Unfettered

Last week was the final week of EISI, certainly a bittersweet time, also exceedingly busy. Everyone in the program had papers to finish, conclusions to draw, and presentations to rehearse. Still we all got through it and I saw some very interesting results. During all this chaos three other students and I drove to Albany (Oregon, not California or New York) to eat at a Hungarian restaurant. I first saw a sign weeks earlier, driving up 5 to a field site and I knew I had to go. After all I'd just spent a semester in Budapest and I couldn't find a Hungarian restaurant in the entire Bay Area. The place is called Novak's and ended up being a little fancier than I expected. Still everyone was game and we had a great time. I had the shepard's platter which had all the typical Hungarian food, paprikás csirke, töltött káposzta, kolbász, and pörkölt (chicken paprika, stuffed cabbage, sausage, and goulash for those who don't speak Hungarian). The food was quite good though no

I doubt anyone is still reading this, but I need a break from Mathematica so I thought I'd try writing some plain English for a change. We've been in Corvallis now for 4 weeks, and aside from one trip back to Quartz Creek I've been doing my work here, either in the library or memorial union. Earlier this week the other two members of my group Will and Ginger went out to Crab-Tree Creek on the Santiam to finish the last of our data gathering. I opted not to go for two main reasons, one the StreamPro (The ADCP actually designed for shallow water) can be easily operated by two people, and two I already had plenty of work to do. For the last 4 weeks I've been using Mathematica to visualize and analyze our data. It may not be the best tool for the job, but I know how to use it. Essentially what I do is read in text files of data from WinRiver (the program that comes with the ADCP), process them into a usable format, then use them to make pretty pictures. Aside from work I

Now that it is the second half of the summer we have transitioned from working in the Andrews Experimental forest to working on the OSU campus. Last Thursday we packed up and cleaned up and permanently moved all our belongings into the dorms. Though living in the woods is always a great time Corvallis is a nice town so its not too bad. Plus it is nice being within walking distance of grocery stores, movie theaters, and other modern conveniences. Being in Corvallis does not however mean we are done with field work, just this Monday my group scouted our second site and developed a rough game plan for next few weeks. This week is data analysis week, which is what I've been doing the past couple days, while next week we get to try some different equipment at our original site. That's really about it for work, since I doubt anyone wants to hear about my battles with Mathematica. This past weekend I explored the town, went berry picking at a farm owned by the school, and played some

This has been rather busy as evidenced by the lack of posts. On Monday we drove around with a forest service guy named Ray. He showed us a bunch of log jams on the McKenzie and some side tributaries. Its amazing how well he knows the area and all the log jams. He kept coming up with sites to look at, we ended up driving back and forth over the basin. We found a couple of cool snorkel sites to look at fish behavior but none of the sites were really suitable for our instruments. Today we went back to Quartz creek (our main site) and took some more data. This time Jorge our math mentor came along and helped us try to come up with a way to create a grid of data. Suffice it to say it was a long and complicated process and only data analysis will tell if it works. We did get to use a total station to survey the points where we took data, which was pretty cool. This weekend I went to the Oregon Country Fair , which was quite a spectacle and tons of fun! I'm not really sure how to descri

First let me start out with a picture of the keystone of our research the ADCP, mentioned in at least one previous post. So this past week has been quite busy. Despite the day 'off' for the 4th we still have had a full week of field work. This has consisted of getting data with our ADCP and taking snorkel surveys of the fish populations. Since I'm the mathematician/Computer Science guy I've been running the laptop attached to the ADCP and only assisting with the snorkel surveys. Ginger our ecologist has been doing the real work and donning her 'not so dry' suite and swimming the river to catalog the locations and orientations of fish. My job has been to record her shouted observations since it is hard to take good notes on a dive slate. In fact this morning we completed the 24-hour fish survey of our site. Starting yesterday at 11:45 Ginger would snorkel the pond and report her findings. She did this every 4 hours for a total of 6 surveys. Since some of these to

One of our projects key piece's of equipment is an ADCP which stands for Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler. Basically its a $30k piece of equipment that uses sound waves to determine the velocity profile of a stream. Unfortunately the version we have is really designed to be mounted on a boat and used in deeper waters so we were unable to get it to work yesterday. I did get to use some surveying equipment to plot points along the logjam and stream bed though, which was cool. Today was a reading day for me, mainly documentation on the ADCP model we have and the one designed more for our project type. Tomorrow its back to the field to see if my new knowledge helps us collect any usable data. This evening there was an HJ Andrews potluck which was fun and a nice change from the basic cooking I've been doing. I got to talk with some of the long term workers as well as members of the other crews stationed here. I brought a basic vegetable platter, but other people got more creative

