Tag Archives: goals

2015 – Learning for life…

The PolyBlog
January 7 2015

One of my goals for 2015 is to think more coherently (i.e. plan) for online learning that I’m interested in. I have little interest in a formal degree at this point, nor even sitting in lecture halls. I have far more interest in online options, at least where it is not short-term or local or highly specialized (like a camera course).

For example, I basically see three main options for myself. First and foremost is the ad hoc stuff of TedX talks. I don’t take near enough advantage of the posts over there.

Secondly, iTunes and Youtube have lots of podcasts and videos where one expert or another has done the curation for me of some decent content, distilling it down to the bits I probably care about, and giving me enough of an overview that if I want to go further, I’ll have a good starting point.

Last, there is the dual-prong options of downloadable courses (such as The Great Courses) and online courses (such as are Coursera). For those who aren’t familiar with either, here’s the bumpf.

The Great Courses option is designed as a “cream of the crop” approach to lectures. Based on a variety of sources of info to identify who the best professors are around the world, they then hire them to record their lectures in audio or video format and then sell the courses to people. They have a huge catalog that they send out six times a year with massive discounts listed — for example, it is not uncommon for 75% discounts off the web-listed price. I’ve seen samples of some of the courses and they are pretty good.

Coursera takes a different approach — they offer a central repository for universities offering potentially-large enrolment online courses, usually with two options. One option is you pay, get graded, and get a certificate for finishing the course; second is free and you just audit the courses.

For me, the lists of courses are like fueling a drug habit. I ran through the Coursera listing over the last little while, and my list of courses in which I might be interested, noting that I was actually HARD in whittling out ones that sounded okay but really were a bit too off in their approach, is still quite large. 126 courses large. Of course, I could never DO that many courses, but it feels a lot like my undergrad where there were so many options and electives to initially consider. And these aren’t slouch courses — some of them are offered by Yale, Princeton, UofT, UBC, etc. My full list of possible Coursera courses is below. Unfortunately, many of them are not currently scheduled yet this year, and some of them are too long to sustain my interest, but I’m probably going to commit to at least three this year.

My interests fall into some pretty simple categories, except for the long nature of the original list:

  1. Gamification — There are lots of aspects to this including online game design, original game theory, visual design, and programming;
  2. Psychology — if this one seems odd, go back and read the first post of the year, it will all be come clear;
  3. History — including both human history as well as paleobiology;
  4. Music appreciation — classical, rock and roll, etc.;
  5. Publishing — it may not seem directly evident at first, but it is the source of the review of economic principles, different genres of writing;
  6. Astronomy — again, for obvious reasons;
  7. Writing — including forensics;
  8. Business, philanthropy, organizations, law, etc. — a few unifying themes there that all tie into governance;

Now I just have to get around to choosing my courses!

