Earlier today, the professor for my Combustion class mentioned that for our final project, we will be working on a problem that currently has no solution. This intrigued me of course, as I wondered if our final grades would have no solution as well. After he explained, it made all the more sense and reminded me why my love and passion is in the field of fire protection engineering, the school I go to, and the people I work with: they all heavily align with my values and principles of sharing knowledge and making information available to everyone, everywhere.

[From NASA]

So, let me explain his model simply by example:

The professor said that when he first started this class 2 years ago, the students were working on a different problem with no solution… at the time. The class worked together and in the end the results were so significant that a couple of students took the initiative to publish the results in a scientific journal. The same happened when the class was taught last year - project done, paper published.

So what does this mean and why do you care? Well, all too often in the academic world, people can get caught up in working on projects and sort of work themselves into a dark corner where nobody gets to benefit from the results… and this is done in real life as well, not just academics. This is where the ridiculous amount of collaborative technology available to us comes in to play. Want to gather up notes on the Smagorinsky constant and publish them for anyone to find who is searching for them in the next 1000 years? Easy: 5 minutes. Want to publish your results in the most useful way? Easy: work on an open source project in your area along with your research - or make your own.

…Or you could write a paper, finish your thesis work, wrap up the loose ends in a few years and show a flashy poster of your work 5 years after anybody cares about it anymore or thinks it to be useful.

I digress. I just wanted to stress this new method of collaboration that is among us, and how it’s going to change the way that we work together and grow together in fire protection engineering and fire science.

[From Rowan University College of Engineering]

Why not make use of motivated students and brainpower when they come together? Here is me welcoming this new phase of community and collaboration in a field that directly impacts life safety and makes safer buildings around the world. So when we work on that final project in a few weeks, it’s not really at all about a grade anymore - it’s about a new way of doing science - together.

Update: This is exactly the kind of stuff that I’m talking about here, posted today on the SFPE National blog that I set up a year ago - collaboration: Foundation Funded Research underway at WPI

Three fire engines and a ladder truck just blared by my house going southbound on the street and stopped about two blocks away. What a beautiful sound of the QO2 siren screaming by on a chilly city night. It takes me back to a few years ago, hearing the fire dispatch alert going out, gearing up in seconds at the station with 45 pounds of firefighter bunker gear, and peeking around each street corner as the truck leaned away from the turn - not knowing if there would be a small car fire or a huge commercial building fire. Terrified people waiting with nobody left to turn to as their family members are endangered by the power of fire. Their life history, photo albums, accomplishments, and material possessions having flames licked at them and could be vaporized into an ashtray within only a minute.

That blaring sound is why I do what I do. And people ask me, why do I like this field so much? Fire is mesmerizing, fire is better understood each day that passes by, but still greatly misunderstood. Fire is extremely useful. Fire is extremely devastating. Fire has context to define its will.

To me, understanding the dynamics of a fire dancing and licking around can be like trying to understand the psychology of billions of different humans. It can be like trying to catch something running away by using differential equations and fluid dynamics. It can be like painting a picture for hours or days and the end product is something that sticks with you every day for the rest of time.

It is like playing on a sports team and working with your family when working in the lab. We work for 3 hours on setting up temperature sensors and calorimeters and even more hours discussing and brainstorming in a room boiling over with a mental flood of science, passion, logic, deduction, and induction. All about fire. Then we burn our creation in 1.73 minutes and forever destroy it, releasing yet another drop in the endless pool of ongoing knowledge.

Here is a video that exhibits a very successful test burn from today. The box is filled with small plastic cups and packed like one that would be shipped. We set up instruments inside to measure the fire size, temperature inside at different places, cameras to record the flame standoff distance, and a ton of other information.

I guess in my version of 1984, things make sense in this way: fire is knowledge, community is power, and intuition is freedom.

This is why I do what I do.

Update on the big move to MA

In just over 9 days, I will be departing for the big move to Massachusetts with nothing more than 16 boxes holding 30 cubic feet (about 224 US gallons) of my belongings. I will be traveling with my dad and cousin Abel and leaving behind 23 years of memories physically in the good old Houston of Texas.

The trip will involve a little-engine-that-could Ford station wagon and a Nighthawk 750 motorcycle with the three of us alternating riders for all of the comfort and enjoyment that the 1800 miles will bring upon us. The trip will look something like this:

I was fortunate after looking at 2200+ postings on craigslist to find a place to live for a good price (good by New England’s standards) which has all bills included AND is fully furnished! All I have to go on is a few pictures from the landlord and a few external supporting pictures thanks to modern technology (Thanks Google and Microsoft!):

I’ve tried to make it a focal point just to be a listener for my last days in Houston. My story is already known; I just want to slowly and patiently take information in as the final days leak through the drain.

Tianguis Cultural del Chopo

Last night, I met someone who was embarking on an adventure at the same time as I, except in a much different direction. She lives in Austin and will be taking THE bus down to Monterrey, Mexico then flying into Cuba for a few days. Just to explore the world and take in more experiences, couchsurfing style. What a great idea.

