The Chemistry of Engineering

My company finally changed from MS Excel 2003 to 2007. Part of this late change is compatibility with other programs and of course the natural drive of some engineers to hack their own macros into a worksheet. If such a file proves useful to other engineers, suddenly a tool is born. This gets checked against a number of hand calculated situations and if the outcome pleases everybody the tool is ‘verified’.

Well if everybody has the skills and the will to write proper macro’s there is not so much of a problem. However hitting the record macro button and save whatever comes out is not a good practice in my humble opinion. But that happens a lot. continue reading…

I had to create a new password to log into my work computer. The mail system in use is Lotus Notes, and there is a option to choose the same password for Notes and Xp. Some simple rules are applied to ensure everybody is using a strong enough password.

This requirement brought me to rethink something that hit me recently, the RockYou.com hack. It happened in December 2009 by a very simple technique, but the impact was disastrous. Over 32 million user account details were aquired and brought into the public. Later on Imperva issued an analysis of the passwords in use and the outcome was shocking. continue reading…

While surfing the internet for some work related info, I came across the term click chemistry. First I thought it had to do with mouse clicks or some other digital phenomena. Surprisingly it is a rather new term in chemistry.

Click chemistry is about synthesis of rather complex molecules in small steps. The main purpose is to quickly examine the pool of drug candiates. Drug testing nowadays is done by creating a molecule and testing its effects on living creatures. By ruling out all non-active substances new drugs are found.

Based on a set of criteria which are based on natural environment properties, the pool of drug candidates is drastically lowered. This will hopefully speed up the discovery of new drugs. Only question remains is what to do when all substances are tested…

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/chemistry/chemical-synthesis/technology-spotlights/click.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_chemistry

http://curlyarrow.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-is-click-chemistry.html

The other night I was reading my corporate emails and found out that coming months are going to be more exciting than expected.

There is an upstream project about to start, which will be in the FEED phase. The project comprises development of three sets of P&ID’s, for three phases of construction. Not realy a technological challenge, but there is enough to learn and it leaves room for other activities to be done.

One of my roles in the project will be Process Systems Engineer. I will look after the overall quality of the P&ID’s, keep an eye on the consistency and I will be involved in SmartPlant activities.

Another role is that of Process Engineer. I will be doing regular process activities like calculations and dealing with design issues.

Finally I will be coordinating the conversion of Excel tools from version 2003 to 2007. This will be a tedious task whith a lot of uncertainties. A real challenge thus.

Like most engineers I am having an off day now and then. Engineering can be a boring activity. Inspired by others who try to find some joy in life by writing about the random events and mind-boggles that occur to them, I decided it was time for my very own blog.

Last week was a quiet one, a short holiday after coming back from Singapore Show on map. Getting used to life in The Netherlands was a though operation, but I managed to survive. First I had to get used to a shorter and less intense daylight schedule. Second I had a lookout on a couple of months of no work in the office. Finally the rush of last project was still in my veins. At this very moment I feel a lot better and new ideas are popping up already.