2017 – Page 3 – Trans Scend Survival (2024)

Wolf Pine @ Fox Park #12: 4/7/17, Evening Checkup

I trundled into Fox Park at around 7:15 pm on 4/7/17. The sky was overcast (as it has been for the last few days), kind of rainy/above freezing, and providedjust enough evening light to let me do a proper sit spot.

There were some fantastic tracks. I did not take any pictures, but I am fairly sure there are some extremely large dogs wandering these parts. One issue I have been having with some of the medium sized tracks is the position of the toes. I know there simply are not 4 bobcats and 4 catamounts wandering around my sit spot…. But these dog tracks seem to sometimes show very forward toes, which is is indicative of a cat. Alas.

another problem I became acutely aware of is the highway. On my way up the hill to my wolf pine, I began hearing all sorts of crazy sounds…. Animal? Owl? Alien? Upon getting to the pine however, it became evident to purrs and chirps were indeed car sounds from the interstate. 🙁

I did not hear much in the way of singing, but over the last day or two, the song sparrows, cardinals, titmice, and robins have definitely been singing more than before.

To be continued…

-Jess

Preview: Learning Fusion 360 and Next-Level CAD Craziness

This is my trunnion table: behold!

Here is the practical use in China:

And here it comes back to a geek-desk near you:

Parking Lot/Sit Spot @ Fox Park #12: 4/3/17, Owling 2 Hours Before Sunrise

It was very dark when I left the parking lot variantof my sit spot, and still it still is. Was it worth it? Maybe.

I entered the parking lot around 4:35am this morning. After spending a whilejust listening to the sounds of “nature”, finishing my coffee and trying to not make sounds into what they weren’t, I gave in and decided to play some screech owl trills. Unfortunately, an issue I have not yet addressed was beginning to get in my way for real: the highway.

Even when I play calls from my phone, I could tell the white noise from the interstate not far away was cancelling the sonorous sounds of my owls. That part isn’t a big deal, but I know my inferior human hearing will struggle to pick out a chatting owl even within my part of Fox Park. The frequencies are just too similar, often exhibiting asimilar timbre. This means a sound carrying more energy (lower frequency rumbles and what not) will not only mask the weaker and more refined owl toots and hoots, but could “phase cancel” them out altogether. Phase cancellation is obviously not a standard concern of birders, but I happened to know from recording sounds in this frequency range (lower end of a medium grand piano and acoustic guitar for example) achieving a mini “Bose noise cancellation” is quite easy. All it takes is two sounds going the opposite direction and/or of similar magnitude or at leastfrequency (a distant truck with a Jakebrake and closer GHO for example and whoops! there goes the owl hoot.

I mention all this because in the ~50 minutes waffled around in the parking lot (10 degrees below freezing mind you), during which I played screech, saw-whet, and GHO, I heard lots of mumbles and whoos and blops… …yet I can only take one seriously. One toot, that’s all.

I had played screech, then saw-whet, andscreech once more at this point. The toot sounded much lower than a saw-whet toot, and there was just one. It was not dainty, and had a nice conviction and resonance. I have never been compelled to describe an automobile this way, so I can say with good faith this was an owl.

But was it Barred or GHO? Both make single toots in this way sometimes. Indeed, I’ve seen it done on trips where the either owl may want to just put a small idea out there, a pleasantry maybe to the owl it listened to from a birders phone, or perhaps just to test the waters on who could call back. For whatever reason, more than half of my hearing/visual owl encounters involved a single toot instead of a full blown dissertation of whoos and haws.

So, I will tentatively stick with the current idea this is a GHO, because my other evidence seems to support this. As I played some GHO after the toot, I quite honestly could not listen between the cars and trucks from, say, half a mile away. Thus, while the tooting owl was not in spitting distance of my mini encampment on a bit of ice in the parking lot, it could easily been in Fox Park or an adjacent landowner’s pine tree and I would never have known.