While I was looking around and making a customized Google map to share with her some cool spots that lay back in my memory, I was trying hard by visual cues and street names and picture order to find a punk/hippie/skater flea market that I ran across in Monterrey. I believe that it was fashioned after this concept in Mexico City:

The Tianguis Cultural del Chopo is a Saturday flea market near Mexico City downtown, known locally as El Chopo. [...]

Originally, the Tianguis was a place for hippies to trade sixties memorabilia including not only records but also clothing, magazines, books and other collectibles. Eventually, the Tianguis has also given place to more recent musical styles like metal, goth, punk, grunge and ska, among others. Almost always, some local and touring bands play live gigs at the back of the market, where you can also find the casual traders standing and looking up for that rare and collectable record or CDs.

On the northern end of the market at Aldama and Camelia is an area called Espacio Anarcho-punk. Vendors in this part of El Chopo sell mostly books, movies, and other materials that have an anarchist or radical perspective. Many of the Espacio Anarcho-Punk vendors contribute to a weekly zine of the same title addressing local social issues and radical politics.

(from Wikipedia)

Lots of cool stuff to be seen in the world.

Information R/evoultion

An excellent video about how information access, sharing, collaboration, and all of my other favorite things going on in the world is here:

Been thinking a lot lately. Exerting myself mentally. Not so much physically. But exercising my mind daily is what I love. If it was this “easy” to exercise physically, well, I would be in well shape. But something drives me to work on projects. Some meaningful, some just practicing and moving my brain cells along the line.

So, this is nothing other than an updating type of post, a snapshot of where my neurons are firing.

1) Been actually practicing typing and using Python everyday. Did you know that the language Python was named after Monty Python’s Flying Circus? Neither did I until finally doing the official tutorial. Why am I practicing typing? I have been using computers since I was about 5, and still I cannot proper type. Sort of embarrassing. Not that though. I just want to type about thinking about typing. This post was written without proper typing. I have finally completed the typing tutor deal on my laptop. And now just need the practice part. I can type at 90+ WPM with this improper style, but the memory obstacle is still there.

That moves me on to Python. Why am I learning yet another language? Well, let me clarify. I am not the master of any one language. Python just seems so sensible to me. Good language to finally master. It comes on every Mac and Linux install. It can do all of my automation tasks that I dearly not need waste time on. Filling out FDS files based on numbers in a CSV file. Searching through PDF files for a server. Or making a post-processor for FDS output files. I love the direct-ness of the language. To print something is “print ‘hello world”. And that’s it. No braces, no output specifiers, no weird containing characters, no declarations, and so on.

2) Finished the Four-Hour Work Week. Amazing book. It is the first book that I am going to buy ever since giving away a huge percentage of my books about six months ago. I am now tasked with actually making something tangible that the rest of the world can use (and will pay for). The book is not just a business book, but a book about lifestyle, travel, and the philosophy of modern culture.

I now have to think about what I can provide to benefit masses of people. Perhaps the biggest thinking outside experiment that I have ever done. This can be difficult for my idealistic mind, but is totally possible. Since I retired in the month of August in 2006, this is certainly a key element in keeping myself financially supported - but avoiding the traps of an 80-hour per week self business. I do hope to develop my website with more FDS videos and info. This website or another, I am not sure. Hobby or “business”, I am not yet sure. Time and experiences will tell.

3) Travel. Need more travel and exploring. The above points will actually help with this in my abstract mind.

4) Graduate school politics. My fire science hero has a terrible relationship with my future grad. school advisor, department, and school. Yay. All I want is meaningful work, and I hope that they all understand that. To think that my next two years of work might be thrown away is 1000x times worse than saying I would never be paid for the work. I will do my best, as always. My future advisor posed the question of why should an entity contribute to an open-source worldwide project who did not fund them directly. Why should he post the “results” for free. This violated one of my primary values in life. I immediately thought of Linux, KDE, Google, and tons of other open source projects that were not directly funded by those agencies themselves but have benefited the lives of millions based on contributed work.

Hell, I have been contributing to the FDS project for “free” for the past three years in whatever way that I can, every single day. I would do it for free - because it is one project of many in the world that is meaningful and benefits the world. It even has the bonus of saving lives through better fire protection design. So, I took that comment with a hard heart and looked back on the past 2 years as I have been earning a McDonald’s salary to teach, research, and contribute to a meaningful project. Priorities.

To leave on a good note, as I should, I have emailed several contacts around the US and the world about future travel and research opportunities. We will see what happens! Have a fantastic week.

On Tuesday, I travelled to the outskirts of San Antonio: Schertz, TX, to be exact. There was held an SFPE event upon which smoke control testing was to be demonstrated. Attending something like this is worth a million words. I never knew much about smoke control systems, but now, I was able to see them in action.

The researchers in jump suits heated up smoke candles to produce over 100,000 cubic feet of smoke in order to form an upper smoke layer in the newly-built 350,000 square foot furniture warehouse. Three minutes of smoke-filling, then the vents are activated. The vents serve a primary purpose of controlling fire spread by removing superheated gases from the warehouse in the event of a fire. They also serve to clear the warehouse of smoke to help with tactical firefighting operations.

Enjoy: