News Bite

Small update here -- I will be tinkering with my website on and off a bit, so things may be moving around. In the workings are:

-- A more thoroughly cleaned-up version of Journey to Dunheasa and Telcontar Restored
-- A separate section for the Geeksters series
-- Hopefully also a cleaned-up version of "Whispers From Afar"
-- (VERY much in the semi-distance future) A sequel to Telcontar... Who knows what THAT will involved given my most recent misadventures =)

Ear Worms

So... I've been woken up by a random loud noise (fire truck? ambulance? some other noisy siren-ed vehicle?) and I can't quite go back to sleep. There's a song that's severely stuck in my head for whatever reason... or at least a piece of a song. The sucky part: it's in a language that I can fake some knowledge of! Even worse: It's the kind of song that usually makes me cringe but I seem to have become desensitized to recently. I'll let you try to guess what the language is.

Here's the part that's stuck in my little brain:

Oriude ai fi, eu te voi gasi
Oriunde tu ai fi, eu te voi iubi
Oriunde-n noapte sau zi te voi gasi
In sinea mea cand voi iubi
Dulcea mea, amara mea...te voi gasi

Te voi iubi in noapte, sub cerul plin de stele
Ca-n visuile mele, cand te voi gasi
Te voi strange-n brate, ca-n ultima noapte
Mereu voi fi aproape, cand te voi...gasi...

Telcontar Restored Revision

I've just posted the second draft of Telcontar Restored. Read and enjoy!

November Update

It's been a while since I've last posted -- life has been pretty exciting ever since I started training heavily in compound bow and trying to get all my term projects nailed down. My most recent archery accomplishment was on Tuesday morning where I nailed all 4 arrows in the X-ring (arrow only needs to be tangent to the line) from 15 yards. I never got a perfect 20 with 4 X's -- I've had 20s with 1-2 X's, but never 4! I was extremely excited, especially considering I was having some trouble calibrating my sight earlier and my arrows are both over-weight and over-spined for me! The only complaint was that I was all by myself when it happened, but heck, at least I had my camera with me! I can only imagine what I can do with my Equalizer once I hit about 47-50 lbs draw weight, get properly spined arrows for it, and keep practicing... ;)

Besides shooting, I've been sneaking in some time writing. Telcontar is still being cleaned up after my initial posting but once I get to a new stopping point, I'll post an updated version. The third part is also in progress. I have no title as of yet, but let's just say it may be a very long time before Part 3 shows up because I've got so much on my plate with my research, proposals, and trying to survive classes along with my need to be outdoors.

Geeks at Last!

So I was hanging around with my traditional archery group and as it grew darker, one of my fellow archers reached into the back of his truck and pulled out a 6 D battery MagLite. He proudly declared "And this is my +10 wand of arrow finding." Next thing I knew, another fellow archer and I joined in about our Dungeons and Dragons adventures. Score! I finally found people who appreciate and still play Dungeons and Dragons! I also found out some other really cool stuff about my traditional shooting group:

-- Our fearless leader may be on the verge of discovering a new sea-lion virus. She was quite excited yesterday as she talked about the gels and other biochemical stuff that people do to identify viruses and their proteins. I'm definitely in good company!
-- Another archer showed quite a bit of enthusiasm about doing research on vertebrates with a focus on large mammals.
-- At least 1-2 other people in the gang work as biochemistry technicians of some sort.
-- Lots of references to Monty Python and Tolkien in the group.

I'm even more pumped up about this group than before now that I know that not only do we love traditional archery and nature, but also we're a really geeky bunch! I don't think I've seen a group of people this geeky since Caltech! People at school wonder why I'd rather hang out with archers of any sort, both traditional and compound. They're a whole lot more colorful and fun than the people who'd rather be drinking at a bar or sitting at some over-intellectual film without any combat scenes or the strange critters who think life revolves around TV!

