![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
An Eternal Student
The serpent’s record in seeking out new knowledge has been abysmal of late. I ended up abandoning a fascinating course about terrorism and counterterrorism due to that detour to Amsterdam in December. I figured I learned my lesson and should stay away from online courses until the old grey cells were back in working order.
They seemed to have turned to total mush during that overseas adventure from the very first days. Balancing the books at the end of a day’s spending proved far too taxing for this old grey serpent brain as did adding up the scores for our regular games of Scrabble. It was like the numbers kept slipping through a sieve. I just could not hold them in my head.
Such a contrast from the games at the day centre where I would keep a running total of the score and be in agreement with the official calculator version more than 90% of the time.
I had decided to start with baby steps with the online courses and chose a computer programming course based on Scratch which is designed for kindergarten kids as well as another on Crypto more for nostalgia sake than anything.
It seems most courses these days are big on video lectures. I must say I prefer good old fashioned slides since they don’t nuke my meagre 4gb monthly ration and they are so much quicker to get through.
Downloading a video is a bit like buying a book. When you get in from a library the 3 week deadline increases the likelihood of actually reading it. Buying gives the sense of having all the time in the world.
So it did not take long to rapidly fall behind. No point in downloading a whole pile of videos if you don’t get around to actually watching them.
Bad bad Izzie. Time to face reality. Those old grey cells are a bit sizzled and senile,. They just ain’t what they used to be so stay away from that very tempting tree of knowledge for the time being or at least until April’s Camp Nano is over.
I should have known better and disabled all email correspondence from Coursera, Edx, Futurelearn and the rest of the MOOC mob.
Was feeling very good with this grand plan to stay away from such stuff until in a more suitable state. That was until two days ago. The promise of a twisted statistics course from Edx and another on the dark art of persuasion and argument without recourse to logic and reason was just too much for this innately curious creature.
It is also not helped by the nostalgia of this time last year where I was near the end of a fabulous online course about science fiction and fantasy writing. It was a ridiculously heavy work load and the peer reviewers were seriously mean creatures but there were some amazing discussions in the forums and it meant actually reading a whole bunch of classics such as Frankenstein, Dracula, Alice in Wonderland and The Martian Chronicles that had been on the to do list for years. It also proved to be extremely inspirational for that year’s Nanoland adventures.
The statistics course starts today so I should be over there slinking on the forums and actually watching the tutorial videos rather than squiggling in Cyberia.
In recent weeks I have developed a bunch of habits that have sorted out most stuff on the housekeeping front. Sweeping Sunday, mopping Monday and Loo (and laundry) Tuesday means that spending 30 minutes on each of those days keeps the Lair looking clean and decent with very little mental effort expended. No need for thinking, just stick to the ritual and in no time it becomes a habit requiring very little thought and not much effort. It’s time to do a bit more tweeking along the same lines on the learning front so that the old brain does not turn to complete mush.
I was over at the local university today to attend a meeting of their Scrabble club. I snaffled a delightful specimen of a white Angel’s Trumpet at the weekly markets there and read the papers in a cafe overlooking a gorgeous lush green garden. I had been there recently for the Astrofest and got to thinking that there are just so many wonderful things literally almost on the doorstep of the Lair and the university is one of them. It is also the reason we have excellent bus services in the area and that I had two froggie tenants for two years which helped knock years off the mortgage. Unlike the present premier of this state, I made the most of the boom times to set aside a fat stash for the rainy days and now it’s payback time.
Izzie is an ancient serpent amongst all the young spring chickens but it is good for the mind and the soul to be in a place full of curious creatures some of whom even love learning for its own sake and not just a means for making lots of loot.
They seemed to have turned to total mush during that overseas adventure from the very first days. Balancing the books at the end of a day’s spending proved far too taxing for this old grey serpent brain as did adding up the scores for our regular games of Scrabble. It was like the numbers kept slipping through a sieve. I just could not hold them in my head.
Such a contrast from the games at the day centre where I would keep a running total of the score and be in agreement with the official calculator version more than 90% of the time.
I had decided to start with baby steps with the online courses and chose a computer programming course based on Scratch which is designed for kindergarten kids as well as another on Crypto more for nostalgia sake than anything.
It seems most courses these days are big on video lectures. I must say I prefer good old fashioned slides since they don’t nuke my meagre 4gb monthly ration and they are so much quicker to get through.
Downloading a video is a bit like buying a book. When you get in from a library the 3 week deadline increases the likelihood of actually reading it. Buying gives the sense of having all the time in the world.
So it did not take long to rapidly fall behind. No point in downloading a whole pile of videos if you don’t get around to actually watching them.
Bad bad Izzie. Time to face reality. Those old grey cells are a bit sizzled and senile,. They just ain’t what they used to be so stay away from that very tempting tree of knowledge for the time being or at least until April’s Camp Nano is over.
I should have known better and disabled all email correspondence from Coursera, Edx, Futurelearn and the rest of the MOOC mob.
Was feeling very good with this grand plan to stay away from such stuff until in a more suitable state. That was until two days ago. The promise of a twisted statistics course from Edx and another on the dark art of persuasion and argument without recourse to logic and reason was just too much for this innately curious creature.
It is also not helped by the nostalgia of this time last year where I was near the end of a fabulous online course about science fiction and fantasy writing. It was a ridiculously heavy work load and the peer reviewers were seriously mean creatures but there were some amazing discussions in the forums and it meant actually reading a whole bunch of classics such as Frankenstein, Dracula, Alice in Wonderland and The Martian Chronicles that had been on the to do list for years. It also proved to be extremely inspirational for that year’s Nanoland adventures.
The statistics course starts today so I should be over there slinking on the forums and actually watching the tutorial videos rather than squiggling in Cyberia.
In recent weeks I have developed a bunch of habits that have sorted out most stuff on the housekeeping front. Sweeping Sunday, mopping Monday and Loo (and laundry) Tuesday means that spending 30 minutes on each of those days keeps the Lair looking clean and decent with very little mental effort expended. No need for thinking, just stick to the ritual and in no time it becomes a habit requiring very little thought and not much effort. It’s time to do a bit more tweeking along the same lines on the learning front so that the old brain does not turn to complete mush.
I was over at the local university today to attend a meeting of their Scrabble club. I snaffled a delightful specimen of a white Angel’s Trumpet at the weekly markets there and read the papers in a cafe overlooking a gorgeous lush green garden. I had been there recently for the Astrofest and got to thinking that there are just so many wonderful things literally almost on the doorstep of the Lair and the university is one of them. It is also the reason we have excellent bus services in the area and that I had two froggie tenants for two years which helped knock years off the mortgage. Unlike the present premier of this state, I made the most of the boom times to set aside a fat stash for the rainy days and now it’s payback time.
Izzie is an ancient serpent amongst all the young spring chickens but it is good for the mind and the soul to be in a place full of curious creatures some of whom even love learning for its own sake and not just a means for making lots of loot.