July linkfest

It's another linkfest! All the good stuff from our newsfeed over the last few weeks.

We mentioned the $99 supercomputer in April. The Adapteva Parellella is a bit like a Raspberry Pi, but with the added benefit of a 16- or 64-core coprocessor. The machines are now shipping, and a version is available for pre-order.

In April we also mentioned the University of Queensland's long-running pitch drop experiment. But on 18 July a drop fell from another similar experiment, but which has even slower drops...

A gem from history:

In the British Islands alone, twice as much oil as the navy used last year could be produced from shale. — Winston Churchill, July 1913.

This surprising quote was doing the rounds last week (I saw it on oilit.com), but of course Churchill was not fortelling hydraulic fracturing and the shale gas boom; he was talking about shale oil. But it's still Quite Interesting.

Chris Liner's blog is more than quite interesting — and the last two posts have been especially excellent. The first is a great tutorial video describing a semi-automatic rock volume estimation workflow. You can get grain size and shape data from the same tool (tip: FIJI is the same but slightly awesomer). And the most recent post is about a field school in the Pyrenees, a place I love, and contains some awesome annotated field photos from an iPhone app called Theodolite.

Regular readers will already know about the geophysics hackathon we're organizing in Houston in September, timed perfectly as a pre-SEG brain workout. You don't need to be a coder to get involved — if you're excited by the idea of creating new apps for nerds like you, then you're in! Sign up at hackathon.io.

If you crave freshness, then check my Twitter feed or my pinboard. And if you have stuff to share, use the comments or get in touch — or jump on Twitter yourself!

Invitation to a geophysics hackathon

Do you like to build things? Join us for two days of scientific software creation. We'll be in Houston on 21 & 22 September, right before the SEG Annual Meeting, building web and mobile apps to attack one of the unsolved problem themes we exposed in Calgary in May — error and uncertainty. 

Let's build something together

What displays, or calculators, or simulators, could you dream up to help understand, or compute, or visualize, or communicate, or reduce error and uncertainty in your work? How about stochastic synthetics? Well logs with error bars? Fuzzy inversion?

You don't have to be a programmer — teams need ideas, they need science, they need design, and they need presentation skills. Please bring your creativity and your courage. Bring whatever you have, but mainly your brain. 

I'm in, what now? 

If want to take part, sign up at hackathon.io. If you have an idea already, start a project there. We are still filling in some blanks but can say that the event will be in downtown Houston, starting at 9 am on Saturday 21 Sept and running till 6 pm on Sunday 22 Sept. It will be free for students; there will probably be a small fee for professionals. We can only take 8 teams, so get in early and be sure not to miss out! 

If you'd like to help make this event happen, we'd love to have you as a sponsor for the event. The two main opportunities for sponsorship are the catering, and the prizes, but we're open to ideas. Drop us a line.

Last thing: Please share this post with someone you know who loves to make things. Or help spread us on social media with the hashtag #geophysicshack. Cheers!

Update on 2013-07-26 15:40 by Matt Hall

We have confirmed the location of this event. It will be at START Houston, 1121 Delano Street, Houston. This is quite close to the convention centre downtown. We will be arranging a shuttle or similar from that area to the venue... we'll find a way for people to sign up for that. 

Update on 2014-08-22 08:36 by Matt Hall

I forgot to follow this up with a link to the review — find out what happened.

Great geophysicists #8: d'Alembert

Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert was a French mathematician, born on 16 or 17 November 1717 in Paris, and died on 29 October 1783, also in Paris. His father was an artillery officer, but his mother was much more interesting. Having been a nun, she sought papal dispensation in 1714 for a new career as a fun-loving socialite, benefiting from the new government banknote printing scheme of John Law. She left her illegitimate child on the steps of Église St Jean Le Rond de Paris, whence he was taken to an orphanage. When his father returned from duty, he arranged for the boy's care.