As for the pictures, the arrows were shot from 30 yards on the Equalizer and the outlier was the result of me punching the trigger when I felt a mosquito trying to dig a well on the one spot I missed with the insect repellent. All in all, I scored 239/280 while shooting from the Hunter posts and 220/280 on the Field posts this morning. I think I did fairly well -- now that I've established a baseline, I'd like to see if I can break 250/280 consistently in those before the end of the semester =)

Field Training

There's few things as thrilling as doing archery. I got a major head-rush today when my coach and I went out to the range to do a practice hunter round (4 arrows from marked posts at various distances at 14 targets). Total number points possible: 280 with 5 for the inner-most circle, 4 for the next circle, and 3 for the outermost ring. I pulled a 218/280, which is pretty darned good for someone who's got very little experience with a compound, tends to snap-shoot, is vulnerable to target panic, and forgets that a compound isn't a longbow... and apparently good for someone with a fair amount of experience too! I've had a few critters tell me that I've got the makings of a championship archer... but I'm still a bit skeptical myself about this! Yes, a really great dial-up sight with a magnifier makes it a lot easier aim as well as the let-off on my bow and the high speed (223 feet per second!), but it still takes a lot of work, as I'm very quickly learning. I still have to actually keep my form up, and trust me, a 5 lb set-up is harder to hold up and making sure I have a clean release is a lot tougher than just finger shooting on my recurve.

Above are pictures from the practice range to make sure we're sighted in. I'm taking shots at 60 yards (doable but difficult shot for my Chek-Mate and almost impossible on the Little Hawk) and scoring on each shot. My arrows are the ones with the white and yellow fletch and my coach is shooting black and orange fletch. It's still quite mind-boggling to see what I can do with a bit of training and focus... and some impressive equipment to top it off!

Telcontar, Absolute First Draft

I have finally finished my absolute first non-embarassing draft of Telcontar Restored. There will be many more revisions, as always. This one was definitely a tough one to work on, but overall, I'm pleased with the results, aside from the numerous loose ends from something of this magnitude that always come up. I do have the next story starting to form, which I'm not sure how long it'll take to write. I really feel a strong connection to some of my characters in Telcontar, particularly the Geeksters (Vincent and Ivan) and Tarathorn. And no, there's no Killer Parakeet in this one, although he does get mentioned here and there.

Disclaimer about Telcontar: There may be some stark resemblance to real people that aren't coincidental. This is only in the case of the Caltech professors. The rest of the characters may have bits and pieces of quirks taken from other critters that I thought would be fun to incorporate. This is especially true for the Geeksters, who are inspired from my favorite bands and various people I've hung out with over the years.

A hearty thank-you to everyone who somehow contributed to this story from all the (mis)adventures we've shared, whether in person or from stories and tall-tales. Without all the fascinating and weird critters I've lived/live around or read/heard about, fun stories like Telcontar and Dunheasa would not be possible!

Reminder to self: keeping the same CD on repeat isn't always the brightest of ideas! I now have several Erasure songs stuck in my head!

And now, I've got to make my little journey to the second star to the right and go straight on 'til morning!

Recurring Theme...

I should've learned by now that more than 1-2 cans of Red Bull in a day does weird things to me, but every now and then, I get the urge to see what happens again. This time, I stopped at 3 and I've got insomnia that not even reading Supreme Court opinions could relieve... and my brain feels like it's trying to race with light in a vacuum.

The more I think about my research and all the directions it might go since Nature doesn't always cooperate, the more I realize this is really a life-long adventure and this thing called a PhD is just a brief chapter. And there's just so many ecosystems I want to learn more about -- boreal forests, tundra, steppe, pretty much everything besides urban!

Random picture of the day... Isn't it a beauty? :)

Brain Fluxes

In theory, I should be cranking out more materials for my PhD research proposal and/or cranking out more R code to run split-plot ANOVAs, both balanced and un-balanced designs. In practice, I'm letting a bit of pressure out of my brain so my skull doesn't explode. But on my mind: carbon and water fluxes.

The more I read up on various models for both evapotranspiration and carbon flux, the more I realize that there's a lot of stuff we don't know! The below-ground carbon pool, for example, is a huge mystery that everyone's still trying to figure out. For me, the real fun is in trying to bridge the various scales from individual tree/shrub to the regional (on the order of many square kilometers) and how to get a slick, parsimonious model that I can use across different pine forests. I wasn't too shocked when I found out that there's people all over the place doing what I want to do on different ecosystems, but it is a bit of a kick to the ego knowing that my brain actually falls within 2 or 3 standard deviations in some things!

