Beam Reach

I have a functional computer! Win!

My computer charges!!! Score!!! Todd’s computer guy couldn’t fix it. Bummer. But my parents sent me a port that plugs into the computer at a different jack, so I can charge it (however slowly) without using the broken jack. Thanks, parents! And since my dad already had the port, it was free instead of $550 (what Fujitsu would charge to fix it). Win. I was so sick of living out of my flash drive. It’s too small to store DATA on it, and it can’t run programs because it IS just data storage.

Went to the Center for Whale Research today. I want to help out there or do something, but I don’t know how much help they need doing anything. I WOULD like to know if they’ve got vocalizations ID’d to whales. I’d be more than happy to increase my sample sizes.

On the topic of good, I think I’ve got more of Praat figured out than I thought I did. I’ll play with it later today and see how much what I want to do will work with my own voice. I’m not sure what stats I want to run. I wonder if I can use JMP. It’s not at all intuitive, and Val really seems to like R. And then Jason’s a big advocate of Matlab. We’ll see. Maybe Vannoni and McElligott (2007) have some insight.

I’m tempted to jump in the water. I need to get SOME physical activity going. Even if it IS just becoming slightly hypothermic. It was nice at British Camp (62 degrees!) . . .

blogging . . . briefly

OK, so time to try blogging for class. This should be interesting. Here goes.

I think my Beam Reach experience so far can be summed up in one word: exhausting. In Week One, it seemed like we had all-day-long classes, followed up by nights spent in the computer lab reading articles and searching for papers. Week Two on the boat was pretty much work from 7am until whenever I finished what I needed to get done (about 10:30). Add that to the work needed to keep my head upright, and I’m pretty beat.

I think the thing that gets me the most is that we’re never *off-hours*. From when we get up until when we go to bed, we’re working without a break. Sure, I can take a breather to go for a run or read a (non-whale-related) book, but it still seems like I’m on duty all the time. Even when the two groups get together, we’re either attending a lecture or loading stuff on and off the boat. No time to unwind and hang out. I can handle sleep deprivation (no matter what NPR says), but I need my down-time. No offense meant to anyone giving those lectures, but I wouldn’t mind a meal with team JaMi without time constraints. Just a thought.

Anyway. Today shall be spent . . . working! I need to find Ford’s call catalog (I’ve got a sinking feeling that I left it on board the Gato Verde) and classify the calls we used in our report of the “Close Encounter”. Then I need to figure out this whole formant thing. Jason explained it briefly, and I can kind of see what he’s talking about, but I’d love to understand how that applies to all the little red dots I see when I open up Praat. And I pronounce it “Praht” instead of “Prat” in my head because, really, what else can anyone honestly see when they see a doube “a”?

I think the room still rocks slightly. Todd says I may have vertigo issues, which I’ve never had before. Now I’m worried that the rocking only comes from my worries that the room is still rocking. I think I need to get back on the boat where the floor actually DOES move so I can stop wondering if it is.

I suppose I should sum up everything that’s happened, but I think Alex did a better job of summing things up than I can (too tired to remember the sequence of things). But I’ll try to keep up with this in the future so my blogs can be more of a journal and less of a rant about how much I want to just sit and hang out (or practice my option shots).

OK, I actually need to do homework now. To the library!!