New Brunswick Where People Live in New Brunswick A while ago I came across this map [http://whackdata.tumblr.com/post/69019510879/mapping-new-brunswick-with-only-buildings] that I wanted to share. The guy who made it used freely-available (Yay for open data!) geo-referenced data for every building in New Brunswick. As he points out, even though only buildings are shown, the
3D Printing Making a Mould with a 3D Printer This post is about using a 3D printer to produce an intermediate component—specifically a mould (or mold, if you prefer)—rather than directly printing the final product. I wanted to try doing this because it combines some of the advantages of 3D printing (customizability, accuracy) with some of the
History A Demotivational Poster for May Day Today is May 1st, and I made a "demotivational"-style poster for the occasion. The LaTeX code (see below) can be easily modified for other posters of this style. % "Demotivational" poster template in LaTeX \documentclass[12 pt,portrait]{article} \usepackage{fullpage} \usepackage{url} \usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx}
Solomon Link: Solomon's Palace In keeping with my blog's ultra-minimalist theme (speaking of which, the red button with three lines at the top of the page accesses posts other than the current one, in case you haven't figured it out yet) I don't have a blog-roll or anything
New Brunswick Timing of River Ice Formation and Break-Up in New Brunswick Half a dozen years ago, I did a summer work term for Hydro-Com Technologies [http://www.rvanderson.com/index.php/fredericton-nb]. I had a good experience there and learned a lot. One project I was involved in while I was there was an analysis in trends in rivers in New
New Brunswick Map of New Brunswick Watersheds In the introduction to Timothy Frink's book on New Brunswick history (which I reviewed earlier) [https://danbscott.ghost.io/a-quick-overview-of-new-brunswick-history/], I read that there were very few roads at the beginning of European settlement because it was so easy to get around the province by canoe. He claimed
History History Through a Liquid Lens This post is a review of Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization by Steven Solomon (2010). To start with, I have some general comments on the book itself, and then I'll delve into some of the issues it covers. It's a long book,
3D Printing A 3D-Printing Workflow: From Idea to Finished Product This post is an example of the complete process of making a 3D-Printed object, starting with the initial idea and design, through to actually having the finished product. It's based on making a replacement knob for the oven in my apartment—a useful application for a 3D printer.
Re-Published Marq de Villiers' lecture at UNB For World Water Day / Canada Water Week [http://canadawaterweek.com/events/all] 2014, I decided to repost these lecture notes from a couple of years ago (originally shared on Facebook). Introduction On 15 March 2012, I went to a public lecture at the University of New Brunswick by author/journalist
3D Printing Writing an .stl file from scratch The .stl file format [http://www.ennex.com/~fabbers/StL.asp] (see also [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_%28file_format%29]) is used for 3D printing and similar fabrication technologies. The files are normally created as output from design software, but I wanted to try writing one by hand
Book A Journey Through Ukraine With the current events in the Ukraine, I thought it would be a good time to pick up and read Where the West Ends by Michael J. Totten. Michael Totten [http://www.michaeltotten.com/] is an independent foreign correspondent that I've followed for a while. He initially grabbed
Book Neal Stephenson's Writing An author that I've really gotten into over the past year is Neal Stephenson. His writing is hard to classify, ranging from futuristic hard sci-fi to historical fiction, but has some common themes such as information theory [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory]. So far, I'
Re-Published The Long March of the NB 104th This note was originally posted on Facebook for Remembrance Day 2012. It is about a story from Canadian military history that I find quite inspiring. These soldiers started their march 101 years ago this week. The 104th Regiment As I understand it, most of the regular forces on the Canadian
R Chaos Game Sierpinski Triangle The following figure is a representation of the fractal known as the Sierpinski Triangle. It was drawn using the chaos game [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_game] technique with 100,000 iterations. The way this technique works is: 1. A random starting point is chosen; 2. The next point
History A 'Riveting' Book on the Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution is a period of history that has long fascinated me. Largely because of the technological developments and sense of potential, and also for the way that engineering and modern business were shaped during the era. William Rosen wrote The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story
New Brunswick A Quick Overview of New Brunswick History Last weekend I read the book New Brunswick: A Short History by Timothy Frink. It's a very quick read, but I still found it informative. Recently I was complaining with some friends about how history is taught in our schools and this book just drove home the point
3D Printing Best Practices for 3D Printing When I first got a 3D printer, I was a little disappointed with the print quality, to be honest. But after using it for a while and fine-tuning some of the settings, I've started to get better results and a sense for what works and what doesn'
Re-Published The World By Numbers Although my statistics skills are stronger now and I probably would do some things differently now, I still like this analysis I did back in 2010 on some publically-available data on countries around the world. I wrote it on Facebook then a former classmate from UNB who works in the
Water My Master's Thesis For my first regular post (I plan to normally publish on a weekly basis, probably on Thursdays), I decided to look back at the research I did for my master's degree at the NSERC Chair in Water Treatment [http://www.civil.uwaterloo.ca/watertreatment/] at the University of
General About Me I was born and raised in Fredericton, New Brunswick and studied Civil Engineering at UNB (Bachelor's) and Waterloo (Master's). My thesis topic [https://danbscott.ghost.io/my-masters-thesis/] for my Master's degree was "Nitrification in chloraminated drinking water distribution systems". Now I'
General Welcome! As 2014 dawns, I decided it was time to start a blog. My goals are to hone my creative skills and share some ideas that I hope readers will find interesting or useful. Some of what I plan to publish will be semi-related to what I do professionally—information and