Site News
voltagegate | June 17, 2008Ian had some RL issues come up, so this months Oekologie will be a little late.
voltagegate | April 16, 2008It's been a bit nuts at work this week so far (or was it last week?) so pardon the lack of blogging. We had a user conference for the past few days and it's been off a bit. I've been working on a couple posts about acid mine drainage which I hope to have up in the next couple of days. I also have a couple of stories about working at that small town newspaper that I've been sitting on for a while now. I needed some distance before I could go into it.
I'm hoping that I also be able to get to a state park this coming weekend, maybe Sunday morning. It's been tough because Heather's schedule and…
voltagegate | March 26, 2008Anyhoo...
The week before we left for Atlanta, Heather and I stayed with my parents, who drove back up to PA to help us load our moving truck. The day before we got there, it snowed about a foot, making it impossible to even get the Subarus up there, much less the truck. We had to hire someone to come out, clear the driveway and then tow the moving truck up to the house, which took all day. Packing took all night. The following morning, on four hours of sleep, we left for Atlanta.
The icing on the cake, the very rock bottom, was the fiasco involving our remote choice of residence. We signed a…
voltagegate | March 24, 2008 As you may have already guessed, things are beginning to normalize. We just finished moving in the rest of the furniture to our new place this past weekend, a cute little house in Midtown Atlanta. From our street you can see downtown, which is beautiful at night.
Apparently, the previous owner's name was Hattie, who was a prominent member of one of the local Baptist churches (in the basement, our landlord found a plaque of some kind given to Hattie in honor of her service to the church). Hattie's old deep freeze, dryer and Frigidaire stove still work perfectly (and go perfectly with our…
voltagegate | February 26, 2008Before I get started, I want to assure those 10 people that still check TVG for updates that this is still a blog, and I do intend to pick up where I left off months ago.
I got a phone call about four weeks ago from a family friend offering me a position as a tech writer in Atlanta. I interviewed and accepted the offer, and I'm moving - again - in the next week.
I apologize for the lack of material. It's been a tough few months for me. My friends at Seed have been very patient with me fortunately, and I hope to get this blog up and running again before long. There's much to talk about.
For…
voltagegate | December 3, 2007Well, two weeks of hell has receded for me. This past Friday we finished moving all of our stuff out of Frostburg, waving a not-so-tearful goodbye to the old apartment and its coal furnace (not just for heat either; our water was warmed by the furnace as well, which I didn't know until this past year... they used to use gas).
To be frank, Friday was one of the worst days of my life. We still had the essentials in the apartment - food, a few dishes, coffee, computers, mattress, etc. - so they needed to be packed in both cars to haul up to our new place. But before we could load her car, it…
voltagegate | November 9, 2007It's been a bad week for me, and I don't think things will be slowing down for a couple more.
Heather is graduating this semester, and as we planned, it's time to move on. I'm moving into a new job and she'll be searching for one (after a much needed break), but since Frostburg is devoid of opportunity, we had to find a new place. We did, and we're in the process of packing up and giving/throwing away (with emphasis on the latter - I hate clutter).
So I ask forgiveness if things get dusty here for chunks of time. I'm sure I'll find the time to get some quick posts up here and there, but until…
voltagegate | October 20, 2007I picked up a couple of shifts catering homecoming this weekend, which is why things have been dead the past couple of days. I did, however, finish a couple of Jack Vance books which I want to discuss next week, specifically the social/lingual aspects of them. I also found a great paper about habitat fragmentation which opens the door for me to go into edge effects (the resulting edge of clearing a natural habitat and imposing another - ex: forest/farm land) and a new theory regarding its variability.
The next couple of months should be very interesting. We're moving at the end of November,…
voltagegate | October 9, 2007Things will be a bit slow on TVG this week. My mother was pulling weeds a bit too hard, fell back and snapped both her radius and ulna in half. The doctors had to bolt and plate the bones, and needless to say, she's out of commission for the next couple of months.
But, mom being mom, she was not going to let little things like broken bones and surgical wounds stop her from spending her vacation in Western PA this week, and I volunteered to help her out around the cabin while she's up here. I'm home briefly to toss up a few reposts of the ecology basics from the beginning of the year (I've…
voltagegate | August 30, 2007Bint reposts up for the weekend! Let's hope nothing happens to them this time. Everyone have a nice Labor Day.
voltagegate | August 26, 2007The binturong posts were supposed to last all weekend, but Blogger was down the day I left for the mountains and I couldn't access my archives. I tried to find a wireless signal in podunk PA, but that little venture was doomed before it began. Sorry about the slackage; I'm going away for Labor Day as well, so the rest will post starting Thursday or Friday.
It was a crazy few days, not exactly the ideal vacation, but I'll have the full story tomorrow. I need a day to recoop from the vacation (/sigh).
voltagegate | July 25, 2007
After hosting TB last week, I had been planning a bit of a break to spend time with family and get lost in the mountains for a bit (while secretly waiting in line last Saturday at midnight for the new Harry Potter - review pending).
We had a chance to sift through some flea markets and I found a wonderful set of small, illustrated books on nature published by the National Audubon Society and a book on fossil collecting in PA, both put out back in the 1960's. I thought I would share some of the finer illustrations below the fold.
The fossil collecting book has some really great ones, like the…
voltagegate | June 28, 2007It's been slow around here this week, and it's all his fault.
Heather and I have been talking about getting a dog for some time now. I caught her on Petfinder every now and then, perusing the local shelters for dogs. I finally broke down the other day. We applied for a bull terrier mix named Lexie, spent an hour at the shelter that's an hour away, only to come home and find out that someone was "better suited" for her. So, we switched the name on the application for that cute little mutt.
He checked out at the vet the other day. At 16 weeks, he's 17.5 pounds, so we're thinking he'll reach 60…
voltagegate | June 8, 2007Things at TVG have been slow for the past couple of weeks. I have been DCed from the internets, on vacation in Western PA. We had the pleasure of visiting Ohiopyle State Park and dipping out feet in the freezing Yough on a hot day. A few miles north of Ohiopyle is Wright's Falling Water, and beyond that is Bear Run nature reserve, where we spent a cool, damp afternoon.
It's truly a lovely area, beautiful place for camping. One of the campsites sits alongside a sizable stream surrounded by thickets of rhododendron and mountain laurel, shadowed by a stand of hemlock.
So, things will be…
voltagegate | May 3, 2007Sorry for the lack of substantial updates this week. I'm graduating in about three weeks and looking down the barrel of tests/papers-before-finals-week as well as finals.
In addition to that, I've been gathering data (and posts) from the Blogger Bioblitz. I'm hoping we can have everything tabulated in the next week or so.
I should have a bit more substance up by the weekend, including the next in the biomes series.
voltagegate | April 24, 2007We have submission guidelines and a full game plan for the next couple of weeks.
As of today, there are 50 participants (including the birth of a new blog). Please send me an e-mail and register at the Google group if you are interested in joining us, and the Flickr group if you plan on photoblogging the event.
Jenn has crafted a fine array of buttons for participants and supporters of the Blogger Bioblitz. Check them out, download and help us spread the word while adding a bit of spring flare to your blog or website.
Greg has contacted a friend from Discover Life, who has graciously lent his…
voltagegate | March 27, 2007Since the announcement of the First Annual Blogger Bioblitz yesterday morning at 8 a.m., we have gone from about six bloggers to 23, thanks to some major linkage from friends and participants (Bora, Bev, Bill, Brian, Dan, river2sea72, Judith, Greg, Madhu, Karmen - let me know if I missed anyone).
All correspondence for the event happens through the official Google Group, and everyone is invited to join the group and watch the evolution of the Bioblitz over the course of the next several weeks even if you're not interested (or don't have time) to participate. Jenn will be posting several…
voltagegate | March 26, 2007UPDATES: Part I, Part II
In honor of National Wildlife Week, April 21 - 29, I am inviting bloggers from all walks to participate in the First Annual Blogger Bioblitz, where bloggers from across the world will choose a wild or not-so-wild area and find how many of each different species - plant, animal, fungi and anything in between - live in a certain area within a certain time.
Pick a neat little area that you are relatively familiar with and is small enough that you or the group can handle - a small thicket, a pond, a section of stream, or even your backyard - and bring along some taxonomic…
voltagegate | March 18, 2007Hello and welcome (or welcome back) to the reincarnation of The Voltage Gate here at ScienceBlogs. I'm excited to be a part of such a diverse community.
For those of you that are familiar with the old site, business will be as usual; for those unfamiliar, I blog mostly about ecology, evolution and conservation, but occasionally chatter on about culture and religion.
I've included a few samples of material from the old site below, just to get a head start. Also, the banner is due for a change; I will begin rotating monthly biome illustrations to highlight the growing list of ecology basics…