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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026

I’ve since completed my weekly 25% water change, measured from a 9.25 cm drop in water level, with an estimated uncertainty of 1 percentage point. The model predicts approximately 7.6 ppm nitrate afterwards. At these concentrations, nitrate isn’t a particular concern. I’m more interested in […]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026

The updated estimates are: • Tank: 9.06 ppm • Tap: 3.11 ppm • Net accumulation: 2.11 ppm/week It’s that last figure I’m particularly interested in from a husbandry perspective. With 10 panda corydoras, 7 platies, 2 honey gourami and an increasing number of plants, I’m interested in the […]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026

The filter assigned predictive probabilities of 17% (tank) and 10.6% (tap) to today’s colour-chart readings: 2.56 and 3.24 bits of surprisal. The GADF is useful here because the tests are categorical and uncertain, while nitrate levels change between tests. It […] [Original post on colquitt.xyz]

Time-series graph of an aquarium nitrate model from 2–10 October 2026. Blue line shows estimated nitrate concentration (ppm), rising from approximately 4 to 11.5 ppm before falling to 9.1 ppm following new measurements and then 7.6 ppm after a 25% water change.

Green line shows estimated net nitrate accumulation (ppm/week), initially around 2.3, increasing to 3.1 before falling to 2.1.

Shaded regions show the 95% uncertainty intervals for both estimates. The nitrate uncertainty widens between measurements and contracts when new observations are assimilated.

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026

Well, that was unexpected. Today’s #aquarium nitrate tests returned 5 ppm for the tank and 1 ppm for the tap. Both considerably lower than my Gaussian assumed-density filter (GADF) was predicting. The previous measurements had pushed the estimates upwards. Today’s results have pulled them back […]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

One of the better perks of being Head of #Mathematics: occasionally I get to sit at the back and simply enjoy some very good #maths. This afternoon: Richard Thomas FRS giving the 2026 Terry Wall Lecture on enumerative algebraic geometry and string theory. A […] [Original post on colquitt.xyz]

View from the back of a packed lecture theatre during the 2026 Terry Wall Lecture at the University of Liverpool. The speaker stands at the front beneath two large projected screens showing an example from algebraic geometry: a degree-four polynomial in two variables and a sketch of a genus-3 surface. Audience members are seated in the foreground.

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026

A few days on, the aquarium GADF has now seen its second set of nitrate measurements. I have also added some diagnostics to answer two slightly different questions: 1. How plausible was the measurement before the filter saw it? 2. How much did it change what […] [Original post on colquitt.xyz]

Home Assistant dashboard showing diagnostics from the second set of measurements processed by the aquarium nitrate Gaussian assumed-density filter on 6 October 2026. For the tank test, the observed swatch had predictive probability 47.49%, surprisal 1.07 bits and ranked probability score 0.28; the observation reduced nitrate variance by 33.53% and net-accumulation-rate variance by 25.05%. For the tap-water test, predictive probability was 28.08%, surprisal 1.83 bits and RPS 0.35; tap-water nitrate variance was reduced by 34.40%.

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

I have, perhaps inevitably, built a Gaussian assumed-density filter (GADF) to estimate nitrate in my #Aquarium. I initially thought of it as a #KalmanFilter, but parts of the physical and measurement model are non-Gaussian, so GADF is the more accurate […] [Original post on colquitt.xyz]

Home Assistant dashboard showing the aquarium nitrate model over 2–4 October 2026. The blue curve is estimated nitrate concentration with a shaded 95% uncertainty interval; the green curve is estimated net nitrate accumulation rate with its 95% interval. The current summary reports nitrate 7.90 ± 1.74 ppm, net accumulation 2.29 ± 1.32 ppm/week, and tap-water nitrate 4.28 ± 1.51 ppm. The filter has only been running for a few days, so the estimates and uncertainty are still settling.

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026

📢 We’re recruiting two Postdoctoral Fellows in Statistical Ocean Acoustics at Liverpool University. :seas: Work with us on uncertainty and variability in ocean acoustics, spanning mathematical/physical modelling, statistics, signal processing & data-driven methods. 📅 Closing: 29 Oct 2026 🇬🇧 UK […]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026

I’ve spent a slightly unreasonable amount of time looking into the engineering behind The Seas :seas: at EPCOT :SpaceshipEarth: — a near-perfect intersection of my fishkeeping hobby 🐠 and Disney :MickeyHead: obsession. The backstage story is fascinating: 23 million litres of artificial seawater […]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 20/09/2026

Sunday maintenance on The Seas :seas: Aquarium is complete. NH₃/NO₂ undetectable, NO₃ 4 ppm, pH 7.4, KH 3° and GH 11°. Water temperature averaged 22.9°C over 24 hours. #HomeAssistant tracks water parameters, temperature, heater energy and maintenance […] [Original post on colquitt.xyz]

Home Assistant dashboard for a 125-litre aquarium. Water temperature is 22.6°C, nitrate is 4 ppm, and the estimated nitrate accumulation rate is −1.02 ppm/week. A five-day graph shows aquarium and room temperatures alongside heater energy consumption.

