This year's concrete toboggan race hosted by Western was the first since 2010 to held on the eastern half of Canada (due to the narrowly cancelled 2012 race) where it was hosted by McMaster in Hamilton. The team finally did not have to pay for flights to cross the entire country or ship the toboggan in a giant crate, which saved a lot of time, paperwork, and money.
The team took a totally new direction on the toboggan design this year after the team carpenter convinced the team that the frame should be built out of wood. They also went with a 2 front ski and 1 rear ski design which at first when it was constructed looked a bit unstable, but really solidified when the rest of the frame was installed. The concrete mix for the skis included needle reinforcement in a basic concrete mix with higher than average fly ash (for competition points). Two GFRP bars were cast into the skis along with the mounting plates to attach the skis to the frame. This was the 3rd year in a row where the Waterloo team used the Architecture CNC machine to create the formwork, which allows for some creativity in the shape of the skis and the running surface. A UW alumni called their shape "so 90's" whereas the design captain joked that it fit their theme of sailors and boats. The steering system was a scissor-type connection to the two front skis with a nice big handlebars in the front. First hand experience the one night in the E5 parking lot, I can say it steered very well and smoothly. The brake was a giant plate the width of the toboggan that was hand-activated by two vertical handles. This design was paired down by the GNCTR safety committee from having a horizontal grab bar at chest height to just the vertical handles at about 18" tall.
My hope was to make it out for the tech exhibit on the Friday, stay the night with the team in London and then see the race on Saturday morning. These plans had to get altered to just the race day because of work on Friday, so I ended up going to the Friday night dance in Toronto . I rented a car for the weekend since I was planning on also attending the Toronto swing dancing exchange on Saturday night and the Imperial social on Sunday night. There was a lot of driving planned for that weekend, and of course there was a snow storm forecasted. After a few hiccups at the rental place in the morning, I was on my way out of Waterloo around 9:45am and got to Boler Mountain at 11am. As I parked and ran to the hill with the dubstep music playing (obviously GNCTR and not the family-friendly area). Just as I got there, I see the large digital display with "Run 1 now: Waterloo" which made me exciting that I didn't miss it. Turns out this was their second run and because of hill conditions at the top, the brake was getting caught on the bump of the hill. Sadly, they were taken off the track, disqualified, and the next team went to race. Their first run at 9am that I missed came very close to being the top speed at 38 km/h. This is much slower than the 2012 race in Calgary, but there were also no major injuries this year.
After lunch was the the king of the hill race, where teams battle in an elimination style for the faster run. During the break after Waterloo's second run, they chipped some notches into the frame near the rear ski in order for the brake to swing forward and higher by even a 1/2" in order to not get caught in the snow. This did really well for them for two runs..until one of the eye bolts got pulled straight, a cable came undone and one of the welds holding the brake plate to the handles sheared. Originally being disqualified, the team's carpenter grabbed his circular saw, cut off the other weld to remove the plate, and the team convinced the safety committee that the two vertical handles would suffice as individual emergency hand brakes. In the end, they came out third, and had more runs on their toboggan than any UW team in the past 3 years.
Considering that the skis were cast less than 28 days before the race and there was no frame 2 weeks prior to the competition, the majority of the GNCTR organizers and judges being doubtful of the wood construction, they did very well and should be proud.
Congratulations UW GNCTR 2014! :D
PCL, one of their sponsors, is also interested in featuring their team and toboggan, which is a great opportunity for them. Super glad I could make it in the end :) Oh yes, the drive back from London was quite an adventure since the rental car had no snow tyres and I was not able to make it out of my driveway that night. Yay adventure!
I've noticed that since I started grad school, the next question is often 'So...what do you do?' Well, in short, I do this:
A well-thought out setup. I'm serious, it worked out really well :D
Reusing covies, thanks GNCTR!
Promotional picture worthy, couldn't have done it without Richard
It can hold a car!
The subject for our running tests
Those are the 'yay for good weather and successful experiment' smiles
So, a bit of backstory, I had just returned from New Orleans 9:30 pm on October 1st. I was to meet Sriram at 8:00 am on October 2nd to get the last of things to pack in the CPATT Sprinter van before we departed for Montreal at 9:00am. Needless to say, all of my planning had to happen before I left for NOLA Thursday, so I was super prepared, and yet I still forgot my pajamas (don't worry I packed spare clothes and I didn't embarrass myself).
Sriram and Scott left in the rental car to take care of some errands and they would be meeting us at the ONroute stop past Toronto. They were also in charge of picking up the a 12th cable to run from an accelerometer to the signal conditioner. I couldn't find the last one in the lab so we unfortunately had to order one. Upon calling the supplier than morning, I had a bit of a panic when the receptionist said 'Oh ya, we shipped it'. Luckily they also had one at their office which we had to get before 5 pm.
Richard, Pampa, and I tossed the rest of the equipment that Richard had not yet packed on Monday into the tall van (as wide as a pick up truck but tall enough to stand in). We knew what we were generally getting ourselves into thanks to some pictures and dimensions courtesy of Alex's people at MAADI doing some surveying for us in the summer. We knew we needed long ladders to reach the midspan of the bridge from the underneath complete with fall arrest equipment for Richard (the only one trained). We had our non-destructive accelerometer mounting brackets all machined and ready to go. Toss in our personal luggage, about 4 laptops, Sriram's bicycle and all the cabling we'd need and away we went. Driving to Montreal was so uninterrupted, we forgot to point out the CN Tower to Pampa (this also happened on the way back!). Even just driving on the 401, Pampa was impressed by the colours of the leaves, which reminded me that she's only been from Pearson to Waterloo since she moved here on September 1. Well, she was going to drive through/visit Canada's two largest cities, a great outing for her!