The saga continues…

-Jess

Wolf Pine @ Fox Park #11: 4/1/17, It Is A Snow-Show, Debunking The Melanistic Dogamount

I slipped and slid my way into Fox park Saturday,4/1/17 at about 4pm. About 7 inches of snow had appeared on the ground over the last 24 hours, which (for the second time) definitely stifled and spring-like activities for the critters and what not. Yet, the still powder-like snow was melting already. This stuff hadn’t really had time to settle and compact, it just came down from the sky just below freezing, then bobbed above freezing at about noon and rained. This made for perfect postholing snow. Indeed, I saw some dogs who took it hard- leaving postholes almost 3 feet deep.

I heard some confused titmice and a lonely Hairy woodpecker over (almost) the whole time out, though a the crow crew started up yakking away just as I left. I had really come for the tracks in the snow, but because of the rain and rapidly melting cover, I could only make out big dogs.

Here we have one of these big dogs. things to note:

• triangle shaped claws
• very symmetrical
• creates a distinct circle-oval shape
• Can easily be broken into left, right, two leading toes and rear pad quadrants

These traits are interesting, though they get way cooler and silly when we look at the crazy, unique, and very artistically rendered “black panther” prints I found in the PSU dining hall:

I realize this is the worst iPhone-picture-while-scooping-ice-cream example, but…

…I do not think these prints are for a black panther. I do not think they are for a dog. These are the one of a kind “melanistic dogamount” prints!

Here we have the local catamount (cougar) vs the dog (similar to the big dog I found).

Remember, the PSU mascot is amelanistic jaguarnamed “Pemi”. Jaguar prints are anatomically very similar to the puma/cougar version that is theoretically in new england, if only on occasion. Indeed, these “uber crazy level” cats have an (average) range of about 300 square miles. Which is 192,000 acres, if you weren’t so hot on math. 🙂

This range makes tracking a single cougar extremely difficult, and as far as I can tell, nobody has been particularly successful- thus, finding photos of actual paw prints is really, really hard, and makes the far larger melanistic jaguar printsimpossible to find. Below is a cougar paw from captivity.

So, what arethe good and bad parts of the PSU sign?

Good:

• Toes are mostly in front of the pad. This is indicative of a cat.
• Rear pad is wide, (almost) a cat trait in this example

Bad:

• Rear pad is too oval shaped. Real cougars and jaguars have deep scallops creating three distinct parts of the pad
• THE NON-RETRACTABLE CLAWS ARE TRIANGLE SHAPED, LIKE A DOG’S CLAWS!!!

All cats have retractable, grappling-hook shaped claws. These are rarely out and about when walking, as they are really best for catching one’s balance and slicing stuff to shreds. They are usually seen as dots with a groove toward the toe on a paw print. Dog claws on the other hand are designed to be a permanent part of the foot, and are shaped like a wider “V” to generally help with transport. These are what we see, making this paw print completely and unforgivably wrong.

That concludes today’ssit spot observation.

-Jess

Parking Lot/Sit Spot @ Fox Park #10: 3/31/17, Whoo’s Clues

I entered the Fox Park parking lot at approximately 5:30, about an hour before sunrise. 32 degrees, partly cloudy, and very dark and supremely quiet.

I didn’t have to wait 5 minutes after settling into a comfortable standing position to hear the first of 2 fat clues about my owl buddy at Fox park. Three sonorous “whoos” reverberated across the surrounding fields and white pine trees, followed by some muffled humming and burbling over the drone from the highway about half a mile away. What luck! The thing to know aboutthis scenariohowever is these whoos were higher pitched than “ye average” great horned owl, BUT were far from the “hawws” and other gurgles the barred owls make.

The second clue about this sound (and I heard it one more about 10 minutes later) is how a classmate recently described exactly what I heard today to me. “It was saying Whoo! but it was started going up, then down to some quieter sounds.” This was heard not far from Fox Park, near Langdon Woods. That forest has a great field used for light football training by humans, and critter hunting by birds of prey no doubt. This is well within an average great horned owls “zone”- in fact, owls have been seen occupying a 25 mile radius of space as a residence. That means no other GHOs are allowed to live there. Quite territorial, and have interesting family/land relationship patterns because of the vast zones required for a proper turf. This is almost entirely the reason the GHO isbothwidespread and thus “common” and essentially impossible to find, making it a treat to locate.

So, I know this pattern is very likely a GHO after two pairs of ears have heard it and agree. So…

…Success!