Not too many people seem to be interested in carbon flux and evapotranspiration simultaneously from what I've seen in the literature, but from what I know, those two are pretty closely linked because of all the plant-soil-atmospheric-who knows what else interactions going on too. Doing a coupled ET-CO2 flux model is probably going to be tedious work because of all the unknowns and all, but I think that's somewhere I might be able to put in my little contributions... at least I hope so. And then there's all these cool new algorithms with artificial neural networks (which I'm still trying to wrap my brain around).

And then as if thoughts of coupled CO2-ET models with hyperspectral remote sensing and integrating plant phenology, LiDAR, and stable isotope analyses weren't enough, my brain's also swimming in daydreams of being one with the ecosystems I intend to study... and not just as a system of some sort, but with the plants, soil, and animals. Admittedly some of the daydreams also involve joining the ranks of various predators and hunting various critters, particularly invasives and anything that needs some help in population control. And then my brain is also tinkering with the idea of competing at some of the larger archery competitions and at least holding my own in them. Let's just hope that I can keep the Ranger in check long enough to make sure I can do what I set out to do!

Part 3... and then some!

As I clean up the second installment of what I've tentatively called the Telcontar series, I'm already starting to think of some stuff for a third installment of the story because I somehow created so many additional opportunities to explore not only the young heroes, but also the worlds they explore. I can't promise any time-frames to post Telcontar Restored because my #1 priority is school and my creative abilities do fluctuate fairly randomly even if there is a fairly strong correlation between creativity and stress levels. I also have a lot of catch-up time for honing in on my outdoors and shooting skills, especially now that I'm starting to integrate techniques from shooting compound into my instinctive traditional shooting. It's really weird how I have a hard time holding my shot on my trusty recurve after taking several shots on my compound, but at the same time, I'm getting to be a bit of a better snap-shooter because of it. I still like to hold my shots on a traditional bow for a count of 3-5, depending on the distance, but being able to shoot as soon as I hit my anchor and still maintain both my form and aim is a very useful skill too, especially if I ever have to do timed competitions or hunt something besides foam and plastic.

Oh and there's a link to an extremely cute video I found on YouTube when I had to take a breather from working on my prospectus and/or homework (especially ecological statistics and plant ecophysiology). There's just something oddly appealing about Erasure videos inspired by fairy tales, mythology, and/or random children's stories.

And now, time for me to continue working on my plans to conquer the world... er... curl up so I can wake up for my early morning experimental design class and endure a long day of seminars.

Effects of Stress...

List of severe stress symptoms that can be cured either with a good pretend-hunt or other solitary outdoor activity away from the general populace... or temporarily relieved with tasteless music videos, excessive use of computer games, destructive hobbies, and/or exercising to severe injury:
- Uncontrolled salivation at inappropriate things
- Visions of bulls-eyes on particularly annoying people like those annoying solicitors who don't understand the concept of "I'm running late to class/meeting/seminar" or those inconsiderate people who wear excessive product in poorly ventilated places... most of the bulls-eyes seem to be centered around lung/heart shots.
- Excessive shedding
- Cut-up tongue from refraining from swearing at the *.* person who almost runs me over when I have right-of-way or the annoying solicitor trying to recruit me into
- Sudden and increased cravings for medium-rare meat on the bone
- Loss of overall competetive edge in class
- General inability to sit still without having to stretch or walk

And now time to try to ignore the effecs of stress long enough to focus on making sure the curve is nice and broken in my favor and learning the material inside-out...

Odds and Ends

Just a few little thingies to post because I feel like it and am trying to let my brain re-set enough to continue on a presentation...

