Monthly Archives: November 2010

Minnesota Metro Hunting Map

by stuporglue Posted on November 20, 2010

The Minnesota DNR website is a fantastic. It has more information available than you would usually need in order to plan an outing. The information is arranged in a very hierarchical and organized way, which usually lets you get to the information you want easily. Unfortunately if you want to look up more complex information that spans several of the categories, there’s not an easy way to do so.

Finding Public Land in the Twin Cities Area (MN Hunting Area 601)

One of the difficult things to figure out is where you can go hunting near the Twin Cities. This map shows the area boundaries, and it is easy to see that area 601 is the area which covers from Anoka to Hastings to Chaska. If you’re new to Minnesota, or are just getting into hunting or you just want to try somewhere new or close to home there’s no obvious good way to look up what huntable public land exists within the 601 hunting area boundaries.

The DNR does have a web page dedicated to publicly accessible hunting land in Minnesota. It is divided into types of land, and then by county. If you’re like me, you don’t care much if it’s a WMA, WPA or National Forest, you just want to see your options. Making it more difficult only Ramsey county is completely inside area 601. Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Scott ,Washington and Wright counties all straddle the border. When you use the county lookup tools to search for land, you need to search each of the counties and then check if each of the results is inside of 601 or not.

It’s Not Just Hunting

I have deer on the brain right now, but it’s not just about hunting. Many of the public land locations are prime bird and wildlife watching spots and are good places to take a hike, a picnic or even a family photo shoot.

What We Need Is a Map

I want to be able to easily see what land is available to plan trips with friends, and to also let my wife know where I’m going so she doesn’t worry. 10 years ago I would’ve had to sit down with some platt books, a paper map and a Sharpie; today Google Maps gives us tools that are good enough.

Presenting The Metro Hunting Map

It’s not much to look at yet, but it does have the area 601 borders and 4 pieces of public land listed, so maybe that’ll be helpful to someone. It is my intention to continue to add to this map and to continue exploring the public land that’s so close to home.


View Metro Hunting in a larger map

Posted in Projects, Something Interesting | 8 Comments

Why I Like Cooking Better than Baking

by stuporglue Posted on November 19, 2010

It was Caroline’s birthday this week, and I baked a boxed angel food cake. It reminded me once again that I don’t really like baking. The thing is, I love cooking. As I thought about this seemingly odd discrepancy more, I think I figured out why.

The Cooking Process

Cooking is an ongoing process. You can change directions mid-recipe pretty easily. You taste the sauce, add something else, brown the chicken a little more, decide to chop it up and use it as a salad instead. If you cook like me, you don’t even always have to know what you’re making when you start — just start cooking the core ingredient and add whatever spices and extras you find as you pillage the cupboards.

I might see a pork roast and some apples in the kitchen, and know that somewhere between the two lies a delicious roast. I’ll then go see what spices and sauces we have to make a glaze and just start mixing. I won’t know where I’m going with it, I’ll just keep tasting and adding things till I get there — and I almost always arrive somewhere acceptable, if not delicious.

Balking at Baking

With baking, you need to get everything together and correctly proportioned at the beginning. If you add too little salt or too much yeast, your bread isn’t going to turn out correctly. Baking requires planning and understanding of how yeast, flour, sugar and water interact in different proportions and what happens internally when the ingredients are left to rise, kneaded, baked quickly or slowly, etc.

The planning ahead requirement makes it so I can’t easily experiment and adjust as the baked good is forming.

A Sports Metaphor

If I had to make a sports metaphor, Baking is like bowling. You line everything up at the beginning, then let it go. Once it’s started, there’s no pulling back. Cooking is more like curling. You start in a direction, but along the way you can add and remove things to adjust your destination.

Now that I think I know why I don’t care much for baking, I’ll be watching for baking vs. cooking type feelings towards other activities in my life.

Posted in Moore's Ramblings, Something Interesting | Tagged , , | 3 Comments