As usual, after the second “whoo” and maybe 10 minutes of standing in the parking lot a sole cardinal started singing. Then, one by one, the local crows woke up and decided the calling owl was a significant problem (they decide this every day) and started up with the tomfoolerywe can expect from them. On that laural, I was sure the owl would be silent to give the crows a sporting chance at hide and seek, so I left, after a bit more than 30 minutes in the parking lot.

-Jess

Beaver Dam @ Quincy Bog #1: 3/30/17, The World Has Gone Mad

The first year PSU natural history class wandered into the middle of Quincy Bog onto the local beaver lodge at about 10am today,3/30/17.

We had came to this spot originally to float about the area and gather fun and mildly interesting questions and about the “real” natural world (as opposed to the classroom). We found lichen to be a mutualistic symbiosis between algae and fungus; the bog is full of “leather leaf”, but is not acidic enough to be completely full of this plant, as real bogs around here are; we also saw a few crows mobbing a raven.

And: A peregrine falcon…

…And (what to my knowledge is) a short eared owl.

There have been between three andfiveshort earedowls in the main portion ofNew hampshire in the last decade(besides at the seashore near the northeast tip of Massachusetts). According to the eBird, we can see in 2013 and 2014 there were aroundtwo or three short eared owls migrating up to their summer home in far north Canada. After reviewing a few migration routes from around the web, I can say there is a good chance a few short eared owls will be coming from the “middle of the east half of the west”- likely farms and fields emanating from Tennessee- at this time of year. Obviously, this owl is vastly more important than anything else I could have done today, so it will occupy the remainder of this spot review.

Firstly; thingspushing against the evidence I do have for this owl. The owl like to float around 10 feet over the grasses in fields to snatch mice and voles. This owlwas about 700 feet up in the air. Additionally, it islikely there weretwo of these birds seen up there soon after we arrived. After that initial glimpse however, there was just one.

Reasons this is a short eared owl:

• We were standing in a prime hunting spot for a migrating short eared owl-an iced over bog shouldbe riddled with yummy critters. A group of 20 people milling about the middle of this bog could be a good reason to do some gliding at some distance, waiting for the people to leave and the mammals to emerge again.
• The bird was a light grey color, with distinct black wing tips. That is the first mark we saw. A fat “buteo”-like (think a soaring red-tailed hawk) tail, creating almost a complete semicircle, was really built into the bird’s body. This is totally different than a flared harrier tail, which is long.

  REALLY LONG TAIL- Harrier. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Harrier/id

Additionally-the real kicker in my opinion- are the black slashes on the medial and greater coverts on the short eared owl. The two photos I have included here are enough to show these unique field marks. I have never seen a bird with that pattern; just a flat matte white with two black marks parallel to the body, and black wing tips. Many birds of prey have black wingtips or interesting patterns/markers under the wing. In fact, this is an outstanding way to learnbig birds who usually fly overhead/don’t usually hang around on a perch.

In summary: unless we find another bird with this wing shape and color pattern, this isa short eared owl.

…(And it may have a migration buddy!)

-Jess

Wolf Pine @ Fox Park #9: 3/26/17, Everyone Is On Vacation

I walked into Fox park Sunday afternoon,3/26/17, after “spring” break. Please note, however, neither the suburbs of Boston or Fox Park have turned the ignition on the spring thing. So, I will not provide pictures today because the view is, for both flora and fauna alike, the same as the last time I took pictures.

The weather was warmer than freezing, but there is evidence of chilly rain and wind slowly wearing away at the snow. the Beech leaves are also having a hard time staying attached this long into the cold season. they are rustling and falling off both because the the weather but also because we really cannot have too much longer before our warblers come through, song birds start really singing, buds and leaves ome out, etc, etc.

Let us see where the warblers are today, ehh?

Here we have the most up to date info on the Palm warblers. If you are not used to the eBird species range map, you should click the link and get used to it. This is the most efficient way to find where species are, assuming there are people around the areas in question to report sightings. Here, I narrowed the time frame to this year and this month. We can see the Palm warbler crew is still in Florida for the most part. This is where many Palm warblers go when they go south, the farthest ones only ferrying over the Cuba. Up the coast they go, but the leaders of the pack are not really in New England yet.

