Dan Scott

History

Psalm 107

For this post, I wrote a bit of a Christmas meditation. For next week, I'm planning a Year in Review [https://danbscott.ghost.io/2014-year-in-review/] post. Merry Christmas to all of my readers. Psalm 107 [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+107&version=NLT] may not

Math

Arabic Calligraphy

I recently got a very cool piece of art. So that's what this post is about. First things first, here it is framed and hanging on my wall: The design is Arabic calligraphy of the word al-Hurriyah (الحرية), meaning "freedom" or "liberty". The artist

Tiling

Hilbert Curve

One of my favourite topics in math is fractals. For this post, I drew the Hilbert Curve fractal in octave. The Hilbert Curve [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_curve] is a space-filling curve: although it is one-dimensional (a series of line segments) itself, it covers a two-dimensional area. I

Yemen

Yemen

In 2012, I had the opportunity to travel to Yemen for my job (a couple of my photos from that trip are at the end of this post). Since then, that country has held a special interest for me. So one time when I was in The Midtown Scholar [http:

3D Printing

Economics of 3D Printing

This is a discussion on the economics of 3D-printing based on printing the bookend [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:417703] from my last post [https://danbscott.ghost.io/new-bookshelf/]. As shown below, this part (including auto-generated scaffolding) was approximately 100 grams. The print time was approximately 4.5 hours (plus

3D Printing

New Bookshelf

I recently made a new bookshelf for my room and wanted to share the design. I came up with the design myself. It is built around a single vertical post (a cedar 4x4, 4 feet long) instead of the more common structure where side walls bear the load. Here is

Links

Uganda Venture: Through Their Lens

On Thursday (6-Nov.), I went to a really cool event to raise money for a great organization. Check out my description in the post below, and consider going if it happens again. Uganda Venture [http://www.ugandaventure.com/] is a social non-profit that engages in development activities in a village

Water

A Fantastic Diagram of the Water-Energy Nexus

The Water-Energy Nexus is a concept that puts the spotlight on the relationship between water and energy use from a sustainability perspective. When I was at WEFTEC [https://danbscott.ghost.io/weftec-2014/] this year, one presentation included a fantastic graphic on the topic from the US Dept. of Energy (DOE)

Water

Water and Wastewater Vocabulary in Arabic

First of all, my apologies to readers for being late with this post. When I was at the University of Waterloo, I took a couple of Arabic language courses at Renison College [https://uwaterloo.ca/renison/]. I thought it would be a good exercise to look up translations for some

Water

ASM1 in Octave

This post contains an implementation of the IWA [http://www.iwahq.org/]'s Activated Sludge Model No. 1 (ASM1) in octave. Models are a widely-used tool in the design and operation of wastewater treatment systems. For my job, I use a commercial simulator [http://envirosim.com/], but I thought

Water

Open Access Journals for Water and Wastewater

This post is a short list of open-access journals in the fields of wastewater and water treatment and quality. Open-access journals [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_journal] follow a publishing model where content is made freely available to readers (often there is a fee for the researchers publishing

Water

WEFTEC 2014

This past week I had the opportunity to attend the WEFTEC conference and tradeshow in New Orleans, Louisiana. This post will hopefully convey a bit of this great experience. WEFTEC [http://www.weftec.org/about_weftec/default.aspx] (the Water Environment Foundation's Technical Exhibition and Conference) is the

Water

Nutrient Cycle Infographics: Carbon and Sulfur

As mentioned in a previous post [https://danbscott.ghost.io/nutrient-cycle-infographic-nitrogen/] I made some infographics for the carbon and sulfur cycles. You can go back to that post for a refresher on the legend (colour scheme, layout, etc.) and some discussion. These infographics are not intended to be exhaustive—a

Math

Degrees of Go

Recently I started playing "Go" (known as baduk (바둑) in Korean and as wéiqí in Chinese). I started playing on an app [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.aifactory.gofree&hl=en] on my phone, then made my own board (shown below). Go

History

Whence Finance?

This post is a review of The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson. I got it from my favourite used bookstore: the Midtown Scholar [http://www.midtownscholar.com/] (pictured below) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Niall Ferguson [http://www.niallferguson.com/], a historian at Harvard, wrote

New Brunswick

Shogomoc

Recently I went on a hike (with my family) along Shogomoc Stream, about 45 minutes outside of Fredericton. It's a pretty cool spot, so I thought I'd share it on my blog. Shogomoc Stream [https://goo.gl/maps/UNs2R] offers a couple of good reasons to

Water

Calibrating a homemade probe

This post is a continuation of the previous one [https://danbscott.ghost.io/a-home-made-probe-for-dissolved-solids-in-water/] on making a homemade probe for dissolved solids in water. Here I explain how I calibrated it after I got it working. After printing off a new probe tip [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:440005], I

Water

A home-made probe for dissolved solids in water

Conductivity is a commonly-measured parameter in water. For example, I measured it in my thesis [https://danbscott.ghost.io/my-masters-thesis/] and it is being measured in the Disappearing Rio Grande Expedition [https://danbscott.ghost.io/up-the-creek-with-a-paddle/]. This post is about my first attempt at making a home-made probe to measure

New Brunswick

Eqpahak Island

Eqpahak Island is an island in the Saint John River near Fredericton [https://maps.google.ca/?ll=45.976924,-66.762714&spn=0.025171,0.055189&t=h&z=14] . Recently I went kayaking there. For the most part, paddling on the Saint John River is not

3D Printing

Link: Dassouki Photos

As I've previously mentioned [https://danbscott.ghost.io/link-solomons-palace/], I'll occasionally share links to my friends' websites and endeavours. Ahmed Dassouki [http://dassouki.ca/] is a photographer in Fredericton. He shoots a lot of events (with action and candid shots of participants), and also takes

Water

Nutrient Cycle Infographic: Nitrogen

For this post, I made an infographic on the Nitrogen Cycle. Nitrogen's chemistry has been important for my Master's research (nitrification in drinking water distribution systems) and now in what I do professionally (removal of nitrogen from wastewater, among many other things). I've seen

Re-Published

Sim City's Laffer Curve

This post is something I originally wrote for a Facebook note a few years ago, but I'm planning to do more to explore economic concepts in video games. Introduction I dug out an old computer game recenty (i.e. before I originally wrote this note ), Sim City 2000.

Book

The Expanse and the human

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a closely-knit crew fly around in a spaceship getting in and out of trouble, against a backdrop of intrigue and sinister forces. The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey [http://www.danielabraham.com/james-s-a-corey/] (the nom-de-plume of a pair

Water

Is the Aral Sea still shrinking?

When I was in university, I took a class called "Intro to International Development Studies". For that class, I researched and wrote an essay on the Aral Sea crisis in Central Asia. I learned a lot from writing that essay—I believe it's where I first

Review

Safety Lessons from Chris Pine's Unstoppable

Unstoppable (2010) [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477080/?ref_=nv_sr_1] is a kind of unique movie that I enjoy. Its antagonist is completely inanimate: a runaway train—with its immense kinetic energy—with no one on board. This train is racing toward a populated area, carrying tanker cars