Susanna Codes

The Angels Up In The Clouds Are Jealous Of How Much I Love Coding Yep. I finally felt it again today. I sat down to work on some real AI code. I’ve been building a dashboard for some AI experiments but putting my hands back into the code for our tests for an AI model. I finally felt it again. I felt home. I am back home where I belong. The wind farms spoke to me again on the way home too. It’s been months since I felt them like I did today. What did I do? I danced for 3 hours yesterday. I let myself wane. Like the moon. Over the last few months. I let myself crash. I let my enthusiasm crash like the waves on the rocks. Like the waves on the shore.  Knowing it would come back again one day. I let myself work fast. I let myself work slow. Knowing it would balance out. I let myself write my tech talk in working hours so I wouldn’t exhaust myself even further. I let myself rest on weekends. I opened my laptop on the weekend and realised Monday would be unbearable if I did that again...

When I Get Sad I Stop Being Sad And Then I Look At The Offshore Wind Farms You guys. I can’t give up. I can’t give up. I’m sorry. I have such a rich and full and beautiful life. I danced for two hours this morning under the shadows of seagulls and under the beautiful sunlit golden sky. I messaged my beautiful family. I ate a vegan roast for lunch. I bought a new book on climbing. I am reading a dance book as well. I am feeling reading again. What a miracle. How beautiful and perfect wow. And I love the water tech. I want to take that with me on my journey as well. I bought a beautiful new sketchbook yesterday in Brighton to plan it in. I have so many things to do. Two full albums to dance to today. Put the laundry on.  Read my 3 news books. Maybe cook or maybe not. Make a juice. Plan my week. Read my cards. But I want to fully organise the research as well. But how will I have time to do it? The night is young. I have to meditate and shower as well…

Maybe I DO Know Where To Go From Here This is my 700th blog post. And look. I don’t really know where to go from here. I know I want to dance. I want to open my heart up to other people like I failed to do for so long. I want to open my heart up to people and opportunities as for a while I had to shut people out but now I have the emotional capacity and the time to be around people again So look. I want to dance. I have to dance. It’s not a choice for me not to dance. I have to build into my routine so there is time for dance and time for healthy eating. And then I just need to do the work. Get practice. Solve tickets. Keep on researching the water tech

Guided By An Unseen Star I have been on a massive comedown for a month.  I have been productive. I have done amazing work. I am better at software engineering than ever. The thing is. I wanted this job more than anything else in the world. I knew it wouldn’t be right for me to leave here. I knew I had to be here. I knew it would be against the laws of nature and gravity and the universe for me not to be here. Because I love renewable energy and I love water tech. I have crashed. I still dance. I am doing my work but I’m exhausted. And I can’t do anything round the house although ironically I’m doing more than I was doing when I was working 12 hours a day. I once really wanted this job more than anything. And I knew it was right for me to be here 

AI and water quality in water treatment processes - again I can't be bothered to make this long. I am going to be brief. Raw water comes from lots of different sources. As such there are lots of different things we have to think about when we think about where our water comes from as well. Rainwater, groundwater, shallow wells near rivers known as "infiltration wells." So there can be pollutants that have not yet been confirmed in our environments. These can include pesticides, microplastics and pharmaceuticals, and these "emerging pollutants" can be a big factor in water quality. AI can help to improve this. Water Treatment Process Improvement AI can always be used to improve the quality of water treatment processes.  Why and how? Well, it can: Monitor the initial state of the water and its quality Monitor the state and the quality of the water after it has been treated Monitor the processes that were used to get to this condition By knowing this information th...

Revising Seasonality in Water Quality  Seasonal variations can be a huge part of water supply and demand. However did you know that they could also be a huge part of deciding water quality? It is so interesting and fascinating to understand that seasons can play a large role in predicting and managing and planning for the quality of our raw water - and the subsequent treatment of this water. I am simply in awe of it. In awe of it. I cannot get over my fascination with water tech. I feel most alive when I am doing this. More alive even than when I dance. So how is it that seasons affect our water quality? Well, first of all they can be linked to heavy rainfall. Depending around the world of course - and we are thinking across the whole globe here as well - heavy rainfall can wash sediments, nutrients, and chemicals into water sources. Warmer weather can also affect algae growth. If the weather is too cold then the growth of some plants such as algae may be stifled. The thing is that...

Revising Water Tech, Part II Water is like renewable energy - it needs to be handled in real time. I always say and I will say again - no human being can ever hold in mind all of the different factors that need to be taken into account to make the best real time decisions about data all at once. Making the right kinds of real-time decision can improve water quality, save water, reduce energy consumption and better cater to supply and demand. The need will go up as water scarcity increases. Managing Water Networks Better My blog posts talk about managing water networks better but I still don't know what this really means. Spotting faults before they even arise could be very powerful. AI can help us improve asset management through predictive maintenance. Damage to infrastructure tends to get worse in time and I can help us to spot this. Quicker fixes mean lower water losses. Water loss is one of the biggest concerns of our time. This also reduces supply downtime. This reduces costs,...