Palm warblers are an early warbler in my experience around here. They often will be showing up as the buds on the trees begin to get serious about leaves. They simply don’t cross the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean, unlike many of their peers.

Another early bird is the pine warbler. They don’t really migrate much, but in the spring they wander up from the south, making for regular sightings in MA in NH.

But what about the real warbler crew? Blackburnians! Chestnut sided! Well, as you can see below, they are all still singing songs in portuguese and spanish, as far south as Ecuador (for the blackburnians) right now.

Remarkable! Both of those birds will fly between 2,000 and3,000+ miles, just to visit us in NH! Special indeed.

Despite the snow, rain, and cold winds at my sit spot, the anticipation for spring is getting into gear.

-Jess

Boutique everything: When The Hobby Grows Up

Food. Clothes. Art. Musical Equipment. Consumer Design and Products. Can a mere citizen enter the fray of cutting edge design and production?

As a hobbyist designer with a passion for, say, high end audio, the options for actually producing a quality, well executed product may seem lucrative and completely not worth while. “It’s just a hobby” some say, or, “The cost of manufacturing tools or a bid at the factory floor in China are way bigger than my love for sound”, or, “nobody would ever purchase my design, there are so many other companies who have done this longer than me”. These answers are all valid, but may not be the complete picture when it comes to local, boutique production.

Can a passionate enthusiast use makerspace technology and peer support to bring small batches/limited runs of high quality products to a localized, niche market?

Could a food connoisseur use networking services to construct a timely supply chain for seasonal meals at local restaurants or cafes?

Would a local tailor be able to source materials and equipment to realise the material science and design they have always dreamed of for a coat in small batches?

Using cutting-edge makerspaces and the subsequent networking opportunities, I believe producing small batches of high quality goods and utilizing a local business/niche marketing approach or distribution system could increase the innovation and quality of any given local economy.

The idea of “group buys” iselementary in DIY audio circles. Folks going in on a board design for fabrication will often drum up some enthusiasm on the internet or elsewhere, in a move to offset the high entry price of board manufacture. I have noticed some folks take it a step further, and will not only complete the project they intended to, but perfect the project into a product and do a run of a few pieces to a few dozen and beyond. This model is actually a great asset to the developing maker; offsetting the cost (or even making a few coins in profit!) of larger projects inherently makes bigger and better projects feasible.

The folks building audio equipment in their basem*nt, garage, or bedroom are, in essence, artists exploring art through avenues otherwise devoid of artisan qualities. It is easy to reproduce sound commercially- Apple supplies those iBud-earPod-headBeats with every phone they sell. Yet, the people in DIY audio are taking on audio components exactly how a great potter would craft a new bowl or coffee cup; functional sculpture, art in one of its oldest forms.

Below is a picture of one of the quasi-famous Jazzman ESL panels. A true labor of love and work of art, Charlie has pioneered the processes required to build a ultra-top-end electrostatic loudspeaker, in the confines of the home, job, and hobby budget. Now, Jazzman’s speakers are built almost exclusively by hand, using careful measurement techniques to ensure tight tolerances instead of using machines that could do this automatically- making these panels really one of a kind and certainly not an option for even the most ambitious cottage industry entrepreneurs.

I bring these panels up simply to show what home-brew audio (or any labor-of-love-hobby) is about: craftsmanship, dedication, and a desire to learn. falling right in withhome-brew beer, local pottery, cooking, painting, tailoring, and more, one can see from this artisanal point of view the value in these kinds of work.

Unlike some of these art forms found exclusively in art shows and galleries, only recently has there been an opportunity for individuals to reverse the commercialization of otherwise beautiful hobbies.

Commercialization and hobbies: can we have both?

You bet. As individuals get better at their craft and further down the hobbyist rabbit hole, (I personally) wonder where to draw the line as a hobby. Don’t! We develop makerspaces to propel creation into hyperdrive; the next and last step in completing the artist’s high-end project circle is selling the last project so the new batch can be justified. Because rapid fabrication and makerspaces are “a thing” now, people need to understand what comes next with all those creative and production juices flowing. I think many makers may not approach their custom brazed bikes, amazing wooden trinkets, or tube guitar amps from the view a painter would monetize paintings- but they (we) should. Art stores, art shows, audio meetups, DIY ecommerce sites, Etsy, craft conventions… These are real venues we should be adding to our vocabulary as makers. It is the last step to a full circle justification, and for me (in my hobby bird photography work for sure) it simply feels amazing to be at that stage of chatting it up with locals about where I took the picture of the merganser. It takes way more effort than I or my fellow artists will let on, (learning high-end home printing, commerce, getting a materials supplier, website, etc) and marketing/selling is not NEARLY as glamorous as hacking away at our craft.

