First Day of Classes

Today marked the start of a new semester, one which is a milestone in a certain way. This is the first semester with an assistantship, so now grad school feels much more serious and real to me.

The classes themselves went pretty well. The real analysis class seems like it will be a good, natural continuation of the classes I had with Dr. Fleming last year. Dr. Angelos seems like a reasonable guy. The stats class doesn't seem as intimidating as I thought it would be at first. I have to get familiar with a software package called R. I still want to pursue certification with SAS. As far as the Combinatorics class is concerned, I think it will be okay. I have a natural interest in the topic and am interested in learning more about it. I am going to have to sit closer to the front though in order to compensate for the professor's quiet voice.

In other news, Amazon tells me that my books should be arriving soon!

Spanish Update

Today I added about 75 words from the first 8 lessons in the Madrigal book to my Spanish collection. These are only the ones that are not part of the English => Spanish word transformation groups that the author provides. I think it would be interesting to come up with an estimate of how many Spanish words fit within those categories; I am sure that the count would be well into the hundreds and possibly into the thousands!

When my dictionary arrives, I will go back and enter the Spanish definitions for the items. I could start doing this with Real Academia Española's dictionary widget, but it could lead to definition overload right now. I can't wait to get started on Harry Potter in Spanish...

The Fall Semester Approacheth

This morning I went up to Mt Pleasant to do my grad assistant training. There were parts of it that I found interesting and informative, but there were also parts that seemed a bit boring to me. I think that this is probably because of my pre-existing interests in learning and memory research, as well as different learning styles and perceptual/cognitive psychology.

More interestingly, I went ahead and purchased my textbooks. The books for Real Analysis (MTH 632) and Combinatorics I (MTH 578) look especially interesting. The book for Applied Statistical Methods (STA 580) seems like a massive brick!

This semester I intend to experiment with using SuperMemo to provide continuous review and recall of the material for my classes. My plan is to enter the class material into SuperMemo collections right after my morning classes and make it part of my daily repetitions.

I have had a good experience thus far using the software to help me with vocabulary acquisition for Spanish, Russian, Toki Pona and lojban. I have also used it to help with remembering various bits and pieces of music theory and statistics. I look forward to using it for my classes!

Recipe for Greens Casinelli

An inspiration from dinner tonight.

Ingredients:

1 large bunch of collard greens

1 large bunch of Swiss chard

1 small bunch of kale
1 sm onion, diced
2-4 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tb olive oil

2 Tsp toasted sesame oil
1/4 C water
3 Tb butter
1 Tb lemon juice
1/4 Tsp marjoram
1/4 Tsp rosemary
1/8 Tsp paprika
1/8 Tsp yellow curry powder (or more to taste)
1/8 Tsp garlic powder

Salt to taste

Wash greens and trim stems. Slice approximately 1 1/2" wide. Heat olive oil over med-low heat in skillet. Add onion and garlic and saute until light brown. Add 3 handfuls of greens, drizzle sesame oil over them and stir until wilted. Increase heat to med-high, add water and rest of greens and cover. Steam for about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, melt butter, then add lemon juice and rest of ingredients except garlic powder and salt to melted butter. Remove cover from skillet and drizzle butter mixture over greens. Stir to coat and cook for about another 5 minutes. Sprinkle garlic powder over the greens. Add salt to taste.

Serves 4 to 6.

PS: One suggested addition was portobello mushrooms and a dash of soy sauce.

Learning Spanish

Our recent trip to Mexico has reawakened and strengthened a long-standing desire of mine to learn more Spanish. Ever since my first exposure to the language in 3rd grade, I have felt an attraction to it which I have never seriously followed up on. Now I want to.

I propose to use a modification of the method that Michal Wojcik describes as The Norsk Experiment. I am going to use a monolingual Spanish dictionary right away -- the Diccionario Practico del Estudiante -- and an easy Spanish novel -- Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal.

Two differences in the method that I plan to use: I am using Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish to help with the grammar and to quickly build passive recognition vocabulary, and I plan to add vocab words to a SuperMemo collection, in the form of sentence-items. More about my experiences with SuperMemo in a subsequent post...

I will post updates of my progress as I go!

Inauguration

Welcome, friends.

In the past, I had a LiveJournal which died on the vine from lack of attention because I felt as if I had nothing to say. Now, I finally feel as if I have something to say. I guess that (belatedly) joining the worlds of MySpace and Facebook has broken my shell.

My intentions for this blog are to share bits from my life that others might possibly find interesting. This could be anything from travelogues, poetry, and photos to recipes and progress reports on school and hobbies.

Whatever it is that makes its way onto these pages, I hope that people (including you!) find it interesting.