Graceful Pigeon

I'm still hunting for some good subject matter for the GoPro, either timelapse or slo-mo, but for now you'll have to settle for a pigeon down by the river:

Slo-mo can make even a ratty river pigeon look graceful, haha.

***

Mostly just a work day today. I worked on All of Statistics this morning. A quick review of probability density functions, bivariate and multivariate distributions. This afternoon, I worked on my draft paper. I actually started a new document yesterday, filled in an outline of sections and started pulling stuff out of the earlier draft. It's been working well. I've been able to strip down and simplify a lot of it. I have one major section left for tomorrow. Once that's done, I'll let it rest for a day or two and re-edit.

***

The Mariners are playing a day game in KC right now, so I get to watch them live, which is unusual. It's 6-6 in the bottom of the 9th. Hopefully extra innings.

Gym Time

All this running seems to have caught up with me. I've been nursing a sore left foot for a few days and I think my body is telling me that there's been too much running this year. Before coming to Spain, I rarely ran for exercise (for precisely this reason). I either used aerobics machines in the gym like the elliptical or stairclimber or road my bike on hour-long training rides. Here, without those options, I've been running along the river. I think I've developed a mild case of metatarsalgia, so I'm gonna stop for a while and do something else. Laura checked out the gym that occupies the same building as her language school for me today. I think I'll try that for the remainder of my time here.

***

Still playing around with my GoPro. This evening I did a 2fps timelapse for about a half-hour. I sped it up to 60fps (30x) and got this:


It was pretty breezy during the shot. You can see the puffs of air on the surface of the river.

***

Laura found an app called Paso a Paso that is developed by someone here in Sevilla to keep track of all the religious processions during Semana Santa. Looks pretty useful.

Imperative

For homework, my Spanish teacher asked us to look for uses of the imperative out in the "wild". I saw this sign while walking Laura to class today:

It's just your standard caution sign for some public works project:

¡¡Peaton!! 

Acera en obras 

Disculpen las molestias

Which translates roughly to: Pedestrian! Sidewalk work. Excuse the inconvenience. The imperative here is the formal you plural (ustedes) form of the verb disculpar (to excuse, to forgive). I like this example because most of the examples we had in class were from advertisements, "buy this", "sign up for that", "save money" etc. This a non-commercial use of the imperative, haha.

***

For exercise today, I rode around a bit on one of the bike shares. I took my GoPro with me and did some more slo-motion photography. The camera can do 1080p at 240fps. I can take that 240fps and slow it down to 24fps (a slow motion factor of 10) which is pretty good. I'm still looking for some actually interesting subject matter, but today I did get a nice slo-mo of a bubble floating by the fountain at the Plaza de Espana:

Too Much Spark

After cleaning the gas stove top this morning, the igniter on one of the eyes would not stop sparking. Laura and I looked at it for a while and watched what we thought were relevant youtube videos, but couldn't get it to stop. It was pretty loud and annoying. Finally, we just cut power to the stove top using the circuit breaker.

Fortunately, a couple hours later, I turned on the breaker and the issue had resolved itself. Hopefully, it's resolved for a couple more months, haha.

***

It rained pretty heavily again today. I pointed my gopro out the window and took some 240fps video of the rain. Then I used Shotcut to slow it down to 24fps. I have to say that the results are pretty impressive:


I'm looking forward to trying this on more interesting subject matter.

***

I had Spanish class today. This week is optional. The class was larger than usual with a number of students from a wide range of levels joining in. It was interesting, but also a bit too advanced for me. Still, good practice listening.

***

I have a bit of a sore throat that I hope goes away instead of turning into a full blown cold. Already, I'm getting that feeling that I may lose my voice.

***

Started doing final edits on a paper. I hope to submit it by Friday, but I won't rush it if it's not ready. I also started reading about probability density functions and common distributions in my stats book.

Bunny Bumps

Another rainy day in Sevilla. I managed to go out for a run in one of the breaks in the weather. Later I went for a walk with Laura and got rained on a bit.

We walked along another pedestrian street in Triana, close to the feria grounds. It too has a freshly painted bike lane.

***

Sundays I try to call people. Of course, being 6 hours ahead of the east coast and 9 hours ahead of the west coast, I can't really do that until after 3pm our time. That said, I managed to talk to Jo-Anne, Rachel, and Emily. Rachel is dog sitting Penny this week and so was enjoying some time with Penny while we talked. Emily is in the process of adopting a second rabbit, Apricot, in addition to her current bunny Benji. I didn't realize it until she started the process, that it is challenging to bring a second rabbit into a household. The rabbits can actually fight and not get along to the point that the second rabbit has to go back to the shelter. Apricot and Benji seem to get along at times and then at other times have conflict. Emily was sitting on the couch while we talked, giving the two rabbits some together time (normally they're kept separate until they can reliably stay together without fighting). Here Apricot is grooming Benji, which is a good sign. Hopefully this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship: