University of Minnesota EZProxy Bookmarklet

Are you a student, staff or faculty member at the University of Minnesota? Do you ever find yourself at a webpage of a journal publisher, when you realize you haven't gone in through the Libraries system, and the publisher won't give you access to the full text? All you have to do is make a bookmark with this code:

javascript:location.href='http://floyd.lib.umn.edu/login?url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)

When you find yourself at a page requiring authorization through the University Libraries, just click your new bookmark and it will ask you to login (if you're not already) before sending you back to the correct page, fully authorized! Of course, it will only work if the Library has itself purchased access to the articles. But it's great when you follow a link in a news story to Nature and want to read the real deal.

Sink Frogs

Sink Frogs
Originally uploaded by botanize

So I walk into the bathroom, which is basically an outhouse with plumbing, and these frogs are sitting in the overflow drain holes of the sink. They didn't even flinch as I took their pictures, or washed my hands. I guess there are plenty of bugs and no snakes in the bathroom. Yet.

Starry night

Starry night
Originally uploaded by botanize

Try viewing a large version of this photo by clicking on it. You should be able to see some stars, and just the slightest hint of star trails. The Moon is nearly full, so I'm expecting werewolves to come hunt down some of the bambis that have been prancing around the meadow like they own the place. The point is, when the moon is new, I'll take some pictures and try to get the Milky Way.

A typical evening at the fire

A typical evening at the fire
Originally uploaded by botanize

This is one way to relieve tedium: fire and beer. I asked John to play "rockin' in the free world", because I was getting sick of hearing sad folky songs. He said it was the first time he knew a song someone requested; i helped him sing it.

Box of goodies

Box of goodies
Originally uploaded by botanize

Lately I've been doing a lot of this: labeling small plastic bottles, filling them with water and freezing them. I'm going to thaw some of them out in a week and run ammonia on them. The others are going to be next day shipped to Minnesota on dry ice, so that I can spend all of fall semester analyzing them.

Science is tedious, the trick is finding a tedium you can stand.

If the countryside is not green it is dying

If the countryside is not green it is dying
Originally uploaded by botanize

I knew that California has a Mediterranean climate. I know that means cool wet winters and warm dry summers. I know how important that may be for the evolution of grains. But I didn't really know what that means.

"But Adam, looking out over his dry dust-obscured land, felt the panic the Eastern man always does at first in California. In a Connecticut summer two weeks without rain is a dry spell and four a drought. If the countryside is not green it is dying. But in California it does not ordinarily rain at all between the end of May and the first of November. The Eastern man, though he has been told, feels the Earth is sick in the rainless months."

- John Steinbeck - East of Eden

The end of a long day (with incubations)

The end of a long day (with incubations)
Originally uploaded by botanize

Science is tiring. The boxes behind me contain 16 2-liter flasks full of filtered stream water plus a bacterial inoculant. I'm going to track the concentrations of various forms of nitrogen and carbon of the course of two weeks to determine how much of it is usable by bacteria. At the end of the two weeks I'll have hundreds of small vials of frozen water that will keep me busy for quite a while. And of course, it doesn't end there. I have a few other things I'm going to try to do with the water left over, because with science, there's always something else you can do.