Category Archives: Tạp bút

Viết những suy nghĩ linh tinh

I hope you are doing well

Hello stranger, whoever happens to read this post.

Nothing special, just after COVID (we’re still having it, but not so panic as before) and some stupid things about war and global warming and pollution here and there, our lives are not the same anymore. For me too, beside those things, my wife and me welcomed our first born last year, a cheerful boy, I love him. I realize life has many hidden gems which can be considered an endless adventure for a human.

I’m still playing games, playing my guitar, singing Oasis, doodling, and focusing on my job to earn money for my living.

I’m writing this just to wish you a happy life, courage and luck for whatever you are doing or planning to do.

Me, another random stranger.

October – Wake me up, breast cancer awareness month, rain and waiting for November.

I’ve just had a brief look at Facebook and realized that we’re in October already. The WHO page remind us that this is the month of breast cancer awareness (I’m always mistaken the logo of this thing). I remember reading the book “Breasts” Florence Williams, haven’t finished it yet, but it already gave me a fairly good amount of knowledge about women’s body, from a man’s point of view. Maybe I should have bought the book “Mon vagin, ma vie” (in french) as well when I had chance at the bookstore last September. I look at my body sometimes and I must say that nature has such a way to build things. It’s so hard for us men to understand the women’s body, therefore I’m grateful to those mentioned books, that allow me to understand better my wife, or other half of the world in general.

The rain comes more often, this month always make me want to listen some old songs like “I’ll take the rain” and “Rain and tears”, it must be a seasonal thing. Also, it’s time to listen “Wake me up when September ends” less often, to start waiting for “November rain”. Maybe.

Autumn is an awesome season, my most favorite season of the year.

Reading books will never be obsolete

Books have always played an integral part in my journey growing up. While there are many different platforms of entertainment and to gain knowledge, and I do enjoy them, books will never be obsolete.

When we were little, colorful books helped us recognize the world, and they planted the seed of imagination and creativity. I will never forget my mom reading those books to me, and at the same time, explaining moral stories that came within. Children are like plain sheets of paper, and books like these are the brightest colors.

Next up, comics. I guess you have once asked your mom to get a new one every week. Or the little novels to long ones, the hesitation to read them because of the walls of text quickly faded as you read more and more.

There are two subjects that I think the learn-by-heart fashion is not suitable: 3D geometry and literature. Geometry is present everywhere in the world around us, and literature is all the reasons I mentioned above. You may argue with the high school approach of literature as one-sided, and while unfortunately that is true at the moment, literature is more than that. If you learn it by heart, then humanity could just print one massive book and distribute it to everyone. Yet you see, there are millions if not more books ready for us to read and feel, and people are still publishing new ideas in books.

Lastly, you don’t read a book once. Some books deserve more than one read. There are books that you perceive one way in the past, and differently now, maybe more differently in the future. They mark our progress as a human being. A poor man’s time machine that. Maybe you’ll read your favorite novel, and the image of a 7-year-old you enjoying the same thing more than 10 years ago pops up. Personally, that’s how I keep my memory fresh, how I relive my childhood. Life is cruel sometimes, and the memory train with books as carriages is a good way to soften things a bit.

So read.

Some FEM-DEM coupling attempts

FEM and DEM are well-known for studying structural analysis and behavior of granular materials, respectively. There are some special cases that we wish to combine the two methods to profit all the strong points from both methods. Here  are a list of what I’ve found till the writing time of this blog post.

1. YADE – OOFEM

YADE is pretty well-known in Europe as an open-source DEM tool, written in C++ and PYTHON, and OOFEM is a FEM tool (latest version is 2017).

2. YADE – ESYS

Also from YADE document page, the link between FEM-DEM has been made using these two tools.

Very basic at the moment, lacks some serious development.

3. EDEM – ABAQUS

From version 2018, EDEM shows some supports for porting to ABAQUS. To some academic members, ABAQUS is their favorite numerical tool to do structural analysis.

4. YADE – COMSOL

There is a module developed by University of Ottawa, Canada to couple FEM-DEM using YADE and COMSOL based on JAVA linking.

Tính tò mò

Một trong những bản tính tôi thấy hay hay và thấy ghét cùng một lúc ở con người đó là bản tính tò mò, vậy nên viết về nó một chút chắc cũng vui.

Tại sao lại nói về sự tò mò? Chắc phải quay lại cuộc nói chuyện với một thằng bạn cách đây vài tuần, tán dóc với nó thì nhiều chủ đề, từ đá banh, game cho tới Vật lý lượng tử, lỗ đen rồi dark matter… trong một lần thảo luận thì có một câu là “tố chất của dân nghiên cứu là gì?”. Continue reading Tính tò mò

Chuyện cà phê

Cà phê – một thức uống hấp dẫn

Một tách cà phê để bắt đầu ngày mới

Đối với nhiều người, ly cà phê đầu tiên của buổi sáng là cách duy nhất để khởi đầu ngày mới. Nhưng thậm chí cà phê cũng đã trở thành một trong những phần thiết yếu của họ trong phần còn lại của ngày: cà phê có thể giúp tiêu hóa tốt hơn sau khi ăn, hay để thư giãn 5p khi làm việc ở công ty, hoặc để kết thúc một ngày mua sắm: một tách cà phê. Ở rất nhiều quốc gia, cà phê được xem như một thức uống “thần thánh”, mặc dù cách uống và cách pha chế có đôi chút khác nhau, thậm chí có thể chả giống gì nhau. Thời gian gần đây, cà phê của Italy nói chung, những tiệm cà phê kiểu của Mỹ và những quán cà phê thư giãn kiểu Vienna đã truyền bá khắp thế giới văn hóa cà phê của họ và đã thiết lập nên gần như là một sự “sùng bái” cho thức uống này.

Continue reading Chuyện cà phê