Arriving to Brossard, we park the van up on the path and we have our first look around. The first impression while walking along the bridge was that 'wow, this is bouncy, yay we'll have data!'. We all got excited because we have known about the bridge for almost a year but we finally got to see it in person. Due to the embankments, 3 of the 6 locations (1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 bridge lengths on the north and south side) were easily accessible from the ground without a ladder. The centre north location required the long ladder off of the embankment and the centre south location was over the water. For this one, Richard put the base of the ladder in the creek and used the step ladder horizontally from the channel side to walk out to the ladder. I trust he knew what he was doing because he worked extensively as a rigger on telecommunication towers.We decide that since they're easily accessible, they could easily be taken/vandalized during the night, so we waited until the morning. Sriram and Scott met up with us with the crucial cable. Apparently there was a giant traffic jam and Sriram walked the last 1/2km to the supplier to get it before they closed (and it was still after 5pm but we got lucky). We had a nice relaxing dinner, talking about the future of the structures lab, planning and such (not that I could really contribute but it was informative none the less). Oh yes, and Richard (and Scott somewhat) gave me grief for not letting them know that the hotel had a pool and a sauna. :P
Wednesday morning we wake up nice and early, get breakfast at the hotel, and head out to site. Unloading stuff bit by bit, we all have our own tasks to do, and it worked out really great. Richard got the mounts on the bridge, Sriram installed the accelerometers on the mounts, I laid out the cabling with Pampa's help, while Scott fielded questions from Jaques from the Aluminum Association and Alex from MAADI. Alex was a really interesting person to talk to because he's the owner of the company that made the aluminum pedestrian bridge that we were working on, and that would also be providing UW with our own 70' aluminum pedestrian bridge. He's clearly excited about his work and puts all his effort into his company. It only took a couple of hours to set up, checking the working condition of the accelerometers, signal conditioners, low-pass Butterworth filters, and data acquisition software. I didn't want something to bugger up and not know where it was coming from.
Tests we did were; heel drop for free vibration, single person walking, two people walking synchronously or asynchronously, a runner, a cyclist, jumping off the railing, a walking crowd, a running crowd, ambient vibration, and (our favourite by Alex's request) driving a car. What I found funny was that I was left on the bridge for an extended amount of time to wait for random pedestrians and run the data acquisition for them. Meanwhile, everyone else went for lunch, though they also picked something up for me, I felt funny being exiled to the middle of the bridge. Then when Sriram saw someone coming he'd yell and point saying 'Ann! Random person!'. Now, being Montreal, not everyone would speak English, so I thought that it was rather funny for pedestrians.
By mid-afternoon we were done collecting data, cleanup was fast and we were all done. I'd say it was a super successful day, especially since even the evening before, it was calling for rain. It was dry and fair all day. It looked a little cloudy towards the end but we got lucky. We headed back to the hotel where we regrouped and went downtown to join Alex at a pub. We first dropped in on the MAADI office, which was in a tech incubator-type centre like the Accelerator Centre in the Research and Technology Park at UW. Since Alex was crazy busy, we decided to meet him downtown later, and went for a walk. This is when Pampa got really excited about being in Montreal (which made me proud of my hometown). Walking along Peel and then St. Catherines, we stopped for a few pictures.
Meeting up with Alex, he talked about some of the interesting projects he has been a part of, including floating barges in Florida and pedestrian bridges around Quebec. We were able to stop by his one project, which were bridges leading from an old boat renovated into a floating spa docked at the Montreal harbour. Needless to say, the pictures show that it is a very high-end trendy place now.
Bridge to Bota Bota, a floating spa in Montreal, actually I didn't realize this picture has me (left), Pampa (center), and Sriram (right)
This also meant that we walked through the old part of Montreal, cobblestone, European buildings, and all. It was great, I hadn't personally been there in...ages really. It was great for Pampa and a bunch of the others either hadn't been before or hadn't been in a while. I love Montreal <3 p="p">
The next morning we took at a leisurely pace where Scott took us to see his family house. The Walbridge family had a large plot of land near Bedford, QC, about an hour south of Montreal in the townships. On the land is Quebec's only 12-sided barn, still standing from around the 1880's. It was really neat to see because inside the barn, the centre platform rotated to allow easy entrance/exit of horse and wagon, but also easy loading of hay bales into the stalls. The roof work on the barn was complex and quite remarkable. Richard was very interested in the history and was gushing over how things were built. We went for a bit of a walk in the forested area, passing an old sugar shack where they made maple syrup. Since the trees were changing colours it was really something special. While Scott had to meeting at the family house, the rest of us ventured to the café in Mystic (the hamlet). They had an extensive set of chocolates, preserves and everything made form scratch. This is where Richard found maple syrup pie that was closer to my mom's tarte au sucre than the one we had the first night. I was all excited, yay French Canadian dessert that's pure sugar.
Oh yes, and to Bedford and almost all the way home, I drove the Sprinter van. That's right, on the 20 I drove the van, and confidently at that! :D I was proud, though I did have a bit of guidance from Richard to start since I had never driven anything bigger than my family's Chevy Malibu. Getting home at 9:30pm, I was tired from having travelled over 4000km by plane and 1200km by car, but I had a lot of fun, and the research trip seems successful (from what I can tell so far). Of course, here's hoping that the data looks nice, then it'll all be worthwhile!
So this post is a little delayed, which would correctly indicate that I have been super busy (not just school but yes school's taken a big chunk of time). I'm still working for Walterfedy partime when I don't have classes, lab work or meetings. I enjoy the two types of pace, academic and industrial, I feel it keeps me grounded.
I'm taking the only civil structural grad course being offered this term called Risk and Reliability, as well as an ECE stochastic processes course in relation to signal processing. It's something different but I'm trying to get a feel for where I could take my master's thesis afterwards. So far both courses are good, had the same first 2 weeks if lectures since they have to review statistics. The ECE course will definitely be higher math, should be interesting.
So the big news is that We were finally able to nail down a date to go to Montreal to instrument MAADI's aluminum pedestrian bridge spanning 44m across a ditch in Brossard. I'm super excited because we've been planning this since June but the date would get pushed back. We're hooking up up to 12 accelerometers on mounts that will be clamped on the underside of the bridge, hook them up to a data acquisitions system, and collect data on the laptop. An added challenge is 1) we needed to bring our own power and 2) we're leaving the day I get back drom New Orleans. :P
I'm also excited because some of the coolest people from my graduation year stuck around for MASc too :)
My office has been frequently frequented by my friends/people hungry for baked goods. :P
So yes, things have been going exceptionally well, busy, but very well.
I finally got my degree yesterday morning. Not much to say, the ceremony was nice enough, about 2.5 hours so I was getting pretty hungry by the end (so was everyone else). The speech was given by the chair of the Cambridge Toyota plant with the message of 'if you can think it, you can build it', though I found the speech kinda overly focused on his work on the Lexus. O well! Here are pictures!
Quick post about the Troitsky Bridge Building Competition. Tim, Griff, Omar, and I went to Montreal to compete in this popsicle stick bridge building competition. Having gone last year, I was super excited for this year because we knew what to expect and I had a plan (since September!).
