Jan. 26th, 2009

kareina: (Default)
Today [livejournal.com profile] clovis_t went to fighter practice. I wanted to go--many of my friends would have been there, and it is always good sewing time. But I was good and stayed home and worked on my thesis. Total hours actual uni work today: 6 hrs, 47 min. Mostly doing edits to chapter five (yah, the one I wanted to be done and sent off to my advisor well before now--I keep finding more that can be done to improve it!), but also creating a totally new sort of figure for this one--I set up a map (using ArcMap) of all of the locations of the samples which have had monazite dating done, and then copied the outline of Tasmania + sample locations into CorelDraw, and am now adding layers with arrows showing the direction one needs to go from one region to the next to get to monazite with increasing amounts of Y or Sr. Other elements will follow, but although *often* Y increases in the direction Sr decreases, sometimes it is opposite. No idea if this figure will wind up in the thesis, or if it is just for me to organize yet more thoughts before typing up something profound, but...

In addition to the uni work, I actually got out my hammer dulcimer today! First time I've touched it in just over a week. Played with it for about two hours, though part of that was typing up the letters for the notes of the Cantigia de Santa Maria #322 into a Word document so that I could see all of them at once, since NoteWorthy has the sheet music hanging off the right hand side of the screen. The program does these jumps as it plays the music, where the score suddenly jumps left enough so that the note currently being played is at the left edge of the screen, then it holds still until the current note is almost to the right hand side, then it does another jump. This is probably well and fine for people who are able to read music--they can probably cope with the jumps. But I, who am only just teaching myself the skill, can't. While I could zoom out so that more of the notes fit on the screen, that results in them being too small to actually see. So instead I created a notational system for myself which communicates as much information as I need to play. see the notation system here )

Sure, I'd learn to read music faster if I tried playing from the dots themselves, but I'm so not ready to cope with the screen jumps!

So, to teach myself this tune ) By the end of the evening I did manage to play the first 16 bars (on my own) without looking at the screen. Next session I'll try to learn the middle bit, but two hours total time elapsed is as much as I was willing to spare today, even if I didn't play at all last week.

I also went for a walk "around the block", and explored a side street (dead end) too. My goodness, the house at the end of the side street has too much money for landscaping. What would possess someone to put such a huge, tall, metal (painted off-white) gate with large stone-work supports on such a short wooden fence? It so doesn't match! I bet it opens automatically, without anyone having to get out of the car.
kareina: (stitched)
Today [livejournal.com profile] clovis_t went to fighter practice. I wanted to go--many of my friends would have been there, and it is always good sewing time. But I was good and stayed home and worked on my thesis. Total hours actual uni work today: 6 hrs, 47 min. Mostly doing edits to chapter five (yah, the one I wanted to be done and sent off to my advisor well before now--I keep finding more that can be done to improve it!), but also creating a totally new sort of figure for this one--I set up a map (using ArcMap) of all of the locations of the samples which have had monazite dating done, and then copied the outline of Tasmania + sample locations into CorelDraw, and am now adding layers with arrows showing the direction one needs to go from one region to the next to get to monazite with increasing amounts of Y or Sr. Other elements will follow, but although *often* Y increases in the direction Sr decreases, sometimes it is opposite. No idea if this figure will wind up in the thesis, or if it is just for me to organize yet more thoughts before typing up something profound, but...

In addition to the uni work, I actually got out my hammer dulcimer today! First time I've touched it in just over a week. Played with it for about two hours, though part of that was typing up the letters for the notes of the Cantigia de Santa Maria #322 into a Word document so that I could see all of them at once, since NoteWorthy has the sheet music hanging off the right hand side of the screen. The program does these jumps as it plays the music, where the score suddenly jumps left enough so that the note currently being played is at the left edge of the screen, then it holds still until the current note is almost to the right hand side, then it does another jump. This is probably well and fine for people who are able to read music--they can probably cope with the jumps. But I, who am only just teaching myself the skill, can't. While I could zoom out so that more of the notes fit on the screen, that results in them being too small to actually see. So instead I created a notational system for myself which communicates as much information as I need to play. see the notation system here )

Sure, I'd learn to read music faster if I tried playing from the dots themselves, but I'm so not ready to cope with the screen jumps!

