Jan 28 2008
If you can’t get enough plant goodness here, check out the first edition of Berry Go Round over at Seeds Aside. This is a really fun new carnival! I especially enjoyed the first section which focused on a new species of palm. I’ve even got a post in the moss section!
Jan 23 2008
Jan 23 2008
Last summer, my basil plant suffered through my cooking. So it doesn’t get quite so defoliated next year, I’ve started a new one!
Jan 22 2008
I’ve been waiting anxiously for the black eyed susan vine I got a few months ago to bloom. It started this week. I’m a big fan of the fused petals.
Jan 19 2008
let me tell you why I’m excited.
I learned this morning through Kevin Clair that the Library of Congress has a flickr account.
Jan 12 2008
This semester is going to be very busy, but doable. I’ve got a week where I’m going to Humboldt to do some work that could cause some problems because I’ll be missing an entire week of classes. Hopefully it’ll work out alright.
I’m taking differential equations, the second course of a three-course long physics series, and sort of a research methods course associated with my UMEB fellowship. I’m a bit worried about my physics course. I took an algebra based physics about electricity and magnetism in high school and I really struggled with some of the concepts. (I demonstrated my complete misunderstanding of said concepts by shocking the living hell out of myself every week in lab.) This semester I resolve to use the right hand rule with my right hand rather than my left. We’ll see how it goes… If I make my hair stand up, I’ll post pictures.
I’m also working about 30 hours a week. Almost all of it will be in the lab or in the field. I’m pretty excited. I get to go to a lot of beautiful old volcanoes across northern Arizona to collect tree cores. Best of all, I actually get paid (an incredibly small amount) for it! Financially, things are still pretty tight, but I’ve got enough for rent and I’m rich enough to have joined the Flagstaff CSA. Lots of vegetables every week are far better than peanut butter, peanut butter, peanut butter, ramen. I even bought a new bed with a nice firm futon mattress. I’m all grown up now, so my back hurts and a good firm mattress seems to help. Of course, presents are always welcome. Hugs and cookies too 
Jan 11 2008
A couple months ago I bought a bunch of seeds. The black eyed susan vine I got is going to bloom soon! It’s got lots and lots of flower buds. I had originally planned to grow it up my staircase, but it’s smaller than I thought it would be and prefers to twine around smaller things than my staircase railing.
Jan 10 2008
After reading this review, I really want to read Refresh, Refresh by Benjamin Percy.
These short stories, especially the title story, literally pull you in to the high desert of central Oregon and drop you off, to feel, process, and face the emotional upheaval of our time, usually through the rich inner life of a young male character.
Jan 08 2008
I’ve always thought it was silly that our government deems 18 year olds responsible enough to be soldiers, but not responsible enough to drink. Under current law, it’s easy for underage people to get alcohol. A high percentage of the people I know have (or have had) fake IDs that get them into bars and work just fine in stores. And you can always get a slightly older friend to buy it for you. Current laws don’t discourage underage drinking much and there are few education programs discouraging things like binge drinking. Take the situation on college campuses for example. My university has 3 all freshman dorms. Almost every weekend night, there’s an ambulance outside at least one of them for someone with alcohol poisoning.
I think we should lower the drinking age to 18 with a few stipulations. I think 18-20 year olds should only be able to buy alcohol in bars. This is good for several reasons. Bartenders don’t serve people who are too drunk. It will be good for local businesses. And alcohol in bars is usually more expensive, so 18 year olds won’t be able to afford as much to drink. Make the consequences for buying alcohol from a store for people under 21 more severe. Ramp up consequences for DUIs for people under 21- say anything over the limit results in a 6 month suspension of a driver’s license and a 100 hrs of community service, in addition to already existing penalties. And students should get better education in high school and when they start college about drinking responsibly.
18-20 year olds aren’t going to stop drinking, but we can teach them to do it responsibly and “train” them a bit by forcing them to drink in public, not in a dorm room surrounded by other 18 year olds trying to prove they can drink someone else under the table.
Jan 07 2008
I use a program called COFECHA to help crossdate trees. COFECHA uses some old school formats developed for punch-cards. Excel, which I used to make changes to ring widths, does not like these formats. There are lots of programs for changing formats, but it’s all a bit confusing.
Many dendrochronology programs produce and use Compact/Precision formats. When crossdating trees with the program COFECHA, it is often useful to convert Compact/Precision formats to formats recognized by spreadsheet programs like Excel and then convert back to Compact/Precision formats to run through COFECHA. So for any other confused dendrochronologists out there, here’s a method that works for me.
Compact/Precision format looks like this when you open it with notepad:
ira 11946 170 200 216 755
ira 11950 529 332 405 342 384 760 647 363 556 466
ira 11960 288 431 490 124 827 282 319 248 441 1082
ira 11970 1601 498 992 1407 850 1053 1356 951 1145 1621
ira 11980 1756 1381 1397 1626 1868 2739 2447 2250 1684 1942
ira 11990 1401 1390 861 1389 1158 1421 1454 1040 -9999
Sometimes the numbers seem to run together, but each line will start with a series identifier and each series will end with -9999.
Convert file from Compact/Precision to tab delimited .txt file with program YUX. Open .txt file with Excel and make necessary changes, being sure to save as a tab delimited .txt file. Convert to Compact/Precision format with program CASE, being sure to save the new file as a .rwl. COFECHA should be able to read this file.
If you get COFECHA output that only includes the title or part of the desired output, try playing around with the print options in COFECHA. If COFECHA produces a completely empty output file, try copying and pasting the information from your .rwl file into an existing .rwl file and saving it as a new .rwl file.
All programs can be downloaded from the Ultimate Tree Ring Web Pages run by Henri Grissino-Mayer.