Telcontar: I've finished the first private draft, which means it's going to be getting worked on a whole lot more before I let ANYONE else look at it. All I can say about this one without giving too much away at this point is that the violence content is unusually low. I don't know how long this one will be given that I'm trying to also wrap up a manuscript, get my research proposal written, and generally stay nice and competetive academically. Oh and make sure that I don't accidentally engulf my bike seat with my butt.

FGSO Treasurer

I got appointed as the treasurer of the forestry graduate student organization in a very interesting race against 2 other candidates. Hey, free food is a VERY strong motivator to get things done... well, and the opportunity to check out other research that's going on in the department that I otherwise wouldn't hear about. Downside? The president seems to really love going to bars and other places where it gets a bit too stuffy for someone who'd rather be outdoors.

Power Wheels?
Well, I had the courage to bike to the local pro-shop to do my last round of test-shooting. Right now, I'm down to 3 models that really fit me really well, although none of them come close to beating out my trusty Chek-Mate recurve. The 3 finalists in my quest for a good compound bow are:

#1 -- Fred Bear Odyssey. Pros: Price (<$300 for a fully set-up kit), minimal hand-shock, can be easily adjusted without a bow-press, smooth draw, extremely comfortable grip, weighs less than 3.5 lbs completely set up, fits in on the back of my bike safely, zero finger-pinch, comes almost-ready-to-shoot, wide draw weight range (35-50 lbs). Cons: Slow compared to several of the other models, needs some work with timing and tuning, a bit unstable, a bit of that "children's bow" stigma, 2 year full warranty.

#2 -- Browning Micro-Adrenaline. Pros: Price (<$300 for a fully set-up kit), low hand-shock, doesn't need a bowpress, smoothest draw of the top 3, reasonably fast, weighs less than 3.5 lbs completely set up, stable, fits safely on bike, comes almost-ready-to-shoot, easy-to-change limbs. Cons: Some finger pinch, handle felt a bit small, smaller weight range (40-50 lbs), a bit noisy, minor tuning/timing issues, a bit of that "children's bow" stigma, 5 year full warranty

#3 -- Bowtech Equalizer. Pros: Extremely fast, very stable, flattest trajectory, adjustable let-off, very quiet, very stable, most forgiving, fewest worries about timing issues in the top 3, fits safely on a bike, very little hand-shock, reasonable weight (4 lbs with everything), life-time full warranty. Cons: Price ($650 by itself), substantial finger pinch, smaller weight range (40-50 lbs), needs modules and bowpress to adjust.

The winner? Who knows. All I know right now is that there's muscles in my back and chest that I didn't realize I had.

Great Laughs

This entry is linked to a website I'm really enjoying lately. It's still a poor substitute for roaming around in the wilds with my trusty little Chek-Mate, but at least it's keeping me from doing too much damage to my walls.

I usually hate rap and hip-hop, but MrSafety Professional Idiot is a lot more palatable than most of the other stuff I get exposed to. His songs and stunts defy description -- you've just got to watch it to see why I enjoy his videos so much. I think the more tasteless and annoying the music is, the more likely I am to gravitate towards it. Consider... my favorite bands are Depeche Mode, Moenia, Erasure, O-Zone, and ABBA ... and I have a real weakness for bagpipes. I also have a particular fondness for Beavis & Butthead and South Park along with the adventure epics involving archery, nature, swords, and sorcery.

And what's wrong with appreciating toilet humor, a good hunting story, or even a good technical discussion? For some reason, there's some kind of really annoying social stigma against someone who appreciates the crude and violent... at least if you're female and Asian. And why is there so much social stigma about necessary digestive functions?

Dental Floss and Super-Glue

I just felt like posting something about some of the greatest inventions: dental floss and super-glue.

Dental floss, besides keeping my teeth in pretty decent shape (but alas, it didn't save me from the cosmetic torture of braces), has a wide array of other uses. I've used dental floss to hold my glasses together long enough for me to get a set of screws for them. It's served as a fairly reliable emergency nocking-point on my bowstring when my brass nocking-point fell off. It's also done a very good job of holding my cat-whisker silencers in place, in fact, it's done a better job than the strand of Dynaflight 97 or B-50 Dacron recommended by most other archers. I've even used dental floss to secure my writing instruments to me and to even measure my draw length when I didn't have a meter stick or tape measure on me at that moment. Dental floss is also great for improvised tea bags when I have loose leaf tea and bags but no way to secure the bags to keep all the leaves from coming out.

