INTRODUCTIONS AND REINTRODUCTIONS:
Apologetically, this website remains vulnerably ill defined--and like its author-- very much a work in progress. For now, its kid-amateur-author might describe an encounter with this site as "the finding of a 'Dear Diary' in a Cornell Drawer." Th "i" in iNaturalist? Where BugGuide meets Bugsy Malone? Perhaps we'll figure this out as we go along... And maybe we'll rewrite this first page as we go along. Or perhaps we'll look back on it as a momento of the start of something great...Or something really, really stupid.
For now, feel free to use the navigation bar at the top of each page to explore the collections (see "Creatures") and recollections (under "Bug Me")...
For now (or forever more),
Bugsy Alone
This website is a digital compilation of one aspiring naturalist's collections and recollections--featuring some specimens from a physical collection as well as some companion notes.
Each specimen in the physical collection is labeled with a distinct QR (quick response) code. Upon scanning the QR label (either from the specimen's individual pin, vial) with any mobile device, the viewer is instantly directed to the specimen's virtual database--thereby facilitating instant, paperless access (and constant updating) to a specimen's records. In addition to basic collection data found on traditional identification labels (locality, date, name of collector, taxonomic ID, etc.), each specimen's data page consists of more detailed study highlights, notes, and inquiries surrounding its collection and/or analysis. This experimental platform aims to fuse the naturalist's collection display-case, lab-notebook and journaling into an instant, all-in-one virtual database, thereby facilitating improved record-keeping and organizational practices.
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It is a scientist's responsibility to read and think critically
— to identify and differentiate between what seems and what is.
This site, however, calls upon a naturalist's duty not to distinguish between personal and natural histories, but rather to reintroduce the two.
For me, it is this reintroduction—this very interdigitation of the personal and the natural—of our own lives and life itself—that weaves the fabric of all things Biophilia: "the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes" (Wilson, 1984).
So welcome to a strange little cyberplace that explores some of the best "strange and little" our planet has to offer.
AN ASPIRING NATURALIST'S
BUGSY
AN ARTHROPOD-ENTHUSIAST'S OASIS
INTRODUCTIONS AND REINTRODUCTIONS:
ARTHROPOHOLICS
ANONYMOUS
BROUGHT TO YOU BY:
THE FIRST STEP:
COLLECTIONS AND RECOLLCTIONS
OF METINGS:
ALONE