Landing on the Ground & Revising My Beloved Water Tech I don't choose my passion. I'm serious.  I dance, and when I dance, I think "I love to dance." But nothing, NOTHING, can lift me up, can light me up, just like thinking about water tech can, like writing about water tech can. I don't know who I am anymore.  I have just come back from two weeks on the road, working from Leeds and London. Swimming pools, trains, restaurants, cinemas, bridges, tubes, and most of all - my best friend, my little sister - nothing but the best of times, and now I came back to Brighton and felt like there was nothing for me in Brighton. And so I danced the whole day. And when I danced enough - and mine is a spiritual dance - then I come back to the water tech. And this is what always happens. I dance, and I come back to water tech. Major Thoughts in Water Tech One of the bottom lines of AI in water is that it can help systems analyse vast amounts of data in real time. Manual monit...

Responding to Larger and More Critical Patterns In Water Use with AI In my last few blog posts, we have explored what "critical" and "larger" patterns means in water, and now I would like to look at how AI can solve them. As a reminder - what are critical and larger patterns in AI again? I will discuss this a little bit more below again, thanks. How AI Can Help So how can AI help to solve these problems? AI can help to solve these problems by being trained to consider weather, seasonality and other broad factors.  We have looked into what weather and seasonal factors are in water tech, and we have looked at what "other broad factors mean." While I could do with revising these, the ones that always jump out at me are demographic patterns - population growth, social changes, industry, economic changes, agriculture. Also things like climate change consequences. So let's review the whole concept in full - as one sentence sent me into over 5 blog posts'...

The Whale Rider When I was about 10 my mum took me to see Whale Rider in the cinema. I don’t know why but in my early twenties that film came back into my life. In my mid twenties while dealing with an incurable health condition I thought a lot about this movie. I thought a lot about the girl and how she has a destiny and how her destiny brings things back into alignment. And so I begged to be put into alignment again. Then I found industrial ecology. Then I found renewable energy. And then through coding I found water. If I hadn’t become a software engineer I would never have moved into water tech. One of my great loves in life is Tibet. I thought about going away to join a monastery in Tibet (nunnery?). And then I realised the Tibetans need water too. And I have the skills to build water tech. Actually probably more niche skills than you think More niche skills than even I realise Infinite Love

My Happy Ending I started a dance blog. And I’m pretty sure that that’s my happy ending. No handsome prince. No Nobel prize. Just to be able to write a dance blog means everything to me. Why? Because it means that I dance often enough to be able to talk about it. And it means that I have enough thoughts about dance to be able to put them down. And I have thousands of them. Thousands and thousands. You can’t even imagine or understand. All I want to do is dance. All I want to talk about is dance. And so I know that will help me. Because I don’t know what’s coming next. But I know I will be dancing. I have no idea what’s coming next But I know that I will be dancing

You Were There With Me This blog post is a letter of thanks. To someone who I have never met and will never meet. This blog post is a thanks to the spirit of Alan Turing. We have never met, but I feel I know you so closely. From the first time my ex-boyfriend mentioned me to you to the way I would cry when I heard your story. From the colleague and the random American lady on the tube who told me to go to Bletchley Park. To the way I cried at your statue and when I read your story again. I visited Bletchley Park on two subsequent days in December 2023, travelling for 7 hours total on each day and breaking my bank to get there. Worth it. For all of 2024 I felt you were with me. There when I lost my job. There when people told me that it would be impossible to find another job at my stage as a software engineer and let alone in renewable energy. You were there when I worked 12 hours a day for 6 weeks to get my current job. There when I learned Python, along with Margaret Elaine Hamilton,...

Seasons & Weather: Water in SummerI am trying to summarise my last 3 blog posts. It's not going too well. Maybe they don't need summarising. In the last post, I looked at weather in water tech. Seasons and Weather In Water Tech I think one of the key things here was temperature. It is impossible really to separate weather from seasonality in water tech and I can't believe how silly I was to try. But I am glad I tried - because it made me realise how silly I was to even try. So let me summarise them together and see how that goes. Summer In the summer the temperature increases and the heat can change both the way that water behaves in the environment and the way that we consume it as people. On the behaviour front, in hotter weather, water can evaporate more quickly. This can lead to increased need for irrigation from farmers, placing higher stress on demand for water supply. It also means that people need to water their plants more often and irrigate their landscapes an...

