Taste of Long Hammock

Here's a sample of the various denizens that attend the Long Hammock shoots. I'm hoping the other photographer has some better, more representative pictures!









Oh and here's a few gratuitous pictures I took to cheer myself up after realizing that my gut looks a lot like an ameboid beer keg.

Insomnia and Inspiration for the Swan-Song Sequel

What can I say? I sometimes get oddly fascinated with certain songs and they color my writing for a bit...

Song for interval t: Stripped by Depeche Mode, both the original and the Rammstein cover.

In other news, I have a nice grove of regression trees growing and pretty soon they'll form a nice random forest and maybe some committees. I might have to prune a few of them though because they're starting to look like ents.

Trimarian Olympics

There's some scattered pictures from the Trimarian Olympics.
From Aesa: http://pics.livejournal.com/jasminedragon/gallery/0001zb6k
From Wurmund: http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=424483532&albumId=1302253

From me (Guenhwyvar): http://s375.photobucket.com/albums/oo194/cylithera137/Trimarian%20Olympics%202009-June-20/

It was a hot, humid day so we all braised very nicely (or miserably). Under normal circumstances, I would've participated in other activities like the foot-races and tug-of-war. (Un)fortunately, I made my Will save and decided to stay in the comfort of the shade. Still though, the merciless FL sun combined with FL summer humidity buggered the life out of me. It was a real blast and something I'd happily do again. Next time, I'll hopefully have my own garb that's a wee bit more breathable than the nice Roman tunic that a friend of mine loaned me!

Why the Heck Not...

The latest build of all of the stories in the Dunheasa series, including Swan-Song. I've also added two short stories: Idiocy and Innocence, a story I had written back in 1997 about Killer Parakeet and an almost disastrous journey and cleaned up after years of gathering cobwebs, and The Sundering of the Tuatha, which is a bit of a legend which may or may not be true. I also have a bit of a revised bunch of fragments for the sequel to Swan-Song. The tentative title has gone from Shadowhawk to Morgenstern as things have unfolded bit by bit. As always, no telling which way this one's going to go although I can honestly say the (mis)adventures of T. Morgenstern, his companions, and the Shadowhawk may span a handful of stories.

900 Round

No pictures this time -- camera seems to have gone on strike on me. I shot a 526/900, which according to everyone else, is a pretty strong score for me shooting a longbow with hunting arrows. The Olympic barebow shooters were in the mid 600s and the highest score in the whole shoot was 870-something. My best round was at the 40 yards, where nearly all of my arrows were in the gold except for one flyer (the 1st arrow out of 6 of that round). That round, I had 55/60 and the arrows scored as follows: X, X, 10, 9, 9, and 7, where X is a 10 in the X. That's better than some of my compound (with full field setup) rounds at 40 yards! I think I also made some compound and Olympic shooters rethink their opinions about longbows in these types of shoots, at least one compound shooter in my group couldn't believe that I pulled that off. I had some trouble re-calibrating myself at 60 and 50 yards, leading me to a total of 5 non-scoring shots (out of 90), but once I figured out what my gap was, it was (usually) smooth sailing. All in all, it was a real blast!

Now if I can only convince my fellow traditional shooters to come to some of these shoots with me! At least I've got some friends shooting their Olympic recurves with nothing on them to keep me company!

Another Pic Rolls In

Still waiting for pictures from one of my fellow shooters but I received this pic earlier from the K family.

In other news, I finally was able to get some useful output from PnET-Day after wondering why the frequency MatLab kept giving me strange errors like undefined variables and boiler processes. And now to use my own data instead of the Harvard Experimental Forest site, which is predominantly hardwoods. Which model has the greatest predictive power? Tune in and find out if PnET, regression tree, or artificial neural network is the Most Powerful Predictor of NEE and evapotranspiration!

