TITLE: Time Out
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: July 04, 2023 11:55 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 <p align="right">
   Any man can call time out, but no man   <br/>
   can say how long the time out will be.  <br/>
   -- <a href="https://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/personal/bokonon.html">
         Books of Bokonon</a>
 </p>

 I realized early last week that it had been a while since I blogged.
 June was a morass of administrative work, mostly summer orientation.
 Over the month, I had made notes for several potential posts, on
 <a href="https://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2023-05.html#e2023-05-19T14_57_34.htm">
    my web dev course</a>,
 on the latest book I was reading, but never found -- made -- time to
 write a full post.  I figured this would be a light month, only a
 couple of short posts, if I only I could squeeze another one in by
 Friday.

 Then I saw that the date of my most recent post was May 26, with the
 request for ideas about the web course coming a week before.

 I no longer trust my sense of time.

 This blog has certainly become much quieter over the years, due in
 part to the kind and amount of work I do and in part to choices I
 make outside of work.  I may even have gone a month between posts
 a few fallow times in the past.  But June 2023 became my first
 calendar month with zero posts.

 It's somewhat surprising that a summer month would be the first to
 shut me out.  Summer is a time of no classes to teach, fewer student
 and faculty issues to deal with, and fewer distinct job duties.
 This occurrence is a testament to how much orientation occupies many
 of my summer days, and how at other times I just want to be AFK.

 A real post or two are on their way, I promise -- a promise to
 myself, as well as to any of you who are missing my posts in your
 newsreader.  In the meantime...

 On the web dev course: thanks to everyone who sent thoughts!  There
 were a few unanimous, or near unanimous, suggestions, such as to
 have students use VS code.  I am now learning it myself, and getting
 used to an IDE that autocompletes pairs such as "".  My main prep
 activity up to this point has been watching
 <a href="https://blog.humphd.org/vocamus-2/">
    David Humphrey</a>'s
 videos for
 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJgO3yLojCBM3paJ5Ar7qvc_eyX9OoxLk">
    WEB 222</a>.
 I have been learning a little HTML and JavaScript and a lot of CSS
 and how these tools work together on the modern web.  I'm also
 learning how to teach these topics, while thinking about the
 differences between my student audience and David's.

 On the latest book: I'm currently reading <em>Shop Class as
 Soulcraft</em>, by Matthew Crawford.  It came out in 2010 and,
 though several people recommended it to me then, I had never gotten
 around to it.  This book is prompting so many ideas and thoughts
 that I'm constantly jotting down notes and thinking about how these
 ideas might affect my teaching and my practice as a programmer.  I
 have a few short posts in mind based on the book, if only I commit
 time to flesh them out.  Here are two passages, one short and one
 long, from my notes.

 <blockquote><em>
 Fixing things may be a cure for narcissism.
 </em></blockquote>

 <blockquote><em>
 Countless times since that day, a more experienced mechanic has
 pointed out to me something that was right in front of my face, but
 which I lacked the knowledge to see.  It is an uncanny experience;
 the raw sensual data reaching my eye before and after are the same,
 but without the pertinent framework of meaning, the features in
 question are invisible.  Once they have been pointed out, it seems
 impossible that I should not have seen them before.
 </em></blockquote>

 Both strike a chord for me as I learn an area I know only the
 surface of.  Learning changes us.
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