Matthew Singer - Biologist, Photographer, Geocacher, Adventurer, and more...

What have I been up to?

March 22, 2023March 22, 2023 Matt Personal Updates

Sunset on the Prairie It has been quite some time since I last made a post here, so I'd say I'm a bit overdue for an update. For the past two and a half years, I have been living in northwestern North Dakota. Saying this is an adjustment is an understatement. North Dakota is considerably flatter than any place I've…

Fourth of July

July 5, 2020July 5, 2020 Matt Hikes, Personal Updates

View on Grandmother Mountain For many years, I have spent my Fourth of July basking in the part of America that I enjoy the most: its wild and natural beauty. It started in 2011 when I explored the Hobo Cedar Grove for the first time. Then again in 2013 when I hiked Grandmother Mountain. In 2015, I spent the fourth…

Why you’re working from home, Part 2: A Shiny Model

March 28, 2020March 28, 2020 Matt Personal Updates

Immediately after I published my last post, I wasn't content with the manner in which I conveyed the SIR model. Simply posting graphs from scenarios that I ran isn't exciting. It's passive, and it doesn't actively demonstrate for the reader how social distancing does work to reduce infection rates. I wanted something interactive. Something that you, my readers, can play…

Why you’re working from home: An introduction to epidemiological modeling

March 24, 2020November 24, 2022 Matt Science News

The COVID-19 virus is sweeping the world causing an equally contagious pandemic of fear and confusion. Depending on where you live, you may be ordered to stay home, going out only when necessary, or there may be no restrictions on your life, leaving it up to you to decide how to go about your day during this tumultuous time. Two…

Sand Mountain Trail

June 18, 2019June 18, 2019 Matt Hikes

I don't get out hiking or geocaching often these days. With geocaching, it makes sense. I've found nearly all of the geocaches in a close distance to home and town, forcing me to travel farther distances just to make a find. But when it comes to hiking, I have less of an excuse. I don't live in Moscow. I live…

Geocaching

June 14, 2019July 8, 2019 Matt Personal Updates

In case you weren't aware, Geocaching is one of my hobbies turned obsession that fills my life with joy. Geocaching is a game in which people hide containers and post the coordinates on the web for others to enter into a GPS and go out and find. The game began in May of 2000. On May 2, the US Government…

Adventures in Sourdough

February 4, 2019February 4, 2019 Matt Personal Updates

When life prevents you from going out and adventuring, you make your own adventures at home. My latest adventure is making sourdough. Now, I could go out and obtain or buy a starter from a local bakery, but what's the fun of that? It's so easy to start my own from scratch, and now I have one that I can…

Board Games

October 7, 2018October 7, 2018 Matt Personal Updates

My hobbies include outdoor adventure, photography, and geocaching. They also include board games. In high school, I played a lot of games with my friends (we even played Axis & Allies during AP History class). It continued in college. And I started back up in graduate school after discovering both a game club in town and (finally) other students and…

An update for 2018

January 31, 2018 Matt Personal Updates

It's occurred to me that I haven't been good at writing posts recently. My last update was from May, and that was subsequently my last big hiking trip. Since then, I have been incredibly busy, and that means I haven't had as much time for fun. I did get out a few times this summer with the family. But there's…

Hells Canyon, Episode 2

May 29, 2017December 29, 2019 Matt Hikes

Happy Memorial Day everyone. I had originally planned to spend the long weekend down in the Alvord Desert of southeastern Oregon with friends and the family. We would have been camping, hiking, birding, herping, and soaking in hot springs. But circumstances had us backing out of the trip at the last minute to spend a lazy weekend at home. So…

Moscow Mountain Snowshoe

January 22, 2017 Matt Hikes

Saturday, January 14, 2017 It's not often that I get out to hike these days. But we've had a fantastic winter so far, and after a week of insanely cold temperatures and clear weather, I just had to get out and take advantage before the warm weather and rains took over. I've always wanted to hike to the lookout on…

Jerry Johnson

January 13, 2017 Matt Personal Updates

We've gotten a lot of snow this winter. And then it got cold. Like, really cold. Night time lows below zero, and daytime highs hovering around 20. Â So the only thing to do with this kind of weather is go swimming. [embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xz_UKNzjso[/embedyt] Last year, we took Clara to a developed hot spring near McCall and she loved it. This…

December Update

December 11, 2016 Matt Personal Updates

When I started this site, I never expected to make daily posts. Weekly? Maybe. Monthly? Less desireable. I'm kind of ashamed that it's been three months with no updates, but there hasn't been much of excitement to talk about. There haven't been any big adventures this fall. I'm just plugging away at the Ph.D. thing, which has also made me…

Camping at Hazard Lake

September 5, 2016 Matt Personal Updates

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPFgUQ-9cwA[/embedyt] In May we bought a new tent to accommodate our growing family on camping trips. I guess the two-person backpacking tent just won't do it anymore for thee people and two large dogs. So after we bought it, we took it out for its maiden test at a nearby campground. This summer was dubbed the summer of no…

Adventures with Clara: Hobo Cedar Grove

July 20, 2016 Matt Hikes

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fGgqlKSpXw[/embedyt] The Hobo Cedar Grove is a nice easy 1-mile hike through a grove of giant old-growth trees. It is the perfect hike for toddlers to explore nature, which is why we brought Clara up there on Sunday. She enjoyed the large trees, but wasn't into walking the trail much. Eventually Erin had to carry her for most of…

Grandmother Mountain

July 11, 2016July 11, 2016 Matt Hikes

I finally got some time to get up to Freezeout to hike Grandmother Mountain. The flowers are out and it's quite pretty, though it's not the best year for flowers that I've seen. It could be that I got up there a little late. Everything seems to be coming out a little earlier this year than normal. But then, all…

July 4 Update and Clara in Spokane

July 4, 2016July 4, 2016 Matt Research Blog, Travel Stories

It's been over a month since my last update. There haven't been any major adventures due to time and financial constraints. As I aim to write and finish my dissertation, the time for such outings decreases and thus this summer will be nicknamed "the summer of no fun." Fun isn't completely off the table, but the number and scope of…

Steptoe Butte and the Palouse

May 6, 2016 Matt Photo Blog

When I moved to the Palouse, I didn't realize just how photogenic the landscape was. Then I saw ads for the Palouse in Popular Photography. It turns out, people will pay good money to come and photograph the region, and here I am living there not taking advantage of my home turf. I've only been on Steptoe Butte once before,…

White Pine Loop & Bomber Too

May 1, 2016 Matt Hikes

Last week, Clara and I had a day to ourselves, so we had a little adventure on a nearby trail. The white pine loop is a 3-mile hike fromÂ the White Pine campground off of Idaho Rt. 6. A one-mile (one-way) out and back spur takes us to the site of a WWII bomber crash site with some pieces of the…

Canoeing on the Palouse River

March 21, 2016March 21, 2016 Matt Travel Stories

March is such a bipolar month in Idaho. One day it can be cold and snowy and the next can be sunny and 60. So while we had cold rain during the weekend of our canoe trip, this past weekend was really nice. I took Clara outÂ for a hike on the Potlatch River Trail near our house and she hiked…