6:15 am. with a coffee.

A brief comment on 3 pm yesterday. I picked up the book Ancient Greece with the intent of making a few notes. I quickly came to the section on Alexander the Great. Then I decided to see if there were any good books on him. I went to amazon.com , typed in his name and quickly noticed one book with a 5-star rating by its readers. The reviews were very positive so I checked to see if it was available in Lethbridge. Yes! Twenty minutes later I have the book and am browsing the shelves to see what else catches my eye. One does, which I also buy.

Now the dilemma. Do I continue to use this web site for notes (motes?) about my one-hour a day focus, or do I expand it to include some (clearly not all) of my other learning activities?

I have just finished reading the preface to Alexander the Great by Robin Lane Fox. It is only a page and a half, but it has some lovely sentences:

"I have not aimed at any particular class of reader, because I do not believe that such classes exist; I have written self-indulgently, as I myself like to read about the past. I do not like ... refutations of other men's views. The past, like the present, is made up of seasons and of faces, feelings, disappointments and things seen. I am bored by institutions and I do not believe in structures. Others may disagree". (p.11)

"It is a naive belief that the distant past can be recovered from written texts..."(p. 11)

"This book is a search, not a story, and any reader who takes it as a full picture of Alexander's life has begun with the wrong suppositions. (p. 11)"

Much of this applies to me, and to this web site. Thus, at least for the moment, I will wander a bit from the chosen path, and include a few other comments about my learning, comments that extend beyond the "one hour a day". When I realize that I am spending all of my waking life in front of the screen, I will stop to reflect on my existence.

Perhaps the focus will change to "what I do early in the morning, after the coffee is ready".

Okay. What was the name of the other book I bought yesterday? It is called "Dave Baum's Definitive Guide to Lego Mindstorms". I have been a lover of Logo since the very early days on the Apple II computer, and purchased the basic Lego Mindstorms computer kit when it first came out two years ago. This book may provide the incentive to get back into that microworld again.

I also bought three other books in the last week.

• The Mask Carver's Son by Alyson Richman (2000) [a novel]
• Switchbacks: True Stories From the Canadian Rockies by Sid Marty (1999)
• Non Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright (2000).

The first was recommended by a friend half a world away (email), the second I purchased because I like everything written by Sid Marty who lives a couple of hours away, although I have never met him, and the third because it looks like a far better treatment of a theme that I presented at the Mathematics Council of the Alberta Teachers Association last October.

Now to begin reading about Alexander.

The book begins with the assassination of Philip, his father. He is stabbed to death by a bodyguard using a Celtic dagger. What catches my attention is that the dagger is Celtic. (1). How does the author know this? (2) Where is the Celtic civilization at this time (330 BC)? The web gives the answer to (2). It only takes a few minutes to type "Celtic history" into a search engine (Dogpile) and skim through a few dead links before finding Celtic Resources. Well worth a few minutes read. This exemplifies a new way of learning: one begins reading, a question naturally arises, the web is used to find a timely answer, and one returns to the reading. Now where was I? Philip is dead, and there is a power struggle to see who takes over the crown. Alexander wins - the issue was never really in doubt since he was the oldest son.