So, to teach myself this tune ) By the end of the evening I did manage to play the first 16 bars (on my own) without looking at the screen. Next session I'll try to learn the middle bit, but two hours total time elapsed is as much as I was willing to spare today, even if I didn't play at all last week.

I also went for a walk "around the block", and explored a side street (dead end) too. My goodness, the house at the end of the side street has too much money for landscaping. What would possess someone to put such a huge, tall, metal (painted off-white) gate with large stone-work supports on such a short wooden fence? It so doesn't match! I bet it opens automatically, without anyone having to get out of the car.
kareina: (Default)
Happy birthday [livejournal.com profile] allergicone! All of Australia celebrates today, holding many bbq's in your honour. They just *think* they are celebrating Australia day. ;-)

Hope your day is delightful, and that it marks the start of the best yet year in your life.
kareina: (Default)
Happy birthday [livejournal.com profile] allergicone! All of Australia celebrates today, holding many bbq's in your honour. They just *think* they are celebrating Australia day. ;-)

Hope your day is delightful, and that it marks the start of the best yet year in your life.
kareina: (Default)
I just finished baking a cake to bring to dance practice tonight to celebrate [livejournal.com profile] madryn_1960's birthday. The special day was actually earlier in the month, but this is the first chance we've had to celebrate. She, like me, is careful about what she eats to avoid having too much junk, so I made up a recipe full of healthy stuff. The only refined sugar in the cake was whatever was used to make the raspberry jam, which I bought last month from a roadside stand--it was labelled "home-made raspberry jam, contains only natural fruit & sugar". The eggs are fresh laid by our hens, but the other ingredients came from the store. Since I probably won't be interested in food by the time we get to cake (that whole not eating at night thing), I baked a tiny bit in a separate small loaf pan, and boy it is yummy! Because someone will ask, here is the recipe )
kareina: (Default)
I just finished baking a cake to bring to dance practice tonight to celebrate [livejournal.com profile] madryn_1960's birthday. The special day was actually earlier in the month, but this is the first chance we've had to celebrate. She, like me, is careful about what she eats to avoid having too much junk, so I made up a recipe full of healthy stuff. The only refined sugar in the cake was whatever was used to make the raspberry jam, which I bought last month from a roadside stand--it was labelled "home-made raspberry jam, contains only natural fruit & sugar". The eggs are fresh laid by our hens, but the other ingredients came from the store. Since I probably won't be interested in food by the time we get to cake (that whole not eating at night thing), I baked a tiny bit in a separate small loaf pan, and boy it is yummy! Because someone will ask, here is the recipe )
kareina: (Default)
I got up at a reasonable hour, but I'm not certain that my brain accompanied me, and, sadly, for much of the day, I didn't really notice it was absent. I just sort of puttered along without being totally here. I made the cake, and did a bit more on the figures for uni work, but though my log says four hours of uni work done today, I don't really have anything I can point to as an accomplishment from those hours. Then I went to dance practice, which really helped--getting up and moving is always a good thing to wake me up! I love dancing. And we had a decent turn out--about a dozen dancers total, but not all at once, since some left early, and others arrived late. Everyone enjoyed the cake I made for [livejournal.com profile] madryn_1960, and much dancing goodness happened. Alas, when I went to post the dance practice report, the Baronial web page wouldn't open for me, so I'll have to try again in the morning.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be far more productive!
kareina: (Default)
I got up at a reasonable hour, but I'm not certain that my brain accompanied me, and, sadly, for much of the day, I didn't really notice it was absent. I just sort of puttered along without being totally here. I made the cake, and did a bit more on the figures for uni work, but though my log says four hours of uni work done today, I don't really have anything I can point to as an accomplishment from those hours. Then I went to dance practice, which really helped--getting up and moving is always a good thing to wake me up! I love dancing. And we had a decent turn out--about a dozen dancers total, but not all at once, since some left early, and others arrived late. Everyone enjoyed the cake I made for [livejournal.com profile] madryn_1960, and much dancing goodness happened. Alas, when I went to post the dance practice report, the Baronial web page wouldn't open for me, so I'll have to try again in the morning.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be far more productive!

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