Wednesday, January 4
5:10 am
It is +7 C, with a high forecast of +14 C!
From the Environment Canada website:
Wind warning in effect.
Today
A mix of sun and cloud. Clearing this afternoon. Wind west 40 km/h gusting to 60 increasing to 60 gusting to 90 early this afternoon. High 14.
Tonight
Clear. Wind west 50 km/h gusting to 70 increasing to 80 gusting to 100 near midnight. Low plus 5.
Tea is much like wine, or scotch. But not like coffee. It has an appealing color, a great aroma, and a variety of fine tastes.
I am beginning to get my head around the changes I foresee with web authoring - at least my web authoring. Within an Apple environment the choice appears to be one - iWeb, which is only available as part of the iLife package. Fortunately the latest version of iLife runs on both Snow Leopard (which I have) and iLion (which I hope to obtain shortly).
I like the use of templates with Pages (which I am using to create this), but it is limited in terms of its output. It can produce a pdf file which is readable by most web browsers but there is no way to produce a set of files with hyperlinks among them.
I will visit the Apple store this morning and purchase a copy of iLife and give iWeb a trial run.
5:40 am Literature
I have begun reading a new novel. This one is by Guy Vanderhaeghe and is called “A Good Man”. There is a section in the first few pages where a man is remembering when his mother gave him a diary where he could keep track of important events.
She goes on,
“And putting something down in ink - well, I think it concentrates the mind wonderfully - like the prospect of hanging. And ink has another advantage. It is permanent. It does not permit you to escape it or yourself ...” [p. 5]
I like it! I have never seen the argument that ink is permanent viewed as an advantage. Word processors permit revision, both immediately and later, and this is usually trumpeted as an advantage. I can now see the other side of the coin.
I have finished reading the first section of“Rumi: The Big Red Book” by Coleman Barks. Barks has organized Rumi’s poems into 27 sections.
Barks ends his introduction with the following:
“We must not be led by the mind, but by the spontaneity in the heart-center, the soul, which is always starting out, beginning again. It cannot be said with words. Music and song do better.” [p. 15]
I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing. The trick is to find the appropriate balance for each particular situation. But I like the idea of recognizing the importance of the “spontaneity of the heart-center”.
2:00 PM Technology
I am still playing around with various settings for images, both for size and for resolution.
I am also mulling around comparing the features of this approach with that of my earlier Dreamweaver-based approach. I definitely like focusing on design rather than code. I also like the basic page design of this template but I miss the linkages between my daily journal entries and my activity indices. Hopefully this will be rectified when I try using iWeb.
I am back from a visit to the Apple store. There are always a few surprises. It turns out that iWeb is no longer part of the iLife package when one buys a new Mac. It is also not on the latest version of iLife that you download. But it is available if you buy the DVD in a box (which is not available at this store).
So I asked the salesman if he knew of any app/program that allowed you to create a web site and he mention Sandvox. I have downloaded a (free) trial version which will run on both Snow Leopard and Lion operating systems. My first impression is quite favorable. Now to play a bit and see if I think it will meet my requirements.
2:30 PM Model Trains
The DVD I ordered before Christmas arrived. It contains an amazing collection of color photographs of Canadian National freight cars plus detailed descriptions of the features of each style. I will use this to help me plan for some of the weathering that I plan to do on some of my cars. But first I want to spend a few hours just viewing the material. There is so much to learn.
4:00 PM
We are back from a 1-hour walk around Nicholas Sheran park. The wind is up, but not as high as forecast. There is a lot of open water on the lake - very unusual for January. We also saw 9 deer beside the sidewalk on our trip. As is usually the case, it never occurred to me to take my camera with me. When will I learn?
6:00 PM Cooking
We made a delicious Curried Chicken for dinner. This recipe was taken from "The Best of Clean Eating 2", p. 144.
9:30 PM Technology
I have successfully used Sandvox to create a 5-page website that provides links to a series of pdf files created by Pages. There are a few other features such as blogs and photo albums that I want to review before making a final decision about whether to purchase this software. I also want to think about the merits of only having a pdf file for each week of the year (like this one) instead of one file for each day of the year.