08:26 – I’m still cranking away on the biology book, still in the plants group. I hope to finish the lab session on mosses and ferns today and get started on one about gymnosperms and angiosperms. After that I’ll move along to the next group, invertebrates, and do two or three lab sessions for that group, then some lab sessions for the chordates group, and finally some lab sessions on the human body. Once I finish all that, I’ll jump back and start filling in additional lab sessions in the groups I’ve already populated to fill the available time.
The drop-dead deadline for the book is 31 January, so I’ll continue knocking out new stuff until about 24 January. That leaves me a week or so to do a final run-through, incorporating comments from tech reviewers, rewriting as necessary, adding more images, and so on. At that point, it’s ready to go to production, although of course I’ll continue making changes through the editing process. At some point, Brian Jepson, my editor, will have to drag the manuscript away from me, despite my kicking and screaming. At that point, I’ll wave good-bye to the book, take a day or two off, and then start work on the forensics manual and kit.
My hat is, per usual, off to you, sir. So long as you really enjoy what you’re doing, and it seems readily apparent that you do. Good on ya, mate, as our friend from Oz might say.
The throwing-away marathon continues here at Chez OFD, on a nice sunny weekend, as we prepare to move out and up to a new (1830) brick house 65 miles to our northwest, on the shore of Lake Champlain and just 20 miles south of O Kanada. OFD is mainly concerned with bank and insurance paperwork and how we need to really dump about two-thirds of our junk and Mrs. OFD is looking at shutters and wood cook-stoves. Well, to be fair, she is also hauling stuff outta here.
We are hoping at some point to catch a glimpse, and perhaps a nice photo, of this guy here:
http://www.paranormal-encyclopedia.com/c/champ/images/1977-SandiMansi.jpg
What is that? The Loch Champlain monster? Champie?
Yep. Reported sightings by First Nations peoples prior to First Colonists peoples. The loch has outlets via the Richelieu to the north and the St. Lawrence Seaway, and to the Hudson in the south via the old canal locks and Lake George. In some places it is 400 feet deep, and very dark and cold.
The picture that I linked to is probably the best so far, and it was taken just offshore from where we will be living, nearly forty years ago. I am thinking of setting up a webcam with a telephoto lens triggered somehow by motion detection and linked to a pooter in the house. Can this be done, O techno wizards here?
Holy crap! I honestly thought I was making that up.
Is that really the best fake picture available? I wonder if anyone has bothered to subject it to image analysis.
I thought you knew about it already from the nickname you gave it; it is actually called “Champ” and it was the mascot here for the former minor-league ball club that was affiliated with the Montreal Expos. The team here now is the Vermont Lake Monsters.
Dunno about rigorous image analysis, and I am sure there are newer tools to do it with now; and there is this:
“The Mansi Photograph
The Mansi Photograph
The most famous photograph1 of Champ, the Mansi Photograph, was taken in 1977.
Sandra Mansi’s account of her family’s 1977 encounter with Champ is the most fully documented sighting of any lake monster sighting in history.
Sandra, her two children, and her fiancé Anthony Mansi, along with Sandra’s two children from her previous marriage, were driving on the north shore of Lake Champlain near the town of St. Albens. Around noon, they stopped at a small bluff that overlooked the lake.
As the children waded along the shore, Mansi saw what she first thought was a school of fish or a scuba diver about 150 yards out. Suddenly, “the head and neck broke the surface of the water.” As her fiancé hurried the children out of the water, Mansi quickly grabbed her Instamatic camera and snapped a photo. Then she put the camera down and watched as the creature turned slightly and then disappeared again beneath the water’s surface. The sighting lasted a remarkably long time; the Mansi’s estimated from four to seven minutes1, 3, 6.
What is most remarkable about the photograph is that, although examined by several experts there is absolutely no evidence of tampering with the picture, making the Mansi Photograph the most credible evidence to date of a lake monster sighting.”
There have been similar sightings in Lake Memphremagog to the east of Lake Champlain and the funny thing is that all the sightings are of something that resembles the ones of Nessie over in Yon Scepter’d Isle’s northern Loch Ness.
Hey, cut them some slack. That picture was from 1977. Photoshop didn’t even exist back then.
I named it by analogy to Nessie, another fraud.
It didn’t require Photoshop to do all the fraudulent images of Nessie.
We have Ogopogo in Ktown. Another fraud perpetrated by the tourist bureau. Even the First Nations people admit that it’s superstitious nonsense, like volcano gods or snow gods.
Now you wait just a damn minute, Mr. Grigg! We know full well here in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine that there are snow gods! We pray to the buggers every winter in hopes that the ski slopes runneth over here and zillions of touristas will spend money like water and then LEAVE.
We may be related in this regard to those cargo cult natives of remote Pacific islands, I dunno.
Looks to me like 2 geese facing each other, one with head below the water under the breast of the other, the other with head facing away from the camera.
@OFD What is the new commute to work like for you and Mrs. OFD? I am working on decreasing mine (about 60 miles), but it sounds like you have increased yours substantially.
Geez, I am trying to download a 2gb file with bit torrent, and it has plenty of seeds and peers, but I am getting download rates averaging 52.4kb/s. Internet delivery needs to be separated completely from all entertainment companies. What exactly do our Congressmen do anyway? Anything constructive at all?
Chuck, the new commute from home to work for me will decrease by about four miles, and ditto to MIL’s place, as it happens. Mrs. OFD works at home most weeks but an average of once a month goes on a trip for her work to the corners of the nation for a week at a time, and we shall have to see how that affects the trips to and from our wonderful international airport, which, BTW, hosts a squadron of F-16s, the new Green Mountain Boys, and soon to host the new AF fighters, I hear.
And your question about our Congressmen had me LMAO, thank you.
As I said, perpetrated by the tourist bureau! Besides, you’re a self-confessed Catholic, you’ll believe anything! 😀
No, no, no; only what the scarlet Whore of Babylon tells me to believe!
Eh? My hair is no longer red, so calling me “the scarlet Whore” is inaccurate.
Yo, what happened with your red hair? I still have mine. Paternal grandpa kept his until the end. Maternal grandma kept hers almost to the end and then it turned completely white, but she was in her late 80s. Genetics.
How far do you go with genetics in the biology kit?
And here’s another somewhat related question; the three main causes of death in my family seem to be cancer, senile dementia/Alzheimer’s, and gunshot. Of the three, you can guess my preference. Do I have a one-in-three chance here or what?
Just ruminating on a brisk late fall morning (low fotties) in northern Vermont…
“Silver or grey Whore” just doesn’t flow as well. How about “The Whore formally known as Scarlet”?