Matthew Singer

Evolution at Snowbird

June 27, 2013June 28, 2013 Matt Travel Stories

This year's Evolution meeting was held at the Snowbird resort in the beautiful Wasatch Mountains outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. This year, I was fortunate enough to attend this meeting and present a talk on the correlation (or lack thereof) of boldness behaviors and swimming behavior in an open field. Of course, while meetings are great for presenting research…

Palouse Falls

May 28, 2013 Matt Travel Stories

There seems to be a trend among people that when you live in a certain area, you tend to take for granted your proximity to tourist attractions and not visit them. Local attractions aren't really a priority because they're always there, so you can always visit them later. Well, later can turn into years. In this case, three years. I've…

Spring Wildflowers and McCroskey State Park

May 12, 2013May 12, 2013 Matt Travel Stories

When I started this blog, I never intended to make daily posts, but then, I thought that maybe I could come up with enough content to post more than once a month. This month's post is all about Spring wildflowers on the Palouse, because I've found some new ones and re-photographed some old favorites. To begin, I had realized that…

Problem Solving to Victory: RLE

April 15, 2013April 15, 2013 Matt Research Blog

Today I had a sort of "Boo-yah!" moment when I solved a problem I've been working on since the summer. Here's the back story: We've been integrating video tracking into our behavior assays in the lab, and in order to implement this method into research, I have been working with one of the math-bio undergrads on writing R-code to import…

Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge

March 16, 2013 Matt Travel Stories

I had to go to Spokane for a follow-up appointment with the orthopedic surgeon, and it happened to be a nice day, so I suggested that while we were up there, we should go to the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge and spend some time outdoors. I've known the refuge was there and have always wanted to check it out, but…

Birding in Lewiston

March 10, 2013March 10, 2013 Matt Personal Updates

Given my current disabled condition, there's not much I can do to get ouside and enjoy the sunshine, but there are a few places that I can go. There are paved walking and bike trails in every nearby town, and some of them offer spectacular scenery. The Trail of the Coeur D'Alenes, for example, starts in Plummer and meanders for…

The Ski Trip to End All Ski Trips

March 1, 2013March 1, 2013 Matt Personal Updates, Travel Stories

February 17th began as any other trip to McCall. I rolled out of bed around 5:00 am, packed the car with my gear, and 20 minutes later, I was leaving for Moscow to meet up with Tyler and Genevieve. We made it to Brundage around 10:30 local time and headed straight to the Centenial chair where we met up with…

Chickadees

February 5, 2013December 15, 2013 Matt Personal Updates, Photo Blog

For Christmas, I bought Erin a new bird feeder to replace one that had been broken earlier in the summer. A few weeks ago, we finally got some seed and put it outside, but this was in the middle of a cold snap where daytime highs remained in the low 20's, and the nighttime lows, well, we just won't go…

Winter Hike to Jerry Johnson Hot Springs

January 28, 2013January 28, 2013 Matt Hikes

Last weekend, I reported on a snowshoe hike along the Potlatch River and alluded to a second snowshoe adventure the same weekend. In fact, we had planned a little excursion out along Rt. 12 to Jerry Johnson hot springs. It turned out that the hot springs are still popular in winter, at least enough so that the one-mile trail was…

Snowshoeing: Potlatch River Loop

January 20, 2013January 20, 2013 Matt Personal Updates

This week's snowshoeing adventure takes us on the Potlatch Canyon loop trail (Clearwater NF #765). If the view above looks familiar, it's because I have hiked this loop many times in the summer, and first posted about it two years ago. This time, armed with snowshoes, we had a very successful winter hike through the woods. Despite the rising temperatures…

Snowshoeing: Palouse Divide

January 13, 2013January 13, 2013 Matt Hikes

I must have forgotten to post about this trip. This was last week, January 5, 2013. This was Idaho Parks and Recreation's free day in which no parking pass was required to use the Park n' Ski areas or any of the state parks. There are two Park n' Ski areas near Moscow: Elk River and Palouse Divide. The Park…

Snowshoeing: Spud Hill

January 13, 2013January 13, 2013 Matt Hikes

This snowshoeing thing is taking off, and if I keep this up, I'll be in shape enough to not suck at hiking at the beginning of the hiking season. This week's adventure brings us up Spud Hill, also known by some as Mount Deary. Spud Hill was my first Idaho summit, and it's a great little local hike that I…

A walk in the snow

December 29, 2012December 29, 2012 Matt Hikes, Photo Blog

[caption id="attachment_321" align="aligncenter" width="500"] A layer of mist hovers over the snow behind the house.[/caption] Well, now that Winter has finally arrived, we thought it might be fun to tromp through the snow and get some exercise. I dusted off the snowshoes (literally) and we set off for a little hike out of our back yard. As we began our…

Free Meat!

December 27, 2012 Matt Personal Updates

Warning! This post may contain some graphic and delicious images. Proceed at your own risk. (more…)

Thanksgiving, Parts II & III

December 19, 2012December 27, 2012 Matt Travel Stories

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Las Vegas from Lone Mountain[/caption] Holy smokes, it's almost Christmas and I never really finished posting about my Thanksgiving trip to Las Vegas. So, I'm going to give the abbreviated version of the rest of the trip and then move on to some more current events. When I visit Las Vegas, it's not for the usual…

What I am thankful for

November 29, 2012November 29, 2012 Matt Opinions

During the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, many people post about the things they are thankful for. I have been stewing over just how to say what it is I'm thankful for, because it's a little bit different than most people's ideals. There are two major concepts that I am thankful for. Number one is free will. Number two is…

Thanksgiving in Las Vegas, Part 1: The drive down

November 29, 2012November 29, 2012 Matt Travel Stories

One of my best friends from high school invited Erin and I down to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving. In fact, we were invited down last year, but we weren't able to make it. Therefore, I decided that we'd make it work this year. Erin still wanted to host our annual Thanksgiving dinner at our house, so we had one on…

Fall Foliage

October 18, 2012October 18, 2012 Matt Personal Updates

I've been spending a lot of time finishing up my dissertation proposal, which is due in a little over a week, and that has kept me from taking time to enjoy the outdoors. We got some considerable rain over the past weekend which lead to some dramatic skies and really clear views on Monday and Tuesday, but I just wasn't…

Aurora

October 9, 2012October 10, 2012 Matt Personal Updates, Photo Blog

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500"] A test shot from early on in the night. Notice the two meteors captured in this frame. Apparently, I also caught the end of a major meteor shower.[/caption] This story begins Friday night when I learned that a large coronal mass ejection (CME) sent a burst of solar radiation from the sun headed toward Earth.…

Smoke in the Air

September 28, 2012September 28, 2012 Matt Personal Updates

Where have I been the last three weeks? To put it lightly, I have been choking on smoke. Since returning from the Seven Devils trip over Labor Day Weekend, the wildfires in the northwest, particularly in Idaho, have flared up. A fire south of the Devils appeared as well as a large fire just outside of Riggins. There have been…

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