D Bermuda Pi

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Bermuda Pi

$$\Delta \; B\epsilon\rho\mu\delta\alpha \; \Pi$$$$Number \; -e^{i\pi}$$

The week 10th to 18th October 2015 there is a lot happening in Bermuda.

  • TEDx Bermuda on 10th October

  • America's Cup racing 16th-18th October

  • The first anniversary of hurricanes Fay and Gonzalo

This creates a good opportunity to run a number of small events around Free Software and Free Culture.

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics STEM is already getting a lot of attention. This is natural in a world where there is so much innovation and change in current times.

Throughout my life technological change has created a lot of wonderful things. At the same time, humanity and social systems are struggling to keep pace with this change.

STEAM adds the Arts into STEM. Making the Bermuda $\pi$ a STEAM powered event seems a natural choice, as the event can then embrace Bermudian culture in general.

At the same time, a hurricane can be viewed as a giant steam engine. Bermuda once ran a steam powered island. How about bringing this to the 21st century: D Bermuda $\pi$, STEAM powered.

Free Culture

People in the free software movement have been dealing with this change for some time. They have developed ways of working with technology that not only scale, but also enable people to build systems that evolve naturally over time.

There is a more general Free Culture movement, publishing artistic material under Creative Commons licenses that mirror the free software licenses. Generally, these licenses allow others to build on the ideas and use them in their own work, usually with attribution. Some licenses do not permit commercial use, but many do. Authors choose a license based on their own values.

Weather and hurricanes

Given the connection with Fay and Gonzalo some events would focus on hurricane research in the Bermuda context.

Event Ideas

A Pi conference

  • Python
  • Raspberry Pi's
  • Weather data
  • Hurricane simulation
  • Damage surveys and damage estimation
  • Impact of climate change
  • lightning talks
  • python and pi's in Bermuda education

Aim for most presentations to be about activities that are going on already in Bermuda, with some visions for future projects.

Invite others from overseas that are doing similar work. Better still, people we are already collaborating with on Bermuda projects.

Focus on the Bermuda context: why is what you are doing a good fit for Bermuda, how can it fit better?

Music, Art

Allow local musicians and artists to work and play together. Work on making local artists work freely available on line.

Work on ways technology can complement the arts and vice versa.

Story Telling

Have people tell their hurricane stories about last year's storms.

Structure in a way that the stories might inspire new ideas to gather data and do research based on data from previous storms.

  • A 5km run over a 3.14 ($\pi$) mile course.
  • Pies to eat
  • Education, teaching students using raspberry pi

The ideas here are very much inspired by the way python conferences are run

The aim is to have a number of small events, that together make up the Bermuda Pi experience.

Food and sustainable agriculture

Local Bermuda food

How to do sustainable agriculture

Leisure activities

Fay and Gonzalo parties would seem a good starter

Music, story-telling, Bermudian food,

Gombeys!

A 5km run over a 3.14 ($\pi$) mile course.

Pies to eat!

Weather

Any event during hurricane season has to pay attention to the weather.

Given that one theme of D Bermuda Pi will be hurricane research it would be unfortunate if the event were hit by a hurricane.

Having said that, it would give the researchers valuable first hand experience.

One project to work on during the week would be getting better estimates of the probability of the event being hit by bad weather.

  • Use long term climate features such as El Nino, the North Atlantic Oscillation, and the Bermuda High to help with contingency planning

  • Develop tools that can help with future event planning

  • Study detailed windfields around the island to better understand the challenges faced by the sailors.

  • Study tides and currents around the island

Murphy's Law is likely to intervene here, so in the meanwhile it would be good if we kept an eye on the long range hurricane forecasts and nearer the time be in a position to work with Bermuda Weather and have plans in place in the event of bad weather.

Sustainablility and environmental impact

Renewable Energy

Information security and privacy

Cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin

Bermuda Based Organisations

  • BIOS station
  • Bermuda Weather
  • BEST -- sustainablility
  • code441
  • codtuna
  • Pecha Kucha
  • Chewstick
  • Others?

Coding Sprint

Work on free software projects for a better Bermuda.

Reinsurance

Many of the reinsurers are using free software and the python language in particular.

It should be possible to have a free software in finance track, perhaps along the lines of the PyData conferences.

Visitors

  • Free software practitioners and enthusiasts
  • Python Foundation
  • RedHat
  • Canonical/Ubuntu
  • Environmentalists
  • Meteorologists and climate researchers

Venues

This will very much depend on the level of interest

Southampton Princess conference hall, used for TEDx

BIOS station

The BIOS station is close to the airport and close to Paget Island (see below).

Paget Island

Paget Island is one of a number of Government run islands. It has basic facilities. It would make an excellent venue for a coding sprint focussing on the environment and sustainability.

Bermuda is an expensive place to visit, some free sofware enthusiasts would be more than happy to come and camp on the island.

One goal would be to make this as inclusive an event as possible, hence creating many different activities that will appeal to different demographics, but also to find ways to mix those people and give them new experiences.

The buildings and infrastructure on Paget Island are in need of some TLC. It would be good to work towards building a place run on renewable energy, environmentally positive where people can come to study how we are doing things in Bermuda.

The philosophy of a camp on the island would be to leave the place better than it is found.

Chewstick

Everywhere!

Trivia

Around the world in 80 days

This blog started as a blog for an idea to create an *Around the world in 80 days* idea, to run little competitions where people get miles (or kilometers) for activities. The idea is to see how far round the world you can get in 80 days, with fun twists along the way. One idea was to do an Around Bermuda on Bermuda Bus and Ferry competition. I learnt a lot on the project, but never quite got it out of the door. But that is another story.

There is a version still limping along on heroku: https://tonzone80days.herokuapp.com/

Kudos to heroku. I have a half build project running there, haven't checked it in ages and boom it springs into life.

There are some other pieces coming together that might make the bus thing viable in the near future, just needs a bit of time applied to it.

One thing that I found useful in the project was thinking in an 80 day time horizon. So I was curious about what date is 80 days before 10th October 2015, the date for the start of the Bermuda $\pi$.

Hitting Home on the https://tonzone80days.herokuapp.com/ shows me this:

Jun 29, 2015 is today's date

Sep 17, 2015 is 80 days from today

Apr 10, 2015 was 80 days ago

So time for a little python.

In [6]:
# lets see what python says
import datetime
bermuda_pi_start = datetime.date(2015, 10, 10)

eighty_days_before_start = bermuda_pi_start + datetime.timedelta(days=-80)

print(eighty_days_before_start)

2015-07-22
In [ ]:
So things need to get started on July 22nd 2015
$$2015^{{10}^2}$$

What's this *Number $-e^{i\pi}$ thing about?

There is a wonderful equation in mathematics that links some of the key constants from the world of mathematics.

There is $\pi$, the ratio between a circle's diameter and its circumference. $\pi$ turns up all the time in mathematics.

Then there is e.

Both $\pi$ and $e$ are transcendental, a special type of number, although there are an infinite number of transendental numbers, when they turn up in mathematics they tend to be important.

Then there is 1. The special number that you can multiply any other number by and leave it unchanged.

And there is 0. The special number you can add to anything and leave it unchanged.

The equation is known as Euler's identity:

$$ e^{i\pi} + 1 = 0 $$

As this would be the first Bermuda $\pi$ it would:

Bermuda $\pi$ Number 1 = $-e^{i\pi}$

Let's make it number one, every year.

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