Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod. My first day working in the fire laboratory at school and about 30 minutes into it this is what I get. Why am I so excited about fire? Fire!

The day started off cool enough with French combustion students presenting their projects done at WPI.

Just watch:

The test involves measuring the heat energy from the flame, tracking the flame as it spreads inside the box, and the mass loss rate of the box throughout the burn. The purpose of the test is to better classify the types of hazardous storage commodities and much more greater things than I can put into words.

As the lab student said today, “As much as we like to protect people from fire, we also really like to burn stuff.”

Fire. I love this place. Nerds, community, really motivated people. And fire.

What an intense day. My brain hurts, time for sleep.

WPI

Welp, I’ve been accepted to start my M.S. and eventually start my Ph.D. at Worcester Polytechnic Institute this fall! I will be studying fire protection engineering, a continuation of my bachelor’s degree. The school is populated with just under 4,000 students and it is a private engineering school. Not only does this school house one of the top fire protection engineering programs in the US, but the faculty and their work align closely with my values and passions in life.

The big move will look something like this in 8 weeks:

Some cool info about the school includes the fact that Robert Goddard went there and graduated in 1908 - he was the gradnfather of modern rocketry with the first liquid fueled rocket. Also, the fire protection engineering department has about 150 masters of science students and 4 (!) doctoral students. This is quite the opportunity I smell.

What I did during the summer of 2008

So far this summer I’m being funded by UHD as a last request to make a catalog of fire models for various textbooks. The work is very refreshing and I love to work when I learn much more than I expected. Another cool side effect of this work is that I can include the FDS models and example writeups on my website, free for anyone else in the world to see and learn from. The technical writeup is located here and it gets updated automatically anytime I change a single word in there. Eventually it will have links to FDS files for FDS users and students around the world to download and use on their own - I love technology.

FDS MESH Size Calculator tool

Finally, to finish off a nice post about fire protection engineering and FDS: I updated my FDS Mesh Size calculator on my other website to include some awesome and never-before-done functionality! It now takes in x, y, and z dimensions and an expected heat release rate and gives the user three MESH lines (coarse, moderate, and fine) to guide them on making an FDS file that has an adequately resolved MESH.

The tool can be found here on my FDS/sciency website and the nice folks at NIST gave me a link on their third-party tools page of the FDS website: http://fire.nist.gov/fds/thirdparty.html

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I know I post out-there stuff like this on my blog here sometimes, but this is what is on my mind and taking up my mental cycles and daily days. Jump in and read the linked pages or play with the tools of my creation!

Some of my friends and colleagues may have heard me go on a rant or two about net neutrality or equal information access. Hopefully this post will describe my stance a bit better. Those who know me know that I stand strong for open knowledge and easily accessible information for all of us in the world. This includes upholding open document standards and the opposition of tiered-internet infrastructures. But most people that use computers these days, I am afraid, don’t think or feel that these ideals will affect their day-to-day computer usage that they partake in.

Well, I happen to think that it not only affects your daily pursuit of knowledge and you work in whatever field you are in, but it also greatly affects the way we work together as a society, create and bring new ideas into fruition, and nurture successful generations to follow.

Last Thursday, the FCC held a public hearing on net neutrality. 5 commissioners from the FCC joined and heard from leading public scientists, network operators, and entrepreneurs. 2 commissioners were in support of network neutrality, 2 against, and one neutral (pun intended). Also, Comcast and many other carriers were invited to the hearing; however, they declined.

Here is the video from the hearing as well as other snippets on the topic:

Jason Devitt, CEO of Skydeck, testifies at the FCC Hearing

Law Professor Lawrence Lessig on Net Neutrality and the Rise of Google

From Barack Obama’s address at Google

You’ll notice I stuck a button on the right of my site in support of net neutrality. I’ll be calling my senator and representatives on Monday morning to let them know of my support of net neutrality and a new Act working its way through the House of Representatives. I urge you to do the same. It is critical to recognize that issues such as Verizon winning the FCC spectrum auction to Microsoft’s OOXML as a international standard to Comcast breaking fundamental ethical and technical ways of the internet are of utmost importance to our current age, culture, and political era.

