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Media Wednesday slipped by, but i wanted to note that...
... i am playing iOS game "Swords and Sworcery" as i rest. I enjoyed it at the beginning, but the coordination to fight off the trigon's lightning bolt attack is annoying me. The training mode is civilized. So far I'm not feeling stressed but as soon as that happens, i'll start ignoring the game again. I think i got the game in some "free this week" offer in the IOS store. I'm not much of a game player, but we'll see if this pulls me in.
... i read Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan on Overdrive on Saturday. I did not take the time to pay attention to the science fiction unification of gravity and quantum mechanics with my critical mind, but let the the device move forward. I found the layers of world (and universe) building and narrative nicely interwoven. Having been thinking about biochemistry since starting the Great Courses Biology: The Science of Life by Stephen Nowicki, i appreciated the effort to evolve a novel form of life. I just have an itchy feeling the writer got to a point and some one said "Wrap it up" and a chunk of discovery, explication, and resolution was skipped to, well, wrap it up.
On the other hand, sick reader.
... i'm reading http://openstaxcollege.org/books Biology text. It's a little rough (terms used before introduction), but it's providing me a foil for the MOOC and the Great Courses. I'm also poking around in E O Wilson's high-school level free iBook text. All these feed into the ANKI flash cards. (Note - there's a whole EO Wilson-developed high school Biology course in iTunes University.)
... i finished Coursera's Learning How to Learn. It reinforced some things i had picked up over the past decade: oh, if i had learned these things BEFORE grad school! The newest point was that exercise is also useful for learning.
... i started Coursera's Preparation for Introductory Biology: DNA to Organisms. I decided i am not interested in participating in the peer engagement part. Since my goal is understanding plants at the ecological level, i try to keep my focus on the keys details for that. One of the TA's helped me find a text that explained relative densities of ions in solution in plant cells to contrast with the human bias presented in the lecture.
I suppose many people taking biology are en route to the medical profession. Hrmph.
--==∞==--
In exciting genealogy news, i've been contacted by relatives on my Swedish great-grandfather's side from Sweden. His history, prior to getting married, is not well documented and there is little in our family records. My earliest documentation had been a census record after the first children were born: no idea when he was married, immigrated, etc.
I spent some time on google earth translating his mother's and father's moving about from the email narrative to a map. It was a little while before i realized that the movement from HOUSE TO HOUSE was being passed on, all within no more than 5 miles square. From that history, to crossing the Atlantic, moving around the eastern seaboard, to Wyoming, to Florida -- what a change!
--==∞==--
Things on my mind:
* Coughing when i sit up and talk for a while. Saw the doctor yesterday and was told keep resting.
* Family dynamics are in a holding pattern. I'm still looking for resources and have no idea how fast this needs to move -- but right now we're letting my Dad call the shots.
* Haven't heard from HR about the resources for my staff member.
* Christine's therapist was even less impressed with the psychiatrist's behavior because the three word "diagnosis" was first just sent to the therapist and then sent to Christine with therapist cc'd. Therapist has disabused Christine of the notion that it is a reasonable "diagnosis." The previous night's (American) murder mystery tossed the same diagnosis around for the suspect.
... i am playing iOS game "Swords and Sworcery" as i rest. I enjoyed it at the beginning, but the coordination to fight off the trigon's lightning bolt attack is annoying me. The training mode is civilized. So far I'm not feeling stressed but as soon as that happens, i'll start ignoring the game again. I think i got the game in some "free this week" offer in the IOS store. I'm not much of a game player, but we'll see if this pulls me in.
... i read Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan on Overdrive on Saturday. I did not take the time to pay attention to the science fiction unification of gravity and quantum mechanics with my critical mind, but let the the device move forward. I found the layers of world (and universe) building and narrative nicely interwoven. Having been thinking about biochemistry since starting the Great Courses Biology: The Science of Life by Stephen Nowicki, i appreciated the effort to evolve a novel form of life. I just have an itchy feeling the writer got to a point and some one said "Wrap it up" and a chunk of discovery, explication, and resolution was skipped to, well, wrap it up.
On the other hand, sick reader.
... i'm reading http://openstaxcollege.org/books Biology text. It's a little rough (terms used before introduction), but it's providing me a foil for the MOOC and the Great Courses. I'm also poking around in E O Wilson's high-school level free iBook text. All these feed into the ANKI flash cards. (Note - there's a whole EO Wilson-developed high school Biology course in iTunes University.)
... i finished Coursera's Learning How to Learn. It reinforced some things i had picked up over the past decade: oh, if i had learned these things BEFORE grad school! The newest point was that exercise is also useful for learning.
... i started Coursera's Preparation for Introductory Biology: DNA to Organisms. I decided i am not interested in participating in the peer engagement part. Since my goal is understanding plants at the ecological level, i try to keep my focus on the keys details for that. One of the TA's helped me find a text that explained relative densities of ions in solution in plant cells to contrast with the human bias presented in the lecture.
I suppose many people taking biology are en route to the medical profession. Hrmph.
--==∞==--
In exciting genealogy news, i've been contacted by relatives on my Swedish great-grandfather's side from Sweden. His history, prior to getting married, is not well documented and there is little in our family records. My earliest documentation had been a census record after the first children were born: no idea when he was married, immigrated, etc.
I spent some time on google earth translating his mother's and father's moving about from the email narrative to a map. It was a little while before i realized that the movement from HOUSE TO HOUSE was being passed on, all within no more than 5 miles square. From that history, to crossing the Atlantic, moving around the eastern seaboard, to Wyoming, to Florida -- what a change!
--==∞==--
Things on my mind:
* Coughing when i sit up and talk for a while. Saw the doctor yesterday and was told keep resting.
* Family dynamics are in a holding pattern. I'm still looking for resources and have no idea how fast this needs to move -- but right now we're letting my Dad call the shots.
* Haven't heard from HR about the resources for my staff member.
* Christine's therapist was even less impressed with the psychiatrist's behavior because the three word "diagnosis" was first just sent to the therapist and then sent to Christine with therapist cc'd. Therapist has disabused Christine of the notion that it is a reasonable "diagnosis." The previous night's (American) murder mystery tossed the same diagnosis around for the suspect.
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