Moving right along...

Jeff and I met for a very productive day in Kent. We tweaked the book.cls file and played with the sectsty.sty file, so now I think we have things looking the way Jeff - I mean we - want :-) We also reorganized some of the material in Chapter 1. We separated Function Arithmetic into its own section and took the material in the Distance Section and added it to section 1.1. I completed my drafts of 2.2 and 2.3 and have sent them off to Jeffrey. The current incarnation of the book can be found here. My goal for the upcoming week is to finish drafts of 2.4 and 2.5 by next Monday. The more we write, the better we get. We may just yet get this book finished by Fall.

Good riddance...

This past week was, perhaps, the first “bad” week of my sabbatical. The rapid changes in weather gave me headaches that no amount of medication could help. We lost power early Thursday AM and were actually trapped in our allotment by a fallen tree until late Thursday PM. Thankfully, my brother Dan and my Father mounted a rescue mission of sorts to deliver propane heaters and take Taylor South where she would be warm and safe. Needless to say, I was happy for the week to end and meet with Jeffrey on Friday. Each week seems to bring with it a new set of technical issues, but we usually have quite a bit of fun trying to sort them all out. The narrative portion of Chapter 1 is done, and Jeff is working on the editing and exercises. In addition, I started in on Chapter 2 this weekend, and have sent my draft of Section 2.1 to Jeff. The current incarnation of the book ishere. (Unfortunately, I neglected to get the updated .tex files from Jeff on Friday which include his wonderful exercise sets for some of the sections in Chapter 1.)

In other news, I finally finished off the iTunes gift card my brother Dan gave me a while back. The cartoon “Star Blazers” is available on iTunes, and it’s quite a bargain! I remember running home from school to try and catch this show. It is an epic space opera, and one of the earliest Japanese-imported Animations. Just listening to it as I write the book takes me back to the old days. It continues to inspire me, too. The Star Force had only 1 year to travel 148,000 light years to Iscandar, retrieve the Cosmo DNA, and get back in time to save Earth - and we have only half that amount of time to finish this book and have it ready for Fall semester. I think we’ll be fine.

Addendum: Jeffrey sent along an updated .pdf of the book which includes his exercise sets. You can enjoy them here.

Closing in on two chapters...

Friday marked another productive session in Kent. For the time being, Jeffrey’s agreed to do all the editing and write the exercises, while I level up my Dwarf in Lord of the Rings Online - I mean - write the sections. The most recent incarnation of the book can be found here. You’ll notice a tentative table of contents (for the algebra part) as well as some additional completed sections in Chapter 1. My favorite example to date is in the Graphs of Functions section... where the Calculator lies to us. I find writing the book challenging, but rewarding, and have come to the realization that it being offered open source means that if someone wants to use it and doesn’t like some things about it, they can download the source and change it to suit their needs. I think one of the problems with current commercial textbooks is that in order to make a book as marketable as possible, the publishers try to make everyone happy, and end up really serving no one.

Apart from that, I am taking time to “smell the roses” and enjoying not having to deal with Lakeland politics. I enjoy all the time with Taylor, but now have a very deep admiration for stay-at-home parents. And running around Middle Earth with my buddy Kai a couple of times a week just can’t be beat!