Moving Up the Ranks

As of last night, the average of my top 3 Royal Round scores is now above 80 -- shot an 86, 85, and 80 (all three being my top scores) so now I've moved up from Bowman (60-80 average if I recall correctly) to Master Bowman. I'm going to see if I can reach the coveted Grand Master Bowman, which is a 100 or above. Given the way a Royal Round is structured, that's a pretty tall order. There's 3 untimed rounds with 6 arrows and a maximum possible score of 30. The fourth round is a timed round and the most arrows I can shoot in 30 seconds is 9, which would make my theoretical maximum 45 points if I could even fit all those arrows in the bull's-eye. I'd have to average 25 points per round, which is a pretty tough goal with wood arrows but it's not out of the question. Who knows, maybe one day Trimaris will produce five or six Grand Master Bowmen!

I also got a personal high on my IKAC score -- 215. I've yet to beat Sir Erika's record high (250-something I think) but I think I might have a shot at it and maybe put a bit more of a dent on those guys from An Tir and Aethelmaerc. I also suspect that there's a core group of five or six of us from the An Croisaire barony will bump things up nicely for Trimaris...

More FAA State Championship Pictures

These are courtesy of one of my fellow shooters, there should be another few posts coming as pictures roll on in.

FAA State / NFAA Sectional Championship

As always, click on the title for the entire collection of photographs.
I shot at the FAA/NFAA State/Sectional Championship at Gator Bowmen this weekend and went uncontested in the adult female traditional division. My score was by far the lowest score out of anyone on the range and I had the slowest setup out of all the people there, but heck, that 571/1400 (224/560 field, 161/280 animal, 186/560 hunter) is going to be my tournament baseline. According to other shooters, it was a pretty strong score given that I (in their eyes) shot with every possible handicap: longbow, heavy hunting arrows, feathers in the rain, and shooting directly off the shelf. A lot of people did comment on me having a lot of courage for shooting what I shot and staying with the entire shoot. Overall it was a real blast and I'd happily shoot another field round with my longbow! Now if I can only get my other half to also appreciate these shoots...

Swan-Song FAQ 1/n et al

I really don't appreciate being woken up by the local yahoos making insane amounts of noise, not too different from what I sometimes hear the nights of football victories. I don't know what it is but some noises really, really, really make me wish I either could cast disintegration or lightning bolt or even magic missile, with disintegration being my first choice because of its more permanent effects. Heck, a sphere of annihilation wouldn't be too bad either, provided I have full control of the blasted thing. In any event, I'm up and am having trouble going back to sleep so time to do a few things.

First, click on the title or here for a really funny video that improved my mood a bit and reassured me that there's still some tasteful music out there. Don't know what it is, but rap, hip-hop, and a lot of jazz and lite rock make me think about the effects of Vogon potery on non-Vogons. Just to give you an idea of the video, it's a live performance of "Mein Teil" by Rammstein, which translates to "My Part" or "My Male Thingy".

On to the Swan-Song FAQ...

Q: Which stories should I have read before-hand, if any?
A: Definitely Family Secrets (in the Palindor section), but the other Dunheasa stories are also helpful, particularly The Lay of Imladrien and Tinuvion

Q: What the heck inspired this story?
A: Lots of things. The main sources though were D&D campaigns while I was still in SoCal and South Park. I also gave a bit of a nod to the Knights of Solamnia in the Dragonlance series as well as to a lot of hero-story stereotypes.

Q: Why so much flatulence in the story?
A: Because it's funny and amusing to write about.

Q: Will there be more Rusvalki and/or S'vartalf in future stories?
A: Nearly certain. They're too interesting for a one story appearance.

Q: When will the Crossroad get cleaned up?
A: I have no clue. It'll reveal itself when the time comes and no sooner.

I'll post a second one later on when I get more feedback and/or questions :) Hopefully now I can curl up happily and actually get some rest.

Draft 2 of Swan-Song

Click on the title of the post to see the second draft of Swan-Song. If that doesn't work, click here.

Basically I re-added a few parts I had omitted earlier to give a better sense of a couple of the characters as well as cleaning up some details. As always, the story will continue to evolve.

Gratuitous IKAC Pictures

These pictures are courtesy of Wurmund.
Wurmund and Sir Erika Bjornstottir on the line.

Aesa, Guenhwyvar (me), Jochi, and someone being obscured by Jochi (can't tell who) on the line. Aesa is the one closest to the photographer, Jochi is the furthest whole person visible, I'm in the middle.