The Great Courses

  • 1 Fundamentals of Photography
  • 3 National Geographic Masters of Photography
  • Practicing Mindfulness: An Introduction to Meditation
  • Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft
  • Our Night SkySale
  • Experiencing Hubble: Understanding the Greatest Images of the UniverseSale
  • Old TestamentSale
  • Writing Creative NonfictionSale
  • The Art of Storytelling: From Parents to ProfessionalsSale
  • Art of Public Speaking: Lessons from the Greatest Speeches in History
  • Understanding the Fundamentals of Music
  • Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior
  • Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques
  • Foundations of Western Civilization
  • How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition
  • Thinking like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making
  • Stress and Your Body
  • Understanding the Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy, 2nd Edition
  • The Mathematics of Games and Puzzles: From Cards to SudokuSale
  • The World Was Never the Same: Events That Changed History
  • Art of Teaching: Best Practices from a Master Educator
  • The Inexplicable Universe: Unsolved Mysteries
  • History of the Bible: The Making of the New Testament Canon
  • A Visual Guide to the Universe with the Smithsonian
  • Origins of Great Ancient Civilizations
  • Physics and Our Universe: How It All Works
  • Forensic History: Crimes, Frauds, and Scandals
  • Elements of Jazz: From Cakewalks to Fusion
  • How the Stock Market Works
  • Lifelong Health: Achieving Optimum Well-Being at Any Age
  • The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works
  • My Favorite Universe
  • The Entrepreneur’s ToolkitSale
  • Understanding Greek and Roman Technology: From Catapult to the Pantheon
  • Mysteries of Modern Physics: Time
  • The Creative Thinker’s Toolkit
  • How Ideas SpreadFoundations of Western Civilization II: A History of the Modern Western WorldSale
  • Black Holes, Tides, and Curved Spacetime: Understanding Gravity
  • 12 Essential Scientific Concepts
  • Heroes and Legends: The Most Influential Characters of Literature
  • Mastering Differential Equations: The Visual Method
  • Foundations of Eastern Civilization
  • Medieval World
  • From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity
  • Economics, 3rd Edition
  • Behavioral Economics: When Psychology and Economics Collide
  • Dark Matter, Dark Energy: The Dark Side of the Universe
  • Cultural Literacy for Religion: Everything the Well-Educated Person Should Know
  • History of the Ancient World: A Global Perspective
  • Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond
  • How to Read and Understand Shakespeare
  • Turning Points in Modern History
  • Trails of Evidence: How Forensic Science Works
  • Classical Mythology
  • Great American Music: Broadway Musicals
  • Cosmology: The History and Nature of Our Universe
  • The Symphony
  • Story of Medieval England: From King Arthur to the Tudor ConquestSale
  • Art of Reading
  • Iliad of Homer
  • Early Middle Ages
  • Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and MuhammadSale
  • The Life and Death of Stars
  • Skywatching: Seeing and Understanding Cosmic Wonders
  • Odyssey of HomerSale
  • The Art of War
  • The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation
  • Introduction to Judaism
  • Masterpieces of Short Fiction
  • 36 Books That Changed the World
  • Dante’s Divine ComedySale
  • Joyce’s Ulysses
  • Espionage and Covert Operations: A Global History
  • Life Lessons from the Great Myths
  • String Quartets of BeethovenSale
  • Beginnings of Judaism
  • Religions of the Axial Age: An Approach to the World’s Religions
  • Great World Religions: Islam
  • Great World Religions: Hinduism
  • Great World Religions: Buddhism