Rules:
Only materials are popsicle sticks, white glue, dental floss and toothpicks
Pieces must be able to fit into a 500mmx400mmx350mm "box"
Clear span of bridge: 1000mmm to 1200mm
Freeboard of bridge: <= 150mm
Overall length: <=1350mm
Deck height: <=450mm
Mass: <6kg no deductions, 6 < m <10 kg minor deductions, >10 kg you're ridiculous
Back in September, Tim and I made some test popsicle stick pieces to see how to best glue the popsicle sticks together. We waited for the pieces to dry and tried machining them in the band saw and putting them in the lathe, which were all successful and allowed for a more elaborate design. We also took a density test so that we could estimate the weight of the bridge before we even built it.
I drew everything up on Inventor for 3D purposes, made drafting plans of the pieces, and using the density, I tailored it until it was just shy of 6 kg so that we wouldn't go over with the dental floss or accidental extra weight. And then nothing happened until mid February...
Since I was in Concrete Toboggan, I had to wait to work on Troitsky, so once February 12th hit, I was in popsicle mode. Actually, because the week after GNCTR was hectic trying to catch up and write more exams, it started on reading week. So of the 6 days of reading week (closed the family day weekend), I think I spent all but 1 or 2 on campus working to some effect. Tuesday morning I got down to work and started glueing the tension members (the horizontal bar of the 'A' frame). These were some of the highly critical pieces so needless to say I was a little nervous because I didn't know how best to start. Turns out, organizing the first layer is important and tricky since there's nothing to secure them. I was lucky that for the dimensions of the tension members, the width was half a popsicle stick, so all I had to do after I cut off the rounded ends was to pass a few sets through the band saw again to get half pieces. It was basically cross laminated for simplicity. I got help from John in the afternoon which sped up the cutting and gluing process. In order to tie the tension members together, I built a second piece (one popsicle stick long, a 40mmx40mm cross section) that went perpendicular to the member so that the floss had something to wrap around. The tension member was built to have a hole that size to insert it, so at the end…it looked like a set of crossbows. Another thing done during the reading week was the design of the logo and the background for our display. Unlike concrete toboggan, we did not require technical data or analysis, so I took a picture of a ship, "Queen Anne's Revenge", sketched in AutoCAD and colour filled in Photoshop. No copyright issues!
The basic idea of the design was to achieve a quick install time for the day of the competition. The compression members connected to each other (at the peak of the 'A') and to the top of the tension members with dowels. The tension members were also doweled together and to the base plate on the pier. The piers themselves were hollow. The deck was supported on a flattened portion of the compression members and thin deck supports on the ends that were secured with notches into the underside of the deck.
So after spending way too much time in the machine shop cutting, glueing and machining, we were off to Montreal on Thursday after the dynamics class. It was great evening in comparison to last year because we pulled an all nighter trying to build the bridge pieces in our hotel room. This time we were able to go out, but that consisted of hanging around at the hotel for a bit, going with a group of people back and forth on St. Catherines because the events were over or the bars were full. À la GNCTR, we ended up back at the hotel, socializing in the hallway. We got kicked out by security, and Tim and I retreated to our hotel room, we lost Omar to visiting his Montreal friends and Griff to somewhere else in the hotel. Tim shoved himself under a bunch of sheets while he laughed at the audio from me watching anime (Natsume) and talking to John on Facebook about stuff from my applied math biology course. Griff came in much later, proclaimed 'I am so hammered', left again, and then came back 1/2 hour later to say 'I am so wasted' and was back to stay. Crazy times :P
Friday morning we got ready for the competition, sans Griff until a little while later for recovery purposes. Building went really well, We had three boxes of dental floss going together as one strand and being wrapped around the tension member "nubs" in a figure-8. The only thing we had to modify was to increase the height of the piers by one popsicle stick because there was a slight sag in the tension members even after being doweled on its ends and wrapped up in floss. Here's what our bridge and display looked like!
Crushing ceremony came in the afternoon, and some of these bridges did fantastically. Now, of the 34 teams, apparently 27 of them did 'A' frames because it's the tried and true design, so the creativity wasn't always there. As for our team, we got to 288 kg when we got a member failure (the dowels were ripping out of the inner face of the compression members where they meet the tension members). Since the crushing ceremony demands destruction, Tim smashed it on the ground since the "crusher" shaft was getting bent and they no longer were crushing until total failure. The machine still broke on the last bridge, the automatic number one team, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Even though the highest load from another team was 2500kg, they were at 2100kg and no sign of giving up when the "crusher" actuator gave up.
That night was the dinner and awards at La Cage aux Sports at the Bell Centre. The event got the entire bottom floor, so many engineering chants, beer, and popcorn everywhere. Thanks to GNCTR, I knew the cheers and could follow along :P. But after a while I had had enough, so like last year I slipped out after the dinner and headed the other way. A bunch of the Carleton alumni spotted me and asked where I was off to. I said '...out' to which Tim replied "she's going swing dancing" with a very matter-of-fact tone. Apparently that caught the attention of one of the Carleton alumni cause he used to be part of swing Dynamite and does west coast now, so he came with me to Cat's Corner. I had a blast, I just needed a bit of a different vibe than the drinking yelling group and just get to dance a bit.
When I got back to the hotel around 1 ish, I was in the hotel room for a bit but it quickly became busy so I headed upstairs to where Tim and the Carleton alumni were. Locked out of my hotel room, I was forced to be up until 3:30, and after having danced, I just wanted to sleep. First I checked the door, and the bolt was over the door, I go back upstairs in a determined tone saying "Tim, pass me our tension member, I'm getting into that room", but he came with me and so did one of the alumni because he was amused. Turns out people left our room in that time and I was able to curl up and go to sleep finally.
Overall I really liked this year's competition, much less stressful than last year, so more fun! I don't think I'd want to participate again (even if I could), but I'd be totally up for mentoring a group of undergrads if they are interested. They don't need to build a terrible bridge like we did last year. I leave you with our 2010 attempt, oh the colourful horror.
