STEVEN C MILLS.ca

Today's soundtrack is Alcest: Le Secret, an absolutely brilliant piece of work. It's a blackgaze (black metal crossed with shoegaze) masterpiece that runs a gamut of emotions and moods: triumphant, chaotic, thoughtful, melodious... It was re-recorded recently, though I think (as is probably abundantly clear at this point) that the original EP from 2005 stands perfectly well on its own. This afternoon, I'm working on solving "linear-quadratic equations and quadratic-quadratic

Today's soundtrack is MxPx: Secret Weapon, a fun pop-punk album that was obviously influenced by Blink 182 and Green Day. This afternoon, I learned how to use the free TAL Vocorder, then put the finishing touches on a song that's been percolating in my brain for the last four years. I like the result. The song is called "Fly So High" - give it a listen below: #MxPx #Blink182 #GreenDay #TALVocorder

Today's soundtrack is Matt Redman: Facedown, a live album from the UK-based worship leader. My favourite tracks on the album are "Nothing but the Blood" and "Worthy, You are Worthy." The latter has aged very well. This afternoon, I'm working on the assignment portion of the lesson I did yesterday on graphing quadratic inequalities with two variables. There isn't really a lot to report on in this one; I went over the necessary steps in the last post - today, I've just been imp

Today's soundtrack is 50 Cent: Get Rich or Die Tryin', a classic album with lots of instantly-recognizable hooks. That being said, I'm tempted to say "Gesundheit" every time Mr. Cent says "G-unit"! Today's been super chill; my wife let me sleep in, which was such a welcome surprise. Now she's out grocery shopping with the older kids, and I just got our littlest down for his nap, so it's time to get down to work on learning how to graph quadratic inequalities when they have tw

Today's soundtrack is Metallica: Master of Puppets, an absolute unit of an album. I still remember the first time I heard the title track on Vancouver's 104.9 Xfm (rip). The acoustic interlude blew my mind. I credit that song with my later love of prog metal. This afternoon, I'm continuing to work on the assignment portion of the lesson on linear inequalities. Links to prior entries: Part 1, Part 2. I figured out a new strategy to test my graphed solutions today. If I am give

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Today's soundtrack is, for the last time until December 2019, Christmas With the Mills Family. I love Christmas music, but I'm really looking forward to getting back to my regular music collection! I'm especially stoked to check out Lil Wyte's new release after seeing his tweet about it the other day. I had a lovely Christmas with my wife and kids; it is such a joy to see my kids' faces light up as they open their gifts. I received some really fun presents, t

Today's soundtrack is Christmas With the Mills Family, a Spotify playlist that includes my favourite Christmas songs. This Christmas Eve morning, I'm starting the next chapter of this unit, "Graphing Linear Inequalities in Two Variables." Right off the bat, I realized that I would need a refresher on linear graphs before tackling this unit, as I was given the equation "3x + 2y + 9 = 0" and told to "[i]dentify the slope, y-intercept, and x-intercept" (Pearson's Pre-Calculus 11

Today's soundtrack is Katy Perry: Prism, which is, along with Taylor Swift's two newest albums, one of the few pop albums that I enjoy. On this Christmas Eve Eve, I am continuing to work on my quadratic inequality homework. We went to the Advent Sunday service this morning, and I just bought "Getting Over It" at 50% off in the Steam winter sale, which I'm looking forward to playing! Today, I'm integrating my understanding of the vertex form of quadratic functions with my new

Today's soundtrack is Despised Icon: The Ills of Modern Man, a solid album by the Canadian deathcore band with tight drumming, satisfying grindcore-style squealed vocals, and just the right amount of "-core" to keep me banging my head. This afternoon, we got together with some friends, ate pizza, and played Really Bad Art, a fun, fast-paced cross between Pictionary and Apples to Apples. Now that the kids are in bed, I'm reading the fourth chapter of the second book of Aristot

Today's soundtrack is Christmas With the Mills Family, a Spotify playlist that includes my favourite Christmas songs. It's been a nice day: it was the last day of classes, so I have the next couple of weeks off. We're having some friends over tomorrow, so I spent the afternoon catching up on the housework from the week. This evening, my wife and I visited some of her friends and we built gingerbread houses with them. This evening, I'm going to keep it quick, as it's way past

Today's soundtrack is Christmas With the Mills Family, a Spotify playlist that includes my favourite Christmas songs. Nothing much to report today. Just continuing to work on my homework assignment on quadratic inequalities. Big windstorm today!

Today's soundtrack is Christmas With the Mills Family, a Spotify playlist that includes my favourite Christmas songs. Now that I've finally got a handle on how quadratic inequalities work, I think I'll finally be able to start making some headway on this lesson. I don't think I've had any lessons until this point that have taken me so long to grasp. But this afternoon, I've been working on the assignment questions. Here's the steps for solving quadratic inequalities in one va

Today's soundtrack is Christmas With the Mills Family, a Spotify playlist that includes my favourite Christmas songs. To help visual learners understand quadratic inequalities, I've designed a chart with two graphs that detail how we should understand the equations. Links to the prior parts of this lesson: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. To summarize, when our negative symbol in the equation inverts our parabola, it also inverts our solution, meaning that we need to carefully con

Today's soundtrack is Christmas With the Mills Family, a Spotify playlist that includes my favourite Christmas songs. This afternoon, I used my txt2mid.py program to convert Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" from text to music. I found a recording of Frost reciting the poem and included that audio in the track during interludes between lines. To recap how the program works, each note represents a letter in the words. In this track, there is of course a gap

Today's soundtrack is The Sylvia Platters: Melt, a catchy, atmospheric, and unexpectedly cheerful shoegaze/pop EP from the Vancouver-based band. This evening, I'm continuing work on the lesson I did on quadratic inequalities. Links: Part 1, Part 2. I learned while working on my homework that sometimes we'll be presented with quadratic inequalities in strange arrangements, such as 3x² - 5x > -4. Before solving, we must rearrange the equation so that it corresponds with the now