  • History of Ancient R ome
  • Bach and the High Baroque
  • Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas
  • A Brief History of the World
  • Late Middle Ages
  • Comparative Religion
  • Great World Religions: Judaism
  • Great World Religions: Christianity
  • Fall and Rise of China
  • Physics in Your Life
  • From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History
  • Terror of History: Mystics, Heretics, and Witches in the Western Tradition
  • Black Holes Explained
  • Great Masters: Mozart-His Life and Music
  • Great Ideas of Psychology
  • Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life
  • Why Evil Exists
  • Symphonies of BeethovenSale
  • Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies
  • Life in Our Universe
  • Classic Novels: Meeting the Challenge of Great Literature
  • Understanding the Science for Tomorrow: Myth and Reality
  • Theories of Human Development
  • The English Novel
  • Special Collection – The Joy of Ancient HistorySale
  • Great Masters: Tchaikovsky-His Life and Music
  • Classics of American Literature
  • Greece and Rome: An Integrated History of the Ancient Mediterranean
  • Exploring the Roots of Religion
  • Music of Richard Wagner
  • Life Lessons from the Great Books
  • Unexpected Economics
  • Concert Masterworks
  • Classics of British Literature
  • Psychology of Human Behavior
  • Great Thinkers, Great Theorems
  • A Day’s Read
  • Reason & Faith: Philosophy in the Middle Ages
  • Why Economies Rise or Fall
  • Turning Points in Medieval History
  • Peoples and Cultures of the World
  • Science of Self
  • Shakespeare: The Word and the Action
  • Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind: Literature’s Most Fantastic Works
  • Machiavelli in Context
  • Great Masters: Mahler-His Life and Music
  • Masterworks of Early 20th-Century Literature
  • Great Masters: Brahms-His Life and Music
  • Great Masters: Haydn-His Life and Music
  • Great Masters: Shostakovich-His Life and Music
  • Great Masters: Stravinsky-His Life and Music
  • God and Mankind: Comparative Religions
  • Between the Rivers: The History of Ancient Mesopotamia
  • History of World Literature
  • The Concerto
  • Mystical Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
  • Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations
  • Skeptics and Believers: Religious Debate in the Western Intellectual Tradition
  • Science in the 20th Century: A Social-Intellectual SurveySale
  • Philosophy and Religion in the West
  • Long Shadow of the Ancient Greek World
  • Popes and the Papacy: A History
  • Philosophy, Religion, and the Meaning of Life
  • Myth in Human History
  • Origin of Civilization
  • Masterpieces of Ancient Greek Literature
  • Natural Law and Human Nature
  • Introduction to the Study of Religion
  • Great Masters: Liszt-His Life and Music
  • Great Masters: Robert and Clara Schumann-Their Lives and Music
  • The Skeptic’s Guide to the Great Books
  • Business Law: Negligence and Torts
  • Roots of Human Behavior
  • Life and Writings of Geoffrey Chaucer
  • Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition, 2nd Edition
  • Development of European Civilization
  • War and World History
  • Understanding Literature and Life: Drama, Poetry and Narrative
  • Philosophy of Religion
  • Long 19th Century: European History from 1789 to 1917
  • From Plato to Post-modernism: Understanding the Essence of Literature and the Role of the Author
  • 20th-Century American Fiction
  • History of Science: Antiquity to 1700
  • History of Science: 1700-1900
  • Modern British Drama
  • Medieval Heroines in History and Legend
  • Greek Legacy: Classical Origins of the Modern World
  • Freedom: The Philosophy of Liberation
  • Representing Justice: Stories of Law and Literature

