I'm doing 42 things
Well, Calc 3 is going well. We’re covering infinite series, MacLauren and Taylor series, just now, and just got into “special MacLaurin Series” like the series representations of sin, cos, arctan, ln, e to the x), etc. These are good to learn and recognize in case you see them in a problem where you’re trying to get a function back out of a series representation. One of the examples struck me because it turned out to be sin(6/x), from the sum from zero to infinity of ((-1) to the n * (x/6)^(2n+1))/(2n+1)!, so that means I’m going to have to know the special MacLauren series pretty well to handle permutations of them that might come up in problems (the exclamation mark at the end means ‘factorial’, a number that’s the product of all the numbers leading up to another number. So 6! = 6 times 5 times 4 times 3 times 2, 5!=5 times 4 times 3 times 2, etc. These turn out to be useful for defining sin, cos etc as polynomials with an infinite number of terms.
Ktistec's Life List
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1. Get Straight A's this Quarter
4 entries . 11 cheers11 people -
2. lose weight
2 entries . 3 cheers36,401 people -
3. Get in shape for freerunning
5 entries . 4 cheers1 person -
4. start a nonprofit whose goal is to preserve human knowledge for future generations.
6 entries . 5 cheers3 people -
5. engineer utopia, or at least try
1 entry . 2 cheers2 people -
6. learn electronics
1 cheer97 people -
7. implement GTD
1 entry . 1 cheer462 people -
8. Learn Japanese
2 entries . 3 cheers9,749 people -
9. go on a long backpacking trip
1 entry . 3 cheers6 people -
10. Ride a horse
1 cheer738 people -
11. learn to juggle
1 entry1,174 people -
12. Improve my Judo.
1 cheer1 person -
13. Write a fantasy novel
3 cheers161 people -
14. find a lover
2 cheers135 people -
15. Earn respect.
1 entry25 people -
16. learn to make clothes
1 entry . 1 cheer318 people -
17. get a dog
1 entry3,869 people -
18. learn to belly dance
1 cheer2,297 people -
19. see bracken cave and the huge number of bats there leaving the cave for the night
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20. Practice C.R.O.N.
1 entry2 people -
21. Get a tattoo
1 entry . 1 cheer20,294 people -
22. try kitesurfing
1 entry7 people -
23. learn to surf
7,374 people -
24. get better at Go again
1 cheer1 person -
25. do two hundred consecutive crunches
11 entries1 person -
26. do two hundred consecutive squats
11 entries1 person -
27. believe in myself (whatever that means)
1 cheer1 person -
28. break up goals into smaller goals and work incrementally
1 cheer1 person -
29. visit the fengdu necropolis
1 entry1 person -
30. do 5 pullups
18 people -
31. invite friends over
4 people -
32. do one hundred consecutive push-ups
12 entries . 2 cheers297 people -
33. view life as a role playing game
1 entry1 person -
34. get better at calculus
2 entries . 2 cheers1 person -
35. make a list of books and read them
1 entry3 people -
36. learn materials science
1 person -
37. master electronics
3 people -
38. have multiple streams of passive income
1 entry . 1 cheer374 people -
39. start a small business
1 cheer89 people -
40. circle the earth
1 entry1 person -
41. become more politically savvy
1 entry1 person -
42. figure out how to relax faster
1 person
How I did it: It had been a couple of weeks and it looked more daunting than usual, so I wrote out a list of steps, and followed them to the letter, and surprisingly, when I was done, my room was very clean. Read how I did it…
How I did it: Simply learning to maintain your awareness and correct your posture when it gets poor is enough, at least for me. Certain habits, such as sitting too far forward in chairs, are difficult to overcome but it is worth doing for the sake of your back. I don't think this is something I've actually "done" so much as increased my awareness of, since I'll always have to watch for it. Read how I did it…
How I did it: I found a copy and started reading it in my spare time. It would have been nicer to have read it a bit slower than I did but I have been impatient lately. A Clockwork Orange is certainly a good book to make you think about the nature of morality, maturity and decision-making as well as human nature, though there are better ones. The ending was a bit miserable but it was good overall. Read how I did it…