First of all I have to say I am very pleased with my team members who were present in Calgary before Iron Ring Ceremony (Kristen, Jeff, and Tim), those who stayed the entire time (Matt, Brendon, Fraser, and Andrew (Clow not Chow, sooo sorry!)), Ioana for coming out on her co-op in Calgary as a pusher, and those who couldn't make it (Misha, Liz, Terry, and Billy)
Wednesday:
Tuesday had rolled into Wednesday without any sleep because I was hanging out with John and packing, so my internal clock at the start of my trip was already off. At 3:00 I meet Andrew and Jeff at Engineering 5 to get picked up by Fraser. Stumbling into a car that was conveniently partly pre-packed, we swing over to pick up Tim and off to the London airport we went. I had not left from the London airport before, it was small but nice enough. As we waited for Kristen, Matt, and Brendon (late because they were making cookies for the tech exhibit day), the Western team started to trickle in just as sleepily as we were. What was great was to see Kristen with a luggage bag dedicated entirely to bags of sugar cookies.
Landing in Calgary, you could see snow-capped mountains on the other side of the city, which was really exciting because it had been a while since I had seen snow and also our competition depended on it. Welcome to Calgary!
The rooms at the hotel were a bit of a bit of mess because they had the two rooms for the Waterloo team under separate names (from ages ago when I thought someone else was going to use their credit card too. So after waiting about 5 hours for the one room (in my name) to be cleaned, I had to find out what happened to that second room and I was getting worried. Eight people in one room wasn't going to work. Turns out 4 people and making the last part of our costumes in one room was more than full as it was. Since we had no room and waited like hobos in the hall after we registered, we had a very narrow window in which to make our swag. Partying in the rooms began while Kristen and I worked the finishing touches on the bandanas and boxers. The coveralls, sweaters, t-shirts and gloves all looked great. We also had a ton of buttons, keychains, and the special patches that Kristen was going to give to the team as a present. In the afternoon we went shopping for our costumes for the two themed nights (Space cowboys and 'What I want to be when I grow up') and food/drink supplies.
At night was the opening ceremonies where the partying continued even harder and we had our first look into the size and breadth of the teams. Queen's was ridiculously spirited, donned in matching firefighter outfits, University of Calgary in Elvis one-piece suits, University of Alberta in Tron morph suits, University of Manitoba in Winnipeg Jets jerseys, and University of Toronto in vintage pilot/flight attendant costumes. The cheers, chants, and opening exhibitions were fantastic. A lot of them became really short and just turned into a dance party to whatever song they had chosen to do a dance to. We had a cute movie that Fraser made before we left, but to technical difficulties, the video and sound cut out!! :( Here it is actually.
That night we were off to Ceili's, a bar just down the street. This was going to be the first of many clubs/bars on the schedule, and I realized how much swing dancing has changed my expectations of dancing and music in a bar in general, but it was a good time with mainly Brendon, Matt, and Fraser.
Thursday:
As was going to be par for the weekend, we woke up around 5:00 - 5:30 to ship out to Nakiska (for the skiiers/boarders), and Banff for the non-skiiers for curling and a scavenger hunt. The main point of the trip to Nakiska was that our breakfast was a very tiny bagel and an apple when the box we got our breakfast in looked way more promising.
The drive to Nakiska and the hill itself were absolutely gorgeous! It was my first time actually being near the rockies and it was very awesome. The vertical elevation of Nakiska is 2,400 ft, which is about 12 times as tall as Chicopee in Kitchener. I started my morning snowboarding with Fraser and Matt who brought their own board and skis respectively. There was a spirit challenge to form a group of three with people from other universities in order to interact (hence competitor interaction day), but that didn't really pan out because it was way easier to go with people you knew and you matched their ability level. After a little bit, I joined Tim, Jeff, and Andrew for boarding for the rest of the day. I was so happy with all of my team because they were willing to do any hills and were not too far off in the amount of time we took to get down a run. What was noted and appreciated was that a majority of the runs were straight with few splits, which means you wouldn't easily lose people in a group if you lost sight of them. I think the two best times were Tim and I going on the double black diamond that was ridiculously steep and we just went for it and the black diamond run in the middle of the hill with great slopes and conditions (especially in the morning). Below are some pictures of what I saw from the hill, the group, and me at the hill.
Tim, Jeff, myself, and Andrew at the top of Nakiska
After a very awesome day of snowboarding, we got shipped back to the hotel where we were fed pizza from a white unmarked van in the parking lot across the street from the hotel because the hotel had policies against the group officially ordering food outside of their catering services. That night was Ranchman's which didn't turn out so great for me. Since the night before, I started getting congested and weak from a head cold. Regardless, I get dressed up in my outfit for the 'space cowboys', which was a mustard yellow v-neck long sleeve sweater over my black t-shirt and a phaser à la Captain kirk. Once I was done cleaning up money/admin stuff I ran over. I met some cool people from UofT in line…in line outside when it was wicked cold out. One guy was dressed like Matt Smith with a cowboy hat (series 6 premier), so we got on the discussion of Doctor Who and such, yes apparently I do this wherever I go. After waiting in line for about an hour in the freeing cold, and feeling too stuffed up to breathe or think, I just headed back before I got in, which apparently was a mistake because there was a guy doing 2-step in there and spinning his partner. Though to country music, I would have liked to dance with him, ha! Matt found me in the hotel room passed out in front of my laptop…oh ya I rocked Thursday night :P.
Friday:
Tech Ex day! Another early morning, we're bussed over to the University of Calgary with all of our costumes in order to meet up with our crate that we sent away 2 weeks ago. The organizing of crates took quite a while, which didn't really justify such an early wake up call. Being fed a tasty pancake breakfast, that totally kept us going for the day. When it got to our crate, we were at first really worried because the side of our crate fell off due to the pull out of the screws. Everything seemed alright, and the crate could still be used as our exhibit display (part of the plan to win sustainability points. This proved annoying to set up and longer than the rest of the teams…owell. We got our little body shop for the crash test dummies theme and our rotating impact symbol platform to display our toboggan. Due to the line load of the toboggan, the edges of the platform popped up a bit, making the rotating display a bit touch-and -go. It's a fantastic idea, it just didn't work all the time.