Coursera Courses

  • Active
    • Understanding Video Games
    • Dino 101: Dinosaur Paleobiology
    • Introduction to Psychology
  • Arts
    • Ignite Your Everyday Creativity
    • Introduction to Classical Music
    • Advertising and Society
    • Plagues, Witches, and War: The Worlds of Historical Fiction
    • Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative
    • Comic Books and Graphic Novels
  • Biology and Life Sciences:
    • Astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
    • Astronomy: Exploring Time and Space
    • Origins – Formation of the Universe, Solar System, Earth and Life
    • An Introduction to Consumer Neuroscience & Neuromarketing
    • Introduction to Forensic Science
    • Introduction to Neuroeconomics: how the brain makes decisions
    • Childbirth: A Global Perspective
    • Abortion: Quality Care and Public Health Implications
  • Business:
    • Developing Innovative Ideas for New Companies: The First Step in Entrepreneurship
    • New Venture Finance: Startup Funding for Entrepreneurs
    • Innovation for Entrepreneurs: From Idea to Marketplace
    • Gamification
    • The Governance of Nonprofit Organizations
    • Marketing in a Digital World
    • Digital Marketing Channels: Planning
    • Essentials of Entrepreneurship: Thinking & Action
    • Social Psychology
    • Law and the Entrepreneur
    • What’s Your Big Idea?
    • A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior
    • Forensic Accounting and Fraud Examination
    • Social Entrepreneurship
    • Unethical Decision Making in Organizations
    • International Organizations Management
    • The Power of Macroeconomics: Economic Principles in the Real World
    • An Introduction to Marketing
    • Giving 2.0: The MOOC
    • Surviving Disruptive Technologies
  • Computers
    • Image and video processing: From Mars to Hollywood with a stop at the hospital
    • Welcome to Game Theory
    • Game Theory II: Advanced Applications
    • Fundamentals of Digital Image and Video Processing
    • Game Theory
    • General Game Playing
    • Computational Photography
  • Software
    • Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems: Part 1
    • Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems: Part 2
    • Code Yourself! An Introduction to Programming
    • Beginning Game Programming with C#
    • Human-Computer Interaction Design
    • Learn to Program: The Fundamentals
    • Learn to Program: Crafting Quality Code
    • Creative, Serious and Playful Science of Android Apps
    • Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps
  • Security
    • Cryptography I
    • Cryptography II
    • Surveillance Law
    • Securing Digital Democracy
  • Economics
    • Microeconomics Principles
    • Economics of Transition and Emerging Markets
    • Making Better Group Decisions: Voting, Judgement Aggregation and Fair Division
    • Understanding Media by Understanding Google
    • Public Economics
    • Property and Liability: An Introduction to Law and Economics
    • The Power of Microeconomics: Economic Principles in the Real World
    • Principles of Macroeconomics
    • Principles of Microeconomics
    • Principles of Economics for Scientists
    • e-Learning Ecologies
  • Education
    • Metaliteracy: Empowering Yourself in a Connected World
    • The Age of Sustainable Development
    • Video Games and Learning
    • ICT in Primary Education: Transforming children’s learning across the curriculum
    • Supporting children with difficulties in reading and writing
  • Health
    • Useful Genetics Part 1
    • The Clinical Psychology of Children and Young People
    • Social Epidemiology
  • Humanities
    • Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World
    • An Introduction to American Law
    • Soul Beliefs: Causes and Consequences
    • Moralities of Everyday Life
    • Greek and Roman Mythology
    • Technology and Ethics
    • A History of the World since 1300
    • The Modern World: Global History since 1760
    • Practical Ethics
    • The Ancient Greeks
  • IT
    • Visual Design
    • Content Strategy for Professionals: Growing Audiences for Your Content
    • Content Strategy for Professionals: Engaging Audiences for Your Organization
    • Introduction to User Interface Design (Part 2)
    • Powerful Tools for Teaching and Learning: Digital Storytelling
  • Law
    • Introduction to International Criminal Law
    • Law and the Entrepreneur
    • International Human Rights Law: Prospects and Challenges
    • Presumed Innocent? The Social Science of Wrongful Conviction
    • The Global Student’s Introduction to U.S. Law
  • Math
    • General Game Playing
    • Games without Chance: Combinatorial Game Theory
  • Music
    • The Music of the Rolling Stones, 1962-1974
    • Music’s Big Bang: The Genesis of Rock ‘n’ Roll
    • History of Rock, Part Two
    • History of Rock, Part One
    • The Music of the Beatles
  • Physics
    • Galaxies and Cosmology
    • Astronomy: Exploring Time and Space
    • Origins – Formation of the Universe, Solar System, Earth and Life
    • The Science of the Solar System
    • Introduction to Astronomy
    • Analyzing the Universe
    • Imagining Other Earths
    • How Things Work 1
    • From the Big Bang to Dark Energy
    • The Diversity of Exoplanets
    • AstroTech: The Science and Technology behind Astronomical Discovery
    • Exploring Quantum Physics
  • Social Sciences
    • Moral Foundations of Politics
    • Living with Dementia: Impact on Individuals, Caregivers, Communities and Societies
    • Positive Psychology
    • Resilience in Children Exposed to Trauma, Disaster and War: Global Perspectives
    • Organizational Analysis (Self-Paced)
    • Paradoxes of War
    • Introduction to Psychology as a Science
    • Democratic Development
    • Human Trafficking

Gratitude for laptops…

The PolyBlog
January 7 2015

Gratitude post for day #6…A strange idea, to give thanks for a simple instrument like a laptop, but I am. For Boxing Day, I picked up a new laptop. Primarily it is for me to use in the basement, and around the house. Occasionally, I’ll take it with me to a coffee shop or something. However, for work I have a smaller netbook that will do the job. It just wasn’t up to snuff for the extra work I do on it at home, and there are times I just want to surf and type while watching TV (my PC in the office isn’t quite so portable). Tonight, for instance, I watched an episode of the show Forever while I typed away on some stuff. I’m not completely set up on the laptop yet, still need to add some software and figure out how to easily toggle the touchpad on and off, but it was great. Andrea will likely use it too for school in the fall as she finishes her Masters, my only concern then being battery life for her. Nice large screen though 🙂

Onward in the journey…

2015 – Twelve steps to spiritualism

The PolyBlog
January 7 2015

The twelfth item on my vaguebooking list was “12. Twelve steps to take”. I am not quite sure what to make of this commitment, to be honest. I started it two years ago, and it kind of fizzled on me. The goal was to come up with 12 questions for myself and what I believed spiritually. I started on the first one, ended up down a rabbit hole of disconnected tangents, and I didn’t get too far.