Perhaps d'Alembert's greatest contribution to the world was helping Denis Diderot 'change the way people think' by editing the great Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers of 1751. There were many contributors, but d'Alembert was listed as co-editor on the title page (left). This book was an essential ingredient in spreading the Enlightenment across Europe, and d'Alembert was closely involved in the project for at least a decade. 

But that's not why he's in our list of great geophysicists. As I mentioned when I wrote about Euler, d'Alembert substantially progressed the understanding of waves, making his biggest breakthrough in 1747 in his work on vibrating strings. His paper was the first time the wave equation or its solution had appeared in print:

Though Euler and d'Alembert corresponded on waves and other matters, and strongly influenced each other, they eventually fell out. For example, Euler wrote to Lagrange in 1759:

d'Alembert has tried to undermine [my solution to the vibrating strings problem] by various cavils, and that for the sole reason that he did not get it himself... He thinks he can deceive the semi-learned by his eloquence. I doubt whether he is serious, unless perhaps he is thoroughly blinded by self-love. [See Morris Kline, 1972]

D'Alembert did little mathematics after 1760, as he became more involved in other academic matters. Later, ill health gradually took over. He lamented to Lagrange (evidently an Enlightenment agony aunt) in 1777, six years before his death:

What annoys me the most is the fact that geometry, which is the only occupation that truly interests me, is the one thing that I cannot do. [See Thomas Hankins, 1970]

I imagine he died feeling a little hollow about his work on waves, unaware of the future impact it would have—not just in applied geophysics, but in communication, medicine, engineering, and so on. For solving the wave equation, d'Alembert, we salute you.

References

Read more on Wikipedia and The MacTutor History of Mathematics.

D'Alembert, J-B (1747). Recherches sur la courbe que forme une corde tenduë mise en vibration. (Researches on the curve that a tense cord forms [when] set into vibration.) Histoire de l'académie royale des sciences et belles lettres de Berlin, vol. 3, pages 214–219. Read on Google Books, with its sister paper, 'Further researches...'.

Portrait is a pastel by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, 1704–88.

10 days on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

I have just returned from a 10-day holiday in Iceland, an anomalous above-sea-level bump in the North Atlantic's mid-ocean ridge. It sits over a mantle hotspot at the junction of the ridge and the WNW–ESE volcanic province stretching from the Greenland to the Faroes.

Meteorologically, culinarily, fincancially, Iceland does not score especially highly. But geologically—the only way that really matters—it's the most amazing place I've ever been. And we only visited a few spots (right). Here are some highlights...

Reykjanes. My favourite geological locality was the first place we went, and the most desolate. Barely half-an-hour's drive from the airport, you can go and see the Mid-Atlantic Ridge rise out of the North Atlantic, and start its romp across the country. Reykjanes looks much like you'd expect newborn crust to look: a brutal but pristine landscape of lava, interrupted by clusters of small volcanic cones, elongate fissures, and small grabens. 

Þingvellir. The archetypal rift valley is Þingvellir (Thingvellir), which almost defies description. On top of the textbook geology is a layer of almost magical history — mythical in character, but completely real. For example, you can stand next to the drekkingarhylur (drowning pool), where deviants were executed by drowning, and diligently documented, from about 930 CE onwards. Explorationists know that early rifting is often associated with lacustrine deposits, rapid subsidence, and source rocks. And Iceland's largest lake sits happily in a new (relatively) rift valley, subsiding dutifully since records began. 

Ice. The other thing Iceland has plenty of, apart from lava, is ice. I've seen plenty of glaciers before, and climbed around on a few, but I've never seen them calving icebergs. And I've never seen the products of subglacial eruptions: massive plains of sand dumped by jökulhlaups, and distinctively elongate or flat-topped volcanos.

We vowed to return when our youngest, who is only 3 now, is old enough to remember some of it. We mostly stayed in guesthouses, but we decided a camper van is the way to go — there's so much to see. I also realized I need a lot more photographic equipment! And skill.