But, at the end of the day, this is the right thing to do. Showing others through commerce the true value of maker craft not only educates and enriches, but increases the value in our local economies and local-maker-wizardry.

Wolf Pine @ Fox Park #8: 3/16/17, Someone Bumped The Snow Machine

I decided to snowshoe into Fox Park at about 6:30am Thursday,3/16/17.

Firstly, the forest sounded like it is in shock; dead quiet. No crows or bluejays, only the odd cardinal or chickadee singing a questioning song to advertize its previous idea about making babies. The snow is at leasta foot deep, all powder, deadening sound as well as the attitudes the local animals were gearing up for the so-close-but-so-farspring. I found no tracks- none, zero. The mammals are sure to be down below the snow again, grudgingly re-entering the “subnivean” lifestyle.

My owl friendwas not home either; as we know from the GHO talk from a previous post, the vertical depth challenge snow presents doesn’t deter the GHO from hunting, but plenty of other factors can cause an owl to take a vacation in a different tree. Obviously, the clues I have been using with this “Strix” or “Bubo” buddy are way more annoying for the owl itself. Imagine being mobbed by “idiot bird brains” day in and day out, especially when they tell their cronies where your house is… Yes, sometimes it is time to take a break.

The snow was definitely the “highlight” of this morning’s sit spot, even as a snowshoed out of the park at 7:45…. For how long though? When will thespanish-speaking warbler team from Panama touch down?

?

Sit spot #N.1: The GHO Talk

Great horned owls. Except for the only exception feasible- Which is of course the Great Grey Owl who has decided to move to southern NH from its previous home in frigid Canada– the GHO is the ultimate, TOTL, high-ender of the hunters in New England at the very least. There is a reason all the other members of the animal kingdom hate these “Bubo” eagle-owls as much as they do. GHO’s have every trick in the book, every bell, whistle, and gadget, making the whole evolution game seem wholly unfair to, say, an unassuming chipmunk. I wanted to give a quick rundown of the key toys and tools the GHO has at its immediate disposal, why I care, and why everyone else should care.

1. The “ears”

GHO’s ears are essentially their entire head. The poky things are literally there to throw folks off, though the idea was originally to emulate some bark or a pair of pine cones, some think… Though horns, ears, or party hats are probably ok too. As I say above, onecould say with a fair amount of accuracy the entireheadis a single, huge ear; Thosepretty concentric eye rings? Chamfers and fillets on the face? these are funneling, extracting every scuffle and heartbeat falling in the laser-like path of the big, round, swivel-face. Remember: these owls are seeing with theirears. The GHO is always sleepy during theday, even while other owls might be a bit active- ruling out light as a reliable system for vision.

Below I snipped a good description of the GHO system. The asymmetrical face construction of a GHO also is used for “vertical” hearing- check this out:

“An Owl uses these unique, sensitive ears to locate prey by listening for prey movements through ground cover such as leaves, foliage, or even snow. When a noise is heard, the Owl is able to tell its direction because of the minute time difference in which the sound is perceived in the left and right ear – for example, if the sound was to the left of the Owl, the left ear would hear it before the right ear. The Owl then turns it’s head so the sound arrives at both ears simultaneously – then it knows the prey is right in front of it. Owls can detect a left/right time difference of about 0.00003 seconds (30 millionths of a second!)” (taken from:http://www.owlpages.com/owls/articles.php?a=6)

