So why am I starting this blog? The answer to this is complicated but can be generalized to my desire to share my thoughts on the built enviroment and how technology will impact the structural engineering profession in the coming months, years, and decades. Whether it's a new building or large infrastructure project like a tunnel or bridge, there is often a bigger engineering story behind it of how the design was achieved. It is these engineering stories which serve as the basis of why I have decided to start this blog in the first place. In addition, there are new technologies being discovered which make possible more and more intricate and complicated designs which the current and future engineer will need to be acquaintated with.

It is my hope that my blog can play a small part in introducing some of programming technical knowledge needed to understand the new technologies being utilized in structural engineering design. My overarching goal is to leave the reader with a greater appreciation for our shared built environment by showcasing some of the truly remarkable work being done by structural engineers. Personally, I believe structures like the Mountain designed by BIG are designs which not only show off the best in architecture and engineering but also show us how we can design for social inclusivity by thinking outside the box.

Source: https://www.archdaily.com/15022/mountain-dwellings-big	Source: https://www.archilovers.com/projects/17443/mountain-dwellings.html

I completed my Bachelors degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada in May 2018 and I am currently pursuing a Masters degree in Structural Engineering and Building Technology at Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden. My decision to move to Sweden to pursue graduate studies was borne out of a desire to meet new people, experience a different culture, and discover new engineering perspectives. On a side note, watch out for a upcoming post on why I moved to Sweden to pursue my masters degree. A smaller part of my motivation to create this blog is to stay connected to my industry (i.e. the structural engineering profession) by researching and reviewing the lastest trends in this wonderful profession.

From this blog you can expect posts in 3 broad topics of which I am interested in and have experience with. In order of my interest in them, these 3 topics are:

1. structural engineering

   Posts within the topic of structural engineering will consist mostly of sharing projects which employ new and innovative techniques to make their architectural design feasible. There will no doubt be a emphasis on the subtopic of the finite element method as this is of particular interest to me. As such, stay tuned in the next few months for a series of posts discussing the finite element method.

2. programming

   The second area of focus is programming related posts. This posts will focus heavily on how to effectively use programming languages like Python and Matlab to solve all manner of civil engineering problems but especially elasticity problems. Additionally, I am also a big user of the GNU Emacs text editor as an environment to write code and maintain my TODO lists using the wonderful org-mode package. (This website is also developed using Emacs org-mode.) Since I am such a big fan of Emacs, I will also be posting on how I configure my Emacs environment in the coming months for those interested.

   My use of Emacs also ties into my interest in reproducible research and literate programming which I will also explore in this blog. But in a nutshell reproducible research is the idea to embed the data, computational analysis, and discussion into one "literate, programmatic" document. Unfortunately, writing a quality blog post on this topic will take research and time to make it worthwhile to you, the reader, it will most likely be some months before I post on this topic. However in the meantime, here are some links for those interesed in getting started with what reproducible research is:

   • The Practice of Reproducible Research GitBook, and
   • article on An Effective Git And Org-Mode Based Workflow For Reproducible Research.

3. education

   The 3rd area of interest to be explored in this blog is focused on how do we learn/teach the most efficiently. For example what tools and techniques do successful teachers use to help their students learn the concepts of whatever topic is at hand. As well, tools and techniques employed by successful students will also be explored in future blog posts. Many of the tools and techniques which will inevitably be featured in this blog are based on the teaching philosophy promoted by the not-for-profit organization The Carpentries; however, this blog will also not necessarily be limited to this.

Finally, I would like to set some expectations on how often I will produce blog posts not just for the reader but also for myself. In general, I expect to write approximately 2 blog posts per month to begin with. After a year, I will reevaluate to see what worked and what did not work especially in terms of post frequency.

To all the readers who have made it through this post, thank you, and I hope that some aspect of this interests you enough to read some of my future posts on the specific topics I have just described.