Andrew Ferguson dot NET

A while back I posted some picture on Flickr of the Boulder Canyon Hydroelectric Generating Plant. At one point, I was going to write up a little post here explaining what they were and why I had picture of such a cool (albeit old) facility.

Instead, I decided to write the paper for my class and post that in lieu of writing an actual post.
The downside, though, is that posting my paper creates about five pages of technoblable that most readers will turn away from in utter disgust. However, posting my paper does have the effect of pushing forward my “long standing desire post my school work online” and I think the latter serves the purposes of this blog better then trying to remedy the former.

I generally detest posting things on here in the PDF format, however the IEEE format for publication is rather odd and doesn’t it lend itself to online publication very easily. However, I will include the abstract and index terms for the benefit of those who are at least a little curious but do not necessarily want to read the entire paper:

Operation of Hydroelectric Facilities and the Boulder Canyon Hydroelectric Generating Plant (April 2008) [PDF]
Andrew J. Ferguson, Member, IEEE

Abstract - Boulder Canyon Hydroelectric Generating Plant has been in continuous operation since 1910. While the technology behind the operation has seen some upgrades, the infrastructure is mostly the same as it was almost a century ago.

Index Terms - Breaker, Hydroelectric generators, Synchronization, Transformer, Water.

Update: Received 95/100 on this paper.

I was having a conversation with my flatmate Ben about tattoos. We were talking to Amie, a girl in our climbing class about her tattoos. Ben expressed interest in getting a the outline of the Periodic Table. That made sense because Ben is a Chemical Engineer/Chemistry double major.

This got the gears turning in my head. Why EE related tattoo would be neat and interesting?

The idea of getting a tattoo has been in the back of my head for a number of years now. Originally, it started out as (naturally) some sort Star Trek related design: the Vulcan IDIC or Star Trek Command Insignia.

The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) has a pretty spiffy logo:

I think the arrows are particularly spiffy since they represent the right-hand rule which is so often used in electrical engineering.

With that all this in mind, I mocked up the following tattoos:

The original IDIC

The original Star Trek Command Insignia

Right-hand Rule arrows (IEEE)

Combined Star Trek/IEEE

In any event, it’s not something I would get before graduation. I’m also not set on the getting it on my wrist. It was just a convenient place to mock it up.