly of 6 quad hopper cars; begin nailing track for The Channon 2 hr Mathematics Read & make notes for "Fearless Symmetry" chap 7: quadratic reciprocity 2 hr Make notes for "Letters to a Young Mathematician" 1 hr History Continue reading & making notes for "Citizens" 2 hr Literature Begin reading "Empire of the Sun" by J. G. Ballard 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
Philosophy Read "The Art of Living" by Epictetus Mathematics Larson "Calculus" Read "The Computational Beauty of Nature" Chap 3 Gardner "The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles" History Watson "Ideas" Model Trains Build oil refinery diorama: add ground cover Assemble second oil platform kit Assembly of CN 5930, an SD40-2 with a NAFTA logo Puzzles The Orange Puzzle Cube: puzzle #9
C. Actual/Notes
10:20 PM I completely assembled the first of the six 100 ton quad hopper cars. It is now operational and on the layout. I also began nailing down the spur tracks for The Channon. I hope to complete this tomorrow. Each day that I work on something is one less task for the future.
Here are a two more photos:
D. Reflection