The t-squared fire ramp calculator is available here:

http://www.koverholt.com/t-squared-fire-ramp-calculator/

Please let me know if you find any bugs, would like to give feedback on this tool, or have a request for another web calculator!

Related posts:

1. New web calculator tool – transient steel heating under fire conditions
2. New web calculator – flame heights and plume centerline temperatures
3. Inverse fire modeling for heat release rate characterization

http://www.koverholt.com/flame-height-and-plume-centerline-temperature-calculator/

Please let me know if you find any bugs, would like to give feedback on this tool, or have a request for another web calculator!

Related posts:

1. New web calculator tool – transient steel heating under fire conditions
2. New web calculator – t-squared fire ramp generator
3. Plotting data on videos – A useful way to convey qualitative and quantitive information

http://www.koverholt.com/transient-steel-heating-under-fire-conditions/

I hope you find the calculator useful, and I will continue to add web tools for fire protection engineering calculations. I will be adding a more detailed explanation and equations to the steel heating calculator page in the near future as well as releasing the source code.

Please let me know if you find any bugs, would like to give feedback on this tool, or have a request for another web calculator! The next web tool will be a calculator to give results from the Heskestad flame height and centerline temperatures.

Related posts:

1. New web calculator – flame heights and plume centerline temperatures
2. New web calculator – t-squared fire ramp generator
3. Plotting data on videos – A useful way to convey qualitative and quantitive information

Every once in a while, someone makes an impression on you that lasts for a lifetime. It sticks with you every single time. This is one of those, although a bit on the nerdy side, it is one that can change the way you present information in a very meaningful way.

I was once sitting at the NIST annual fire conference, going about my business, and someone working on a project regarding the structural response aspect of buildings on fire showed a video in their presentation. No big deal, right? Normally, we get cool fire videos, then some plots, and so on. Sometimes the plots are interesting, sometimes they are default from Excel with the ugly legend and all – with no story to tell.

But not this guy. He showed a video with real-time plots superimposed over the video showing the exact real-time structural response of the structure overlaid on the video in a plot. “AMAZING!” I thought. And it stuck with me. A useful way to convey synchronous information. People love videos, why not tell the qualitative AND quantitative story at the same time?

So I started working in grad. school on fire problems, and naturally, soon thereafter, I was scheduled to give a presentation. As most of my real creative coding and writing work happens of hours between the hours of 1 AM and 6 AM, I wanted to make this happen. I REALLY wanted some real-time plotting action in my presentation. No Excel templates for me! So I stayed up for a couple nights and worked on a way to use MATLAB to make this plotting dream a reality: I worked on importing videos, messing with frame rates, tons of images, and so forth. And soon thereafter, it happened. I had a working script.

I used it to show plots of large-scale fire tests with actual and predicted flame heights vs. time as seen here:

And I used the script to show the predicted flame heights on a small-scale test in an amazing way that just about anyone can relate to, fire-crazed scientist or not:

From anyone who has seen the videos firsthand, the response has been amazing. This is a great teaching and communication tool, and surprisingly enough, I haven’t found any existing program or tool that does this. And so I am sharing the videos and script here for anyone to use to better convey information.

My next steps are: 1) to convert the script to Python (since I am now almost exclusively using Python+numpy+scipy for my graduate research and daily work instead of MATLAB, and 2) to make the script into a cross-platform and easy to use tool.

I’m providing the code in its raw and uncommented and unedited form. It generates a number of images with plots superimposed on them, and then it is trivial to use a program to stitch them together into a video. I used Quicktime’s built in method. Sorry, too much current work going on finishing my MS thesis and Master’s degree to clean up the code, but it’s a brutal use of the “release early, release often” ideal! Hopefully someone can make some use of it.

So, here are the linked .m files:

http://www.koverholt.com/scripts/ssPlotVideo.m
http://www.koverholt.com/scripts/fireplotVideo.m

Enjoy! And please leave your comments or ideas!

Related posts:

1. New web calculator – flame heights and plume centerline temperatures
2. Passionate and Artful Communication in Science
3. New web calculator tool – transient steel heating under fire conditions

Whenever I listen to it, I am reminded of my grandfather, Jesus Gonzales, born 1908. It paraphrases something that he knew, something deep. It was to clear your mind of any toils or stress from the day that just passed you by. Jesus, or Apa, was married to Margarita Gonzales for many, many years, and he rubbed off on more people than I’ll ever know. He was one of the happiest men that I knew, in one of the happiest marriages I will ever know, ever.

He was a simple man who simply loved life. That feeling and mission I can certainly share with him. He told me to never go to bed angry, at anything. This is before computers, before we began to live in a life surrounded by computers and overwhelming days. He was never too busy for anybody, including you and me.

