Dan Scott - The Drafting Table

Industry series retrospective

A round-up of my writing theme for 2024 (that spilled over into 2025), along with some highlights from what I learned or that stood out in some way Over the past year and a half, I've been working on a series/theme about industry (and closely-related stuff like

Industry

Materials, Processes, and Supply Chains: Recent Readings on Technology and Industry

steel, silicon, jet engines, microchips, cars, phones, paper, and pipe organs

Book

Mini-Reviews 2024

These are books that I read last year (plus one or two non-books) that didn't fit into my theme on Industry/Technology/Supply Chains—for which a similar collection of reviews is still pending. I've done similar posts in prior years. Eunoia Eunoia by Christian Bök,

Industry

Baie des Chaleurs' industrial patrimony

The category of things that must exist as a going concern or not at all

Blog Info

300th Post

300 posts is a major milestone and a good time to look back on past writing and reflect on why I write a blog. The Ghost blogging platform that I use informs me that this is my 300th post since I started this blog around 11 years ago. My own

3D Printing

Recent 3D Printing

After several years without one, I got a new 3D printer in 2024. This post explores what I've been doing with it. At the start of last year, I got an Ender 3 V3 KE. However, it didn't work initially. I had an issue basically the

Kids

Kids' Books We Like

These books are for the 1.5-3.5 age range (in my experience so far, noting that each child is unique and will mature at different rates with respect to their understanding of stories and specific interests). They are ones that my eldest daughter has enjoyed (and hopefully her sibling(

2024 Year in Review

This year's writing on The Drafting Table and general life updates. In 2024, I wrote 9 posts including this one. That's down slightly from last year, but on par with 2020; my annual average from 2020 - 2024 has been 9.6. Having two kids under

Computer

Apps I use in 2024

Six years ago, I wrote a post about updating a netbook I was running Linux on, and what I installed on it. This year, my Windows desktop died, so I replaced it and thought a similar post about what I set up on it would be interesting: both as a

Industry

Urban Metabolism and other Topics

Vaclav Smil's book Growth is wide-ranging enough that this isn't a comprehensive review. Rather, I decided to mainly explore just a few topics from it. Introduction Growth was one of my five 500+ page books from last year (Lord of the Rings and Journey to the

Links

Assorted Links (Summer 2024)

This summer has been very busy with work and family life, so I haven't had much time for writing. The title of this post, set when I started putting it together, reflects this. This blog is not defunct, however, so I wanted to at least share a link

Book

Mini-Reviews 2023

This post is to provide some notes from books I read (and a couple of movies that I watched) that aren't going to feature in dedicated posts. See here and here for similar posts from prior years. In 2023, I had set a goal to read five books

New Brunswick

NB Budget: Full Circle

My tenth year doing this feature!

Links

Assorted Links (Winter 2024)

Previously. Let's start with a few links related to current events. Scroll down for stuff that's less timely but of more enduring interest if you're reading this page sometime not in the winter of 2024. * This winter has seen (large and at times intense)

Professional

My Erdős #

I only found out last year (at the Water Chair 3oth reunion) that I had one. An Erdős number is a measure of someone's degree of separation from the prolific mathematician Paul Erdős. Coauthorship on the same peer-reviewed paper counts as a link. A related concept is the

Industry

INDUSTRY: A Global Overview

Aiming for the proverbial ten-thousand foot view both in terms of geography and categories. Introduction What do we mean when we talk about Industry? In this post (and others on the same theme that I have planned for this year), I'm using "Industry" in its narrower

2023 Year in Review

... I believe themes of technology and industry will be useful/productive to continue reading, thinking, and writing about in the year ahead.

DIY

Fire and Water

Alternate title: A Tale of Two Tables (or perhaps Tables of the Elements) This post is a write-up of a couple of DIY projects I did this year. The first one was a fibreglass water table for my 2-year-old daughter to play in with water toys outside. The second was

Quotes

From Plato to Pascal

During the pandemic, among other books, I got around to reading some classics that had been on my list for some time: Plato's Republic, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and Pascal's Pensées. Timeless works like those are hard to say anything new about, so this isn&

Links

Assorted Links (Summer 2023)

It's been a year since my last links post. Tried to squeeze this one in while it's still technically summer. This one has more video content than previous ones. I'll start with something I wrote elsewhere: a guest post for an online book club

Review

Mini-Reviews 2022

Last year is well in the rearview mirror by now, but I wanted to compile some of my notes from books I read (and a movie) in 2022 while they're still somewhat in my mind. I did a similar post last year and thought it worked pretty well.

Quotes

The Power of Some Men Over Other Men

"What we call Man's power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by. ... From this point of view, what we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument."

Ideas

Bent Work

"'All keep the mines open; it is a work to be shared. But each digs for himself the thing he wants for his work. What else would he do?''It is not so with us.''Then you must make very bent work.'" ~ Out of the Silent Planet, p.105

Bible

Some Say Jeremiah

They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

New Brunswick

NB Budget 2023: Healthcare Redux

Our provincial net debt in New Brunswick is now smaller than the size of the annual budget.