Obviously, anything can hear something more in the left ear and less in the right ear and know roughly where it is. However, “roughly” isn’t in the GHO vocabulary. Other studies have shown how owls crunch sounds at .00003 seconds; accuracy comes at the price of wildly complexbrain structures that are solely used to draw auditory conclusions. Think; each ear has a setof pre-decision-making brain structures, analysing in parallel both the intensity of incoming sounds and the passage of time- synced perfectly to the other ear’s set and the brain as a whole. Look at it this way; the GHO sensing system, with its multiple super-computing cores is physically 3 times the size of the one found in our usual “smartest local birds”- the crows and ravens. No wonder the owls are always being bothered by crows- they must be so jealous! (and GHOs are a unrivaledpredator to crows if the tides turn nasty)

2. The wings

Firstly, our local owls are dialing inaround 10lbs of lift capacity. This makes even fat wild bunnies a piece of cake, no pun intended. Supposedly, these wings are rather disproportional to the usual bird weight/wing lift ratio, though I wouldn’t know. Just assume the owl can lift around 2.5 times its body weight, at least as far as a nearby pine tree to start snacking.

More importantly however, these evidently powerful wings are dead silent. The legend goes the mouse has no idea about its rapidly nearing demise until it feels the claws come in from above. I personally believe this to be 100% accurate- every possible flight detail has been subject to evolutionary innovation, from the crinkled, broken shape of the beefy coverts and wrist to the micro-turbulent primary and secondary feather structures, all the way to those huge, fuzz-covered legs and feet. These oversized fluffy feet, by the way, have a clamping force beginning to enter young snapping turtle territory… …You have been warned.

The micro-turbulences generated by the wings has sparked much intrigue over the years. Each feather exhibits a subtle, diffusive, “spiky” shape- the idea being the “ripping” and whooshing of air you hear from most birds when they take off can be removed by softeningthe hard edges of the feathers and wing such that the overall acceleration and lift isn’t hindered. This acoustic principle is really the opposite of how their faces work, diffusing sound instead of funneling it in. An intersting addendum in this GHO technology is how the coverts- the thick, leading edge of the wing- are formed. Many other predatory birds, like the local supercar of aviation, the peregrine falcon, bank on really sharp, hard curves and edges in the coverts to squeeze as much speed and maneuverability into these big important body parts. But not the GHO! Without sacrificing effective speed or agility, the coverts are sort of rounded and “broken up” into smaller edges and curves, directing the air and subsequently sound into a more diffuse pattern. Case to point: the mouse example. The general consensus on these coverts is these nubs areexactly the tool needed for the final swoop in to snatch the ground-dwelling prey. Even at a steep, speedy angle, the GHO can silently hurdle to the ground without spooking anyone. Amazing!

3. Other gizmos and gadgets:

The color and shape is its favorite spot to sleep. The local white pine trees, especially the trunk, are prime real estate for sleepy GHOs after a night munching- so, the owl naturally looks like a white pine tree trunk (complete with two pine cones on the top). Despite these owls being huge, they are rather common (in theory). The chances of finding one with human vision is essentially impossible, so we must rely on other clues on its whereabouts.

The digestion system is the best among owls. When the forest has been robbed of mice and chipmunks, GHOs can- and might even enjoy- eating frogs, big insects, reptiles, domestic pets… The trick is they simply eat the whole animal. There is no kerfuffling with fur here or teeth there; GHOs just go for it, 100% in. This may contribute to the widespread success in the north east, with our crazy weather and prohibitive geological extremes other species struggle with.

In conclusion:

I hope this has been both educational and convincing enough to be enthused about owling. Something this special and this relavent in the northeast is too important to ignore.

-Jess

Wolf Pine @ Fox Park #7: 3/12/17, Surprise! It’s Cold

Arrived at Fox Park at about 1:30 today,3/12/17, under a deceiving blue sky and some light scattered clouds. A prohibitive 10 degrees and ~0 degrees with wind chill (at most) set the tone of my walk, though itdid make walking a bit easier in general- the snow, mud, and debris had been frozen solid, so I could comfortably walk my sit spot loop in sneakers and and number of pairs of socks. I spent the first 20 or so minutes wandering the base of Fox Park, going around from the usual parking lot, to the lower-level parking lot, around the artificial, square-shaped wet area, and up around the immediate road. I didn’t find any owl-related clues, but I did find some other points of interest: a few turkey vultures and a few red wing black birds. I think it is apt to be a bit concerned (mostly for the red wing black birds) because they clearly thought it was spring time, but it actually is not. Ground foraging, insect eating birds who rely on marshy habitats do not seem suited for today’s balmy 10 degrees.

