• posted on: [2024-11-11 Mon]
• topic: programming, emacs, orgmode, GNU

What needs to be considered when attempting to install a newer version of Org-Mode than what is available with the builtin version of your Emacs version. The newer Org-Mode version is installed from the version available from the package archive GNU Elpa.

• posted on: [2021-07-04 Sun]
• topic: work from home, engineering

Are you a morning or evening person? Are you not happy with your own tendencies regarding your own productivity?

Circadian rhythms. Chronotypes. These can help you understand yourself better.

• posted on: [2020-06-27 Sat]
• topic: programming, version control

In this blog post, I share a piece about the basics of merging operations using git which is a version control program primarily designed for software development. I have been using it to keep track of my own scientific coding projects and extending it to keep my scientific writing (i.e. thesis) under version control. This is to have a record of all of the changes, additions, and deletions during the life of a project. The following post is not a guide for new git users and rather assumes some prior knowledge of git and it's operations. That being said if you are new to git and version control still have a read and learn something new in a time when most of us are self-isolating due to a worldwide pandemic. I have tried my best to present the topic of merging in git as simply as I can with as little assumptions of prior git knowledge of the reader as possible. If you find this article interesting, please leave a comment on LinkedIN if you would like me to do a introduction to version control article. Thanks for reading!

• posted on: [2020-02-17 Mon]
• topic: engineering

Another blog post just one week after the previous one. This is my attempt at gaining some consistency in writing for my blog. The aim being to publish at least 2 articles per month. In this post, I wanted to explore how I can translate seeking discomfort in other areas of my life to become a better person to specifically how I can use this concept of seeking discomfort to become a better engineer. If this is of any interest, please click here for the full blog post.

• posted on: [2020-02-10 Mon]
• topic: structural engineering

A new blog post after a length break!!! It has been awhile since I have last posted a article but I have been incredibly busy with my masters program but here at last is the next article about the "rope effect" in the design of timber connections. I hope you enjoy and the article can be found here.

• posted on: [2019-11-03 Sun]
• topic: post-secondary education

To further motivate my previous blog post on graduate school and the opportunities it can present, I reflect on my decision to study abroad at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden which can hopefully help shed some light on the numerous advantages and few disadvantages (my biased perspective) on studying abroad. As mentioned in the previous post, this is my own personal story but I truly believe that there are common elements that can be useful to all of us in my story. Furthermore, please leave a comment telling your story about your decision on where you pursued graduate school if you did or why you choose not to. Thanks so much for the attention reading my blog post and stay tuned for more posts in the future back to technical structural engineering topics. Goodbye for now.

• posted on: [2019-10-10 Thu]
• topic: post-secondary education

Today, I take a different approach to examining engineering by reflecting and considering my past experience choosing to pursue a masters degree in structural engineering. Even though this is a very personal story of my experience, I believe that there are some key ideas which can be applied to making big decisions in anyone's life. I think we can all benefit from taking time to probe our own psyche to make better decisions for ourselves. If you also pursued graduate school, I would love to know your own story of how you reached that decision and how you made it happen so leave a comment under the LinkedIN post. Thanks so much for taking the time to read my blog post and goodbye for now.e

• posted on: [2019-09-26 Thu]
• topic: structural engineering

In this blog post, I take a in-depth look at the conceptual design from both an architectural and engineering perspective of the Kingsgate bridge in Durham, England. It was designed by Ove Arup (founder of the architectural & engineering firm, ARUP Group) who considered this project as his finest. My firm intention of this article is to appreciate this bridge structure for the elegance of the concept. I hope you enjoy reading this article.

• posted on: [2019-09-12 Thu]
• topic: structural engineering

Have you ever wondered how structural engineers ensure the safety when you drive over a bridge? Most likely the concept of influence lines was used at some stage of the design process. Influence lines are a tool which engineers use to evaluate where as you drive over the bridge the weight of your vehicle creates the highest load on the bridge structure itself. Engineers then use this knowledge to design the structure such that the load that applied by your vehicle can be resisted by the structural elements. This blog post will explore the basic ideas behind the concept of influence lines. To read the full blog post, please follow this link. I hope that you enjoy the article and maybe even learn something new.

• posted on: [2019-08-30 Fri]
• topic: social media & creativity

Recently, I watched Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Ted talk on how seeking attention through social media is actually damaging to our creative processes. As an actor this is incredible important to him as his main trade is the creative process after all. By no means does he suggest that social media is bad or evil; however, he does take a stand on limiting our social media usage to time to allow our creativity to burst out and truly shine. Most importantly, he points out our collective obsession with clicks, views, and likes. For example, he suggests that our obsession with getting ever more views has us more focused (and worried) on how to achieve more views on our next social media post (whether Facebook, Instagram, or any other platform) than actually allowing ourselves to create unique pieces of work. What really spoke to myself about his talk, is that even though I am an engineer where on the surface you would not necessarily associate creativity with my profession, is this idea that not just actors need creativity but we all do. Creativity can be important in my profession as well to push boundaries of what is possible to engineer. Or a doctor needs creativity to be able to develop a unique treatment plan for each unique patient they may have (humans are complex and no two humans will present the same symptoms to a illness or respond to the same treatment in a similar manner). One of the major ideas I find thought provoking and powerful that Joseph Gordon-Levitt presents is this idea that social media if used differently from how we are using it now could actually help our creativity (and just maybe start making a better world).