Another shot of Aesa, Guenhwyvar, and Jochi.

Swan-Song, Draft 1/ n

In case you can't click the title, click here.

This is my absolute first public draft of Swan-Song. Warning: this story is NOT for the easily offended for the following reasons:

1) Gratuitous fart and toilet jokes
2) Potentially politically / blasphemously offensive material in general

Well reason #2 is pretty weak at best but with people being so easily offended these days, thought it would be a good idea to put a warning. With that, here's the absolute first draft. Revisions, as always, will be coming up as I clean up and develop the epic further. Enjoy!

I Dreamt of Durians

I don't know what got into me, but I was dreaming that I was holed up in my office and protecting territory and research from the hordes of football players, cheerleaders, and politicians. All I had were my Chek-Mate Crusader longbow, 8 arrows, all with Razorcap broadheads, and some durians. I scored perfect double-lung and/or heart shots with the arrows 8 broadheads but that wasn't enough to repel the entire horde of evil entities trying to stop me on my quest. So I started throwing durians at them and for every durian I threw, two more showed up magically. I took out a lot of enemies with well-thrown (or not-so-well-thrown) durians because they can and will inflict some pretty good damage. Plus they do have an area-of-effect to take their advantage and give me some advantage (or remove a disadvantage). Let's just say I'd rather use a nice, sharp broadhead with a reliable bow, much more accurate and safer for me, but I guess I better keep a durian or two around for self-defense, especially during football season when there's a lot of idiots around, stupidity is glorified beyond reason, and I'm not allowed to protect myself in other ways.

Swan-Song Quick Update

Cabin fever, a general sense of "I hope this is adequate for an exploratory analysis" aside, and wondering what I did to offend my insides aside, thought I'd just put a little blurb on Swan-Song

I've been on an unusual roll on Swan-Song, courtesy of the large number of mind-blowingly boring things I've had to sit through and frequent bouts of severe stomach woes. I'm expecting to post a first draft after I finish up my soil-landscape modeling final. Swan-Song is NOT for the easily offended. I will write more on it when I actually finish my first draft and post it.

Shadowhawk is currently on a bit of a hiatus because of some rather interesting things that came up in Swan-Song. More on it later too.

From the Cave

Still holed up in my lab and finally got the artificial neural network to run and give me useful results. It actually did pretty well -- used a feedforward back-propagation flavored one after getting frustrated at trying to code perceptrons. It's a very trivial case: trying to predict productivity class based on 6 different Landsat bands + NDVI + EVI + elevation + aspect + slope, but at least it works. The real fun? Trying to map out the classification tree results because apparently CART doesn't give me outputs to stick back into ArcGIS like my neural network code that I did in MatLab... although CART did give me a nice set of tables and trees to stick in my write-up.

Darn if I got a penny for every profanity at the !#$& football fanatics uttered (actually uttered or thought of) today, I could probably afford a new Hoyt Ultra-Elite with a full set of Shrewd stabilizers, a CBE sight mount, a decent magnifying sight, a nice set of strings & cables from Winner's Choice, a matching T.R.U. Ball Sabertooth 360 4-finger release, and a dozen Carbon Express Nano arrows built and fletched to my specs. I could even here all the hubbub all the way from Newins-Ziegler and it's a difficult sprint from here to the football stadium.

Ok, think my lab computer has unfrozen up so I can resume working instead of thinking up what the Nine Layers of Hell would look like in my world.

What... The... Frequency...?!

Who the heck is evil or idiotic enough to schedule some massive maniac get-together (read: American football game on campus with those glorified over-sized gully dwarves who get more scholarship funding than most grad students can even dream of) so close to finals?! I'm already ticked off as it is when I had to put up with people getting excited over divine zombies and coprophagous lagomorphs and hideous pastels last weekend, but why the hell with an INTRA-MURAL American football game?! Why would THAT attract O(50k) people on campus and disrupt people trying to get work done!? It's enough that I hate sticking around town over the weekend during deer hunting season, why also have a @#$%&@ spring game right before finals?! I guess that's the down-side of being on a big jock campus.

