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ground- water, geo- statistics, environmental- engineering, earth- science

Archive for June, 2012

Daniel Hillel

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In the past, I had written about hydrogeology books, and back then I mentioned Daniel Hillel’s book “Environmental Soil Physics” for variably saturated hydrology.

I still think it is an awesome book, but I never knew much about the author — until I read today on Dot Earth about Daniel Hillel, and how he was awarded this year’s World Food Prize, mainly for his innovations related to drip irrigation in agriculture.

NewImage Daneil Hillel introduced drip irrigation in Japan in 1971. Source: http://photos.state.gov/libraries/amgov/3234/week_2/06112012_WFP-IntroducingDripIrrJapan1971PR_jpg_300.jpg

Andrew Revkin on DotEarth posted a nice youtube video of a talk given by Hillel in which he points out how everything is interconnected. Based on that interconnectedness, he deduces that “we must study more and more about more and more”, and because we are limited, we need to associate and co-operate.

I like that approach! How many hydrogeologists look bewildered if they hear the soil science term “matric potential” or the expression of potentials in general. This should not be a barrier to the wonderful world of soil science, nor to the wonderful textbook by Daniel Hillel!

Congratulations!

Written by Claus

June 18th, 2012 at 6:11 pm

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Advantages of a Mac Server

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This is a short post, neither related to water nor statistics. But I have recently setup a macMini server. It is a nice little tool, so I thought I’d share some information.
 
There is lots of talk about using it as a “Media Center”. I am not sure, if I am using it that way. Certainly that’s not it’s main functionality
 
 

MacMini


File Sharing
I do have a central location where I can store my files, and which I can access from essentially anywhere
 
webDAV Space
general file sharing works between apple machines via afp, via windows machines with smb. With the server there is the possibility to have webDAV enabled file storage space. This has tremendous advantages, for example for storing files that I want to access on an iPad (for example via Good Reader). Also syncing documents in OmniFocus works fairly smoothly via webDAV. It’s not a full synchronization, but import and export on desktop/iPad versions of OmniFocus works reasonably well. It’s my personal Omni Sync Server.
 
Calendar and Address Book
I can have as many calendars as I want, which I can access from anywhere (also on iPad and also online). These calendars can also be shared (accessed and modified by others). This has proven to be of great advantage
 
Python 64bit
There is an i7 chip in it, it’s powerful! And since I don’t use all of the features that a server could have, and since not many users connect to it, I do have a fairly decent python working horse! All setup using the latest scipy superpack
 
Future possibilities
  • mercurial or git server
    This is a top priority! And I can’t wait to tell you more about it. 
  • email server
  • chat server
 

Written by Claus

June 4th, 2012 at 6:58 pm

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