And then there's super-glue. Besides the obvious thing of sticking things together, it also serves as a very nice sealant. On a few occasions, I've used super-glue to fill in gaps between various parts of my arrows to keep things secure. I've yet to have any fletching fall off my arrows (scraped off is a whole different boat) and I've broken many nocks but never had one fall off an arrow where I sealed that gap between the shaft and the nock. Most of the nocks I've lost were on my Carbon Express arrows (which I leave un-glued at the nocks so I can fine-tune the arrow and experiment with the orientation of the fletching) or not secured with a nice, thin film of super-glue in that little gap.

Where would the world be without dental floss and super-glue?

I Think I See a Pattern...

Seminar today went well. Informal but it was a real blast being able to talk for almost an hour about evapotranspiration modelling and the use of the FAO-56 Penman-Monteith. I think I could get used to doing longer performances, except I'm not going to drink an espresso right before!

Compound Bow Names

I'm starting to notice some patterns in how compound bow models get named or categorized... some of which include:

1) If it's an insanely fast bow that's marketed as "the fastest on the market", it has the word "Black" in it. Case in point being Mathews' Black Max, Bowtech's Black Knight (no longer in production), and APA Innovation's Black Mamba Extreme. The word "Extreme" and the letter "X" also show up a lot.

2) If it's for draws under about 26" or 27", there's 4 terms that seem to get used a lot... along with a humorous description (to be taken with a few salt shakers of salt) of what they really mean:
a) Micro-bow: the generic term for a bow designed for shorter draw lengths, typically reserved for (b) or (c). For some reason, a lot of guys I know cringe at the thought of even handling a "micro-bow". I don't like this term either... it's annoying enough having short arms and small hands!
b) Youth bow: "Small and usually cute compound bow for a growing kid and usually has the word `Lite' or `Micro' in it (eg. Rapture Lite or Micro-Adrenaline)" or a fairly "neutral"-sounding name like Odyssey or Badge... typically shot by dabblers and kids and they actually tend to be decent bows in terms of neat features like not requiring a bow-press or not having a specific draw length... also tend to be fairly easy to adjust.
c) Ladies' bow: "Small, usually gaudy, compound bow that usually doesn't go past 50 lbs draw weight and doesn't hunt very well but usually makes for a good target bow". These tend to have either girly names (eg. Tigress or Banshee) or annoying names (eg. Selena... sounds too much like some talentless celebrity with the wits of a fermented radish).
d) Short-draw bow: "Smaller high-performance compound bow that guys don't want to be referred to as any of the above in fear of looking wimpy... and can go to 60 or 70 lbs" Names on these bows go all over the place -- anything from APA Innovation's Suphan to BowTech's Equalizer, but they tend to err on something that still sounds as tough as their longer-draw cohorts.

3) The more appealing-looking models tend to be named after predators, especially great cats (eg., Cougar, Jaguar, Panther), poisonous snakes (Viper, Mamba, Cobra), some word that's connected to killing (Slayer, Fatal Impact, Terminator), or rough weather conditions (Typhoon, Thunder, Storm).

4) Less appealing bows tend to be named after non-predatory animals (eg. Mustang, Caribou) or something that sounds like it could come straight from Star Trek (eg., RinTec, ProTec, Trykon).

I know being prejudiced by a model (or even a company's) name is not the best of things, but there are just some names I just wouldn't want to be associated with. I don't know if it's a bias towards traditional bows anyway, but I do like the traditional bow names a lot more -- typically revolving around nature instead of fads. So far, here's a list of some things I'm observing all across the board... without any regard for what the actual bow (traditional or compound) really looks or feels like.