After the bit of panic for set up, other teams, visitors, industry people and judges walked around for the day asking us questions, taking a cookie from our giant stash that were made Tuesday night, and taking buttons that we put out for people to take. The main events of the tech exhibit were the Circa/concrete, superstructure, sustainability, and spirit presentations as well as the safety/toboggan weighing. The rest was a bunch of cheering and team spirit, which a bunch of schools (especially Queen's) excelled at. Being a new and very small team, we didn't have that much representation, but we did alright for ourselves, more social than previous years I should think. The safety check required us to pick up some grip tape for Andrew on the back and my feet in the front, and some more insulation foam for the back handle, so while the rest of the team continued to reassemble the crate, I made a trip to Home Depot for materials we were to install tomorrow before our races. This is when Kristen, Jeff, and Tim took off for their flight back to Waterloo. They were going back for their Iron Ring Ceremony, which I'll just have to do at a later time :P. The results from the Tech Ex day, the Circa award presentation when well, the superstructure (brakes, steering, frame) not so well with one of the judges being sure that the bolts onto the frame would shear due to bending (and Jeff sure that they wouldn't), spirit was there but not grandiose. We are only 8 people and on a very limited schedule to come up with cheers and spirited stuff. Much credit to Fraser for all of the spirit stuff we did do.
Coming back to the hotel, it was another of those "totally crash" nights. They took us to this club called Desperados where we had dinner and dancing. It was agreed that it was a first for many people to have dinner in a club, mainly because the lights just made all of the food look the same. This theme night was the 'What I want to be when I grow up'. This got funny with Fraser going as Hairy Potter (beard and moustache holding a pot), Matt being a male stripper, Andrew the Clifford dog walker, and Brendon the hoola girl). I was a conspiracy theorist where I covered myself in tin foil (cookie sheets for breast plate), but I started to get an allergic reaction so I took it off. As before, it was club music, and I was more content at my semi-normal spot just hanging out by the bar. There I met the UofT guy from the night before. So chatted a bunch since neither of us were really interested in dancing to the music. Since we got there at 6, it felt like forever and a day until the first pick up party bus (yes, a party bus with poles for dancing) was to pick us up, I considered going to the weekly Calgary swing dance. Unfortunately there were a few uncertain neighbourhoods I had to walk through, multiple buses taking a total of an hour to the other side of Calgary or take an expensive cab. Funny how at one point I just paused and was staring into space and Brendon's like "you're not going to swing, it's ridiculously far", ha! He hasn't known me long but he's already figured that part out :P.
Saturday:
RACE DAY! By this point, although the snowboarding and tech ex were fun, it felt like it was *finally* what we came for. Shipping out at again at 6:30, we got to the Canadian Olympic Park, which is about the elevation of Chicopee, but full of runs with giant jumps, rollers, and terrain park stuff, plus the traditional large, built-up ski jump. Getting into the chalet, we had our first look at our track…holy shit!
It was built out from a regular ski run on the hill where the top quarter was incredibly steep for our purposes (like blue square on Nakiska). I could see teams starting to shake and not knowing what to think. In a captain's meeting the previous day, we were told that instead of hay bails, there were to be three rows of tires because there was a large drop off after the track onto a highway. As a few from the team went to go unload the crate, there was a captain's meeting where we were shown around the track and to ask any questions. People asked technical questions about starting and such, but no one commented on how the track is still sloped downwards after the finish line, the steepness of that top quarter, the three rows of tires (only one tire high), and the giant ice wall after the tires. Regardless, we assembled our toboggan (with a little difficulty because duct tape doesn't stick well to anything except kinda itself at -20 C.
The first to race were two Alumni teams (UofA and UofC). The first went spectacularly and stopped within the first line of tires, things looked good. Then came the next team, and they overshot the finish line, the tires, and bumped into where the sidewall met the giant ice wall. They got thrown from the sled, but since they had slowed significantly, everyone was ok and they hit a whopping 77 km/h! Our team was working on the finishing touches of our grip tape not even a few meters from where they bumped into the wall, so we had to move just in case it happened again. Next came the first undergraduate team from UofA. Having a successful start, everyone cheered as they crossed the finish line, but cheering quickly turned into gasps as the Tron sled hurdled through the tires and rammed into the giant ice wall, flipped sideways, bounced up and did a 180, landing on the riders.
After the ball of snow cleared, officials ran over to check on them, and called that everyone was ok, though 5 seconds later there was urgent yelling for a medic. One of the riders (Aaron) dislocated his ankle. The front rider was thrown forward and sheard off the steering system without sustaining too much damage, and the other two sustained heavy bruising. Everyone was shaken especially since at a top speed of 67 km/h, it happened in an instant. Everyone was called back to the chalet as discussions began of what to two after two big crashes.
While people were inside, the University of Alberta crash was the topic of everyone's discussions. There was shock, worry, and dread for the racers of teams who were yet to run. After a while, cheering began in order to change the topic and improve people's spirits. The snow groomer and modified the track by opening up the walls about half way up the hill in a much gentler section and piling all of the tires onto one run. Once they were done, there was a general announcement talking about the modified course and how disqualifications happens when the sled hits any tires.
From there on, the race went much better. The speeds were significantly less than the first teams, but the general consensus was that it didn't matter as much, it's better to be intact and safe. Ryerson (the first sled after the break) had a fantastic run! They had a hydraulic release for their brake. Since the crash, our team had someone not comfortable with the idea of racing on the track. Still persistent on staying out, Ioana, who was originally supposed to be on the sled, then decided she didn't want to (weeks before the competition so it's ok), agreed to take his place in the sled. Being in the front, I was going to see everything, for good or ill. As we climbed the hill with our toboggan towed by the skidoo, my heart raced about all the possibilities, contingencies, and what could be done by our driving (Andrew). so we got into our sled, tucked ourselves in, got tucked in and away we went. things seemed good at first, though a bit crooked, we started to veer to the left but was corrected at the last minute as to not hit the wall but we hit the "centering" pylon (point deduction). Partway through there was a gentle roll and I felt my butt lift off the sled and I thought "oh jeez I need to anchor my butt better, I don't want to bounce off'. Then we starting veering to the right wall and bumped it slightly right before getting to the finish line, and I remember wincing a little trying to prepare myself for a jostle but it wasn't really there. Ah, and comes the tires. As the tires came closer, I tried leaning back more and tucking my feet in, but the grip take wasn't giving me much to go off of. One row, then second row, and nudged the third row of tires. We came to a stop with no one hurt or anything, but I remember feeling trapped by the leaning back position from the toboggan and the tires piled up on my lap and legs. Though we were disqualified from taking anymore runs, we hit 45 km/h (maximum ended up being 52 km/h by Ryerson), we still had a fantastic run and enjoyed the fact that we made it, competed and came out the same way we came in. We were able to borrow a GoPro camera from the spirit director by the name of Blackslip, and I'll try and upload that shortly!
