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One busy day...
May. 7th, 2011 07:04 pmToday was a major heads-down day, which I sort of wish it hadn't been. The sun was out, the kids were holding a garage sale, and the last thing I wanted to do was work. Still, I managed to complete six smallish documents, plus 500 words of the book due at the end of the month, plus about 2500 words of the coal item due Monday.
Aside from the relative volume, the coal item was quite a challenge, since despite my technical background, coal mining is a new subject, so there's a certain learning curve, and it has tended to be rather shallow thus far. I had planned to finish this job tomorrow, but I'm starting to think I may need part of Monday, too.
Apropos of the phrase "learning curve," I recall the first time I ever heard someone use the term "steep learning curve" to describe something that was hard to master. When I asked what, exactly, the "learning curve" was, I never did get an answer. To engineers, you see, a "curve"—which is basically a line on a graph—typically describes how something behaves over time. (There is, of course, also the famous "grading curve," which plots numbers of students as a function of grade, but I digress...)
If the value of the non-time axis is "how much or how fast one learns" then logically, a "steep learning curve" actually means that you learn a lot over a short period of time. On the other hand, a shallow learning curve—assuming the concept of a "learning curve" actually has any validity in general—means the learning process is long, tedious, and drawn out.
Having inflicted that tidbit on you, I commend your attention to an interesting blog post at Expatica.com whose basic premise had to do with how "ugliness" (as in the "Ugly American") is "not just for Americans anymore." It's not great news to me, but it's nice to see the subject raised.
Galina and I continue to "correspond" via video Skype. I find it a compelling medium, even with all its warts. Plus I'm wondering whether infrastructure upgrades at Baikonur will allow this form of contact during any upcoming campaigns (assuming there will be, for me, upcoming campaigns). As of my most recent sojourn there, our entire group was sharing one laughably low-bandwidth line that linked us with the rest of the world and fell to its knees gasping if anyone tried any funny business, like streaming music.
It's been something like an 11-hour day at the computer for me. Time to give it a rest.
Cheers...
Aside from the relative volume, the coal item was quite a challenge, since despite my technical background, coal mining is a new subject, so there's a certain learning curve, and it has tended to be rather shallow thus far. I had planned to finish this job tomorrow, but I'm starting to think I may need part of Monday, too.
Apropos of the phrase "learning curve," I recall the first time I ever heard someone use the term "steep learning curve" to describe something that was hard to master. When I asked what, exactly, the "learning curve" was, I never did get an answer. To engineers, you see, a "curve"—which is basically a line on a graph—typically describes how something behaves over time. (There is, of course, also the famous "grading curve," which plots numbers of students as a function of grade, but I digress...)
If the value of the non-time axis is "how much or how fast one learns" then logically, a "steep learning curve" actually means that you learn a lot over a short period of time. On the other hand, a shallow learning curve—assuming the concept of a "learning curve" actually has any validity in general—means the learning process is long, tedious, and drawn out.
Having inflicted that tidbit on you, I commend your attention to an interesting blog post at Expatica.com whose basic premise had to do with how "ugliness" (as in the "Ugly American") is "not just for Americans anymore." It's not great news to me, but it's nice to see the subject raised.
Galina and I continue to "correspond" via video Skype. I find it a compelling medium, even with all its warts. Plus I'm wondering whether infrastructure upgrades at Baikonur will allow this form of contact during any upcoming campaigns (assuming there will be, for me, upcoming campaigns). As of my most recent sojourn there, our entire group was sharing one laughably low-bandwidth line that linked us with the rest of the world and fell to its knees gasping if anyone tried any funny business, like streaming music.
It's been something like an 11-hour day at the computer for me. Time to give it a rest.
Cheers...