Weather in Water Tech One of the major factors in water planning and management - along with seasonality - is weather. One of the most important factors for AI models to be trained on in water technology is weather trends. I wanted to deep-dive a bit deeper and to explore a bit more what weather means in water tech. The three main overview areas that I have for weather in water planning are: Temperature Precipitation Humidity and Wind Variations in temperature affect water evaporation rates and water consumption. Variations in precipitation affect water availability and supply, specifically through rain or snowfall. And variations in humidity and wind can, surprisingly, also affect evaporation and water loss. Again, temperature is very much linked with seasonality as we are looking at people using private and public pools, watering their plants and lawns and gardens, showering more often and using water to cool down. In turn, ice cold water can freeze and can cause pipes to burst; and ...

Seasonality in Water Tech Okay so I think the time has finally come for me to address this topic. Properly. Thank you. I mean, this crops up all the time for me. Everywhere I look in my water tech research, it all comes back to seasonality. Seasonality - and weather too. That is why - although this post focuses on seasonality - weather will be coming too soon. Thank you. It seems to me - and I could be wrong - that there are two main areas of trends in seasonality in water tech: seasonal demand changes and seasonal events. Let me see if most of my info can be fitted into these two main areas please - thank you. Here we go. I mean I could probably do a separate blog post on each one. Seasonal Demand Changes So what might we class as a seasonal demand change? Well to be honest with you I do actually think that it is the latter, seasonal events, that I am more interested in. But both are relevant so let me take a look a bit closer - thanks. Exploring Seasonal Demand Changes An example of ...

Use Your Passion Lady Gaga's new song is her best ever. I have been a fan for half my life - since she came on the scene. I have passed my probation - my immense passion carried me through one of the hardest times of my life - and now I want to figure out where do I go from here. Water research. Day job. Working day to day. Growing as a software engineer. Dancing. Wherever my life takes me next from here - and I don't know what my next great challenge will be - I hope that I will dance. I don't know what my next story will be, but I will hope that I will dance. And so if you have a wish that you can make for me - make a wish that I can dance, dance, dance. But I know what the next story of my life will be. I want to finally give back to the water. I want to take care of what I love the most. This planet and this earth. So I hope my water research takes me further. I would like to make this blog be only water posts but I need it to learn. I need it to grow and vent sometimes...

What are "Other Broad Factors" that could be considered in water decision making? AI can be used to help solve "larger and critical problems" in water infrastructure. In my last two water blog posts, I examined and explored what larger and critical problems are. I looked at what these two could mean. I will revise both of these too in subsequent blog posts. However just for today, I would like to talk about; well, basically; I am doing a long form piece on how AI can help in solving larger and critical problems in water infrastructure. And in order to do that, AI needs to know about a few things seasonality - one or two blog posts coming weather - one or two blog posts coming But there are also a lot of other things that water needs to know about. In a nutshell, here they are: Population and Demographics Days of the Week Holidays Environmental Change  Climate Change Water pricing and policies Infrastructure and supply factors (such as leakage) Unusual events (Such a...

Tibetan Buddhism I want to talk about one of the great loves of my life: Tibetan Buddhism. There are many strands of Buddhism. And even within Tibetan Buddhism there are so many strands. But I am absolutely in love with them. I love everything about Tibetan Buddhism. The prayer flags. The chanting. The temples.  The statues. The mantras. The message of pure, divine unconditional love. But of course that message of pure divine unconditional love is not unique to Buddhism or indeed any tradition. It is who we are.  It is what we already are. It is what we are. My journey with Tibetan Buddhism at least as far as I can remember started with a book called Feed Your Demons. My mum got it when I was fourteen. I was recovering from a serious eating disorder; I have never said this before but I had anorexia in my teens - really serious life threatening anorexia - and recovering from that was definitely the start of an awakening. I feel so very lucky to be me. I feel so very privileged....

What Are Examples Of Larger Patterns In Water Infrastructure? As parter of my wider research into water AI, I'm looking at what "wider patterns" in water infrastructure trends represent. Why am I doing this? Well I got really hooked onto this one idea. I got really into: what can AI do to deal with larger and critical patterns in water infrastructure - and how can it be used to influence ensuing decisions. So as part of this I wish to explore - what is a larger pattern in water infrastructure - thank you so much. Larger Patterns And larger patterns could include: Trends over certain geographical areas Trends over periods of time And  consistent changes Going into more detail on about these patterns  I love Geography. I absolutely love Geography. It was one of my first great loves. Indeed when I was in high school I had a teacher who tutored me privately every day for a week for free for me to help me to pass my final Geography exam as I was struggling with my own teacher ...

What Are Critical Patterns In Water? So sometimes in water usage we may see more critical or larger changes in overall consumption. I love this - this fascinates me. This is such a large part of what I am fascinated about in water tech. I like large scale things. Critical Patterns So what are these larger or more critical patterns in water consumption? Well, critical patterns could include (for larger patterns, please see the next blog post): Stress on the water system Potential emergencies More specific examples of critical patterns Some more specific examples of critical water patterns could be A sudden drop in reservoir levels WOW! This is so FASCINATING! I love love love reservoirs - WOW! WOW! If a reservoir level declines rapidly, it may indicate unexpected water loss or extreme drought conditions An unexpected spike in consumption A sudden increase in consumption in a specific area Could indicate one of the following Major event Leak  Unauthorised usage... A sudden drop in pr...