A very powerful Ted talk on the interaction between social media use and creativity which I highly recommend you watch. Thanks for reading this post (I hope you enjoyed it.) and more structural engineering themed posts are coming soon.

• posted on: [2019-07-08 Mon]
• topic: structural engineering

Similarly as the previous article on structural timber floors, this article is also in the spirit of summarizing a particular concept from a course I took as part of my masters program. This article is focused on prestressed concrete since this course covered structural concrete. Anyway, I hope you enjoy and you can find the whole article here.

• posted on: [2019-04-27 Sat]
• topic: sociology & economics

Recently, the news, particularly out of the USA, has given social democracy coverage due to the rise in popularity of politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders among others. But it is interesting to note that many media organizations continue to engage in coverage relating to the cost of social democratic policies like the Green New Deal championed by these politicians. However, in doing so one of the main ideas of social democracy is missed. Here I am referring to the ideas related to class and class structure specifically on how in the very core of capitalism a distinct, systematic inequality exists. By this I refer to the fact that in our current system of capitalism by definition the vast majority of people exchange their labour (whether physical or mental) for compensation whereas those who are in charge collect the profit from the work done by the vast majority. This concentration of wealth into the hands of the few creates a situation where a small number of people have the power to make decisions for everyone. Concentrating power like this in the hands of a few can have side effects whereby these few people become removed from the everyday struggles of the vast majority and at times can make decisions which actively harm the majority.

This idea of class is much more eloquently explained in this video from Richard Wolff who is a professor of marxist economics in the US. I hope you will have found this interesting even if you disagree with the ideology of social democracy to be able to have a open and meaningful discussion without the current vitriol of political debates.

• posted on: [2019-04-15 Mon]
• topic: sociology, economics & philosophy

Many of you reading the title of this post may be thinking that I chose this title to generate more clicks; however, I believe that it is good to be able to have a open conversation/discussion about online privacy and our increasingly digital lives. Some of you may also think that well that's all fine to discuss online privacy but all my friends use WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger or whatever else. To this I would say that I understand and acknowledge that it's not a matter of one or the other but more about raising awareness of an important issue in today's digital world of online privacy. But what is Signal, you may ask as well? Signal Private Messenger is a messaging application with a emphasis on complete privacy when communicating with friends while simultaneously avoiding SMS fees and chat in groups privately. Signal is considered the go to encryption tool for messaging applications who focus on providing digital privacy to it's users.

There are many aspects that I could discuss in this post with regard online privacy but for this short post I want to simply direct your attention to a article from this January about the online security/privacy of different messaging applications. Furthermore, a great organization dedicated to advocating and defending digital privacy and a free internet is the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to learn more about why digital privacy and a free internet matter so much. In general, a free internet is important to support to prevent internet service providers (ISP) from treating data transmitted over their networks in a non-discriminatory way.

Anyway, this is a shorter update due to a very busy last few weeks which prevented me from developing a longer post. A longer post is in the works about the finite element method and will be coming soon.

For those who haven't seen some of my past blog posts on topics like structural timber, I would encourage you to visit my personal website and take a look around.

• posted on: [2019-04-01 Mon]
• topic: structural engineering

After taking a course in timber engineering as part of my masters program at Chalmers, I thought it would be a good idea to share what I learned about how to design timber floor structures especially with regard to vibrations. I also wanted to reflect and summarize for myself and others the basic design philosophy in the Eurocode (EC5) for timber structures. To read the my full article, please follow this link. Feel free to leave your comments (via LinkedIN), so that we can have a discussion about this topic.

• posted on: [2019-03-18 Mon]
• topic: transportation engineering

As I am currently studying at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, I walk by an on-going pilot project to further develop self-driving cars. This project is the s3 Project which is part of Drive Sweden which is an initiative by the Swedish government to develop the technology to achieve fully autonomous vehicles. In addition to this research being conducted right in front of me, I also have worked with LIDAR data in the past so I thought it would be interesting to post my view on this topic. To read the my full article, please follow this link. Feel free to leave your comments (via LinkedIN), so that we can have a discussion about this topic.

• posted on: [2019-02-18 Mon]
• topic: computer science & engineering

Programming has always fascinated me because at it's core it is just a set of instructions for a computer to execute. This fascination led me to a video, from a talk given at the RubyHACK 2018 conference, explaining the different philosophies behind various programming languages. For more about this follow this link to my full blog post.

• posted on: [2019-02-02 Sat]
• topic: structural engineering

Welcome to the new year and to my new structural engineering blog! This first post will act as a guiding path as I embark on my blogging adventure. My blog will explore ideas within the realm of structural engineering, programming, and higher education and there will be approximately 2 posts per month. These are all topics of which I am knowledgeable but also have a keen interest in. I am starting this blog because I believe that I have a interesting structural engineering perspective of our built environment and the technologies which are used in the design of our built environment. I hope that my posts will be informative and provide a unique perspective of structural engineering to you, the prospective reader of my blog. If this sounds interesting to you, please follow this link to read the full blog post on my personal website.