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Today's soundtrack is Spitfire: The Dead Next Door, a chaotic hardcore/screamo album from 1999, somewhat reminiscent of early Norma Jean. I really love the guitar work on the track "A Gaze at Quintessence;" it's slower, almost doomy, with some wicked pinch harmonics. The outro of "Good Cop, Bad Cop" is also crazy cool; it has some Herman Li-esque ascending riffs. I tried to find a YouTube vid of the songs to embed, but had no luck; however, the full album is in my blog playli

Today's soundtrack is Petra: Petra Praise: The Rock Cries Out, the first Petra Praise album. Released in 1989, it's an arena-rock take on what were at that time contemporary worship songs; it was revolutionary for its day! This afternoon, I'm learning about the Laws of Logarithms. Power Rule The first law is the Law of Logarithms for Powers, which applies to logarithms for any base. It states that logₐxⁿ = nlogₐx. The restrictions are as follows: x∈ℝ, n∈ℝ, x > 0, a > 0, and a

Today's soundtrack is Cryptopsy: None so Vile, an oldschool technical death metal album with vicious vocals from the legendary Lord Worm. Today, we'll finally learn what these mysterious "logarithms" are. The "LOG" key has been sitting on your calculator, taunting you; when you press it, your calculator does not turn into a log; nay, it remains a calculator, a marvelous piece of technology to be sure, but subtly a liar, for it does not transform into a piece of organic matter

Today's soundtrack is Whitechapel: The Valley, an incredible progressive deathcore album (I never thought I'd write those two words in sequence like that). It has the deep deathcore growls and chugging guitars that one would expect from Whitechapel, but there are also clean singing sections, thoughtful guitar leads, and intricate drum patterns. The dynamics and changes are somewhat reminiscent of Opeth's "Ghost Reveries," but "The Valley" is a really unique album, and I'm enj

Today's soundtrack is Dream Theater: Distance Over Time, a progressive metal album that I'm more excited about than I have been about anything in a long time. The album's production is on point, the best it's been since Mangini joined the crew. Myung's bass sounds clear and beefy, and Mike's snare sounds like a proper punch to the face, not like the downtuned mess on Dream Theater's self-titled. Labrie's voice is, as always, matchless. Petrucci and Rudess dance musically in i

Today's soundtrack is Alter Bridge: AB III. These guys show the world what rock is supposed to sound like. Like I've mentioned before, I've been a fan of Creed for a long time; after Creed broke up, their drummer, their original bassist, and their guitarist, Mark Tremonti, joined forces with singer Myles Kennedy. Alter Bridge rose like the phoenix from the ashes of Creed, and the world is a better place for it. This morning, I'm learning how polynomial equations relate to pol

Today's soundtrack is Tim McGraw: Live Like You Were Dying, a solid country rock album. Its title track is still sing-along good. I had the pleasure of seeing Tim McGraw perform with Faith Hill in Vancouver a decade back; it was a great show! This afternoon, I'm learning about solving polynomial equations. There are two criteria that must be fulfilled for a multi-term series of numbers to be considered a polynomial: All exponents must be whole numbers All coefficients and the

Today's soundtrack is Our Lady Peace: Happiness...Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch, an album that I like well enough, but it's never really clicked with me for reasons that I can't quite put my finger on. Today's been great so far; we took the kids out to a local show in the morning, and now it's time to buckle down to work. This afternoon, I'll be reviewing factoring polynomials - more specifically, how to recognize which method to use in which case. There are some basic pol

Today's soundtrack is Crytopsy: Whisper Supremacy, the first technical death metal album that I ever bought. I remember that when I first listened to it, I was not sure what to make of its chaotic assault on my ears, especially since there was a contrast between the hardcore-style vocals and the tech-death instrumentation. I couldn't anticipate the time changes; the riffs were all over the place, and there wasn't a breakdown to be found anywhere. It was nothing like anything

Today's soundtrack is S.O.: So it Begins, a criminally underrated rap album. I love everything about it: the reformed lyricism, the skillful rapping, the lush samples. Yesterday, I started learning about the Remainder Theorem. Today, I'm going to work on the assignment portion of the lesson and go through some examples of the different exercises. How to determine whether a polynomial is a factor of another polynomial ​Set up the equation (x³ - 7x + 6) / (x + 3) Find the value

Today's soundtrack is Reg Downey: You're Not Alone (Not Quickly Broken), a thoughtful album with worshipful lyrics. This morning, I'm learning how to solve polynomial division equations by using both polynomial long division and synthetic division, the latter of which I touched on in the past. By solving polynomial division equations through the two above methods, I was able to confirm the Remainder Theorem: "When a polynomial P(x) is divided by x-b, the remainder is P(b)." S

Today's soundtrack is Blackfield: Blackfield, a must-have for any fans of Porcupine Tree! This afternoon, I'm reading the seventh chapter of the second book of Aristotle's Ethics. Here, Aristotle considers the terminology that we ascribe to various virtues and their excesses or their absences. Some virtues, such as fearlessness, have no term describing their excess, but a person lacking fearlessness is a coward. Another virtue, temperance, can be considered; Aristotle says th

Today's soundtrack is Amon Amarth: Fate of Norns, another incredible album from the kings of viking-themed melodic death metal. Today's post isn't going to be a typical one. This afternoon after work, I had a large-scale project I needed to complete: taking hundreds of screenshots from a learning resource, cutting each page apart into three or four sections each of various sizes, and pasting those sections into Word. I first tried making an equivalent number of copies of the

Today's soundtrack is Kutless: Kutless, a solid rock album that I must have listened to hundreds of times over in the early 2000s, and I still enjoy it today. This afternoon, I went in to write my Module 1 Precalculus 12 exam. I don't feel like I did as well on it as I should have; I've been burning the candle on both ends, trying to keep up with family/work/school. A few times during the test, I completely blanked on topics that I know I've studied (finding horizontal asympt

Today's soundtrack is Enya: Shepherd Moons. I love the serenity that Enya's music brings to my soul. This afternoon, I wrote my online tests and studied in preparation for tomorrow's exam. I put together all the questions that I had trouble with in my pre-exam tests and I've been practicing them.