Random Additions to my Workout Mix

I seem to have a way of stumbling across stuff that makes a lot of people around me cringe in terror. Anyway, I found some really good music to add to my list of songs for when I do my cardio, mostly in the form of a band called Oomph!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3lndvRhS_M (Labyrinth)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw63SXgm3_4 (Die letzte Streichholz)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLJhmnI5Ez0 (Sandmann)

Some of the songs were a little too scary/disturbing to post I have to admit but make for excellent music to keep a good rhythm in my running or rowing.

First Bow-Killed Hog

I took this hog with my Fred Bear Lights-Out compound yesterday (Saturday) morning at 0830 hrs. He was accompanied by a second hog with similar coloration but significantly larger. After hearing stories about arrows bouncing off the shield that forms in the shoulder area on hogs, I decided to shoot the little one. I was pretty sure he was 70ish lbs when I decided to shoot him. Sure enough, he came into place first and I released my shot. I had already gotten a little wired up when I spotted a red fox an hour earlier but this time when I saw moving objects, I was a lot better prepared. Anyway, I see my arrow strike right behind the leg about what looks like 1/3 way up. He predictably runs and his buddy runs the other way. I wait until I'm steady enough to come down the ladder before I start blood-trailing. I probably blood-trail about 40-50 yards before realizing two things. 1) It's dangerous blood-trailing a hog solo, especially when one of the hogs looks pretty darned big and has visible tusks. 2) The trail starts getting a little spotty and goes into some really nasty, dense stuff. I wait for R to come down to help me trail this guy. My arrow did completely pass through, by the way, and smelled vaguely of gut but I wasn't sure because the larger hog with tusks did have a bit of an odor to him. Anyway, we find my hog not too far from where I stopped. That's when I realize two things. 1) He's A LOT bigger than I thought and 2) I did ever so slightly brush his guts but most of the damage (we found out when we cleaned him) was in the liver and lungs. So yes, that's my first bow-killed hog and I made about as clean of a kill as I could. Another 1/2 inch forward would've completely avoided the guts, but now I know to aim a slight bit more forward on a hog! I'm sure glad I didn't shoot the big hog -- now that I know that this one I got was 100+ lbs, I think the other one must've been 200+ and a real nightmare to carry back, not to mention the possibility of arrows not penetrating through that shield and just wounding or making him mad!

Some Stress Relief

I don't know why I'm getting so much of a laugh out of this, but I certainly get a good kick out of this little instrumental here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssyUDs0mGFk. Be forewarned about something that happens around 1:45ish in the clip. There's just something about the German language that appeals to me on so many different levels, especially when stress levels start creeping up.

In other news, the radial basis artificial neural network is beating the living daylights out of the feed-forward back-propagation and Bayesian regularization flavors as far as carbon flux estimates go. I still think that the Bayesian regularization should be doing a lot better but I have a reason to suspect something funky in the normalization or the reverse-normalization algorithm. I think I prefer the committee tree still but I can see the power behind an artificial neural network.

Hunting Setup 2010

Shooting my Fred Bear Lights Out, set at about 48 lbs with 28" 2016 and 85 grain tips. This is my 3rd season with this bow and it's been a proven deer-killer, provided something legal actually comes within range.