The awards dinner was funny because it was supposed to be formal and "clean", though all the normal cheers while standing on chairs ensued. Ryerson University swept the competition with fastest speed, shortest time, best overall design and such. Queen's got the spirit award and best use of fly-ash, and Western got the best concrete mix (having made 25 sample batches). Honourable second place mentions went to Waterloo for the most sustainable sled and for the spirit challenge of the first snack (homemade sugar cookies and chocolate milk). It was unfortunate to come home a little empty handed but considering the circumstances of the team and timing, this was just a learning process for the team members. Firstly, there's co-op, it's terribly disruptive to the design process because civils have September to December in co-op, which is key primary built/test time. Additionally, it wasn't originally set in Calgary, but in Ottawa. Then Ottawa backed out of their offer and the competition ceased to exist for part of the summer. Once we found out that it was going to be in Calgary, it was exam time and the captains didn't see much of each other until more urgent emails started saying we needed to kick this into high gear. Another issue was that the new date for GNCTR in Calgary fell on the same day at the UW Iron Ring Ceremony, which meant that all of the 4th years participating or in captain position (save a few) left the team. This meant we either had to find a new team or not go this year.The competition was something Misha, Kristen and myself didn't really want to die in our year, but we couldn't do it by ourselves. We tried reaching out to all of engineering, especially younger civil students and mech engs. We had a medium-sized group for an information session, but the people who persisted were those who came with us to Calgary. Also, our original mech guys disappeared on us in the fall term, which threw a wrench into Kristen's planning of the technical design. We were lucky to get Jeff (who I went to school with in WCI) and Tim.
After the awards dinner, people went back to their rooms and the hardest partying of the weekend began. The hotel security, lovingly called "the Russians" or "the KGB" roamed the hallways and for the first time tried to actually enforce order. Crazy things happened like the continuation of the 4th floor DJ-ed party in the hall, and a hot tub in a hotel laundry hamper with three people in it, being pushed into the elevator. It was a sight. Also, I gained more realization that men really like to take their pants off and go running around the halls, somehow I forgot about this. It was a wild night where people were also trading shirts and gear with each other. The Queen's fireman hats and t-shirts were desirable, as were the UofT pilot shirts. This is when we traded most of our buttons, extra bandanas, patches, and gave away stickers. The patches were well sought out because they were very well done and our whole logo. People also wanted our safety coveralls, sweaters, and the one extra hat that was in the spirit kit. Since everything was custom made for us in a small team, people didn't really part with the main articles of clothing (especially the comfy sweaters).
Sunday:
We got to sleep in! Bus departure with Western to the airport was for 9:45, but I told them 9:30 just to be safe ;). Brendon had come up to me the night before being all excited that he had found the hot tub in the basement and I was like ya we gotta check it out. So it was decided that we'd go the morning we left. Waking up just a bit earlier than we would have needed to for packing (but later than every other day at the event), Brendon, Fraser, Andrew and I chilled out in the hot tub before our plane ride home. I found that the bus/plane ride with Western was even more enjoyable because we knew the people much better. Western is great, but I really liked this Waterloo team. I know they have a billion of midterms this week that they've had no time to study for, and I wish them the best. I know Kristen, Tim, and Jeff got their iron rings, and I hope that was great. Many silly/awkward/epic times were had, and I'm kinda glad we had a small team so that we could all be there to enjoy those times. I say this as I'm on the plane home with the team and peacefully writing before the week starts anew. Congratulations guys, you all rock!
Following a bit of work done during the Christmas break, I have returned to work for Sriram now as a part time researcher. The first couple of weeks were quiet because I had passed off my bridge model to Asim for his thesis. Though offering to help him, Asim couldn't pass much off to me, though I got the occasional code modification to my short span bridge. Though I was not able to attend his thesis presentation due to GNCTR, I heard it went smoothly. A few days later, Sriram, Scott, Asim and I celebrated his finishing of his masters at the Grad House. It seems like he won't be around much longer, which is sad and also means I need to figure out what he did on the long span bridge if Sriram ever needs modifications done during the term.
Last week I got an awesome surprised. Sriram called me to his office and as I was walking down the hall I was smelling chip board (which was nice). I get to his office and it's from from having a 10"x36"x10" ish box on the floor. Inside was a very shiny, 80 lb viscous damper that he just got delivered. This damper was not the kind found in the industry because it had a modification on top that allowed for an adjustable orifice. Taking a step back, a viscous damper is basically a piston with two oil chambers. As the piston moves in either direction, the oil gets pushed or sucked into the other chamber through an orifice. Since the oil is thick and the orifice is small, this creates a lot of friction and thus resists the speed of the displacement (doesn't restrict the displacement so much). The adjustable knob added for Sriram's purposes then permits the damper to have a different damping coefficient where normally this is taken as a constant value for dampers installed on bridges and buildings. Eventually, the hope is to have the damper attached to sensors to collect real-time data and build/program it so that the orifice is controlled by actuators to adjust the damping coefficient based on the recently attained loads. The damper itself can function up to 7000 lbs, a relatively small damper when considering large bridges and skyscrapers where you'd need many of these (at about $3000-$5000 a piece).
Turns out that this will be my toy for this URA term, which is just all too awesome! With Richard's help in the structures lab, I'll be building the mounting for the damper, creating and running the tests, and managing the data collected for the tests to hopefully have something meaningful by the end of the term. The hope is to get up to 2 Hz on the load cell, which from my conversations with Richard, should be doable. The biggest hold up right now is actually getting time to use the load cell since there are many projects on the go. This week, I had been calling around to machining companies looking for a pre-made rod clevis that would attach the damper to the load cell. The clevis itself is like a fork with holes drilled through the sides of the forks to allow a rod to be put throughout he clevis and the hole on the end of the damper. Though because of some sizing issues, it looks like a custom piece would be the best option from the UW Machine Shop.
Anyways, I'm really excited about this since I haven't done as much lab work (well moreso now after GNCTR), but paired with the programming I did last term, it feels well-rounded.
Week 2
On Monday of week 2, we built the framing that would be going around the formwork out of 2x6 and plywood. This would be so that the form was strong enough to be lifted at an angle by the structures lab crane for the pour. Since the slab is thin, has the 'W' shaped cross section with a bullnose front, it was decided that tilting the slab upwards and making the top half of the mould in modular sections would be the best bet to reduce the chance of honeycombing on the bottom of the slab or large gaps on the top. As the pour progressed, the slab was lowered until it was horizontal. The pour went well, though a bit of 1/4" bulge happened in the centre due to the angle pushing the concrete towards the nose.