So I paraphrase him, as Apa wouldn’t mind, and say not to let the sun go down on your grievances. Sleep well, tell the one you love that you love them, and breathe in all the we have. Thanks Apa. I miss the days where I would go “fishing” and hunt for the raisins in my Quaker Oats oatmeal.

You knew exactly how to live life, and we all learned from you to pass it on and on.

Don’t let the sun go down own your grievances:

Don’t let the sun go down on your grievances
Respect love of the heart over lust of the flesh
Do yourself a favor: become your own savior
And don’t let the sun go down on your grievances
And when you wake up in the morning
You’ll have a brand new feeling
And you’ll find yourself healing
So don’t let the sun go down on your grievances

Related posts:

1. Meaning: this way
2. How to remove yourself and your thoughts from this world
3. Updates on welcomed unstability

[From NASA]

So, let me explain his model simply by example:

The professor said that when he first started this class 2 years ago, the students were working on a different problem with no solution… at the time. The class worked together and in the end the results were so significant that a couple of students took the initiative to publish the results in a scientific journal. The same happened when the class was taught last year – project done, paper published.

So what does this mean and why do you care? Well, all too often in the academic world, people can get caught up in working on projects and sort of work themselves into a dark corner where nobody gets to benefit from the results… and this is done in real life as well, not just academics. This is where the ridiculous amount of collaborative technology available to us comes in to play. Want to gather up notes on the Smagorinsky constant and publish them for anyone to find who is searching for them in the next 1000 years? Easy: 5 minutes. Want to publish your results in the most useful way? Easy: work on an open source project in your area along with your research – or make your own.

…Or you could write a paper, finish your thesis work, wrap up the loose ends in a few years and show a flashy poster of your work 5 years after anybody cares about it anymore or thinks it to be useful.

I digress. I just wanted to stress this new method of collaboration that is among us, and how it’s going to change the way that we work together and grow together in fire protection engineering and fire science.

[From Rowan University College of Engineering]

Why not make use of motivated students and brainpower when they come together? Here is me welcoming this new phase of community and collaboration in a field that directly impacts life safety and makes safer buildings around the world. So when we work on that final project in a few weeks, it’s not really at all about a grade anymore – it’s about a new way of doing science – together.

Update: This is exactly the kind of stuff that I’m talking about here, posted today on the SFPE National blog that I set up a year ago – collaboration: Foundation Funded Research underway at WPI

Related posts:

1. The human element in fire protection engineering
2. Why Do I Chase Fire? (and video)
3. Updates on welcomed unstability

This week’s journey leads me to a Thursday night (day 2 of 3) in Caldwell, TX. I am doing fire alarm inspections for four local schools that are pretty huge and thusly I am hanging out at the Sunset Inn for 3 days. This means that I get paid to torture the summer cheerleading camps and office ladies with blaring fire alarm sirens all day long.

And just so you know, in the picture on the front page of my hotel’s (Sunset Inn’s) website, there is a huge Walmart sign right there looming in the background for your nightly dose of subliminal Caldwell advertising – it’s like a bad smell that you can’t help but keep smelling.

Caldwell TX is about 25 miles south of College Station. So everywhere I turn, I see AGGIE COUNTRY signs and all sorts of aggie references. Nothing new here, just overloaded with it. THIS IS AGGIE LAND!!!

Last night, Katie and I were hanging low with the locals at the Texan Lounge about 0.8 miles away from my hotel room. Everything was typical Texas – maybe so insanely Texan that it was just… normal. A sign on the wall said – IF YOU AIN’T OILFIELD, THEN YOU AIN’T SHIT. And I didn’t even want to ask the bartender and get shmacked in the head nor do I even want to Google it. Just let it coexist within my mind, alone and peaceful.

Now to the media: Yesterday, when inspecting the local high school’s fire alarm and deafening the occupants to their demise (and my pleasure), I came across this room (it was actually in the faculty “work room”). Hmm, my school didn’t have one of these:

Smoking bans in Houston bars, smoking rooms in high school faculty lounges, I see the real truth now.

Next up, in the bathroom reserved for only the staff and faculty to do their dirty handywork, located smack in the center of the building amongst the hallways, where surely a middle school student could take wafts of their biology teacher’s deuce:

Thanks Caldwell schools for keeping my teachers clean and freaked out by psychadelic super graphics from space!

And finally, the local schools are plastered with reminders and motivational messages from Aristotle, Einstein, and other great thinkers. But this one particularly caught my eye; they sure do want to remind us of something here.. what is it? Oh yeah!:

I can’t make this stuff up folks. I love it. This job gives me random input from all angles that I never see coming. Good pay, good travel, good summer work. And great timing! – I am definitely getting my Texas fix in before I leave this great state in 20 days.

