Easily Amused
Lately the serpent has not been squiggling much in Cyberia. Even mundane Muggle real life is not scoring too many emerald ink words in the spiral notebooks. Should be toning up those writing muscles for the November marathon but there’s just so many other distractions
Finally gotten over the Queen of Toads and her reign of terror. It’s not that nothing is happening just that other things are much more important. Completely useless stuff like Coursera’s online classes in cryptography and mathematical thinking. Useless in the sense that they have no practical value but they serve as a wonderful antidote to the toadish toxin that have for too long infested the green cells.
Unlike so many folks these days who spend hours at their desks both on the job and off, Izzie’s computer access is limited to between two and three hours in the evenings on weekdays. Daylight is too precious to be spent hunched over a creaking keyboard unless it is raining or sizzling outside.
Still playing catch up with downloading and watching the various video lectures for the two courses. But we cannot neglect squiggling completely. The old head will explode without the odd peek in the Pensieve. The sad and pathetic 6,600 and something words for September do not do justice to the vast quantities of faeces that are hitting the fan.
Discovered recently that one serious key to unleashing creativity is to do a mind dump of stuff put on the long finger. Used the looming start of the new month to tie up a few loose ends on the last weekend of September. There were letters and emails to be sent and a one off trick that will provide a guaranteed supply of bus travel at a big fat 25% discount. It felt so amazing to clear the decks and of course the knowledge that all procrastinators have that the time spent ruminating and considering getting around to doing something vastly exceeds the actual time and effort expended on doing the deed.
Decided that this was also the week to finally do a print out of all the assignments for the mathematical thinking course. It has the intriguing short title ‘maththink’ which in itself alone is reason to sign up. It is a fun and seriously double plus good course
The assignments themselves are not assessed but are the main part of the course. There’s some seriously delicious little morsels tossed in there. But the Izzie does not have a printer so this called for a visit to a city netcafe. Decided that there would be no peeking until finding a decent cafe. Izzie is one seriously sick serpent who actually looks forward to doing her homework. But then again one could expect that from most students enrolled at Hogwarts.
Izzie thinks that the lecturer Keith Devlin would approve a tiny tweek to Dumbledore
“Ah. Mathematics. A magic beyond all we do here”
So far the course is concentrating on basic logic. Never did get past the obvious ‘and’ and ‘or’ before so it getting both tricky and interesting. Been introduced to all sorts of tools to enable clear and logical thinking. Intuition can be fine but it is nice to be able to follow and check the accuracy of intuition with some rational and repeatable procedures. How else can you separate the real heirloom seeds from the Monsanto mutants?
It’s the strange loops that the serpent is really looking forward to. The very first week gave a hint that they would be playing a starring role at some later stage.
Decided to spend the day on the wild side of the city on the northern side of the old horseshoe bridge. The museum was one item on the agenda due to the presence of the Spiegel tent in its gardens and being one of the locations in the Awesome art festival for bright young (at heart) things
Turns out it does not start until tomorrow but that did not stop the serpent soaking up the magical atmosphere of the old cabinets with sea shell, corals, star fish and enormous stuffed elephants, bison and Tasmanian tigers
Noticed that the cafe is now open again. It had been closed for renovations on the last visit and now has a shabby retro chic look with formica tables and hideous orange and brown sofas.
But with a name like “The Muse Cafe” written in Geekish Greek style letters, how could Izzie possibly resist. Yesss. Outside in the sunshine near the gorgeous old wood and glass Spiegeltent and the old red brick walls of the museum with the odd owl sculpture hiding on the roof, it was the perfect nano cafe. Spent a good ninety minutes there. There were a handful of customers most of whom were sitting amongst all the kitsch inside. The mad rush is most likely in the morning and lunch time.
Did two rounds of index cards for the upcoming November adventure. There’s only twelve cards to be completed at this stage. Still not got a story line but something should evolve out of the 270 something story suggestions. Each card is linked to the chapter theme and the card before and after it so some of those story seeds should produce useful fruits.
