Car-armoring?

A river geomorphologist I work with, Bill Spitz, sent this around - pretty crazy - the Japan tsunami has stacked these cars up in the same fashion as cobbles in river bed armoring...

Experimenting with animated slideshows for work - Death to PowerPoint!!!

http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com/tripwow/ta-010e-ec6a-28a1?ln

Tossing digital oranges into the river..

I've just returned from a site visit to a coastal bridge in New Jersey, making observations and collecting data necessary for tidal modeling efforts.  With a budget too tight for extended tide data collection using our usual suite of bubbler pots and acoustic doppler velocimeters, I was faced with the prospect of using the age-old technique of tossing oranges in the water to assess streamflow.  I don't mind going old-school to get the job done, but with an absence of NOAA tide data in the vicinity, I really didn't want to calibrate my highly advanced models with floating fruit, no matter how sustainable and earth-friendly the approach may be.  I needed an equally advanced but inexpensive and quick method to gage stream velocity and angles of attack.  What I came up with was basically a reusable, electronic orange - a sort of digital streamflow tracer.  Here's how it worked:  Borrowing an outrigger real from the survey locker and mounting it onto a Home Depot purchased aluminum rod, I created a rugged casting reel.  Also borrowed from the survey guys was a water-resistant Garmin Rhino GPS/walk-talk handheld unit, which I placed in a waterproof low-profile plastic pouch with external anchor point, purchased from West Marine.  Visiting the bridge at a full moon spring tide cycle, I repeatedly cast the unit into the oncoming tidal stream and allowed it to float freely under the bridge and around the piers before retrieving.  The Garmin unit was set to provide track data at 1 second intervals, including lat/long position, distance traveled per leg, velocity, heading, elevation and time/date.  Using mapping software on my field laptop, I was able to periodically download and check the data visually as it was acquired.  Post-processing of the data shows very few data fall-outs as the unit passed beneath the bridge, with very clean-looking lines of track data obtained after a little trimming of the toss and retrieve periods.  Samples of the streamflow tracers are attached.  Surface velocities will later be converted to depth-averaged velocities using open-channel flow principles, and used in model calibration at periods of peak flood and ebb tides.  Angles of attack will be used in pier scour predictions.  I will post more later on the results of this effort.  Some additional notes if you try this technique:  Don't bother with ziplock bags - they leak no matter how many times you double and triple bag and tape them up!  Get a real ocean casting rod and reel with 20 lb filament test if you can.  My homemade unit did not cast well - I ended up letting out a couple of bridge widths worth of slack and tossing the unit by hand.  Squeeze as much air as you can out of the pouch while still allowing floatation - you don't want the wind catching it at all during the drift.  The low-profile West Marine pouch shown lay flat on the water and worked very well.  Lastly, have a witty retort memorized and ready for use when the local fisherman ask "what the heck are you fishing for??"

Happy casting!

Marina Design: Fixed vs. Floating Dock Systems

Recent article written for Marina Dockage magazine discussing the pros and cons of various dock system types used in marinas and small craft harbor settings.  Enjoy, SZ

Loveland WWII Diver

Interesting article about local lovelander who was diver in WWII.  He took the sink or swim training route, literally, as I suppose many folks had to do in that period.  And I though I was the only hard hat guy in northern Colorado.

Old School bridge inspector doing his stuff... looks like Manhattan Bridge

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fb7_1293681765&comment_order=newest_first

More thoughts on Deep Horizon's Final Hours.. from Engineering Ethics Blog

http://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/night-to-remember-on-deepwater-horizon.html

Good Pearl..

"Meetings  are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate." -Dave Berry

Deep Horizon's final hours provides valuable lessons for the field

If you didn't catch it this weekend or don't subscribe to the New York Times (who doesn't??), the front page story titled "Deep Horizon's Final Hours" is well worth the read.  The story covers the various equipment and operational/human faults that incremently (and allegedly) led to failure of the final well seal, blowout, exposion, and emaergency evacuation of the rig.  There are many lessons and reminders to be gleaned for the field operator, particularly if you're involved in confined space and/or dive work, or furthermore conducting such operations in hazardous environments.  As you would imagine, the article really had me thinking about company safety practices and standards, regular training and rehearsing on reaction to emergency situations.  But it goes further, digging into the questions like 'is this procedure we're practing so much and hammering into out skulls even adequate or enough to address the potential threat?', and 'who has the authority to override and standard procedure or checklist in the heat of the moment out there?'  'How many other bugs and surprises in the system are lying in wait for that first component to fail, ready to snowball on me?'   I recall in my military days that space operations was extremely checklist-oriented, and did not typically even leave opportunity for "manual overides" by superior officers in those emergency procedures.  We were often told in training and practice that as long as you stick to the checklist, you're golden and nobody could touch you no matter what the result was.  Nowadays I reside in the gray world of 'engineering judgement', where black and white checklists can be overriden at anytime as needed per the situation.  The Captain on this rig apparently overrode the decision of the operator to hit the emergency disconnect switch per protocol... the gal supposedly acknowledged, silenced and basically failed to act upon the many gas warnings per protocol... The best laid plans and procedures can certainly go to pot in the fog of war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/26spill.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

Liquid diver ventilation.. Awesome! Where do I sign up?!

http://cdiver.net/news/into-the-abyss-the-diving-suit-that-turns-men-into-fish/?utm_source=Main+cDiver+List&utm_campaign=f9e6db1a8b-Newsletter_46-12_01_10&utm_medium=email