this & that
Today I slept a bit late, had breakfast and puttered for a bit. Then I walked over to UW to go to the Burke Museum. I wandered through their exhibit on Giant Squid and their photography exhibit "Yellowstone to Yukon". The squid exhibit was all right but not amazing. The photography exhibit was quite good. I recognized one or two of the places in the Yellowstone section of the photographs. At 1pm I met up with achyroptera for a talk at the museum about birds of Yellowstone.
The talk was given by a retired (as of two weeks ago) national park service ornithologist. His talk was interesting in that it was certainly not a cutesy "here are the birds of Yellowstone lecture". No, in fact, the second slide he showed was of a pack of about 6 wolves taking down a golden eagle. The third slide was of a dead bald eagle and it's stomach contents. No holds barred! I mean, it was certainly interesting and achyroptera and I were sitting there going "Wow, neat!" at most of the bird behaviorall discoveries he was presenting (wow, a Peregrines attacking a California Gull!). So, very cool on the "you don't see this stuff every day" content. Although, I have to wonder what some of the other audience members thought.
I didn't have any issues with the blood&guts on display but during the lecture I found myself actually a bit displeased with the presentation. I guess I've seen so many power-point presentations on things like this that I found myself thinking of how I would've done this presentation differently. I was re-arranging slides and photos in my head, tweaking the outline, rephrasing slides, adding bullets, subtracting bullets. It was really odd. I never thought of myself as a public speaking guru but I believe I could've done his talk better than he could. :-/ Now I feel like I'm bragging or something, and it's not that he had a bad presentation; it was really interesting! I just feel like maybe it could've been structured better for a more coherent flow and a more concise, powerful message.
Afterwards I took the bus home and had a late lunch.
Since then I have been puttering and working on getting holiday cards addressed. Reading a lot, poking around online.
I need to do my sketches. Both for yesterday and today. :-/ I have a feeling I may or may not get around to them. bleh. I'll do them, though, and post them when I can.
I've been trying to battle some minor cold, with a lot of Tang and tea and lots of sleep. I think it's working, or at least, I hope so.
The talk was given by a retired (as of two weeks ago) national park service ornithologist. His talk was interesting in that it was certainly not a cutesy "here are the birds of Yellowstone lecture". No, in fact, the second slide he showed was of a pack of about 6 wolves taking down a golden eagle. The third slide was of a dead bald eagle and it's stomach contents. No holds barred! I mean, it was certainly interesting and achyroptera and I were sitting there going "Wow, neat!" at most of the bird behaviorall discoveries he was presenting (wow, a Peregrines attacking a California Gull!). So, very cool on the "you don't see this stuff every day" content. Although, I have to wonder what some of the other audience members thought.
I didn't have any issues with the blood&guts on display but during the lecture I found myself actually a bit displeased with the presentation. I guess I've seen so many power-point presentations on things like this that I found myself thinking of how I would've done this presentation differently. I was re-arranging slides and photos in my head, tweaking the outline, rephrasing slides, adding bullets, subtracting bullets. It was really odd. I never thought of myself as a public speaking guru but I believe I could've done his talk better than he could. :-/ Now I feel like I'm bragging or something, and it's not that he had a bad presentation; it was really interesting! I just feel like maybe it could've been structured better for a more coherent flow and a more concise, powerful message.
Afterwards I took the bus home and had a late lunch.
Since then I have been puttering and working on getting holiday cards addressed. Reading a lot, poking around online.
I need to do my sketches. Both for yesterday and today. :-/ I have a feeling I may or may not get around to them. bleh. I'll do them, though, and post them when I can.
I've been trying to battle some minor cold, with a lot of Tang and tea and lots of sleep. I think it's working, or at least, I hope so.