In the meanwhile... back to CART (which I can't get for my own computer and am stuck using a campus computer) now that I'm done expressing my absolute disgust at the horrific traffic here in town and in/around campus as well as the excessive noise.

Just A Bit More...

I'm really, really hoping my body will hold up long enough for me to at least do some serious butt-kicking on my final project for my soil-landscape modeling class. I've already lost a full day to what can best be described as digestive distress from hell. Without going into gratuitous details, it involved a high fever and way too much time worshiping the porcelain god... so no work got done. I'm still not at full juice but I'm determined to do the best I can and hopefully finish the class with a solid, un-contestable A in the class as well as set myself up for a productive summer. This project is pretty much a mini prototype of what I will be doing summer, so I really want to do the best I can. I know I'm only looking at a very trivial case by using only Landsat data and some forest inventory data, but considering I'm also learning how to use and interpret classification & regression tree models and comparing it to an artificial neural network... yeah. I did shock my adviser a bit because while I was describing my term project, he thought I was talking about my dissertation research so I had to do a bit of a clarification with a bit of "this is for the next week" and "THIS is for my dissertation".

In any event... let's just hope I survive this next week... and that my models will actually run. At least the classification tree is kinda working and I got something that looks remotely reasonable. Wish me luck getting MatLab to read in the data sets so I can run the artificial neural network!

Think Dirt-y and Gassy Thoughts

The title about sums up this stage of my research as well as the state of my stomach (well, the gassy part). I'm currently grounded at home with a very bad case of the stomach flu (and wanted to be considerate of my colleagues, nobody enjoys a constant flux of H2S or repeated 5 meter dashes). I wanted to use the word "Soil" but Soil-y thoughts didn't sound as amusing to me. I survived my soil-landscape modeling midterm and got a pretty good score. Now it's time for me to do the real fun part of the class: the quantitative analysis exercise, which is the final for the class. So I did a literature review on eddy covariance tower footprints so that made me think a lot of gassy thoughts. I might be actually doing this over the summer along with some evapotranspiration modeling on top of NEE (net ecosystem exchange).

Anyway, why the dirty thoughts? Because I realized that I only have 3 eddy tower sites in north-central FL... but I have tons and tons of soil data as well as forest growth increment data. Also, NEE is *usually* closely correlated with NPP because NEE is the CO2 in/out of the ecosystem, while NPP (net primary productivity) is the carbon lost/gained by the primary producers (ie, plants)... which are pretty close even if NEE is gas only and NPP deals with solid stuff. So yeah now I'm thinking for this little final for the soil-landscape modeling (and my summer's work on top of footprint modeling and ET), I'll try to simulate NPP over a larger scale. There are a lot models out there for estimating NPP from growth increment data because foresters are really interested in how much wood you can get from a given stand so there's tons of allometric equations out there. My brain is churning and turning now!

SEEC 2009 et al

First... I will be presenting my poster at SEEC 2009 so hopefully I remember to take the camera (and batteries) with me to get a few pictures. Wish me luck in not causing too many aneurysms as I talk about artificial neural networks, net ecosystem exchange, and up-scaling! Admittedly I would rather be Guenhwyvar of An Crosaire, master archer (in my imagination at least), shooting IKACS, Royal Rounds, and 3D at the Trimaris coronation event tomorrow, but sometimes, I just gotta suck it up and stuff myself into a suit. Speaking of which, I'm hoping I haven't blobbed out too much from lack of exercise and too much studying or I'm gonna either look like an overstuffed sausage or just go in my natural plumage.

Second... Thought I'd share links to two blogs I get a bit of a kick out of reading. The first is Welcome to the Genetic Opera and the second is Slayer of Altoids

Okie off I go to finish up laundry -- seems like the only time I can do laundry without having to resort to a slug-fest (or defenstration) is weekday mornings or having to bite my tongue until it bleeds (to avoid excessive profanity at the @!#&$% who don't understand basic punctuality or the @#$%& who pollutes the air with perfume). Then it's an afternoon in tree physiology and most likely seminar unless fortune is in my favor and it's fisheries seminar instead of a carbon seminar. The seminars towards the end of the semester looked rather... wie Scheisse... too much emphasis on social, not enough emphasis on biophysical or simulations... and often a waste of perfectly good time to either be doing real work or working out.

