Learning Activities September 7, 2020

I’m trying to do things like write about problems, learn about grammar, practice explaining simple things, and brainstorm as part of a set of learning activities.

Thinking About a Problem: Rowing Machine for Exercise

I want to work out but have some recurring knee issues. I think varying activities and finding things that involve different motions would help a lot.

One thing I am curious about is rowing machines, since I have read they can be particular easy on the knees, and that people who have trouble with other things like running can handle rowing machines well. Normally I’d consider joining a gym for the purpose of trying a rowing machine, but I am wary of going to gyms due to the coronavirus. I don’t expect the coronavirus situation to get resolved soon, and I don’t want to wait until there’s a vaccine to work on my working out problem.

“Good” rowing machines can be expensive, and I don’t want to commit to one before I know whether rowing will work for me. One idea I had was trying out a rowing machine on the cheaper end from Amazon. That way, I could see if i like rowing, and if the cheaper machine breaks after a little while, it won’t be a big deal because it will have served its purpose for me, and I can move onto a nicer machine if I want to. The cheaper machines breaking after a while is a serious possibility, since durability tends to be one of the main complaints/problems with cheaper machines. But if a serious possibility of the machine breaking is part of the plan, then that seems okay.

One issue with cheaper machines besides durability is they can have worse ergonomics than a higher quality machine. That is one unfortunate thing about going cheaper on a purchase sometimes – you can’t effectively isolate the reduced quality to the specific issues you want, you just get worse quality across multiple categories. Nonetheless, I think it may be worth trying a cheaper rowing machine, given the big price gap between low and high quality machines and given my uncertainty about whether rowing is something I’ll be able to do consistently without pain & also like.

Grammar Trees

I made some grammar trees for Problems 6 and 7 in Peikoff’s homework for Lesson 1 of his grammar course. I got some feedback in the Fallible Ideas Discord on them and updated them accordingly. PDFs of the trees are embedded below but click here to view/download the trees since embedding doesn’t handle big PDFs well.

Peikoff Grammar HW1 Problems 6 and 7 draft 2

Practicing Explaining Something Simply: How do you make pizza dough in a bread maker?

A bread maker can make it easier to make home made pizza dough, which you can use to make pizza, calzones, and garlic knots. To make pizza dough in a bread maker, you’ll need standard pizza dough ingredients: flour, warm water, sugar, active dry yeast, salt, and olive oil. You may want to use additional ingredients to add flavor to your dough, such as oregano, basil, and garlic. You can find many recipes on the Web that say the amounts of ingredients to use to make a certain amount of dough.

You put the ingredients into the pan of your bread maker, starting with the wet ingredients (water, oil) first and then the dry ingredients. If you removed the pan from the bread maker in order to fill it up with ingredients, you should now place the pan into your bread maker and close the lid of your machine. You want to select your bread maker’s Dough setting, which any modern bread maker should have. The bread maker will then do the work of kneading the bread for you. After the bread maker is done, you can then roll the dough out, put your toppings on, and bake your pizza. Enjoy!

Brainstorming: Types of Pizzas to Make

Pepperoni/Mushroom Pizza
Chicken Parm Pizza
Spinach/Ham/Pepper Pizza
White Pizza
Meatball Pizza
Taco Pizza
Cheeseburger Pizza
Prosciutto + Spinach Pizza
Chicken Bacon Ranch Pizza
Sicilian Pizza
Deep Dish Cast Iron Pizza

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