So I am now settled in for a week on my own at our beautiful villa. After the huge disappointment of the changing arrangements for this week, I am now really fired up about what I can achieve this week. I suspect this is another confirmation of an important insight I have often had into the way I approach life - making the best of changing circumstances. But to be so enthusiatic about the week is something of a surprise given how I felt when we first arrived here last weekend.
So awake at 5:30 and working by 6:00. My plan was based on the way I had previously done the long drives between countries over this summer. I would study for two hours then do something else for an hour, repeating this pattern for the entire day. Over the full day, I studied for 10 hours.
My study for the next week - in front of a great view
The entrance to the lounge from the main terrace
And the view from the main terrace out towards Assisi (hidden in the early morning mist on the hillside in the distance)
My study task today was to take some detailed notes from Cohen's The Birth of a New Physics which I completed reading a day or so earlier. For graduate study, I need notes that are less aimed at expounding ideas and are more critical. So the notes I prepared are heavily referenced back to the book and are very much outlines rather than expositions. They contain far more of my own comments than I would have done in the past. Overall I was very pleased with this test. The day went very well and I was able to take about 12 sides of notes on the first 180 pages and only have various "supplements" to cover.
Cohen's book itself was an interesting mix of ideas at varying degrees of difficulty. The description of Galileo's inertial physics was suitably complex and the identification of issues ready for Newton was very well handled. I would have liked to have seen slightly more on why Newton was able to derive that an inverse square law force would produce an elliptical orbit - maybe that is lurking in Cohen's more detailed book, The Newtonian Revolution.
When not hard at work on Cohen I have sorted through most of the boxes of stuff we have been carrying with us all summer, throwing out several bags worth of stuff we don't need anymore and packing up the remaining stuff to ensure that there is lots of space for wine and things that I will be buying over the next week in Italy and France as I travel back to the UK.
No sunbathing, though it remains very hot. No swimming, as I was too fired up by studying. No tv, though the Olympics have now started. And no watching the movies I have on the laptop. A day with lots of implications for the future I feel.
Cohen's book itself was an interesting mix of ideas at varying degrees of difficulty. The description of Galileo's inertial physics was suitably complex and the identification of issues ready for Newton was very well handled. I would have liked to have seen slightly more on why Newton was able to derive that an inverse square law force would produce an elliptical orbit - maybe that is lurking in Cohen's more detailed book, The Newtonian Revolution.
When not hard at work on Cohen I have sorted through most of the boxes of stuff we have been carrying with us all summer, throwing out several bags worth of stuff we don't need anymore and packing up the remaining stuff to ensure that there is lots of space for wine and things that I will be buying over the next week in Italy and France as I travel back to the UK.
No sunbathing, though it remains very hot. No swimming, as I was too fired up by studying. No tv, though the Olympics have now started. And no watching the movies I have on the laptop. A day with lots of implications for the future I feel.
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