Best Model Names: Falcon, Desert Fox, Vazul
Worst Model Names: Non-Typical, Prestige
Most Common Words: Hunter, Cobra, Viper, Mamba, Hawk, Eagle, Wolf, Ranger
Most Unusual Names: Non-Typical, King's Pawn, Stick

Pieces of a TIN Model

Just feeling like scribbling a few random things down in one long post instead of several short bursts. I'm definitely caught in a nice Triangular Irregular Network full of stochastic processes... but as one of my favorite characters once said, "To live is an awfully big adventure".

Relaxation

Besides shooting them, I also really enjoy making arrows. There's just something about turning shafts of wood, glue, feathers, and pieces of plastic and metal into something powerful, beautiful, and ultimately, deadly, in the right hands. I'm split between wood and carbon -- I enjoy the wood arrows because there's a lot more I can do with them and there's a sense of "bonding" with the arrows that doesn't involving glue, but I also enjoy the carbon arrows bebcause they're almost indestructible and are a lot more precise. I can't wait to start my next batch of wooden arrows, which will be cedar (like ones I've made before) but also stained, sealed, and spined to the proper stiffness to turn them into real killers.

Frodo Baggins Syndrome

So I was at an ecology group meeting today and while I was scouting out for potential brains to start picking at, I noticed that everyone was signing up for a time to do some kind of presenation. Only thing was, nobody wanted to present next week, not even the really outgoing young professor from the wildlife department. After the paper went around for a while, the professors in charge were looking for someone to present and I had asked one of them about something else. I don't know what hit me next, but I suddenly said "I'll take it!" I felt like I was at the Council of Elrond and I had just played the role of Frodo Baggins. And now I'm going to have to cough up a presentation... and a manuscript!

More Kills!

I have now added another lizard to my kills -- they need to really stop taking naps between the cardboard target face and the foam or cardboard backing. I also have 2 more giant roach-like bugs in my list of kills. One of them was actually something I aimed at from 10 meters, but the other also made the mistake of hiding in that little space and I managed to nail it from about 25 meters back. As usual, it was with my Chek-Mate recurve, which is getting easier to get accurate shots with now even though my practice time has been severely cut. I've been limiting myself to the practice range because I don't have as much time to dedicate to my shooting, so I've only been doing accuracy and precision drills. The precision drills are a lot easier for me, but in a real tournament or hunting situation, I also need accuracy at a wide range of distances. Coming to think of it, I really feel like shooting!

Nightmare From Hell

In an attempt to be fully alert in my classes (darned early mornings combined with afternoon seminars... and taking the bus to save on ulcers and funding), I tried to go to sleep at a dismally early 21.00 hrs so I can get up early enough. Only problem is I had a serious nightmare, one bad enough where I'm still severely rattled and no amount of "quick laughter" or weight-lifting or shooting at the 3-D target I swiped can relieve so far.

Without going into gratuitous details, let's just say the nightmare involved being forced to live a lifestyle completely incompatible with someone who's having daydreams of being a leader in plant ecophysiology, an archer (both as a hunter and a tournament archer), and generally being able to enjoy solitude in the natural world without any cumbersome entities. It was about par with removing the flight feathers from an eagle and then stuffing it into a parakeet cage and putting the cage in a room full of malicious toddlers and infants and being forced to watch soap operas.

Besides hastily scribbling thoughts here I've also been watching (out from the corner of my eyes) some rather amusing music clips... in a strange way, some of them are actually soothing even if they are very up-beat. I don't know what it is, but just as a sample, I've put a link to one of these clips... Youtube is a great way to lose sleep... or to calm down after a REALLY bad nightmare. I'm not sure what it is... I'm just glad that it's calming me down enough to attempt to sleep.

Week 1 in the Forestry Department...

For a first week of school, things went pretty darned smoothly. I only got lost once in the forestry/wildlife building and only once in the monster buildings collectively called "McCarty Hall". I like all 3 of my classes, especially my botany class, which focuses on plant ecophysiology. Of course, I am a plant ecophysiologist with a particular liking for forests and ecosystem processes.

