Update

[Mccoy]

Dear friends,
I've being living a nearly frenzied life for a while now.

Started a major retrofitting project of my house in August, then had to empty the building and move out last month and rent a flat, to return when the works are over.
I had to supervise personally all the project stages, money related issues, choice of materials for finishings, utilities, and so on.
From the hills I moved to the beach. The change is good, I walk dogs and run on the beach at any hours, day & night, in the wintertime it is often deserted.
Things are more relaxed now.
I'm also back on long commuting hours with the government job. I decided to end the stint as a free professional since payment times for the larger post-earthquake projects here have dilated to several years, some of'em 10+ years. Small jobs are small money and even here it happens you only cash in after longish times of 2+ years. Of course, some times you do not cash in at all!

Never had the time to go and try the Dubai environment. I might apply to some headhunters agencies, and see what happens. Salary should be very good though, considering I have a shoo-in government job and cost of life in Dubai can be pretty high.

I recently held a continuing education course together with a structural engineer on site seismic response. We sit at the ends of the same table alternating presentations, like a duo of jazz pianists. It was fun and exceedingly interesting.
I was showing the ground part of seismic response and the engineer showing the effects on buildings in the same site. Seeing what happens when site and building resonate at the same frequency and what to do to prevent collapse of structure.
It is incredible how close ground behaviour can be to the behaviour of musical instruments (it's sound waves physics after all). So much so that I included some examples from the musical field. WE are going maybe to write a book on it.

http://www.mccoy.it

 

[SlideRuleEra]

Mccoy - Hope the renovations go well. We have done a few of those, too.

Looks like others have visited the seismic-music connection:

Seismic Waves and Sound Waves: From Earthquakes to Music

Sounds of Seismic - Earth System Soundscape

http://www.SlideRuleEra.net

http://www.VacuumTubeEra.net

 

[Mccoy]

SRE,

the link on SOS in very interesting, I must listen to it on my home PC, which is connected to higher quality speakers.

I read the following in that webpage:

Earthquakes are essentially sound waves travelling from the focal point of seismic rupture. The naturally occurring geophysical properties of earthquakes effectively cause the earth to ring like a bell as seismic waves propagate and travel through the earth. Seismic waves have a frequency spectrum below 1 Hz. The human audio spectrum ranges between 20 Hz - 20 kHz which is much above the spectrum of seismic waves. While the frequencies of seismic waves are below the range of human hearing, one can speed up digitally recorded seismograms by factors between x276 to x2205 creating sounds audible to the human ears acoustic criteria of listening to sound.

As a matter of fact, soil layering may give rise to resonant systems with frequencies in the range of 30 Hz (fundemental frequencies or harmonics).
This happens when a thin layer of soft soil is underlain by rock or stiff soil.

Such frequencies can be audible (the lower A of a piano keyboard is 27 Hz) and can make up the low-pitched 'roar' which is often heard during major earthquakes.

Even not so thin layers underlain by rock can make up powerful acustic resonators in the 10 Hz region, and the first harmonic of that is 30 Hz, an audible sound.

http://www.mccoy.it

 

[BigH]

I'm sort of hooked now on home and car renovations! Planning to do some to our condo in Thailand when we finally move in . . .