Invent Civil

Officially Overseas

Skylar — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:52:38 +0000

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted. A very long time. That said, I’m going to chalk it up to one major event that has been occurring in my life over these past few months. A little while ago, my wife and I decided that we’d really like to move overseas and see the world. After a lot of planning and even more stress, we have finally made it to a city called Abu Dhabi. Many of you would probably have never heard of this city/Emirate, although it did make the headlines a short while ago when it “bailed out” Dubai. I won’t get into any of that right now.

It’s hard to believe that I’m actually on the other side of the world as I’m typing this, but it’s true. I’m going to be looking for a job in the coming weeks, which should be interesting. If you happen to have any contacts in Abu Dhabi, I would certainly appreciate any help you’d like to offer (here’s my email). Thanks also to those who have given me a few leads, I do appreciate it!

Since you’re actually reading this blog post, you’re probably wondering to yourself “what will become of Invent Civil?” Well, I’m asking myself the same question. I’m not sure if the things I encounter here in Abu Dhabi will be of any help to my reader base (mostly from Canada and the US). I’m going to just hang in there and see what happens. This blog was originally focused on technology and it’s applications in Civil Engineering, and I hope to continue working in both of these fields while living in the UAE. So here’s hoping something works out!

In the meantime, feel free to ask questions in the comments or drop me a line if you feel so inclined.

Thanks for reading!

“Unknown Lifeform” from North Carolina Sewer

Skylar — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:45:31 +0000

I found this via Digg today: Sewer Cam Uncovers a Mysterious Creature

Now, even with my limited experiences looking at sewer camera inspections, I’ve seen some odd and disgusting stuff. But this one would certainly top the list.

Obviously, this is not a video to watch while eating.

Looking at a few comments, it sounds like the “organism” is actually a giant ball of worms that are just moving in unison. Either way, it’s gross.

Wolfram Alpha and Google Squared

Skylar — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:52:50 +0000

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about Wolfram|Alpha, which is a new way to find data online. A classic google search uses only information taken directly from the web, but Wolfram Alpha takes a bunch of facts and figures and uses various mathematical formulas to provide you with enhanced information. For the most part, it seems that this would provide a bit of entertainment, but it doesn’t seem extremely useful in it’s current state. For instance, a search for “stormwater” currently gives no result. But there’s a little section in the “Engineering” examples dedicated to “Civil Engineering”. I put that in quotes because it gives only two links - one of which seems to be more of a mechanical engineering calculation than anything else. Nonetheless, it got me thinking.

I tried another search for groundwater. This gives me the volume of the world’s groundwater. Thus, a search for “groundwater / world population” gives:

0.001533 km^3/person  (kilometers cubed per person)  (2006 estimate)

Here are some more “civil engineering” wolfram searches:

Asphalt
Elevation Kitchener
Length of a Dam
Dry Sand
Darcy’s Law
Bernoulli Equation
Darcy-Weisbach Equation
Manning’s Equation

…And I’m sure there’s plenty more where those came from. In short, yes - I’d say there’s some useful information on Wolfram Alpha. Right now it takes a lot of searching to find relevant information, but as the database expands, it has the potential to become a great tool for Civil Engineers.

In other news, Google announced Google Squared. The news on this google labs product is that it’s results are all over the place (at least for now). As an example, consider a search for “Civil Engineer”. The last result is “Osama Bin Ladin”, which is not very good PR for our profession. It seems the relationship has developed from wikipedia, which claims:

Some reports suggest bin Laden earned a degree in civil engineering in 1979,^[12] or a degree in public administration in 1981.

Anyways, I’m not going to say there is no useful data from Google Squared. It’s a great starting point to learn about new topics when you don’t yet know what to search for. I’ve found a few interesting tables, but nothing too revolutionary as of yet. In the future, I can certainly see this growing into a very valuable resource.

Got any good civil engineering Wolfram Alpha or Google Squared searches? Leave em’ in the comments!

Eng-Tips Roundup – Apr/May ‘09

Skylar — Sun, 24 May 2009 01:07:43 +0000

ASCE International Workshop on Computing in Civil Engineering

Skylar — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:51:44 +0000

The University of Texas & ASCE is hosting a workshop about the uses of computers and IT in the field of civil engineering. According to their website, topics include: Sensing, Mobile/Wearable Computing, Life-cycle Assessment and Sustainable Infrastructure, Design, and Cutting Edge Development.

These topics sound extremely interesting to me but alas the workshop is A) in Texas and B) too expensive. But is anyone going to this? Cause I’d love to hear about it!

Event Registration and Details [via advanced-infrastructure.com]

New blogroll and links page

Skylar — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:49:29 +0000

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I planned on adding some links and blogs to my site. I’ve compiled a list that is in no way complete, but I think it’s a great starting point. I’m going to introduce the list over a period of time to lighten the load and allow people time to digest the content I add. Feel free to leave comments or suggestions wherever you see fit.

I’ve done my best to split up the list into categories, though it’s hard to fit them all into one subsection. Nonetheless, today’s categories are “Stormwater” and “Water/Water Resources”. Here are the blogs that I think fit these categories:

Stormwater

Water Resources & Drinking Water

[Check out the new links page here.]

Barrel Relining via Sustainable Stormwater

Skylar — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 23:09:42 +0000

A great post was recently featured over at Sustainable Stormwater Management about relining a CSP culvert with a new HDPE liner. The winning feature is the pictures that the author adds on the end. Who doesn’t enjoy construction photos? Okay, what civil engineer doesn’t enjoy construction photos?

[SWM Facility Embankment Repair - Barrel Relining]

TTC Daily Traffic Visualized

Skylar — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 03:30:08 +0000

Just saw a few really interesting videos via the Torontoist. I’ll embed one of them here for simplicity’s sake, but you can visit the original post to see more. This is a great way to visualize how traffic is greatly unbalanced throughout the day. Great video - many thanks to the creators!

(watch this in hd if you can!)

TTC Weekday Service (HD) from Kieran Huggins on Vimeo.

Twitter Watermain Mapping - Part Two

Skylar — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:52:38 +0000

So, it seems like I jumped the gun by saying I could only add up to 15 results through the yahoo pipe. A quick look at the comments on the original post about this yahoo pipe shows that there’s an argument in the twitter search api allowing you to specify the amount of tweets to receive! It also shows you how to create a google map using the export to kml function. So here’s an updated map with a full 100 tweets. Note that a lot of them overlap because people have their location set to a city and not a set of coordinates.

In fact, almost half of these tweets are about a watermain break in Toronto re-tweeting that “Subways are bypassing Union Station due to severe watermain break that is flooding the station”. This is in part due to the fact that Toronto’s twitter users have started using twitter to provide real-time updates on the status of Toronto’s public transit.

Watermain Breaks Twitter Map

[created from this yahoo pipe]
Try clicking the “view larger map” link so you can cycle through the tweets to see the overlapping ones.

View Larger Map

While we’re at it, let’s try a few other search terms!

World Water Day Tweet Map

[original yahoo pipe]
This one’s a bit more spread out. Still focused a lot on the United States. My guess is that this is a result of a skewed user base and language differences, not the actual publicity for World Water Day. This map is probably more representative!