Also took a peek at the five assignments and started on some of them. When the muses come to visit you got to grab and snatch what they offer because who knows when they will next arrive. Of course Izzie is not taking chances and intends to abduct and kidnap a couple.
Finally gotten over the Queen of Toads and her reign of terror. It’s not that nothing is happening just that other things are much more important. Completely useless stuff like Coursera’s online classes in cryptography and mathematical thinking. Useless in the sense that they have no practical value but they serve as a wonderful antidote to the toadish toxin that have for too long infested the green cells.
Unlike so many folks these days who spend hours at their desks both on the job and off, Izzie’s computer access is limited to between two and three hours in the evenings on weekdays. Daylight is too precious to be spent hunched over a creaking keyboard unless it is raining or sizzling outside.
Still playing catch up with downloading and watching the various video lectures for the two courses. But we cannot neglect squiggling completely. The old head will explode without the odd peek in the Pensieve. The sad and pathetic 6,600 and something words for September do not do justice to the vast quantities of faeces that are hitting the fan.
Discovered recently that one serious key to unleashing creativity is to do a mind dump of stuff put on the long finger. Used the looming start of the new month to tie up a few loose ends on the last weekend of September. There were letters and emails to be sent and a one off trick that will provide a guaranteed supply of bus travel at a big fat 25% discount. It felt so amazing to clear the decks and of course the knowledge that all procrastinators have that the time spent ruminating and considering getting around to doing something vastly exceeds the actual time and effort expended on doing the deed.
Decided that this was also the week to finally do a print out of all the assignments for the mathematical thinking course. It has the intriguing short title ‘maththink’ which in itself alone is reason to sign up. It is a fun and seriously double plus good course
The assignments themselves are not assessed but are the main part of the course. There’s some seriously delicious little morsels tossed in there. But the Izzie does not have a printer so this called for a visit to a city netcafe. Decided that there would be no peeking until finding a decent cafe. Izzie is one seriously sick serpent who actually looks forward to doing her homework. But then again one could expect that from most students enrolled at Hogwarts.
Izzie thinks that the lecturer Keith Devlin would approve a tiny tweek to Dumbledore
“Ah. Mathematics. A magic beyond all we do here”
So far the course is concentrating on basic logic. Never did get past the obvious ‘and’ and ‘or’ before so it getting both tricky and interesting. Been introduced to all sorts of tools to enable clear and logical thinking. Intuition can be fine but it is nice to be able to follow and check the accuracy of intuition with some rational and repeatable procedures. How else can you separate the real heirloom seeds from the Monsanto mutants?
It’s the strange loops that the serpent is really looking forward to. The very first week gave a hint that they would be playing a starring role at some later stage.
Decided to spend the day on the wild side of the city on the northern side of the old horseshoe bridge. The museum was one item on the agenda due to the presence of the Spiegel tent in its gardens and being one of the locations in the Awesome art festival for bright young (at heart) things
Turns out it does not start until tomorrow but that did not stop the serpent soaking up the magical atmosphere of the old cabinets with sea shell, corals, star fish and enormous stuffed elephants, bison and Tasmanian tigers
Noticed that the cafe is now open again. It had been closed for renovations on the last visit and now has a shabby retro chic look with formica tables and hideous orange and brown sofas.
But with a name like “The Muse Cafe” written in Geekish Greek style letters, how could Izzie possibly resist. Yesss. Outside in the sunshine near the gorgeous old wood and glass Spiegeltent and the old red brick walls of the museum with the odd owl sculpture hiding on the roof, it was the perfect nano cafe. Spent a good ninety minutes there. There were a handful of customers most of whom were sitting amongst all the kitsch inside. The mad rush is most likely in the morning and lunch time.
Did two rounds of index cards for the upcoming November adventure. There’s only twelve cards to be completed at this stage. Still not got a story line but something should evolve out of the 270 something story suggestions. Each card is linked to the chapter theme and the card before and after it so some of those story seeds should produce useful fruits.
Also took a peek at the five assignments and started on some of them. When the muses come to visit you got to grab and snatch what they offer because who knows when they will next arrive. Of course Izzie is not taking chances and intends to abduct and kidnap a couple.