After working until 8:30 pm tonight, I only had the energy to visit the Brookshire Brothers about 400 feet from my hotel and gather some resources for my last night here: cold beers, a TV dinner, a banana, and a bear claw for breakfast in the morn. During my checkout process, the grocery sacker told me about six and a half times how cool it would be if “you could buy beer when you were 15 years old.” He was about 2.5 times larger than me. Noted.

Thanks Caldwell. Seriously, I love your offerings, no jokes. And here’s to tomorrow. I <3 you Texas.

P.S. Thanks to Sunset Inn for making this blog post all possible with a $35 dollar room with free Wifi! Ahh America!

Related posts:

1. Meddling in life
2. Debates of Saccaka and the Areas of Life
3. Song about life

Well, I happen to think that it not only affects your daily pursuit of knowledge and you work in whatever field you are in, but it also greatly affects the way we work together as a society, create and bring new ideas into fruition, and nurture successful generations to follow.

Last Thursday, the FCC held a public hearing on net neutrality. 5 commissioners from the FCC joined and heard from leading public scientists, network operators, and entrepreneurs. 2 commissioners were in support of network neutrality, 2 against, and one neutral (pun intended). Also, Comcast and many other carriers were invited to the hearing; however, they declined.

Here is the video from the hearing as well as other snippets on the topic:

Jason Devitt, CEO of Skydeck, testifies at the FCC Hearing

Law Professor Lawrence Lessig on Net Neutrality and the Rise of Google

From Barack Obama’s address at Google

You’ll notice I stuck a button on the right of my site in support of net neutrality. I’ll be calling my senator and representatives on Monday morning to let them know of my support of net neutrality and a new Act working its way through the House of Representatives. I urge you to do the same. It is critical to recognize that issues such as Verizon winning the FCC spectrum auction to Microsoft’s OOXML as a international standard to Comcast breaking fundamental ethical and technical ways of the internet are of utmost importance to our current age, culture, and political era.

In the end, regardless of the specific topic at hand, be cognizant of those trying to disrupt and block the progressive movement that is before us. Especially when it involves profit rather than progress. Especially when that blocking impedes our societal learning, sharing, innovation, creativity, and global and equal access to information for all.

Related posts:

1. 18 minutes with an agile mind – video
2. Passionate and Artful Communication in Science
3. The Arrival of Collaboration in Fire Protection Engineering

Stuff like this gives me a warm feeling of why I am so attracted to the fields of science that I am. Something tells me that this man doesn’t fret too much about the trivial stuff that we sometimes get trapped up in day to day. Click on the picture to watch. Enjoy.


http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2008/04/09/must-watch-18-minutes-with-an-agile-mind/

By the way, watch out for loose gravel! – I wiped out on my motorcycle gracefully right at this spot near UHD. Everything is okay with me minus a brake pedal that needs to be bent back into shape and a slightly bent handlebar that with bother my OCD.


View Larger Map

Related posts:

1. Why Do I Chase Fire? (and video)
2. On Breathing In Distinct Steps
3. Passionate and Artful Communication in Science

Along the way during the past month, I have sifted through hundreds of websites and quite a few beginner books. So here, I would like to share the links that I found most helpful in my quest for Python knowledge. As far as my past experience, I’ve dabbled in many other languages such as MATLAB, HTML, Fortran, C++, Java, Perl, and so on but never really grew to master a single one or use it in my daily life.

So, without further delay, on to the list:

Before You Start With Python

1. Python.org – I couldn’t make this list without including the main Python site. There is just a great amount of information there. Plus everything I link to can probably be found there, but my list is only those resources that really helped me along in my learning experience.
   
2. Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years – Article by the director of research at Google – A great overview of programming and learning to program, all the while avoiding the ides presented by the “Learn to program in X days” books.

Excellent Python Tutorials

1. Dive Into Python – This is one of the first tutorials that I read about Python, and it gave me an excellent overview of the language. It really broke down the code line-by-line, but it still reads like a mix between a reference guide, a cookbook, and a tutorial. It’s a freely available book and should definitely be within quick reach as you learn Python.
2. How to Think Like a Computer Scientist – This is by far my favorite tutorial in the entire list. I like this (freely available) book because of its plentiful and challenging exercises! I am usually picky when choosing textbooks on a new subject, and I will almost always get the book that has the most examples in it. I spent most of my time creating my own programs at the end of each chapter, and really got a feel for the language (and a nice sense of accomplishment!) at the end of each chapter. Highly recommended.
3. Python Videos at ShowMeDo – There are over 100 videos at the time of this posting over a wide range of topics. Anything from how to open a Python session to namespaces and more. It was nice when starting out to just sit and watch someone who knew what they were doing do routine tasks, and it helped to ground basic concepts before jumping in on my own. Don’t forget to thank the creators of the videos with a comment!
4. Learning to Program – This is one that I am going through last, because it gets into a bit more in depth discussion about basic and moderate topics. Very thorough.
   