On that Friday, we took the slab out of the mould, which we were all anxious about. We were not able to keep the top sections of the mould intact because the threaded rod that suspended the rebar in place with the epoxy around it was kinda messy. Once we opened up the top, we saw fine honeycombing, so were were happy it worked but a little concern about the bottom of the slab. Luckily, the bottom popped out almost all too easy and it smooth! all of the bubbles moved towards the upper surface. That evening, Doug helped us cut off a bit of the back section of the slab that we had made for ease of pouring. Kristen and I got to take the sled behind the structures lab and grind the top surface. We we were still deciding if the bottom of the sled should be ground to make it super smooth (there was even pebbling from the CNC machining) and to fix the bulge, but in the end, only the top was ground since we didn't want to risk wrecking the bottom.
Week 3
In week 3 continued the frame assembly. There had been a problem that a machine shop account needed to be opened for materials and I was running around trying to find the appropriate people to talk to for an ID number to give the machine shop. Jeff and Tim then got to order their aluminum parts for the frame, the giant plate with teeth for the brakes, and the parts for the hockey puck-style steering system. During this week was also the time I was able to snag a design room for the concrete toboggan team. Oddly enough, concrete toboggan is really not present in Engineering 5, a building largely devoted to student teams. Since it was one of the few rooms available and had a bay door, we got it temporarily for our build. It would have been nice to keep it because now in week 5 they need us out of there. I would like to secure a room for the 2014's with space to store out materials and have room to work. The 2013 team has a space with many work desks shared for different teams, but is not conducive to storing concrete materials. This week was much less hands-on for me other than the cylinder testing at 7 days. Work on the technical display and the crate had begun when I got the room available, but I hadn't seen anything yet. Kristen and Misha put on the Sika FRP wrap and it looked great. It should help our strong and brittle slab survive the weekend (courtesy of Dr. Soudki).
Week 4
Week 4 got interesting, we had to ship by the end of the week. An email from the shipping company early in the week asking to pick it up Wednesday or Thursday got me really worried (more than I let on), and when I asked Kristen, it was just a flat out no from her. Over that previous weekend, the team was really devoted and got a lot done on the technical display and the crate. I knew it was a complicated 2-storey design that was supposed to look like a 'Crash test dummies' workshop, I was just never available when I knew who had the key or someone was working in there. This is also the week for me when I started to get quite concerned about our money status. After reimbursing Matt for the tech exhibit and costumes, we were super low, and had yet to pay for the shipping and hotel (kinda essential). I put the application for funding from the Dean of Engineering into high gear and got the team to seek out more sponsors so that I wasn't left with a +$2000 bill.
Thursday night was our test and pack up night. Due to the lack of snow this entire time, I had been calling ski hills and tube parks to test our toboggan the entire week to no avail. Whatever snow they had they wanted to keep for their business. So late on Thursday, we do the finishing touches for decorating our toboggan like a safety vehicle. I hope it's actually safe, I'm sure it is, because that spring-loaded brake is pretty fierce. In justification though, it is a 300 lb sled plus 5 people. Next was trying to get everyone on the toboggan. Originally, Kristen had designed it for the members that were involved back in August/September, which were a few women about 5'-4" to 5'-7" plus a few guys. What do we have now? two 6'-6" guys (one pushing in the back), two guys about 6'-0", and me at 5'-4". To get everyone on the sled was a ridiculous and hilarious challenge. We found a configuration, almost all of the possibilities ended up with me in the front. This should be interesting! Fun and interesting. I had to go for another meeting, but they slaved away into the night packing up the crate, ready for shipping the next day. At 9 pm, we wheeled the toboggan on a dolly to CIF where we heard there was snow from the rink that we could test it on. Nothing on the CIF hill, we placed the toboggan on a horizontal patch of snow and tried the break out. Ok, so we still don't really know how the brake will work, but we can blame that on the lack of snow. Still, in the snow/rain drizzle that night, there was a sense of victory that the toboggan was built. Many silly pictures happened and that's awesome.
And then came Friday the shipping day. We were told that it'd be picked up in the afternoon, so when I got a call at around 11, I was surprised but the crate was ready anyways. I met the shipping guy but then he asks about a forklift, something we hadn't prepared. While Kristen and I ran around campus for a forklift for about a total of 5 minutes, I get a call from the driver saying he's busy and can't wait and also that it's not the weight or dimensions that we specified. This was totally untrue because I emailed everything to the shipping company ahead of time…so he left! Then I really started to panic because the shipping company said if it doesn't leave on Friday, it's not getting to Calgary. So I call the shipping guy I had been emailing saying 'Hey dude, your driver just left without taking out sled, what the heck!'. Surprised, he called his driver and the dispatcher and apparently the driver left because the crate wasn't oriented in the right position even with a forklift since would need it to be loaded in end-wise and the arms of the forklift extend out 4', not 8'. But, the shipping company got him to come back if we used the East Campus Hall loading dock and just pushed the crate into his truck. Trust me, it was really funny to see Richard (the structures lab tech) going full speed in the slush in his forklift through the E5 parking lot so that the old, 1/2 charged battery on the forklift wouldn't die.
Week 5 rolls around. I'm a lot less stressed now, the toboggan is off the Calgary. Everyone takes a bit of a breather after the panic the frame being too low and a lot more welding ensued, the crate being too heavy, and the brakes not being certain. Yesterday was the pickup to the airport, luggage, final details on spirit wear meeting. It went well, and we all know what we have to do between now and Wednesday morning. This includes a video presentation, packing our stuff and pre-packing the cars (understandably since trying to think at 3 am is tough). Seems like we're in the final stretch and most of the tough work is done. Now all we gotta do is present our toboggan like it's the best ever, race it, and have fun. :)
A giant thank you to the team (Kristen, Misha, Matt, Fraser, Brendon, Andrew, Tim, Jeff, Liz (originally spirit captain)), Richard, Doug, and Terry (lab techs), Dr. Soudki, Dr. West and Dr. Thomson (technical advisors and sponsors), the sponsors, and anyone who put up with any of the team members in their times of stress.
