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.

Here are some models that I have been working on for this semester. They are done in Fire Dynamics Simulator. [Click on a picture for a larger version.]

The first set is a small section of the King’s Cross fire which occurred in a London Underground station in 1987 and killed 31 people. The flames were said to have been traveling sideways because of the trench effect that the escalator tunnel gave way to. Many people went up a parallel escalator and were later killed in the ticketing room where the hot gases were collecting from the escalator like a chimney.

Early stages of the fire in which the wooden treads are catching from the fire underneath:

View of surface temperatures within the escalator shaft. The concrete ceiling reaches temperatures of 700 degrees Celsius after a few minutes of the fire growth stage in our model.

The gas temperature represented by different colors. The gas temperature is about 1500 degrees C after a few minutes in the model:

Two views which show 1) the velocity field within the shaft 2) the trench effect on the flames and fire spread 3) the smoke layer within the shaft 4) and the plume trajectory in the shaft

This is another model which is being used to teach a class in structural fire safety. It is an arena model and shows how readily a fire will develop in an unprotected large room with no fire protection and a large fuel load. The layout is similar to churches as well, many of which are grandfathered into the modern times and exempted from installing fire protection such as sprinklers or evacuation alert systems.

The fire spreads from a source in the corner. The smoke spreads quickly and serves as a medium to heat the roof and structural elements. The energy from the seats flows upwards and feeds the spread throughout the roof, while the radiant energy comes back down to continue the cyclic destruction of the building’s elements:

Outside view of the arena with an angle wood roof and glass atrium at the peak:

View of surface temperatures inside of the arena:

I hope that you enjoyed today’s lesson and learned something from me sharing my current progress in fire modeling for the semester. Enjoy!

I sat in a three-hour long class today, browsing over random websites trying to seek valuable information and input for myself. I digress though. The class is supposed to teach students efficacy with computers, programming, and applied engineering concepts. The first half of the course will use Excel, and the second half will use Visual Basic. Both are tools which are not freely available and actually quite expensive in the latter case; tools that are built upon using proprietary formats and working with others leads to specific idiosyncrasies.

Why does the modern education system do this, even at the university level? Think about it. If you submitted the above purposely-vague course description in order to have a class formed, who would approve that mess? Who would want to take that class? A class that closes your mind and limits your exposure, the opposite of what you should be doing at this time; exposing your mind to tons of different random inputs, tools, methods, and opportunities in the world.

Furthermore, instead of learning how to adapt and use existing solutions and integrate them into your wonderful tool pouch, the students distantly type up examples from a non-existent space in a book and go home for the week. Going home and never again caring or wondering how technological tools can help them and challenge them to the point that it will change the way that they work, think, and solve problems.

When I worked in the summer of 2007 at a research firm in Maryland, I got to use any tool that I wished to solve an endless number of problems (my dream environment), as long as the results could be effectively communicated, shared, and built upon by all other participants in the problem. Of course, I had to use MS Word and Excel a couple of times, but I did not let that limit me. I must have gone through using over 50 different applications, many times on just a single problem. I used MATLAB, R, FORTRAN, Google Docs, Perl, Python, PHP, TextWrangler, SigmaPlot, OpenOffice, NeoOffice, Linux, Mac OS X, GMail, Gimp, Photoshop, Illustrator, Applescript, shell scripts, Google Video, Google Code, Google Apps, Google Groups, CyberDuck, SmartFTP, SmartSVN, TeXShop, and tons of other tools, many of which were free and open source.

And that is not to say that I am an expert in any or all of those applications, but that I have the engineering ability (I use this in the traditional and broad lifelong sense of the word) to be able to know when to use a certain tool, how to fit it to my needs, and how to use it efficiently. Being able to pick up any tool for a job from cold and cater it to your needs is certainly a skill that will separate you from 90% of your peers in school, work, life, relationships, and personal progression.

That being said, how does one teach this skill to a class of engineering students who may or may not know that they want or need this dexterity and competence? Well, how does one learn the skill in the first place? I think that when a problem arises, any problem at all be it an assignment, a task, or a hobby, one starts to look for answers in places that he or she is formerly comfortable with. This usually means that they miss out on a well-structured Google search where the answer would have been right in front of them in this collaborative world, waiting for them to use it and mold it to their needs. But the students continue on, not aware of the opportunity and challenges that are waiting to enrich their daily lives.