Moving into my sit spot, I heard a brown creeper singing and a muffled “beep!” from a hairy woodpecker. At least they seem happy.

The local “hooligan crows” and their cronies (blue jays) were zipping around in little gangs occasionally. There was very little localization, so I think they were just rabble rousing and partaking in tomfoolery.

I did not take photos today, despite hauling my equipment around. It seems like much of what I saw two days ago is solidly frozen in place from the time being.

Wolf Pine @ Fox Park #6: 3/10/17, Theoretical Owls and Real Tree Bark

I hit the trails at 5 am sharp Friday 3/10/17. Nice morning, some cloud cover but a reasonable temperature for prospective chipmunks for jaunt out of the subnivean environment.

This is where I started- within the vicinity of my theoretical big owl. The big murder of crows was there; that is a good start. Being around dawn-ish time however, the raucous birds dispersed within half an hour, perhaps implying my nocturnal friend either fell asleep in a huff or flew away for a less noisy and more welcoming environment (if there even is an environment that welcomes oversized, silent, essentially unrivalled killing machines…?).

I now can see a distinct, GHO-likely trend. The crows are noisy at the time I know owls like to come back to a nice spot to go to bed, thus a time they are most easily bothered; the crow activity is extremely centralized around this stand of large, sheltering pine trees- the crows all seem to circle the trunks of the pines that are growing most close together. GHO’s love pine tree trunks, and rarely will nap far from the center. I have noted the crows are never “bothering” a deciduous tree, where barred owls could be more likely found (than GHO). I heard a few possible “whoos”the first day owling in response to screech owl calls, which is common with the GHOs. I played barred too around then, so I wasn’t sure (the sounds I heardwere very muted and did not complete any full call, but were unique owl-ish sounds nonetheless).

Here we have two common sights: red, “spear-like” Beech buds and the lingering brittle beech leaves. These are everywhere on my way into my sit spot.

Here we have some white pines. These are the only species of pine I could find around my sit spot…

Paper Birches? -Yes, but they are too easy. Here we have a grey birch (the grey colored one) and a yellow birch (the yellow-tinted one)- both of which are sort of near my wolf pine tree.

Hemlocks! Look at the “crunchy” bark. These are everywhere…

Red oaks. Look at the deep cracks exhibiting an almost reddish color…..

…And some red oak leaves. Pointy, “fire-flame tipped” leaves. They are also reddish, which helps a bit.

What could these be? White oaks! These have this random pattern to the nubby bark, and have a “whitish green” lichen or fungus on it more often than not. The tree to the right is the best non-greenish bark I could find.

The obligatory white oak leaf, in with some beech leaves. these do not seem to be nearly as prevalent as the red oak leaves in terms of what is currently still on the ground. This is the only leaf I could find.

To conclude, here we have a striped maple and a red maple. I assure you: both maples are well into adulthood! Despite one being green and thin and the other looking old and broken, this is in fact “how they do”. Distinct barks, but also easy with the “opposite” branching pattern (not shown). In addition, the red maples are not only opposite branches but branch in a neon crimson color. This helps I.D. quite a bit.

-Jess

“A Tad Early” – Adventures Owling At My sit spot

AT IT AGAIN!

DIY MrSpeakers “Open Alpha” 3d Printed Headphones: Dan Did It Again!

Links:

Headfi forum with release and build notes

MrSpeakers headphone plug terminals

Acoustic wool I used

Brainwaves earpads

Prices for Prusa i3 on Ebay

Other materials include a recycled Grado cable, spare bolts from my Prusa i3 printer (and obviously my i3 printer for printing, too) and Hatchbox black PLA.

I like the Hatchbox stuff, thus far it has proven to be affordable and reliable, even at low printing temperature (180 degrees is all I got).

So: Before I get into the build details, the bottom line is this is the definitive overhaul to complete in terms of t50rp mods. I started with a refurbished mkiii, and hated the crazy EQ spike at about where hihats generally reside. This was not a subtle issue, and would give me a headache quickly. From modding with the stock cups, I found denser damping=worse issue with treble and less bass. Think of it like a bass trap- I used essentially felted wool, which in its raw form killed all frequencies except for the strongest… …Which in this case was about 2.8khz to give a rough estimate. Ouch! After googling around, I discovered Dan was using cotton balls as the primary damping material, with a thin layer of dense acoustic mat of some kind to line the cup (helps mostly I think with leakage control and resonance from the actual plastic and flat surfaces on the cup itself).

