Category: Miscellaneous

The semester progresses well. I’m at least as busy as I have ever been teaching, and sometimes feel much more.

I’m teaching two classes this semester, one of which is new and one of which I have taught before. The new class is 105 – a non-calculus introductory physics course. It’s a little trickier to teach than the calculus version because – for me at least – calculus is far more intuitive than the approximates associated with not having access to such things as derivatives.

Torque for instance. It’s much easier to simply say it is a vector cross product than the product of a force and this silly invention called the ‘lever arm‘.

I have 53 students in that class, and it is my desire for them all to do well. At this point, 6 or 7 of them aren’t, and perhaps won’t since they’ve ignored my emails. There is only so much I can do for those. The others are working hard though, and making a good effort. This pleases me, more so because of the ‘average’ students working very hard than the gifted who would do well regardless of instructor (I was one of those). They clearly like me as a teacher though. One student sent me a “get well soon” email this week after I canceled classes Wednesday. Another apparently went to the physics office and requested I teach Physics 108 (next semesters the followup course) so he could have me as an instructor again!

The other course is 240, Modern Physics. This is the third time I have taught this one, and I’d say I get better every time. I know the material now like the back of my hand, and can predict what sorts of things will confuse the students. I still try to make the lectures new though, and in a sense always do since I lecture mostly from my head, only briefly perusing the notes. I have 23 students in this class, and like the ones in my other class they want me to teach 250 – next semester’s followup (a course in Waves).

Will I teach next semester? That’s the question. I’m not getting my thesis done this semester – as usual teaching is too mighty a distraction, and the thesis requires tremendous amounts of uninterrupted attention.

I am debating accepting only one class – assuming I am offered one – next semester so I can devote more time to writing. However if I do this tuition will not be reimbursed, so my pay will be trivial considering I’d have to pay my own tuition. Which makes it seem logical to teach zero classes and have even more time to work on the thesis.

But I love teaching, and besides it is great for a resume. I have students in each class begging me to teach their followup next semester, and here I want to finish my thesis and graduate so I can… do what?

At this point I really don’t know what I’m going to do.

I’m sick. I don’t have a fever, or a cough, but I most certainly do have all the classic cold symptoms. Because of this I cancelled classes today, which is only the second time I’ve ever done this (and the first time I had pneumonia). That should give you an idea how I feel.

Now I can enjoy staying at home and feeling both tired and very uncomfortable. I hate being sick 🙁

Oh yes – we bought a new car! Details (and photos) to follow…

Amusingly, I discovered I can easily export my iPod track data from iTunes. Not only does this include every song, but also how often I have played them. As a result, fascinating information can be processed and passed on to you, my dear readers!  It must be said though that this data is only a few years old, since I obtained my current iPod only a couple of years ago. What I’d give for lifetime data like this!!

Before I start with the lists, my iPod has a grand total of 3318 songs on it at the moment, totalling 15149 minutes of music. That’s 10.5 days!

I have music by 167 bands in total, although only 49 of them have more than 10 songs on the machine.

Now here’s where it gets interesting…

Top 5 Bands (by total number of songs)

1. Erasure (468 songs)
2. Depeche Mode (437 songs)
3. Alphaville (268 songs)
4. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (258 songs)
5. David Bowie (138 songs)

No surprises there, especially if you know my music tastes. Erasure’s position above Mode is solely by virtue of them releasing more material. In both cases the iPod would contain upwards of 99% of everything either band has released.

Now, what if I take the above list and see which of those five I actually listen to the most? One way to do this is divide the total number of listens for the band by the number of songs I have on the machine by that band:

The Same 5 Bands (by average listens per song)

1. Alphaville (9.2)
2. Erasure (4.1)
3. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (1.6
4. Depeche Mode (1.1)
5. David Bowie (~0)

Intriguing wouldn’t you say? Especially the fact that I have quite a few of Bowies albums on the device and yet have barely ever listened to him (only 4 songs, each from the Labyrinth soundtrack, have received any play at all). The Alphaville numbers are particularly impressive because of how uniform they are. I don’t listen to just one or two albums a lot, I apparently listen to the bands entire output more or less uniformly.

But it gets even more interesting if I do a similar analysis, except opening it up to the entire iPod. In other words, which bands do I listen to, on average, the most?

Top 5 Average Listens (per song)

1. Air Supply (99)
2. Hunters And Collectors (38)
3. REO Speedwagon (25.2)
4. The Stranglers (19)
5. Morrissey (17.2)

Five new names! Position 1, Air Supply, is the freakish outlier, obtained since I have only two of their songs on the machine. I have listened to Making Love Out Of Nothing At All well over 100 times (almost ten hours!) and All Out Of Love (which I like a lot less, but is in the same playlist) only a bit less. Hunters And Collectors making the list was frankly surprising to me, but apparently shouldn’t have been since I’d listened to Say Goodbye almost 70 times alone! Speedwagon’s presence is heavily bolstered by the ~50 listens of Don’t Let Him Go, Keep On Loving You and I Can’t Fight This Feeling. Ever since I got their best of CD a few weeks ago though other songs (Take It On The Run, Time For Me To Fly) have been rising quickly in playthroughs. One day, they may surpass Air Supply. Finding The Stranglers on this list was amusing, and helped by the fact I only have three of their songs and love them all! Morrissey wasn’t much of a surprise since I listen to his recent three albums all the time.

Looking at the device overall, I was surprised to note that a massive 52% of the songs on it have never been played! I have entire albums by some bands (The Police, Jesus and Mary Chain) that have never even had so much as one song listened to! Why are they on there!?!

However it must be said the software in the iPod only counts a listen if the song is completed, and I am a compulsive pusher of the ‘next’ button. This would obviously skew my results a little.

The last figure I shall share is the total amount of time I have actually spend listening to music since I obtained this iPod about 3.5 years ago: 42.7 days

Remember there is only 10.5 days worth of music on the device. If I had wanted to, I could easily have listened to it all by now 🙂