I want to return to the work that I started two years ago, answering one question a month approximately, and to ask myself, “What do I believe?”. To what end, I’m not sure. Just perhaps to know myself better. I’ve had my “faith” tested at different points in my life, and I often know what it is “not”, more so than I know what it “is”. Maybe I’ll just end up down a rabbit hole again. But we’ll see. Overall though I suspect this “small” commitment will end up being way harder than the 500,000-word commitment, as this one will require me to ask some fundamental questions of myself and to dig deep emotionally and spiritually, not intellectually, to find whatever truths are hiding deep inside. I’m thinking of combining it with an online course in comparative religions, although I’m unlikely to find myself a spiritual home in any organized religion, it isn’t the way my faith is wired.

When I do those “online tests” to find which religion is closest to your views, Judaism and Wiccan come up as the best matches. Don’t ask, I don’t know how those two are linked. I know the first gets flagged because I care little as to whether Jesus was an actual son of God or a metaphorical one yet strong prophet (making me a pretty weak “Christian” in the normal sense, although I agree with most of the catechism lessons/morals/ethics), and I think the second one comes from a strong sense that there is something more universal in the literal sense of the word, that we’re part of a giant cosmos connected through energy flows.

One way to find out — commit to the quest!

2015 – The photo scanning project

The PolyBlog
January 6 2015

The tenth item on my vaguebooking list was “10. Ten photos at a time”. (Yes, I know I jumped over #8 and #9 as I have another bit of timing stuff to do on those ones, be patient!). But this one is really, really simple.

When my mother died, I retained custody of all mom’s photo collection. Big pictures and stuff we already distributed, but the old photo albums, etc., are all in my office sitting in a bin under my desk. The collection of photos is immense. Terrifying even. Because I want to scan all of them. Digitize them, sort them, let some software package go to town on facial recognition. But it’s a LOT of photos. And the library science / archivist in me wants a complete copy before I distribute them back out to the family. No one is pressing me for them, heck most don’t even want them. But I’m going to give them a complete set on disk when I’m done. I just have to get back into it.

There are some digital scanning sites in Canada that will do it for you. $200, 1200 photos, ship them and get them back done. Great idea. Except there are absolute horror stories about each of the sites. Some don’t do the scanning themselves, they farm it out. And so the group of 5-6 up front services collapse to 2-3 actual scanner companies. With a few challenges of logistics in their operations. Some of the stories are relatively minor — photos that got missed in the scan, or were duplicated, or weren’t fully centred, etc. No big deal, although annoying of course. Of far greater worry, and this is the dealbreaker, some people not only didn’t get the scanned prints when they were done, they didn’t get all the originals back either. Some people even got 100 of someone else’s photos. I considered still doing it, with the small caveat that I would attach a sticker to the back of every photo but that still wouldn’t guarantee their return, and it’s just too risky to my taste to put the whole kaboodle in jeopardy to save the work.

So my commitment is to start doing it, 10 photos at a time (i.e. per day). At 50 a week, up to 2500 in the year, I should be done by the end of 2014. A perfect item to be tracked with the Seinfeld method. I just have to get started. That should keep me busy too. Oddly enough, the swapping and scanning is relatively simple — I can even do other things on my planning list while I’m doing the scanning. But I have to start somewhere. Soon. My goal is to start before Feb 1st, although Feb 1st could be the launch. Stay tuned.

Gratitude for snowblowers…

The PolyBlog
January 4 2015

Gratitude post for day #4…Today I had planned to get up a bit late, drive the cub and wife to swimming and go on to grocery shopping. Unfortunately, I completely forgot about having to clear the driveway this morning. Brutal ice and snow, but not yet frozen, so I’m grateful for that at least. However, mostly I was grateful for the snowblower I was using. I bought it about five years ago at the old house where I had a huge driveway and walkway. I could easily get rid of it with the small area I have now, but honestly, it makes life so much easier that I’m reluctant to part with it. I’d love not to have to worry about space for it, but a couple of times a year it is worth its weight in gold. Today was one of those days.

That’s my single item for today! Onward in the journey…