Teaser

For a bit of a preview of what's brewing with Shadowhawk, click on the title. No guarantees on whether or not it makes it to the final product, but seeing that it'll be a LONG time before I'll have Shadowhawk or Swan-Song out, thought I'd just put a sample out. I may also put up another sample of Swan-Song up if the mood strikes.

Cleaning Out the Camera 2/n

Found some random pictures of the Bowtech Equalizer on my camera. The black/silver release hanging on the string loop is a TRU-Ball Sabertooth-4 (not to be mistaken for my Scott Sabertooth caliper release). I think I do get better groups with the Sabertooth-4 or the TRU-Ball Sweet Spot-4 than with the Carter Evolution, even if I feel safest shooting the Evolution as far as back-tension releases go.

TBoF Spring 2009

As always, click on the title or here to get the full suite of pictures.









I had taken a tree physiology midterm on Friday afternoon and wasn't exactly thrilled about biking home in the unusually bad Friday afternoon traffic. Thank goodness for Rammstein for providing me with some catharsis or Frontier Justice would've been served all around, particularly to the inconsiderate buses who like to block the driveway to my apartment just about every freaking time as well as to the expletives deleted who don't understand that a yell of "Coming through!" means "Get the expletive deleted out of the way!" and that the appropriate response to an angry biker is NOT to expletive deleted plug up the bike path with their expletive deleted stroller with some babies in it when the road has already been blocked by a porto-potty truck and a expletive deleted short bus.

I think I need to work out a lot more again -- my gut's expanding again. If things get bad enough, I might have to start blowing off readings to keep myself from turning back into Blobulous. My doctor already told me that it's a *bad* idea for me to cut my calories any further so I need to cut somewhere to provide myself with more active time. Reading while doing cardio doesn't work for me because for me to stay at a pace that actually does anything, I get more than a bit motion-sick attempting to read. Back to working out now that I've posted and trying to convince myself that a literature review won't kill me even if it isn't helping my DGH (diameter at gut height).

Borderline road rage from the bike ride home and an allergic reaction to something yesterday, the weekend was excellent. I shot an insanely good first round -- 175/200, including 10 total bonus points from taking the master's stake and no misses at all. My second round wasn't so strong, mostly because the "on/off" switch on my brain accidentally flipped and I started to think a bit too hard about my shots, but I ended that round with an ok 130/200. I came out of the championship round with a 145/200, completing the shoot with a 450/200 and taking third place. It was a really, really close squeak for me with that third place but I think I had a couple of really lucky shots that gave me the edge. I did surprisingly well on the championship round considering that I also managed to miss two targets from the master's stake, the same two I nailed perfectly about 24 hours before. I had to admit, the sudden powerful grumbling in my stomach and overwhelming bladder fullness about 7 or 8 (out of 20 targets)! Finally target 11 or so arrived and I was able to take care of business. Thank goodness for tactical range placement! (Feel free to insert appropriate Freudian joke here... although given what was going on in my guts, I don't think even a guy would've really had an advantage).

I also tried some of the novelty shoots, including a long distance shoot. I actually did pretty well on the long distance shoot. I think it was about 70 yards for the sabertooth tiger, maybe 40-45ish yards for the cougar on the PVC pipe. I used the Four Winds Phoenix for this shoot because the long-distance shoot was situated such that the cougar on the pipe about 10 yards up would be in the way of trajectory of my Crusader... plus I feel better about using a much higher-performance bow for unknown but long distances. I was about 5" from the winning shot on the sabertooth tiger and had one of the best shots on the cougar on the pipe. So yeah, I felt really good!

I also had the opportunity to test-shoot some River's Edge Recurve bows. They do have longbows as well so they actually go under the name RER these days. I tried their one-piece and take-down longbow and decided that I like my bows much better even if they do make a really nice high-performance bow that also draws smoothly. I did like this one take-down longbow they had -- very low poundage for me (45 or 46 lbs @ 28") but it took a pretty stiff shaft and had good mass weight in the riser. Only problem was it had this hideous glossy finish that just about gave me a seizure. I think I'll stay with my Four Winds Phoenix and my Chek-Mate Crusader, thank you. They serve me perfectly well!

