Some of you (ok, let’s be honest, only a few of you) may have noticed a lack of new programming here at vdov.net recently. This is mostly because I and the other writers here have been a) on vacation/traveling or b) working on other projects. Recently myself and Alex Boone (site link in sidebar) finished up a blog design and implementation for Commentary Magazine. You can have a look at the site here. I can’t say it’s 100% done yet but it’s very close if not complete. All this wordpress work for Commentary made me anxious to spruce up my own site. Those of you who know me know that my definition of “spruce up” usually constitutes simplification and streamlining. So that’s what I tried to do. It’s mostly another minimalistic theme I pulled from the net with a few random (but important) tweaks. Enjoy.

Most of you know that I’m currently doing a significant amount of computational fluid dynamics work. If you’re at all interested in you can of course read my personal page which roughly describes my work here. One of the types of simulations I do is a finite element system perturbation, where an internal field or fields are set, and then the system is turned “on”. This can be as simple as a stream of nitrogen or a pressure sink being introduced, or very complex sets of different perturbations applied concurrently. The problem is, how do I know when to kill the simulation when the I’ve reached a steady state and the solution has converged? Often these simulations take weeks or (yes, I’m not kidding) months. (more…)