jen's everyday blog
08 2004
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Tue, 31 Aug 2004

A bidet, you say?
Oh man- the best bidet discussion ever.

posted at: 17:38 | path: /living | link

PDFs on anaerobic digestion
Biogas Works has a number of pdfs on various aspects of anaerobic digestion.

posted at: 12:01 | path: /living | link

Anaerobic Digestion
The current in-term for anaerobic composting seems to be anaerobic digestion. I guess since anaerobic composting has such a bad rap, and the process of anearobic compositing is comparable to digestion, it makes sense.

posted at: 11:57 | path: /living | link

Small Scale Anaerobic Composting
Most home composting sites are dead set against anaerobic composting. It’s nice that this site provides an idea for how to do it. The advantage of anaerobic composting, from what I know, is that in anaerobic composting it is actually desirable to seal everything up, which means that you can compost things like meat and food scraps- items that are highly desirous to all of the critters that like things like that and which can be easily accessed in an aerobic compositing setup.

posted at: 11:51 | path: /living | link

The BTA Process
I’m looking into anaerobic composting, with the thought that at some point it might be feasible for Carleton to set up an anaerobic composting facility. There’s a anaerobic composting company set up just outside of Toronto that uses the BTA process.

posted at: 11:46 | path: /living | link

House Plant Guide
A nice primer on how to grow houseplants successfully. I’m having a plant drive for the cognitive science department, so I’m trying to figure out what plants grow well in office environments and how to take care of them.

posted at: 10:28 | path: /living | link

Mon, 30 Aug 2004

Origin of Mathematical Terms
I’m always curious about when particular mathematical terms started to be used. They haven’t been around forever, after all. Here’s some origins of mathematical terms. Here’s some earliest know uses of some mathematical words.

posted at: 17:58 | path: /work | link

Mathworld
According to Wolfram, Mathworld is “the web’s most complete mathematical resource, assembled over more than a decade by internet encyclopedist Eric W.B Weisstein with assistance from the mathematics and internet communities.” Cool!

posted at: 14:16 | path: /work | link

Sun, 29 Aug 2004

Accepting Credit Cards on Your Website
A useful link with some basic information about accepting credit cards on your website.

posted at: 16:17 | path: /work | link

Wed, 25 Aug 2004

The Electronic Music Guide
There sure are a lot of different kinds

posted at: 22:09 | path: /living | link

Handling the need for
approval.

posted at: 14:09 | path: /living | link

Distance Learning Graduate Degrees
Here.

posted at: 09:49 | path: /living | link

Tue, 24 Aug 2004

A guide to audio formats
Some useful information on audio file formats.

posted at: 18:37 | path: /living | link

Mon, 23 Aug 2004

Another Online PDC
This is the one recommended by the Permaculture Institute.

posted at: 15:23 | path: /living | link

Permaculture Correspondence Course
I would really rather go someplace interesting, but if I had to it looks like I could take the design course by correspondence.

posted at: 14:21 | path: /living | link

Permaculture design certificate
I think getting a permaculture design certificate would make a lot of sense. Here’s a course in Queensland, Australia. I suspect finding a course closer to home would make more sense- but I did like Queensland.

posted at: 13:31 | path: /living | link

Certificate in Ecological Education
This looks interesting. Can be completed in as little as 8 months.

posted at: 13:26 | path: /living | link

EnviroLink
Wow- thisis a massive site, with tons of resources. Internet information about environmental stuff just keeps getting better and better!

posted at: 13:21 | path: /living | link

Environmental Education
Here’s a site that you can search for different environmental education programs.

posted at: 13:16 | path: /living | link

Environmentalism Credentials
I feel like I need some official creds to back up my existing environmental knowledge. Here’s a list of some certificate programs.

posted at: 12:58 | path: /living | link

Energy Advisor Requirements
Here’s some more info about the requirements, from one of the companies contracted out to certify people.

posted at: 12:15 | path: /living | link

Retro Ontario
Retro Ontario seems to be the offical provincial organization for the energuide for houses program. Again, they are quite vague about what is required to get a certificate:

“If you are a renovator or contractor, or if you have specialized knowledge about building science or energy-efficient building practices, you may wish to investigate the possibility of becoming an energy advisor.

If you have the right technical background, good oral and written communications skills, and are willing to undertake additional training, contact us to be considered for an energy advisor position. Find out whether candidates are being screened for training, and whether you have the right background or qualifications.

There are a limited number of opportunities available. Only licensed service organizations hire and train energy advisors. If we are not screening candidates when you call, you can ask to be contacted when new opportunities arise.”

