Shoot Happens (& 2023 Photo Challenge!)

December 28, 2022

For the last few years, I’ve given myself small art challenges to keep my creative juices flowing, and, in all honesty, to give me a semi-physical and conclusive product to show and feel satisfied with. Back in 2021, I decided to use an old film camera style app to record my year as though I had a disposable camera in my pocket. When the year was up, I printed them out and put them into an album I decorated to be my yearbook (you can read about it here for part 1 and part 2). I was really content with the outcome and find it fun to show to friends who are into that sort of thing, not to mention it is much nicer to reminisce with a book than just on your phone or computer. For 2022, I tried (and failed) at keeping up with a 365 day photo challenge, where as the name suggests, I would take and post one photo a day. Now with 2023 coming up, I wanted to make my final decision for the new year.

Having the “Gall”

December 12, 2022

While IDing plants, I’ve noticed that sometimes when looking back at photos I’ve taken, the leaves have little bumps on them. I’ve always just assumed it’s a fungus growing or a deformity of the leaf. That is, until now, where I was informed those bumps actually have a name, and they can be caused by a wide variety of etiologies. They’re called “galls” or “cecidia” and are essentially growths/tumors that can form on any part of the plant, sometimes due to irritation and sometimes due to the organism of cause living inside/promoting the formation of it.

Agglutinative vs Fusional Languages

December 7, 2022

In my language learning and teaching journey, I have become somewhat of an armchair linguist, not formally educated nor capable, but does that stop me? Of course not. With what I have experienced and looked into, jargon for aspects of language acquisition and linguistic typology often pop up and leave me at spots that don’t make much sense. A while ago I wrote about mora-timed language for this same reason, as it gave me purpose to get it figured out. Today, as I procrastinate on studying for my biochem exam and am no longer as despondent as earlier this semester, I bring you fusional language.