Before I start talking about day 1 of work here are a few pictures form the hike I took on Sunday. View Across part of the Andrews basin to lookout mountain As you can see there is still a little snow at the higher elevations. The view east from the top of HJA I think these are 2 of the sisters. A pool in the stream our trail followed. Though today was the first day of real work there was still a lot of learning to be done. Today was primarily for Ginger who will be doing the ecology work for our team. In the case of our project this means snorkel surveys of the pools below our logjams. Snorkel surveys consist mainly of floating in the water then observing and recording the behavior of the fish. Since this involves spending prolonged time in water that is between 10-12 degrees Celsius proper equipment is key. In our case this meant dry suits, plus neoprene hoods, gloves, and felt bottomed shoes for better traction on wet rock. Here is a picture of me after we got back, though still ge

Last night I returned from what was likely the most fun thing I have ever been paid to do, namely go river rafting. As part of our program the entire group goes for a three day geology rafting trip down the Deschutes river in central Oregon. Due to the presence of a significant quantity of water and my lack of water proof equipment this post will be picture free and thus I will try to keep it to the point to risk boring my few loyal readers. On Sunday afternoon we drove a couple hours over the cascades to Madras the nearest town to the put-in point. The next morning we packed our stuff into dry bags and after an hour so of geology lectures we got in the rafts. We proceeded down the river stopping for lunch and geology talks eventually reaching camp. The following two days followed the same pattern with a couple additional incidents. The most memorable of these were a lecture delivered from on top of a composting toilet, and stranding our program director and the math mentor on a rock i

Well it's the weekend again, and what a week it has been. Almost all of the week was spent doing various activities designed to get us familiar with H.J. Andrews Experimental forest, here shortened to just 'the Andrews'. These activities included a number of lectures by various professors, a whole afternoon of safety training, and my personal favorites, a number of field exercises and hikes through the woods. Yesterday we drove into Corvallis to OSU where we watched the professors present powerpoints of the summer projects they are leading. After that we had a BBQ at the house of the program director who also happens to be the professor who I will be working with. We then had to drive back to the Andrews making for quite a long day. Since I've been very lax in my picture taking I've only got a few to put up. This is our bunk house, it is divided into four apartments each with 5 double bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen, and a large living/dining area. Our program has

Although I have safely returned from Budapest I'll try to maintain this blog, though likely with infrequent posts. This summer I am doing research at HJ Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon. I am part of the Eco-Informatics Summer Institute which is very similar to other REU's (research experience for undergrads) in that both are NSF (National Science Foundation) funded research opportunities. In all honesty I'm not really sure the difference, though I'll likely find out. The project I am working on is studying the how artificial wood jams in streams affect the fish populations. These wood jams were put in to aid in stream bank restoration and there are still questions as to how they interact with fish populations. In particular my group is studying the flow and hydraulics of water through the jams and how this in turn interacts with fish. My job will be to model the hydraulics using software developed by one of the project advisers. I've actually already arrive

Sorry this blog has been so sparse as of late, but I've been kind of busy as of late what with finals and stuff. I'm taking twice as many math classes as I have before in college and all of them have in class finals so I've had to buckle down and study hard. But, they're over now, no more math for .... well for like 2 weeks until I start my REU, but still. I think I did pretty well , but I find out for real tomorrow. Anyways this blog will likely continue to be boring since I need to go out and make the most of my last 3 days in Budapest. I'll be home on Sunday and I can't wait to see my friends and family. I know I'll miss Budapest when I leave, but it'll be nice to be home. Oh yeah I went to Prague 2 weekends ago (feels like forever) so here are a couple pictures.

Before I finish the much overdue final post(s) of the Greek saga I thought I'd post my favorite pictures from this weekend's road trip through Romania. My friends David, Will, and I explored the wonderfully green Transylvania region, making for an awesome adventure!

I am sorry this post is so long overdue, I don't really have any good excuses either since I've been in Budapest for the past couple weeks.... Picking up where the previous post left off, after a significant amount of scenery and cards we arrived in Athens. A hectic metro trip, and deceptively long walk later we found ourselves at the doorstep of the Hotel Zeus, our residence for the next two days. After a quick planning meeting, we went to bed in order to be ready to take on one of the worlds oldest cities. The next morning we headed down towards the ancient city center, with the Acropolis and other historical sites. While Ranjan and Will went to pick up our train tickets for the trip back to Thessaloniki the rest of the group walked around the touristy area of downtown, including the misnamed and unfortunately overpriced flea market. A friendly kutya (Hungarian for dog) then led us to the base of the Acropolis hill where we met back up with Will and Ranjan. We spent the r

Now that I have a little more free time I'll try to give a little more detailed accounting of my spring break. This will likely take a couple of installments since I did so much in Greece and updating this blog isn't exactly priority one. Anyways, break started on Friday March 26th with the conclusion of my Combinatorics midterm. Ranjan and I went to the CBA market by our houses to get some supplies for the journey, then grabbed our stuff and met up with the other 11 people who had elected to share in our adventuring. Our journey comprised of two legs, the first train got us to Belgrade at about 10PM and the second took us the rest of the way to Thessaloniki. Despite taking nearly 26 hours the trip was actually quite fun, none of the trains were full so we were able to spread out over 3 6-person compartments. On the second train the seats even folded down nearly flat which my compartment only discovered at about 3 am while we were waiting at passport control in Macedonia. We di