Two ways for Q&A

If you have ever tried to figure something out on your own, you will know that it is a lot harder than doing something that you already know. It is hard because it is new to you. But just because it is new to you, doesn't mean that it is new to everyone else. And now, in a time when it is easier than ever to connect with everyone online, a new kind of scarcity is emerging. Helpfulness.

How not to get an answer to your question

For better or for worse, I follow more than a dozen discussion groups on LinkedIn. Why? I believe that candid discussions are important and enriching, so I sign up eagerly for the action. Signing up to a discussion group is like showing up at a cocktail party. Maybe you will get noticed alongside other people and brands worth noticing. There is hoopla, and echoing, but I don't think there is any real value being created for the members. If anything, it's a constant distraction you put up with to hedge against the fomo. 

Click to enlargeYet, hoards of users flock to these groups with questions that are clearly more appropriate for technical hot-lines, or at least an honest attempt at reading the manual. Users helping users is a great way to foster brand loyalty, but not if the technical help desk failed them first. On LinkedIn, even on the rare case a question is sufficiently articulated, users can't upload a screen shot or share a snippet of code. Often times I think people are just fishing (not phishing mind you) and haven't put in enough ground work to deserve the attention of helpers.

What is in it for me?

Stack Overflow is a 'language-independent' question and answer site for programmers. If it is not the first place I land on with a google search, it is consistently the place from which I bounce back to the terminal with my answer. Also, nearly everything that I know about open-source GIS has come from other people taking part in Q&A on GIS Stack Exchange. The reason Stack Exchange works is because there is value and incentive for each of the three types of people that show up. Something for the asker, something for answerer, something for the searcher.

It is easy to see what is in it for the asker. They have got a problem, and they are looking for help. Similarly, it's easy to see what is in it for the searcher. They might find something they are looking for, without even having to ask. But what is in it for the answerer? There is no payment, there is no credit, at least not of the monetary kind. The answerer gets practice being helpful. They willingly put themselves into other people's business to put themselves to the test. How awesome is that? The site, in turn helps the helpers by ensuring the questions contain just enough context to garner meaningful answers.

Imagine if applied geoscientists could incorporate a little more of that.

Geoscience, reservoir engineering, and code

We’re in the middle of a second creative revolution driven by technology. “Code” is being added to the core creative team of art and copy, and the work being made isn't like the ads we're used to. Code is enabling the re-imagination of everything. Aman Govil, Art, Copy & Code

Last year at Strata I heard how The Guardian newspaper has put a team of coders — developers and visualization geeks — at the centre of their newsroom. This has transformed their ability to put beautiful and interactive graphics at the heart of the news, which in turn transforms their readers' ability to absorb and explore the stories.

At the risk of sounding nostalgic, I remember when all subsurface teams had a dedicated and über-powerful tech, sometimes two. They could load data, make maps, hack awk scripts, and help document projects. Then they started disappearing, and my impression is that today most scientists have to do the fiddly stuff themselves. Woefully inefficiently. 

The parable of the coder

Give someone 20 sudoku to solve. They'll sit down and take a day to solve them. At the end, they'll hate their job, and possibly you, but at least you'll have your solutions.

Now, give a coder 20 sudoku to solve. They'll sit down and take a week to solve them — much slower. The difference is that they'll have solved every possible sudoku. What's more, they'll be happy. And you can give them 10,000 more on Monday.

Hire a coder

The fastest way out of the creeping inefficiency is to hire as many coders as you can. I fervently believe that every team should have a coder. Not to build software, not exactly. But to help build quick, thin solutions to everyday problems — in a smart way. Developers are special people. They are good at solving problems in flexible, reusable, scalable ways. Not with spreadsheets and shared drives, but with databases and APIs. If nothing else, having more coders around the place might catalyse the shabby pace of innovation and entrepreneurship in subsurface geoscience and engineering.

Do your team a favour — make the next person you hire a developer.

Image: Licensed CC-BY by Héctor Rodríguez, Wikimedia Commons.