Journal 2014-04-25

I am back in Ottawa and currently I am trying to find the best way to interact with Blogger.  The challenge is to be able to do this from work as well as home, or, for that matter, on the road, in a café, and so on.  I would also like to be able to get the word count and the software in Blogger does not do this automatically.  The only option seems to be to cut and paste the text into some third party web page or Word and use their native utilities.  Of course, if I am going to do that then I might just as well do all of the writing in Word and simply cut and paste the text into Blogger and it looks like that is what I will do.  Oddly enough I can see Blogger at work but it seems to generate some “errors on page” messages.  I think that I will just write in Word and then email the text to myself.  Perhaps I will encrypt it just for fun.

Yesterday I went to the first presentation of the Writer’s Festival here in Ottawa.  Most of the presentations are being held in a church beside my apartment, so it couldn’t be handier.  This presentation was on “Inheritance” and it was a little superficial for me.  I would have liked to discuss more of the mechanics behind conceiving of and writing a book like that.  It was also a little late starting which annoyed me.  The sound people were also a little annoying because they seem to want to traipse about without regard for the people who are actually intent on watching the presentation.  I just have to mellow out.

I also went and bought an additional yoga mat to facilitate working out in my apartment.  It is extra thick, I had another one that Anne left for me but it is too thin by itself and kneeling on it hurts my knees.  I can also do some meditating there.  In addition I got an exercise ball.  It is a little small but should do the job.  I suppose I can even try it out as an ergonomic stool.  I also had to buy a little skull cap for bike riding because I forgot mine in Winnipeg and the weather is still a little cold here for riding my bike to work in the mornings. 

Tomorrow I will ride to MEC again and pick up a larger back pack because the one I got is just a little too small.  I can also check further on what camping equipment I will need for the East Coast trip .  

I am currently working through 4 or 5 MOOCs, two of which I am not sure about continuing.  I think two will be wrapped up as of this weekend.  I also want to continue working through R Programming in Datacamp.