I wanted to give a brief introduction to who I am, why I made this site, and what to expect from the website to provide some overall context and background. I am an American who is trained and educated as a hydrogeologist. Hydrogeology is the study of how water interacts and moves through geologic material underground. I spent 6 years as a groundwater consultant in Texas in which I developed a niche for myself in the analysis, modeling, and presentation of groundwater data. I focused on developing techniques and methodologies that allowed for automation and repeatability in the analysis and presentation of groundwater data. This culminated in me developing two software tools developed in R using the Shiny web application package, that allowed my clients to access their groundwater data and perform calculations for rules and regulation processing. I am currently living in Berlin, Germany and am transitioning both to the new culture, language and career. I am very much enjoying my new life in Germany and looking forward to my future here. The language, as expected, has been the most difficult challenge so far, but I am starting to make headway and feeling more comfortable, able, and confident in my ability to speak and understand. As for my career, the move was done for personal reasons, and while I was able to initially transition with my original firm. Issues with my contract and Covid-19 have led to my release. Since then I have been working in the field of public transportation and mobility. A field that I find interesting and challenging and one that I currently plan to stay in. During my time as a data analyst for two different firms I was able to produce custom tools for QGIS using R that allowed for the rapid development of polylines for the use in schematic and topographic mobility maps. I also became very interested in travel time and routing analysis using R5 (R5R) as well as the GTFS file format and how to improve the quality and editing of those datasets.

As for the reason for the website, I wanted a platform where I could show off my skill sets, methods, and coding. Second, it is also a place in which people who are interested in the subjects I cover could potentially learn or use some of the code I developed. I plan to make most if not all of the code under an open source license. Lastly it is a place where I can continue to learn and experiment with new technology and software. I am always interested in learning new methods and software and having a place to show off new ideas and experiments.

The last item I want to discuss is the topics that I plan to cover. As you might have guessed from the earlier introduction that hydrogeology and groundwater will be covered, but most of those cases will use that data and subject as means to show off and discuss other items. I am also interested in the visualization and delivery of data and reports, and how we can make our final product more alive in a sense. So a general list of topics I plan to discuss are shown below.

  • Groundwater Modeling
  • Travel Time/Routing Analysis
  • GTFS processing/Editing
  • GIS/Interactive Maps
  • Data Visualization
  • PostGIS/Databases
  • Automation and Data Retrieval
  • Automated Reports

As for the tools and software I will be using. I plan to mainly use R as my main programming language, as that is the one I am most familiar with and the one I enjoy using the most. However, I will be using some python and potentially exploring other languages such as JavaScript. The current plan is to have a series of smaller posts, like this one, and then larger long term projects that will be updated through time.

With that I thank you for taking a look at my website. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or interest you may have. I hope that you can find something useful or that can help you with your own projects.