“How do I insert the footer here?” “How do I log into the wireless?” “What formula will show today’s date?” Please, for the love of all that is spinal, use the help file, use Google, use your minds in this environment that is not only openly and excitedly available to you, but that you are paying about 500 dollars to be purposely surrounded by! If most of the time is spent adjusting margins and Excel specific commands and headers and print previews, where will the guts of learning and inspiration come from? I do not mean for this to be a generic rant, but rather a resounding and powerful call to these types of courses and professors to turn around and challenge the intellect of the student in solving problems and furthering their thinking capacity in life. Anyone can achieve this if they try and are provoked in just the right way that stimulates that certain passionate part of their mind.

For instance, consider a slightly disorganized and unformatted spreadsheet that effectively and elegantly solves a problem in which the student spent 3 hours on the solution and 5 minutes on the design. I would much like to see this sort of result and output rather than a spread of pretty colors and fonts that only serves to find the area of a circle - go and solve something real. Come on mentors, teachers, and those in charge of challenging us as humans: summon our great and collective minds!

I suppose that I only seek meaningful work. That is a simple answer. It always is.

To describe working at a traditional engineering firm, you may hear me talk negatively of the type of work. Privatized research, closed-source for reasons of competition, etc. This can be meaningful, but there are more meaningful ways to provide value to the world. This is where my past experiences and future wishes combine with my decision on graduate school and ultimately a career.

Yes, this is me further breaking down the “do what you love” cliche when approaching life, but I always overthink things anyway, so allow me.

When in a sixty-minute lecture at a small university, I remember the speaker saying that if you wanted to be the absolute best and top in your field, you should follow these steps: some were regarding your productivity: like waking up at 5 and being done with your work for the day at 9 or 10 am. Other tips were regarding being a renaissance man, a jack of all trades who knows a little about a lot. I also remember a picture I took in Maryland, when it was raining on me as I was walking back from a bowling alley, and a sunset appeared  which contained every color in front of me that I have ever laid eyes on in my time on Earth.

I also remember a book that I read 8 years ago, called Essays by Francis Bacon, and how I loved his simple yet revealing and provoking style of writings from the late 1500s and early 1600s. I remember how some ways that he saw life by relationships or finances were mind-expanding, while others I loved to challenge. I also recall a lecture from one of my math professors, in which he stated that on that day in class, we were going to learn a method in differential equations that would finally and fully utilize something that I had been doing since grade 6: using the quadratic equation. Finally, a few years ago, I remember contributing to one of the open-source linux distributions by posting a version bump of a tiny library on the changelog so that the developers could update the repositories: I still run into that changelog every now and then when Googling my name.

Now, the common denominator behind all of these memories? First, let me say how I don’t think that I remember my past like most other people do. In fact, we all certainly have a method or way, as abstract or straight-forward as it may be, to remember our own experiences and life. But through this skewed method that I remember things, I can say that the primary thing that links together every drop of inspiration that I have come across or every muscle that I have moved - is meaning.

Meaning in a conversation. Meaning in having a smoke as the sun rises over the 70 foot pine trees and you wait for the rays to warm your freezing torso.  Meaning hitting you in the face as soon as you wake up. For me, meaning comes by many routes, and I look for more and more routes for it to be able to get to me. The meaning is all around me. I just work on venues that invite it in, and work to push away any entity, person, or culture that would try to keep that meaning from getting to me.

And ultimately, letting me share it with others.

1) Sure, I can already believe that it is week 10 of this semester. I suppose everyone else cannot though. Only a few more weeks and I am halfway through with this academic year and only one more course away from my undergraduate degree. What a fantastic group of years it has been. I do, however, have a sort of dormant feeling as I await the coming of graduate school. Big changes smell of great excitement to me.

2) Unsurrounded by people gets to me a bit. I have no group of fire modelers or co-students heading in the same remote direction as me. It’s hard sometimes to work on the FDS project or fire models or even CFD basics when no one in the near vicinity is doing the same. Just me on my own, in my own lit up universe. Thanks to the internet, this is not a problem for me to contribute, but it is still a mental block in my day to day workings.

For instance, I have to wait until my local classwork and lecture work is done before I can get to what I really want to do, so I end up staying up late or working on this stuff at the end of my day. I can quickly see how something abstract like not having a group around me thinking alike has affected my sleeping habits, eating habits, productivity, even my daily schedule. Scary. I will take note and be careful in the near future and far-fetched future to set up my days to work as my mind and heart do.