Today at 6:30 in front of Ye's Sushi in Waterloo, I became bikeless. I had used it thoroughly earlier today by biking to school for a meeting with Sriram, biking home to get my SIN card so I could get my OAN number to apply for OGS, biking back to campus, biking to sushi with Mike, John, Cass, and Gilad. I had locked the main frame to a 3 foot high handicap parking space sign. There was no lock in sight and I noticed the sign was folded that would conclude that the bike was slipped off the sign. I was so disillusioned, I thought Waterloo was safer from bike thefts these days. I remember my friends Alex and Michael from WCI having their bikes stolen on campus multiple times. I filed a police report with the serial number, checking Kijiji, and drinking copious amounts of tea, there's not much more I can do now.
After having my bike stolen I was off to campus to meet Tim to start discussing Troitsky bridge building plans. We bought some popsicle sticks and white glue and discussed design ideas and how to connect the major pieces together. It seems like it's just Tim and I for the building this term, which makes scheduling easier.
Last of the evening was my private dance lesson with Giulio at Fred Astaire dance studio thanks to a groupon deal. We learned the foxtrot, tango and waltz (which I knew basically already). Funny, they're very different compared to their figure skating equivalents.
Tomorrow is CampusRec open house so a few of us will hopefully be dancing tomorrow to promote the UW Swing Club between 11:30 and 1:00 outside the PAC on campus.
Hey everyone, it's that time of the year where students go back to classes...on the weekends...WHAT!
This of course refers to the UW Swing Dance Club's weekly lessons that will be starting on Sunday, September 18th at noon in the PAC Studio 1. The beginner lesson goes from noon to 1:30 and the intermediate lesson does from 1:30 to 3:00. The lessons will be about 45 minutes long with some time at the end to practice what you've learned with the other dancers. Partners are not required since this is a social dance and dancer partners will be rotated frequently throughout the lesson. No experience is necessary, so come on out to our first lesson which is a trial lesson. We're registered through CampusRec which means you require a CampusRec membership in order to join, apologies.
Be on the lookout for the UW Swing Dance Club during CampusRec's Open House (September 14th, it's in the PAC but we may be elsewhere) and Feds Clubs Days (September 22 and 23 in the SLC)! Come, say hi, dance with us!
Other opportunities through the university for dancing:
UW Swing Dance Club's hosted 'Dancing in the Park'
Every Thursday, we grab the club's boombox and head over to the gazebos on the boardwalk by Silver Lake in Waterloo park and dance. This event has been run for many summers and keeps coming back due to its popular relaxed, social (and FREE) vibe. Dancing starts at 8:30 with a mini lesson upon request and goes until the park closes at 11:00. As for the long-term duration, I am up for coming out until the snow falls but it'll likely be mid to late October.
Practice at Perimeter Institute
If you're interested in learning some dance moves or working on stuff you've seen, a group at the Perimeter Institute will be hosting a practice on Saturday afternoons around 3:00 in their squash courts. No official lessons, but feel free to ask any of the physicists how they do those moves. Contact the UW swing club for more information.
And thus concludes this year's frosh week, folks! For once I was actually involved in it since my sparse attendence of my own frosh week four years ago. I was going to take a picture of the engineering frosh teams that I could see through a window down the hall from my office, but then I realized it was not entirely impressive. I definitely heard the chants, cheering, and praise of Ed Com, I saw the strings of yarn taped along every walkway and lots of hard hats, pink ties, and lanyards.
This past Tuesday I co-taught swing dancing lessons for the frosh Variety Night. Since this event is so free form, there's just a whole bunch of student everywhere overloaded with activities. Even a basic lesson of jig walks in 30 minutes is super speedy. Though it seemed like people enjoyed themselves, tried something new, which for frosh week is what counts.
On Thursday was the student team lunch where the engineering frosh got fed after their morning of junkyard wars. The whole week I was trying to work out how to get the concrete toboggan out to the V1 green, but I didn't know how the display case was locked and who was in charge. After much running around and the people seemingly in charge being away on vacation, I threw in the towel because I didn't want to take off the whole morning from work just to figure it out. When I got to the GNCTR table though, Richard the lab tech pulls up in the CivE truck with the toboggan. It seems the 2013 team got enough people to lift the display case - yes, lift, it's bolted together to slide the panels out but it's not secured to the floor - and loaded the 300 lb sled into the truck. The luncheon turned out great, I conveniently had my laptop so I had the GNCTR 2011 highlights and the RMR segment on loop for people to watch. It was overcast but the weather held out which made it more pleasant, windy as heck though. It's definitely fall now and I'm enjoying it tremendously. Heading out to a forested area for a hike in a few weeks will be very pretty.
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As for work, I successfully got keys for my office on Tuesday. It's quite silly how the whole process to acquire keys involves civil eng. deparment, student accounts, civil eng. department again, then key distribution. It was a lot of biking around campus for something so simple. Though I had fun parting the crowds of froshlings with my speedy bike while ringing the bell. They have to learn and there's no time like the present!
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Work-wise, I'm beginning to get somewhere in my work. I understand the basic of Open Sees and I've been using their well-laid out wiki page and examples as a framework for that I need. Turns out that all that the MTO would require is a stick model of the bridge, which avoids me trying to get the 3D slab models to work for the bridge deck. Like any program, you can go into more detail, but at this point, only a theory-level model is required. Due to Open Sees having its own commands, the error messages are complex and hard to decipher, so I've spent a lot of time trying to understand where and what goes wrong.
Since I mastered the 2D framing system, I moved onto a 3D frame and I will be sculpting it to the shape I need. Rather than a simple, equal dimensioned bay 2D frame to use as a basis, the 3D frame example incorporates complex cross sections, being the actual concrete column dimensions with geometrical accurate rebar. This adds a few text files to the program, which I feel some information that I would still require would be buried in there. Another issue is that while I'm currently just augmenting my 2D frame model with 3 dof to a 3D model with 6 dof, I feel that some commands may not operate in the same way or work at all. It's hard to tell with the cryptic error messages. The only way that Asim said you can find the error is just to return a line to the command prompt so that you know if the error happens before or after that ouput.
The end of this week also boasted the installation of and tinkering with Abaqus, the FEM software. The pretty convoluted setup included a static IP to my machine and transferring of an unused license. Now that I think about it, the process was simple enough, it's just that no one who takes care of this type of thing was around for the past two weeks. My first impression is that it's like AutoCAD and Photoshop in the sense that its GUI is complex, technical, and insightful once you know what on earth is going on. I look forward to it :P