Sample Chapter from Swan-Song: The Parakeet Returns

While I'm dealing with a bit of indigestion brought on from eating a bit too fast, thought I'd share a small sample chapter from the project I have tentatively titled Swan-Song. I don't know if this piece will make it into the "final" product(s). To be honest, I'm not certain which of the projects will make it out first -- Swan-Song or Shadowhawk. In any event, I think this piece will give a combination of a sense of the flavor of the upcoming story without giving too much else away. There may be more tid-bits coming up depending on my mood.

In other news, my brain is thoroughly cooked from too much ArcGIS, R, SPSS, interpreting everything that gets spit out, and possibly from listening to too much Rammstein (academic stress indicator... if stress levels reach epic proportions, that's when my tastes shift towards O-Zone and Arsenium). I can't wait for my stomach to quiet down enough for me to pump some good iron.

First Thing I Do After Recovering From a Cold

I spent nearly all of last week with a monster cold and was in desperate need of some fresh air and adventure. We went up to Callahan, about a 1.5 hour drive away, where a friend invited us to help him take some hogs off his hunting lease. As you can see below, we had success. I was hoping to take something with a bow, but I ended up using my .243 to harvest a fine little boar-hog. These guys were about 50-60 lbs and fairly young. I gotta admit, hogs are A LOT harder to shoot because they move around like Pac-Man while deer tend to stay still for a long time! No way I'm going to take a hog with a back-tension release on my compound! It was really neat going into a pine plantation and realizing that I still remembered the materials from the forest mensuration class I TA'ed last year.

Inspiration Comes From Weird Sources...

Right now I'm at home with what some of the Medieval folks would call "the fluxes" and I've spent most of this week down with the cold from hell, courtesy of some of my colleagues who I won't name. In any event, being feverish and congested and now dealing with post-cold digestive fluxes has given me strange bits of inspiration. I blame it on how being sick seems to shift my musical preferences a bit and I think the Test of High Academics did shift me a bit too. To this day, I still can't listen to Erasure without cringing.

Just to give you a sample of what's inspiring me these days, particularly with respect to the academics & sorcery story (The Shadowhawk), here's a few video clips that are giving me new ideas. I'll let you come to whatever conclusions you want to but suffice to say, I'm steering a bit away from the usual stuff that's inspired my writing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pkLDEEs20U (Ohne Dich: "Without You")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXsKWi9FIjY (Du Riechst So Gut: "You Smell So Good")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW03c4Vmr0k (Bueck Dich: "Bend Over" -- watch out, things get really amusing about 3 minutes in, not for the easily offended)

Brief Blip

Not much has been going on besides the usual stuff with school and trying to stay at least halfway fit. I'm still working on the sequel(s) to The Lay of Imladrien and Tinuvion with limited progress thanks to my soil-landscape modeling class.

As of now, on the first idea, tentatively titled Swan-Song, I'm at a standstill. Ilithara has just been seriously wounded by a spy for the Clawed Fury after wandering around where she wasn't supposed to. Tindariel and her friends, including Killer Parakeet, are ready to administer Frontier Justice to the Clawed Fury for all she's done in the last several years.

The second idea, tentatively titled The Shadowhawk, is also at a bit of a halt. I'm pretty much standing alongside five socially inept university students, ranging in age from twelve to twenty seven, and all happen to be taking an archery class that focuses on the compound. Some of these students have already been visited in their dreams by a mysterious entity known only as the Shadowhawk, particularly the twelve year old, whose ancestry traces back to her.

Who knows where the next story will go...

Hoggetowne Faire 2009

As always, click on the title for the full suite of pictures. My camera was acting up a fair bit so I didn't do my usual photography. The other photographer in our group managed to sit on his camera and not take very many pictures either. In any event, the Hoggetowne Medieval Faire was a real blast despite the cold.