Beginner Exercises and Projects

1. How to Think Like a Computer Scientist – I just HAD to list this again, because it goes at just the right pace and the exercises are well thought out. I am convinced that I really learned about 80% of my Python basics here when I put them to practice. Learn by doing!
2. Projects for the Beginner – Python – This is a thread on a forum with over 100 ideas for programs. Use this when you are low on inspiration but high on ambition!
3. Python Challenge – Neat implementation of puzzles that can be solved with Python scripts. They get harder as you progress levels. You might want to hit up the Python Challenge after getting a good hold on the basics and after you have many of these other links open in other tabs.
4. Useless Python Challenges – This site should be visited after you have finished all of the trivial Python exercises and projects. When you are self-sustaining on the language and eagerly looking for some projects to do, but are hitting a writer’s block for programs, go here.

Beginner Forums and Lists

1. Python Forum – Beginners – Not a very high traffic forum, but they have a beginners subforum with 15-30 posts per day, just enough to keep you busy. I find it helpful to attack the problems that other beginners are facing. And if you come up with a good solution, post it and help others while you learn. Everyone wins!
2. Learning Python Blog – One of the few “learning only” Python blogs. It is always good to see information shared from others while they learn. Sort of like this list.
3. Python Tutor Mailing List – I only recently signed up for this, but I must say that there are some very knowledgeable and helpful people on here and it keeps the Python information coming at you via email. Seems to be quite a few students on here and you will most certainly learn something with each email thread.

Interesting Python Projects and Libraries

1. Django Project
   
2. TurboGears
3. Google GData Python API – This is an amazing API from Google that allows you to interact with Google Calendar, Docs, Maps, Youtube, Notebook, and so on. It is very easy to install and use and I look forward to developing with this in the near future.
4. wxPython – GUI toolkit for interface development. I haven’t gotten to GUIs yet, but everywhere I turn I see references to wxPython.
5. matplotlib – 2D plotting library that produces very nice looking graphs. Supports many, many types of graphs and is very customizable.
6. SciPy – A collection of Python tools and modules for use in science, engineering, and mathematics. This is the light at the end of the tunnel for me and I hope to get more involved with this library as I progress with my Python learning.

Editing Tools and Shells

1. iPython – An enhanced Python shell that seems geared towards science, engineering, and high performance computing.
2. TextMate (Mac OS X) – This is such an amazing editor that I must list it here. I didn’t use it at all before I started with Python, and now I simply cannot go without it. I had previously heard it described by programmers as a magical tool, but I had no idea. It does autocompletion based on previous words, syntax highlighting for a ton of languages, has a quick and easy-to-read method to execute Python scripts. It is perhaps the only non-free item in my list, but very much worth it!
   
3. TextWrangler (Mac OS X) – This is what I used for a couple of years… until I discovered the greatness of TextMate a few weeks ago. TextWrangler is free though if you wish to use it.

Other Resources (References, Packages, Hosting)

1. Python Library Reference – Huge list of explanations about Python’s Standard Library. Made to help you discover the power of Python in your everyday programming.
2. Python Webhosting – List of webhosts that offer Python solutions on their webhost. Python can be run on most hosts via CGI, but these wiki pages explain exactly how they implement Python usability. Plus I found out about the cool idea of HCoop cooperative web hosting through this list; this is the host on which you are reading this blog.
3. Python Package Index – Directory of Python packages that you can learn about, download, and use in your own programming. Don’t reinvent the wheel!
4. Python Cookbook Code Samples – This is a directory in the same vein as the previous listing, but the solutions to problems are presented as code with user comments. As of now there are over 2000 recipes.
5. The Daily Python URL – Just as it sounds. News about Python in compact form.

Again, while there are many, many other resources for learning Python, this is a list of my personal favorites. These are the specific sites that have been very helpful and impacting on my venture to learn Python. So while I may not have listed a particular item – I probably saw it, but didn’t get much from it at this time.

Finally, you must forgive me if I got some detail wrong. I am learning, after all! Hopefully this list will help new and moderate Python users to utilize some of the best (and free!) Python resources that others have put up for all to learn from. Thanks to those people who shared their knowledge. And have fun with Python!

Related posts:

1. How to install PyObjC, pygame, and gasp on Mac OS X for Python tutorial
2. The clarity of Python vs. the cloud of Perl
3. Python ImportError with backend_wx2.8 and wxPython when using Matplotlib