But what is this “right technical background” of which they speak? They seem reluctant to say…

posted at: 12:01 | path: /living | link

Ottawa EnviroCentre
It’s possible to become a certified EnerGuide House evaluator, but the national website was quite vague about the requirements for this certification. Following some links led me to the Ottawa Envirocentre.

posted at: 11:53 | path: /living | link

Office of Energy Efficiency
When I think of behaving ‘environmentally’ I tend to to think lifestyle, but there is a technical side to it, too. The Office of Energy Efficiency has some info about this.

posted at: 11:44 | path: /living | link

Sun, 22 Aug 2004

This sounds familiar
I believe this is how Dan, Andrew and Colin conduct their arguments…

posted at: 23:49 | path: /living | link

Fri, 20 Aug 2004

How to build a Qunizee
Enough of that school stuff. What’s really interesting is how to build a quinzee. Don’t you think?

posted at: 12:40 | path: /living | link

Back to biology
with Pierre Freon

posted at: 11:01 | path: /school | link

Okay- Scratch that
I found it. But it looks a little…er…dense.

” Abstract
A penetrating analysis of the wave dynamic modes of a conceptual population system described by the ‘reaction taxis ‘diffusion’ and reaction autotaxis ‘cross-diffusion’ polynomial models is carried out for the case of increasing degrees of the reaction and taxis (autotaxis) functions. It is shown that a ‘suitable’ nonlinear taxis can affect the wave front sets and generate nonmonotone waves, such as trains and pulses which represent the exact solutions of the model system. Parametric critical points whose neighborhood displays the full spectrum of possible model wave regimes are identified and a wave mode systematization in the form of bifurcation diagrams is given. This enables standard criteria of approach to ‘dangerous boundaries’ to be developed. As possible applications, ‘pulsing density patches’ in forest insect populations as well as plankton communities and some other examples are discussed.”

You gotta love these physics guys…

posted at: 10:50 | path: /school | link

Interesting Article- but need to get it
Bifurcations of travelling waves in population taxis models- looks like it could be good, but I don’t have access permission. :p

posted at: 10:44 | path: /school | link

Back to the researchers
Virginia Pasour

posted at: 10:35 | path: /school | link

Another term for MAS
Discrete event simulation.

posted at: 10:33 | path: | link

Another Researcher- Computer Sciency, though
Kevin Glass

posted at: 10:30 | path: /school | link

Drool. Must get this book.
Title Animal groups in three dimensions / edited by Julia K. Parrish, William Hamner. Publisher Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1997. LOCATION CALL # STATUS B Floor 1 B QL775.A535B B IN LIBRARY

posted at: 10:07 | path: /school | link

The Trafalgar effect
In the google summary for the paper: “Pretty patterns but a simple strategy: predator-prey interatctions between juvenile herring and atlantic puffins observed with multibeam sonar”, it says something about the ‘Trafalgar effect’. The Trafalgar effect seems to be related to animals being alerted to the presence of a predator not by seeing the predator, but by seeing the animals around it react to the predator. This is something I put in my ungulate model, so it would be good to know more about it.

posted at: 10:00 | path: /school | link

Another Researcher
James J. Anderson

posted at: 09:46 | path: /school | link

For the sake of variety
Let’s throw a physics researcher in! Dick James. He’s doing some… fishy stuff… heheh.

posted at: 09:41 | path: /school | link

Another…. researcher
Will Wilson

posted at: 09:38 | path: /school | link

Animal Behaviour: Orientation and Navigation
I came upon the word ‘taxis’ in an animal aggregation paper. Here’s a useful discussion of taxis and kinesis and the difference between the two.

posted at: 09:30 | path: /school | link

A little farther afield
Shay Gueron

posted at: 09:17 | path: /school | link

Another Local
Frithjof Lutscher

posted at: 09:13 | path: /school | link

Researcher a bit closer to home
Shane Richards

posted at: 09:10 | path: /school | link

Photogrammetry?
Jon Osborndoes research using photogrammetry. In case you are wondering, like I was, what exactly that is: “Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing is the science, technology and art of obtaining reliable geometric and thematic information on the Earth and its physical environment, and on other physical objects and processes by acquisition, measurement, analysis and interpretation of images from non-touching sensor systems.” (from a href=”http://www.engr.uaa.alaska.edu/gsa/gsa_photo.htm”>here).

posted at: 09:07 | path: /school | link

Another fishbird animal aggregate researcher
Laurent Dagorn

posted at: 09:00 | path: /school | link

Prolific Animal Aggregate researcher
Julia Parrish. She’s with a lab I linked to earlier- the birdfish lab.

posted at: 08:58 | path: /school | link

Animal Aggregate Researcher and C programmer
Will Wilson. According to his website he wrote a book- Simulating Ecological and Evolutionary Systems in C.

posted at: 08:54 | path: /school | link

Animal Aggregate PhD Students
Jason Grear

posted at: 08:52 | path: /school | link

And yet more animal aggregate researchers
It’s a new day and time for… you guessed it… more animal aggregation researchers. Here’s Stephen Ratchford. He wrote Temporal shift in the presence of a chemical cue contributes to a …. I don’t know what the whole title of the paper is because Google cut it off. And warning- that link is to a PDF document. I always wish the browser would warn you when that’s the case and say- “Do you really want to download this PDF document?” . Speaking personally, my desktop really doesn’t need another miscellaneous pdf document.

posted at: 08:44 | path: /school | link

Thu, 19 Aug 2004

Fish School References
A whole bunch.