In the end, regardless of the specific topic at hand, be cognizant of those trying to disrupt and block the progressive movement that is before us. Especially when it involves profit rather than progress. Especially when that blocking impedes our societal learning, sharing, innovation, creativity, and global and equal access to information for all.

[Used from KPRC video click2houston.com]

Fire. It’s what I do. And I happen to subscribe to Google News alerts that have “Houston Fire” in the title. Helps me keep in touch with the fire. It also helpingly disturbs me as to what actually goes on outside of the classroom. Really, it’s quite a good way to keep yourself thinking and valuable if you are stuck with that stagnant smell of your job or classes.

Lots of fires happen everyday. Apartment fires always happen. A lot. Three apartment complexes burned to the ground within 48 hours over the past weekend. And then some. This is what I see:

Residents Say They Heard Gunshots Before 3-Alarm Fire

Blaze damages second apartment complex in 24 hours

Fire erupts at SW Houston apartments

Apartment Blaze Damages At Least 16 Units

Apartment fire sends 5 to Hospital

Yes, those are the most recent stories in my warm and cozy feed reader.

When is legislation going to get off of its ass and move at the pace that the rest of us do? When is enforcement going to follow? Sure, I guess we all are biased to the field that we are in and think that it is the most important thing in the world. But seriously, people are dying and losing their homes in the midst of an ocean of politics and code books wasting valuable daylight.

[Picture used from myFoxHouston.com]

A lot of the time, I am an optimist. I see what change has followed the positive move of a community-based and collaborative internet (see video in previous post) in other industries. And then I imagine progress and change happening in our daily lives. I dream of governmental processes being way more open and community-driven than we are used to. I can watch it in real-time, play-by-play happening with larger corporations - as they break down due to the epidemic spread of knowledge and awareness. And I imagine a world where fire sprinklers (technology that has been around for 130 years) and other fire safety systems make fire protection engineers obsolete before my industry has even had a chance to get popular and prestigious.

I suppose what I am saying is that I toil my soul, expand my brain, and work every breathing moment that I can, day-by-day on prediction of fire, contribution to the robust knowledge that we have on fire/combustion, and working using my technical skills. All of this to allow fire documentation, analytical and numerical tools, and scientific information to be available to all people around the world: engineers, scientists, students, and so on. Why? I’d say, in this century and society, I do it to contribute. And I think if just a few other key people did the same, our fire, death, and loss of home problems would vanish at amazing and mind-blowing speeds.

P.S. This thought process isn’t just limited to my field of fire science, but I write about it because it is what I do. Think about your field for a second. Finance, safety, technology, whatever it is. Mentally apply success to the field by working on and tweaking the top 3% of the people, systems, or methods that are in use now. Realize that these top 3% are there due mainly to tradition, and did not get there due to community-driven work.

Keep working at it. Align your work with your values. The change will happen. I’ll be waiting.

Ok, I think I just found a new role model in the teeming world of science. I realize that every day I learn feel closer and closer to the mind of this man that I have just discovered. Watch this 18 minutes of video, and I think you will enjoy it very much. He is an eccentric man, yes, but listen. His words and final thoughts are aligned with the subtitle of my blog, “Communicating the greatest possible growth”.

Stuff like this gives me a warm feeling of why I am so attracted to the fields of science that I am. Something tells me that this man doesn’t fret too much about the trivial stuff that we sometimes get trapped up in day to day. Click on the picture to watch. Enjoy.

  
http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2008/04/09/must-watch-18-minutes-with-an-agile-mind/

By the way, watch out for loose gravel! - I wiped out on my motorcycle gracefully right at this spot near UHD. Everything is okay with me minus a brake pedal that needs to be bent back into shape and a slightly bent handlebar that with bother my OCD.

 
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