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Archive for June, 2006
June 12, 2006 at 12:57 pm · Filed under Life
On Saturday, I went to what was listed as a Bird watching field trip at Cedar Ridge Preserve. However, when I arrived, I discovered that the schedule was in error; it was actually a “plant walk” to go see some rare orchids. Well, plants are cool too, and I didn’t have anything else planned that morning, so I decided to stick around. Dr. Marcy Brown lead the group to an area of the trail about a mile away from the entrance to look at a Hexalectris grandiflora. Until this year, the only known location of these orchids in the United States was in the Big Bend area of southern Texas. But now, specimens have been discovered at two sites in Dallas County, and I got to see one of them. It’s kinda fun being among the few people that know that the distribution map from that last link is wrong. :-)
As Dr. Brown explained, the tricky thing about this kind of orchid is that it cannot be grown in “captivity” because of its relationship with a special kind of fungus in the ground. Most orchids need a fungus to help them start growing because orchid seeds are relatively small and don’t contain very many nutrients. The type of fungus to orchid species relationship is almost one to one, with most orchids requiring a unique kind of fungus. This makes cultivating orchids very difficult because not only do soil and lighting conditions have to be just right, the correct kind of fungus has to already exist in the soil before the seeds will do anything at all.
Usually, once the orchid has started growing, it ends its dependency on the fungus and starts using photosynthesis to obtain the carbon it needs to grown. Hexalectrics grandiflora is somewhat unique in that it continues the fungal relationship and (as far as we know) never uses photosynthesis. That’s why there are no leaves or other green parts to this orchid.
I took a few more Hexalectris grandiflora pictures. I wish I knew more about photographing plants up close, but I think they turned out alright.
We also saw some Hexalectris warnockii on a different trail. These were more plentiful, but not as pretty to look at. They had bloomed earlier and were now just purplish colored stems coming out of the ground.
After our orchid adventures, we walked around the garden near the entrance of the preserve. Several of the people that had come for the plant walk were from the Garland Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas. I asked them a few questions about some of the plants in the garden, and soon they were rattling off all sorts of long, complicated-sounding names that I’d never heard before.
Soon it was time to leave for the next event of the day: an organ demonstration and a tour of the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. I met Pony, Crystal, and Liz (who was driving her shiny new Chevy Cobalt) at Schmorgan’s house, and then the five of us headed toward downtown Dallas where we met Bungee, Esther, and Tim.
Organ demonstrations are held periodically at the Meyerson, but usually they are only on weekdays. Because of the City Arts Celebration, they scheduled two for this Saturday, which made things much more convenient for us. After a short introduction by one of the Meyerson staff, Mary Preston started playing. I had heard about the acoustic qualities of the McDermott concert hall and the Lay Family Concert Organ, but to experience them in person is really something. The hall completely envelopes the listener in the sounds of the powerful organ and allows each of the 4,535 pipes their own acoustic texture and placement. Having grown up listening to the electronic organ at church (which really isn’t half bad), it was a joy to hear the sound of real pipes and to hear how some of the stops are actually supposed to sound. Listening to the world-renowned Preston play also confirmed something I’d long suspected: my mom is a pretty good organist.
After the organ demo, we were lead on a rushed tour through some of the rest of the building. The guide suggested coming back some other time when there wasn’t as much going on for a better tour. I think I’ll try to do that before the summer is over.
We then wandered around the West End for a while and ate at The Spaghetti Warehouse. Following dinner, Bungee went into “tour guide mode” and showed us all the sites of historical significance relating to the Kennedy assassination. I’d seen the memorial and the Sixth Floor Museum before, but I’d never really gotten a good look at the notorious “grassy knoll,” so that was interesting.
I’m not used to living in a city with so many interesting things to see and do whenever I want to. Talking to members of the local Native Plant Society about some rare orchids in the morning followed by an organ demonstration in one of the best concert halls in the world in the afternoon is just not something that you can do in a small town. I like it here.
June 8, 2006 at 7:45 pm · Filed under Wycliffe
Greetings from Dallas! Life has been very busy these last few weeks. I finished my Resident Assistant duties at LeTourneau University the morning of May 8th, moved into my new home that same evening, and started work in the Language Software Development department the next morning. I am staying with a family that lives just a few minutes away from the Center, so my morning commutes are nice and short.
The first week of work was a bit different from normal because the department was involved in putting on a conference about our software, Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx). Linguistic consultants from all over the world had gathered to receive training on FLEx and give feedback for future development. The conference was a great success; everyone was very impressed with the software and was eager to start using it. Susanna, our analyst, wrote down hundreds of potential improvements we can make.
During the conference, I had an opportunity to talk with a number of the linguists. One of them, Ron Moe, told me about a process he had created called DDP (Dictionary Development Process). Field workers will usually try to create a dictionary of some sort during the process of Bible translation, but often these dictionaries will only have about 5,000 words. Some reach up to 12,000 words, but that could take 20 years of work. The problem with these relatively small sets of words is that the translation can end up sounding like “baby talk” because the limited vocabulary does not tap into the full expressive capabilities of the language. However, using Ron’s process, a small team can create a basic dictionary with as many as 20,000 words in just two weeks! Not only that, but because the words are collected using a structure called “semantic domains,” a thesaurus can be easily constructed at the same time as the dictionary. FLEx has been designed with this process in mind and includes a section that is specifically set up to be used during a DDP word collection session. If you are interested in more information about this revolutionary new process, check out its webpage.