posted at: 23:56 | path: /school | link

Egads, it’s
Yet another researcher- Mark Belisle.

posted at: 23:48 | path: | link

Mathematical Ecology
Another new term, which I found here.

posted at: 23:34 | path: /school | link

CiteSeer Paper
The animal aggregation term search is proving quite fruitful. This paper popped up on citeseer: C. M. Breder. Equations descriptive of fish schools and other animal aggergations. Ecology, 35:361— 370, 1954.

posted at: 23:23 | path: /school | link

Ecology Guy
This guy- Garry Peterson- might fit in somehow. At least, he has an old paper titled: Animal Aggregation: Experimental simulation using vision-based behavioral rules.

posted at: 23:21 | path: /school | link

A mathematician researching animal aggregates
I’ve found a new term- animal aggregates. A search on it led me to Leah Edelstein-Keshet. She wrote the book, Mathematical models in biology, which I recently took out from the library.

posted at: 23:15 | path: /school | link

Birdfish Lab Projects
Birdfish project

posted at: 22:59 | path: /school | link

Fish school researcher
Hiro.S.Niwa

posted at: 20:22 | path: /school | link

Another SOS researcher
Carl Anderson>

posted at: 20:16 | path: /school | link

Another (non-biologist?) SOS researcher
David G. Green

posted at: 17:37 | path: /school | link

Another biologist researching self-organizing systems
Mark Ritchie

posted at: 17:35 | path: /school | link

Lotsa Universities
Have you ever wondered what universities were in Canada? If so, Here you go!

posted at: 13:02 | path: /living | link

Mon, 16 Aug 2004

Ecological Metaphors for MAS
Title The Ecology of computation / edited by B.A. Huberman. Publisher Amsterdam ; New York : North-Holland ; New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Sole distributors for the U.S.A. and Canada, Elsevier Science Pub. Co., 1988. LOCATION CALL # STATUS B Floor 1 B QA76.E32B B IN LIBRARY

posted at: 18:07 | path: /school | link

Distributed AI book at Carleton
Title Readings in distributed artificial intelligence / edited by Alan H. Bond and Les Gasser. Publisher San Mateo, Calif. : M. Kaufmann, c1988. LOCATION CALL # STATUS B Floor 1 B Q337.R42B B IN LIBRARY

posted at: 18:03 | path: /school | link

Modeling Nature
A book that I want that is in the Carleton Library.
Author Kingsland, Sharon E. Title Modeling nature : episodes in the history of population ecology / Sharon E. Kingsland. Publisher Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c1985. LOCATION CALL # STATUS B Floor 1 B QH352.K56B

posted at: 12:58 | path: /school | link

History of Cellular Automata
A comprehensive history.

posted at: 12:23 | path: /school | link

Biology and Cellular Automata
I believe there are two ways that MAS made its way back to biology- cellular automata models and population dynamics models. Here’s a page with references for some biological cellular automata models. They go back to 1988.

posted at: 12:19 | path: /school | link

Another biological modeller
I still have yet to pin down how MAS made the leap into biology. I can list numerious computer scientists and mathematicians who have been inspired biology to develop computing methods- but I also need to know how it went in the other direction. In any case, while looking, I came upon another biological modeller.

posted at: 12:03 | path: /school | link

Back to History of MAS
I always go back to the history of MAS. I have to re-research it about every six months it seems. Oh yeah- and everytime that I write a paper about this stuff. For some reason it won’t stick- which suggests to me that I just don’t have the right framework to stick it on. Each time I think I get a bit closer, though.

So, once again, Here’s some history of soc-sci-sim. I like this page quite a lot, since it has references, and a nice graph of the historical development of socsim, and also talks about how the introduction of MAS shook things up. So- once more into the breach…

posted at: 11:40 | path: /school | link

Sun, 15 Aug 2004

The Scene
Dancing, anyone?

posted at: 16:05 | path: /living | link

Sat, 14 Aug 2004

Trans Canada Trail, an update
Every so often I do a search to see if I can find some solid information on which parts of the Trans Canada trail actually exist. Here’s some decent information on that, for a change!

posted at: 19:54 | path: /living | link

A whack of cross canada by bike links
Here’s a whole bunch.

posted at: 19:44 | path: /living | link

Biking across Canada- Some helpful tips
This guy has some helpful tips.

posted at: 19:40 | path: /living | link

And another one…
Another pretty speedy guy although he stopped in Montreal. Looks like some useful route information.

posted at: 19:29 | path: /living | link

A serious bike ride across Canada
This guys sounds a tad too serious about the whole thing, but he sure was speedy.

posted at: 19:26 | path: /living | link

Walking Across Canada
I continue to obsess about the idea of biking across Canada. I’m trying to figure out how long it would take. These guys walked across.

posted at: 19:21 | path: /living | link

Mon, 09 Aug 2004

American Community Gardening Association Conference
This year the ACGA conference is being held in Toronto. I really want to go!

posted at: 15:30 | path: /living | link

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