Matt - Matthew Singer

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…