Self-Study Day: Understanding Some of AWS's Tools, Part 2 Okay, I have to admit that I got pretty tired and overwhelmed just from all the reading. But I wanted to get a bit more done before the end of today. So I decided to break it down into a smaller blog post and into smaller pieces. Last two remaining tools: kinesis and authentication Kinesis Kinsesis data streams is a REAL-TIME DATA STREAMING SERVICE Data producers send data to kinesis to stream WOW, THIS IS CRAZY, WOW WOW, NOW WE ARE TALKING, WOW WOW, THIS IS SO IN LINE WITH MY AI WATER RESEARCH, WOW DATA FIREHOSE Data firehose is a service for delivering streaming data to storage. To places like s3... Authentication Ah no worries. This is not something I actually need to learn.  This is just about explaining how the company handles authentication to AWS internally. Which, A) I already know how to do and B) I would never post about on here. It just explains a lot more about the types of different roles that a different AWS us...

Self-Study Day: Understanding Some of AWS's Tool, Part 1 Have been learning about some different services and what they do. Please note some of this stuff I do know and I have worked with some of this stuff for ages anyway. But I still love to learn anew because learning things through fresh perspectives really helps me to learn things and to consolidate things. As always this is extremely vague and just my impressions about services and what they do. Thank you What is AWS? AWS as we all know is a cloud computing platform right? It can include object storage services (S3), relational databases (RDS), computing (EC2) (whatever on earth that means, lol), database replication (DMS), IAM (identity and access manager), Secrets Manager, and many many more. The training then talks about different types of AWS accounts which is so helpful as it explains so much that I had heard about but never fully understood before. It's still quite confusing but at least now I have some context. I d...

Self-Study Day: Introduction to Data Platforms Hey! So today I have a study day (with permission). While I have spent some time this morning tweaking some CSS for my current work project as I was HOOKED, I finally made it onto the actual self-study. I am going to be doing a data platform engineering course. Obviously all work stuff is completely confidential. But anything generic I learn then this blog post will as always be my learning tool. Thanks. Okay here we go. I'm also going on a working trip to Leeds tonight so it's intense but fabulously awesome and fun. I can't wait to do fun stuff up in Yorkshire at the weekend. And then to work from Leeds for a week. A change is as good as a rest. Got lots of exciting stuff planned in London over the next few weeks too. And now that my room is finally tidy after a year... I can dance in it again.  And it is the best. But I'm really longing for more water tech reaserch. Need to try and fit if into my life. What is a data plat...

Missing Home Now there’s some space in my life I can finally admit it. I miss home so so much. I miss mainland Europe and I miss Luxembourg and most of all I just miss the forests and I miss the trees. When you arrive at the top of the massive hill that I live on, there’s a moment when you can see a certain selection of trees in the distance. And it’s just so beautiful. I love it so much. I can feel so much love coming from the forests and the trees. And I never feel happier than when I am running around, roaming wild and free in nature. During Covid, I was back home and due to how wild and remote it is there was no restriction on how much I could go outside - only my masters degree was stopping me. I have seen so many things. I have seen the golden light on the Secret Cliffs at sunset. I have seen a deer climbing up a hill vertically. I love deer. They are my favourite animal. I love it when they show up somewhere it makes me so happy. Everything I do I do it for the earth.  That’...

Revisiting Predictive Maintenance: Strengths of Predictive AI in Water Networks What are the benefits of using predictive approaches in water maintenance? What can applying AI algorithms to water data help to achieve? What are the mistakes that can be avoided for predictive maintenance in water networks? Let's look at these. Benefits of Predictive Maintenance Predictive maintenance can be used to maximise system uptimes - this means the amount of time that the network, the area of the network or the specific piece of equipment is working, as opposed to its "downtime", when it is out of order or in repair. Depending on what the equipment is this can affect the whole network, perhaps even blocking it. Another benefit is "leveraging the service life" of each of these pieces of equipment. It's a "if it's not broke, don't fix it" kind of thing. Think of it as like, not repairing something before it needs to be.  Like imagine your phone. Say some...

Peace Nothing is worth more than peace. It is the most precious and valuable thing in the world. As such I am simplifying my life. There are some things I can’t not do. I can’t not dance. And I see no reason why not to. As I am clearing up my room I should have a lot more room to dance at home in a peaceful space so that should help. I am getting rid of as many possessions as possible. Really really just trying to stick to the minimum. This is the only way I can keep a space tidy is by having the minimum number possible of objects. Kyoto Gardens, Holland Park