Earth day is just around the corner, and it is important that we make sustainable choices in the areas that we have influence in. I’m a big advocate of sustainable #engineering, and it is an area that I have some influence in, to the point where almost all of the major projects I work on …
Category Archives: History
Be Thankful
Over Christmas my family and I traveled back to Australia for the first time in five years. There had been several reasons for our not returning sooner, high on our list was the cost, and a close second was the actual ability to take a month off to make the trip worthwhile. In a new job, with …
First Impressions – The Ripple Effect
Sometimes I read for pleasure, but often my reading takes me on a journey ranging from pain, frustration, through to a cathartic release of anger at how stupid we are sometimes. While reading can be an escape from the mundane moments of life, some books remind me to look closer at the people around me, …
Nuclear Risk
One disaster after another. It seems that there are few countries that have come through the past couple of years without wearing some damage from disasters economic or natural. Once again, the Ring of Fire has awoken and claimed thousands of lives. Japan has been considered one of the best prepared countries for a natural …
The Future of Rural Life on the Columbia River
Image via Wikipedia While driving down in Eastern Washington State this weekend, I was stuck by the remoteness of many of the small towns and villages in this region, (both in BC and Washington). In some of these places you wonder how it is that people are able to scrape a living from the land …
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80 Year Old Watermain
There is a story to these pictures, if you are wondering what the growth is called, it is referred to as “pipe tuberculation” or “insoluble corrosion residue buildup” and the main issue is that it increases pipe friction losses thus reducing fire flows, but can also ultimately lead to pipe failure. The infrastructure in many …
Historical Mining in Rossland on Google Earth
Technology changes everything, in this case, it brings an old map to life. My job as a City Engineer takes me into the past quite often, and the ability to use historical mapping as a tool to determine the cause of issues today can be quite important. Since Google Earth and Google Maps have been …
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Now Let’s All Just Pretend That Everything Is Good…
The suspension of disbelief required to have continued faith in the status quo, is becoming more difficult to justify with every passing day. News headlines proclaiming strength in financial markets conveniently smooth over the possible wrinkles in the theories, inherent instabilities in growth projections, the shuffling of funny money assets to create an appearance of profit.