The only down-side to the week? The beginnings of a cold that's made me decide to stay home tonight instead of checking out the athletic facilities ... and a capoiera/breakdance group on campus that meets on Friday nights. I think I picked up the bug from one of my office-mates, a fellow ecologist who's also based in the forestry department who's been sick all week. Given the nature of the bug, I think I'm also going to be stuck at home this weekend, which is going to really hurt because I haven't gone shooting for almost 3 days... and not shooting for more than a few days has been known to have strange effects on me. Maybe I should swipe that discarded 3-D target or invest in one of those cheap bag targets, mount it on a chair, and start shooting at that when I can't go to the range for whatever reason.

I can't wait to start on a project. Right now I've got lots of ideas, mostly along the line of multi-scale studies on different types of ecosystems. Based on talking to some of the professors, I'm starting to think about looking at the different types of coniferous forests ranging from the predominantly longleaf/slash pines in Florida to the boreal forests out in Alaska and trying to develop a mechanistic model of evapotranspiration and carbon fluxes. I think I even have some strong candidates for my PhD committee... including a professor I mistook for a fellow grad student. Put it this way... a rugby player who runs the flux towers that the forestry (and botany) departments utilize and has worked with many of the people I collaborated with while I was at Cal State LA while he was in Barrow, Alaska.

Time to curl up and let my immune system do its thing so I can be at full juice on Monday... almost...

There's a really nifty video clip on http://www.martinarchery.com Just follow the link on the sneak peek for the 2007 Bengal and there's a little link to a video. Something about it was just rather... intriguing. While most people would rather admire tasteless fashion crap, I prefer the beauty of a well-shot arrow and a clean form. My bias is still much more towards the traditional bows, but there's still a different beauty in a compound bow. Just make sure it's not one of those scary-looking, gaudy target bows.

SFRC Orientation and Telcontar

Telcontar: I usually don't put links to videos, but these two pretty much helped inspire me to write the story...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xCXzpTWMenc
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-gkiRE-DhMc

I'm not going to say too much else besides letting you guess how on earth two of my favorite singers influenced this story.

As far as the SFRC (School of Forestry Resources & Conservation) went, it was pretty darned good for an all-day orientation event. It was at the Austin Carey Memorial Forest, which is a nice short drive away from home, not far from the airport. It was a blast being able to meet fellow forestry people and realizing that they're not only very engaging and knowledgeable, but also quirky, although no group will ever come close to Caltech students in terms of being fun and quirky. Of all the orientations I've had to sit through, this was by far my favorite, not only because they actually fed us something besides junk food, but also because I was able to talk about my research without drawing blank looks and listen to my peers talk about their research and catching my attention.

The Austin Carey Forest is actually a fairly "typical" forest in this part of Florida with the upper canopy of mixed pines (mostly long-leaf but also slash) and a lower canopy that's either grasses or saw palmettos, depending on when the last fire was. It's also an AmeriFlux site and I'd love to see if I can get it added to SpecNet :) I have a distinct feeling that my research will ultimately be tied to fire and drought effects, at least based on what the professors told me about the site. I'm looking forward to doing field work here, at least if I do take on this site... but I'm still hoping to see if I can get some work in the Boreal forest and other SpecNet sites so I can really make use of the Spectral Network!

Tomorrow is the first day of school, which means I start studying again! I'm just hoping that my hunting instincts won't kick in too hard!

Stereotypes?

Q: What do you call a short person with glasses, a hat, a T-shirt, shorts, and something interesting to read?

A: A scientist!

Apparently there's something about that appearance that screams "scientist" to a lot of people. I went to get some take-out food, having decided that I've had enough spinach and bell pepper salad, and after I placed my order for something filling, the person at the counter looks at me and just says "Hey, you're a scientist, aren't you?" I was tempted to ask what science, but I decided against it because I just wanted my food, having been hungry for quite some time. The real fun, though was when I had to set my reading material down next to me so I could sign the receipt and the cashier looked horrified when she saw what I was going to read while waiting. I had an issue of Traditional Bowhunter with the page turned to a review of a really cool high-powered compact longbow, complete with broadhead-tipped arrows and a picture of a hunter with an animal they just shot. Is it me, or is it just that nobody seems to expect a 5'2" Asian female scientist in training to be interested in bow-hunting or to be able to draw more than about 30 lbs?