There's a lot going on and I'm counting down the weeks to the various events. One week to an Indian Food festival, two weeks to the end of the semester, three weeks to crawfish, and twelve weeks to Oaxaca.
Classes are winding down pretty well. My 3D printing class is pulling into its big project (design a robot). I had wanted this to be a group project, but I never really got the interaction from students that I had hoped to get (also, there are only 5 students in the class at this point), so it just didn't work out as I had hoped. Still, I'm optimistic that the students I do have will be able to pull together something interesting.
The proof-writing class has pretty much wrapped up (except for a review and the final exam). Overall, I think the experiment of moving some of the content online and really pushing participation by making those online graded assignments has helped. I do need to come up with problems that push them a little bit more in some areas, but I also need to make room for that by cutting out some of the videos. I'm not exactly sure what the right balance of that is going to look like, but I've got some time to let that stew in my head. One thing I feel confident about is that I should be able to push the LaTeX a little bit harder now and really make that a more prominent outcome. If anything, I think that forcing them to type out their thoughts more often will force them out of the sloppy thinking and writing patterns that they've developed, and really tune them in to the words that they use.
I was at an interesting meeting yesterday between the NSC science faculty and the DRI faculty. This is something that has been sitting around in the background for quite a while now, but we were actually able to get the direct faculty-to-faculty interactions that might start moving some sort of collaboration forward. In fact, one of the faculty has asked me if I have any interest in a certain modeling problem. I really have no idea what the mathematical background is that he's looking for, especially since I'm not an applied math guy, but I do think it would be good to get into a new research area and see where it takes me.
The horse racing project continues to go forward, though it's gotten displaced temporarily by a different coding project. I'm still looking for a way to get information out to faculty about their teaching to provide more points of reference for them to think about as they prepare for classes, and to help them see trends in their teaching that can be addressed. In order to learn this, I had to learn how to make Python output PDF files. This is an interesting prospect to me because it also starts to open up the door to many other things that I had not considered before. I don't know what, exactly, but it feels like there's something there for me.
But back to the horse racing. I've now got a program that allows me to type in data from actual races (from the equibase database) and print out a graphic that shows me how the race played out. This step is a precursor to printing out predictions of what could happen. I first needed to make sure that I felt comfortable with the calculations and the overall "structure" of races. I probably need to spend another hour or so typing in more races to give me more of a feel. To make predictions, I'm going to need to use the abbreviated data that's available in the DRF plus whatever general data I'm able to create from the larger database of information that I've collected. I can think of two reasonable comparison points: (1) How fast the horse ran relative to the leading horse in a specific race; (2) How fast the horse ran relative to the average race of that length. The data is going to be far from perfect, as horses run different length races in different conditions against different types of fields, and all of that probably has some influence over the outcomes. But that's okay. I just need to take things one step at a time.
I can now add "Roasted a whole pig" to my resume of random cooking adventures. Looking back, I also realized that I didn't really do a review of the lamb roast we did for the Super Bowl. So I'll start with that one. The lamb ended up weighing about 35 pounds. I followed through with the two-sided flavoring (rosemary/lemon and coriander/cumin). One of the big challenges I ran into was temperature control. I don't grill over charcoal very often, and so I don't have a good intuition about roasting temperatures and trying to maintain a good, steady roasting temperature. We roasted the lamb for about 6 hours, but because we let the fire go down a little too far, it didn't quite cook all the way through. So I had to cut steaks and finish them off on the grill. Not ideal, but close enough. We also threw some wood chips on at a couple points to get a little bit of a smokey flavor to it. I had brought my chef's knife, which was good enough, but I really needed a butcher's knife.
In response to what I learned from the lamb roast, I made a couple adjustments for the pig roast. The pig came in at 56 pounds (and only cost about $250) The first one was that I screwed an oven thermometer onto the back of the pig. Well, not directly on the pig, but there's a U-bracket that holds the spine to the spit. I simply took the oven thermometer and slid the base of it under that bracket. This held in place the whole time. The roast temperature registered between 200-250 depending on how things were going, but since the thermometer is so close to the spit, the actual meat was likely roasting at closer to 250-300. And since this was a pig roast, I was much more vigilant about the meat temperature (because I can't cut steaks from the pig and finish roasting them separately). We also did some wood chips, and that smoke flavor came through much more strongly than on the lamb. Even with the leftovers, when I opened up the container in the fridge, I could still pick up the smokiness. I also got myself a heavy butcher's knife, which helped me get through the meat much more efficiently.
The lamb used up 3 bags of charcoal, and the pig used up 4. In both cases, we had a little bit of a problem getting the fire going. I think my error is spreading out the coals too early. I think that's just inexperience with cooking with charcoal.
The church search rolls on. It's not a fast-paced process, as sermons only come around once a week. I've been to two sermons at South Hills, and I thought the second was much better than the first. But the second sermon was not from the normal preaching pastor. It's hard to really know what that means, which is why I'm still going to go back at least one or two more times. As I said, it's not a fast-paced process. I'm planning this to be a multi-month process.
In the meantime, I'm also doing a lot of reading. I just finished reading "Simply Christian" by N.T. Wright and am starting into "Christless Christianity" by Michael Horton. The first was an interesting read. It's kind of a contemporary apologetic for Christianity. One point that stands out to me was the view of the here-and-now-ness of Christianity that stands in contrast to the yet-to-come-ness of a lot of contemporary eschatology. He frames that type of thinking as "life after life after death" to increase the sense of the distance from that part of the narrative of Christianity to the present. He also sets up C.S. Lewis-like trichotomoy, entering into the space between pantheism (God is everywhere and in everything) and deism (God is completely separate from the universe). He frames this as the intersection of heaven and earth, which I find to be a relatively satisfying description of that mysterious element of Christianity.
I was at Life Springs last night to take part in the bi-weekly social activity. Someone who was new asked me how long I've gone to the church. I hesitated for a moment to think about whether I wanted to just give the half-answer or whether to launch into the larger conversation. I've said many times that this is an open conversation, and so I turned it into an open conversation. It turns out this person had only come to the church a couple times, but was "relieved" to hear that there were some other perspectives floating around. Unsurprisingly (after learning this about her), the viewpoint she brings is more liberal than what the church has put forth. But the ensuing conversation (and general social hanging out) was a good conversation to have. Score one for authenticity.
A takeaway from the conversation is that it continues to push me to think about what I'm looking for. Primarily, I'm looking for a church that I don't feel embarrassed about. I just might settle for that. But what I'm really looking for is a church that knows what its core message is (and it's something I agree with). There are a lot of ways to talk about it, and a lot of ways that it could be framed. But I'm not looking for vague spirituality. I'm not interested in a message that says "Do these things and you'll be a good Christian (or a good person)." There's a sense of "Jesus as therapist" in a lot of sermons, in that Jesus enters into people's lives just so that their life would be better. (Of course, that's not to say that the statement is devoid of truth, it's just not the full truth.) In my view, the basic message is about the fallen nature of mankind and that Jesus came to start making things right. Yes, there's a complex conversation of the implications of the fallen nature of mankind and what it means for things to be "right" but the statement is clear. I think that's a huge piece of what I'm missing in my church experience. The idea that we actually have a message that's worth sharing.
Lastly, the physical work on the kiosk is going to start next week. I'm looking forward to that project coming to completion.