Another interesting topic I learned about at the conference was the importance of academic publications. SIL (the nonprofit academic organization Wycliffe members work under) has an extremely high reputation in the academic linguistic community for their language research and publications. This research not only enables translators to do a better job because they have a better understanding of the language, it is also highly valued by the governments that sponsor SIL to work in their countries. Because these academic publications are so critical, FLEx has capabilities to make producing them easier than ever. Using information that the field worker will have already entered into the program during the course of their research, an academic paper called a “grammar sketch” can be generated with just a few clicks. Dictionary information can also be easily exported and prepared for publication.
After the conference was over, I got my computer set up and was able to start programming. My first major project has been to add “Help” buttons to most of the dialog boxes and menus in the application. Marlon, one of my coworkers in the department, is writing the documentation, so I just had to link everything together. Good documentation is critical to the success of a program like this. Many of our users will be in places with limited communications, and their only source of help on the program may be the included documentation. So, it is important that the documentation be thorough and simple to access. Working on the Help system has been a great project for me. It has given me exposure to most parts of the program and has been a great way to learn how to use the development tools. When I started work, there were maybe a dozen or so Help links in the application. Over the last several weeks, I have been able to increase that number to over 400. I have also worked on several other aspects of the program including restructuring several dialog boxes to make them more intuitive to use, adding some extra functionality, and fixing several bugs.
I greatly appreciate your prayers and financial support. Please continue to pray for our team as we work on this software. October 13 is the planned release date for version 1.0 of FLEx, and we are already starting to feel the time crunch. It is difficult to figure out which features we have time to add and which will have to wait a year for our next big release. Starting next week, we are also beginning a major migration of our development environment to a newer version. This upgrade will give us a number of new features, but also has the possibility of interrupting programming time for several days.
God definitely has His hand in what we are doing. I have been amazed at how much a relatively small team has been able to accomplish. Even personally, I know that I could not have gotten up to speed as quickly as I have on my own. I am still very excited to be a part of something that will have a major impact on Bible translation!
If you would like more information on FLEx, it has a website with screenshots and even a free download of the program. Also, feel free to email me if you have any other questions about what all I am doing this summer.
May the Lord bless you.
June 6, 2006 at 10:24 pm · Filed under Birding
I outlined this post shortly after we returned from the trip, but lack of time followed by lack of Internet delayed its completion and posting until now.
On Saturday, April 22nd, Courtney, Michaela, and I headed out to Paradise Lost (formerly known as Iron Bridge Road) for the last birding trip of the school year. I parked my car outside the yellow gate as before and we started down the road. I had noticed that a pickup was parked at the entrance, but I had not noticed the Eastman employee inside. He politely, but firmly informed us that we could not enter unless we had Eastman cards. I told him that although we were cardless, we were big fans of Eastman; it didn’t help. So, until we can acquire some of these mysterious Eastman cards, we will be stuck outside the gate. I know of at least one professor at LETU that used to be pretty high up in Eastman and may still have contacts there. I’ll probably talk to him next semester about getting some cards for LOL.
Determined to still get some birding out of the trip, we decided to walk down the railroad tracks that paralleled the road leading to the gate. Unfortunately, a heavy fog obscured our view of the few birds that were around and made colors almost indistinguishable. The birds were less than thrilled about the fog, and there was not much activity in either sound or flight.
Suddenly, the sun cleared up fog in an instant and we could see a beautiful morning and a few birds too. There were plenty of Cardinals, but I was eager to see the many warblers Bolt had told us to look for. I did hear a few warblers; some sounded like the familiar pine warblers from the LETU campus, but some sounded different. However, despite my best efforts, I never managed to see any of them.
Courtney pointed out several Blue-gray Gnatcatchers that I caught brief glimpses of. We also saw a mystery bird that neither of us could identify, a hummingbird (not sure if it was Black-chinned or Ruby-throated), and a Tufted Titmouse. But the real highlight of the day was seeing two Summer Tanagers, a male and a female. Such a brilliant red!
All too soon, the heat from the sun that had moments earlier cleared the fog for us caused the birds to reconsider their activity away from the cool shade of the trees, and the area became quiet once again. Reluctant to head back to school, we continued our walk for some time.
Then we went home.
On Saturday, I went to what was listed as a Bird watching field trip at Cedar Ridge Preserve. However, when I arrived, I discovered that the schedule was in error; it was actually a “plant walk” to go see some rare orchids. Well, plants are cool too, and I didn’t have anything else planned that morning, so I decided to stick around. Dr. Marcy Brown lead the group to an area of the trail about a mile away from the entrance to look at a Hexalectris grandiflora. Until this year, the only known location of these orchids in the United States was in the Big Bend area of southern Texas. But now, specimens have been discovered at two sites in Dallas County, and I got to see one of them. It’s kinda fun being among the few people that know that the distribution map from that last link is wrong. :-)
Usually, once the orchid has started growing, it ends its dependency on the fungus and starts using photosynthesis to obtain the carbon it needs to grown. Hexalectrics grandiflora is somewhat unique in that it continues the fungal relationship and (as far as we know) never uses photosynthesis. That’s why there are no leaves or other green parts to this orchid.
Hi there. My name is Curtis Hawthorne, but most of my friends call me Fjord.