Damping the Alphas:

I already had this fancy acoustic wool, so I figured I could make some “wool balls” by separating the dense wad into fluffy pillows. I’d say I aired on the side of less dense- at this point I was printing my Alpha cups, and the space in there is huge, leaving ample space to layer up some of these wool balls. I did not feel the need to line the cups with a damping mat of any kind, because my wool seemed to kill noise and reflection already like nobody’s business.

Printing the cups and other parts:

…Painless, except on the inside of the cups there is a dip where the headband arm is mounted. For no particular reason, I printed both cups without supports- but not without a large amount of “PLA spaghetti” and the occasional emergency “duct tape the PLA spaghetti wad to the bed so it can have something to build on…”

Sound:

Firstly, these sound nothing like the stock t50rp. AT ALL. the low end goes quite low with not a huge amount of distortion, the mids are wide and spacious, and the treble (including the significantly tamed-down spike) is springing and provides nice “pop” and sparkle. These headphones are a pleasure to listen to- I’ve been doing Art Blakey and Coltrain lately because the reproduction of the jazz bass is superb, Couple that with the expansive space where the sax and piano reside, these make a nice way to relax at the end of a day (which is how I have been relaxing each eveningsince I made them). Obviously, we still have some fundamental setbacks. The Fostex driver is unbelievably inefficient. It takes much care to juice these properly (I like them through my e12 portable amp actually, because I can crank the input volume on that with very little distortion for quite a bit). Additionally, there is a limit to how much detail we can siphon out of the driver; this uber mod definitely maxes out the clarity and definition this driver can provide. For example, the successor to this headphone when it was made commercially by Dan/MrSpeakers is the AEON (still in preorder mode at the time of writing)- a completely in house design trickling technology down from the company’s acclaimed ETHER headphones. I am actually lucky enough to have had a few hours to play with them and chat with the inventor (Dan)- quite simply, the clarity and silkiness of the AEON demolishes the notion of clarity with my Open Alphas. THAT SAID an $800 carbon fiber headphone invented from the ground up by Dan (who maintains the highest regards even from competitors (ZMF, even hifiman reps) as the most dedicated headphone creator)is obviously not really competing against a headphone a made for <$300 INCLUDING the 3d printer and donor headphones…. 🙂

The Prusa i3 Update: My ~$150 3d Printer

Links:

the prusa i3 on ebay

Cura 3d slicing and printing gcode software

Marlin firmware for “real” arduinos on Github

I purchased my 3d printer new from the USAfor exactly $155. That is $50 less than a single DUM headphone cable from MrSpeakers. It did not work until much duct tape had been applied and zip ties zipped and jigs rigged, but overall it wasn’t that bad. Now that I’m up and running, there are a few things to note:

1. It can barely heat PLA(at 180 c), so forget about ABS. I have a hunch this mayhave something to do with the wimpy PSU it came with. I just so happen to have a full size version of the same PSU, rated at 30 amps @ 12 volts- someday I will try swapping that one in and see If I can get more temperature. The firmware has ABS settings, it just will never reach the 225 degrees called for.
2. The firmware is very firmly stuck in the arduino. I spent hours upon hours trying to flash this arduino with a custom Marlin software, as I have been taught from my MPCNC project, to no avail. The best thing to do is do all the tweaks in Cura, load the resulting gcode into a sd card, and run the printer off that. The USB was getting wonky on me (I can’t remember exactly what it was doing, it just wasn’t the right thing). plus with the sd card you can put the printer wherever you want.
3. The build quality… there is no quality. be prepared to make up the assembly and troubleshooting as you go.
4. “heated” bed- the bed game is rather weak. things sometimes stick, but usually don’t. I learned the best way to get prints to stick is with washable glue sticks. Long story short (and many prints that skittered off the bed before they were done), I need gluesticks.

Once I procure some glue sticks, I’ll be printing out my “real” machine. MPCNC, Here we come!