Aquarium water test results displayed in Home Assistant: nitrate 4 ppm, nitrite 0 ppm, ammonia 0 ppm, general hardness (GH) 11°dH, carbonate hardness (KH) 3°dH, and pH 7.4.

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 17/09/2026

A strange thing happened today. I wrote a to-do list this morning and, by the end of the day, had ticked everything off. My inbox is also empty. I’m not entirely sure what to do with myself. Presumably I’ve forgotten something important.

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

Finished The Trials of Empire. 5★. Epic in scale and themes, but still grounded in the people caught up in them. I especially liked that the ending dealt with the rather less glamorous business of what happens after the world has been saved: institutions, consequences, compromises, and […]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

@pozorvlak nope, that’s pretty much my reading too.

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Pozorvlak @pozorvlak.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

As far as I can tell, the Navier-Stokes regularity problem has now been resolved in the most annoying way possible: - we have a single counterexample, not a general theorem; - we have no real idea how it was found, but it seems to have been existing ideas and a lot of elbow grease; - this makes […]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 01/09/2026

Is docker.elastic.co down for everyone else, or is it just me? #selfhosting #mastoadmin

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026

The move involved new substrate, replanting everything, transferring the livestock & existing hardscape, & a fair amount of buckets, sand & wet towels. Happily, everything survived & the water settled quickly. Most of the livestock is still hiding & settling […] [Original post on colquitt.xyz]

A newly set-up Fluval Roma 125 freshwater aquarium with a black background and dark sand substrate. Dense green plants and a large piece of wood form the main feature on the right, with a smaller rock-and-plant arrangement on the left and an open swimming area through the centre. A column of fine bubbles rises on the left. Most of the fish and shrimp are hidden among the plants while they settle in. In the foreground, black airline tubing has been arranged into a subtle Mickey Mouse head silhouette as a hidden Disney detail.

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026

Returned from #WaltDisneyWorld and, apparently deciding the best way to beat the #Disney blues was with a completely unnecessary amount of work, immediately upgraded and moved the aquarium. I started fishkeeping with a biOrb, then moved on to a Superfish Quadro. This feels like my first […]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 23/08/2026

Finished The Tyranny of Faith. Even better than The Justice of Kings: darker, more intense and relentlessly compelling. I could see where the ending was going, but it still worked. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Diving straight into The Trials of Empire. Obviously. #Bookstodon #Fantasy […]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 23/08/2026

Each of us has a dream, a heart's desire. It calls to us. And when we're brave enough to listen, and bold enough to pursue, that dream will lead us on a journey to discover who we're meant to be There’s nothing quite like Happily Ever After ✨ #wdw #Disney #disneyworld :MickeyHeadOutline:

Cinderella’s castle in the magic kingdom immediately before happily ever after

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2026

@Gazimoff fair enough. Everyone has a different risk appetite and the impact on a single user instance is obviously very different to a community instance.

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2026

@Gazimoff out of interest, what are your concerns regarding Hetzner? I’ve run both email MTAs and mastodon (albeit single user instance) on Hetzner without issue.

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 20/08/2026

Taking a brief break from my break: our paper using synthetic ultrasonic data and neural networks to size real thermal-fatigue cracks is out. A collaborative effort across #maths, #engineering, #materials #science, #MachineLearning, & imaging — driven by the […] [Original post on colquitt.xyz]

Graphical abstract showing a workflow for ultrasonic crack sizing. Finite-element simulations generate synthetic pulse-echo data from cracks labelled by height and angle. These data train a one-dimensional convolutional neural network. Applied to an ultrasonic measurement of a crack in a nuclear-plant component, the network estimates the crack’s height and angle.

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 13/08/2026

I think I have fallen in love with #Ansible. Upgrading to the latest version of @Mastodon is now as easy as: ansible-playbook playbooks/30-mastodon-compose.yml -e mastodon_upgrade_apply=true Which I can run from my phone. While on vacation. As I have, of course, just done. #mastoadmin

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 04/08/2026

#TIL you can open the same Word document in two *separate* windows and continue editing the same document with changes synced across both windows without conflicts.

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 02/08/2026

A moderately productive weekend of #DIY: installed an outdoor camera, routed wiring through the loft, replaced a single socket with a double, and spent more time than planned on ladders and crawling through insulation. This expanded into debugging the #HomeAssistant integration, supporting two […]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 31/07/2026

It’s not often that I give up on a book, but I’m 100 pages in and this really isn’t for me. It’s a real shame because I was really looking forward to this one. #bookstodon app.thestorygraph.com/books/d267c28…

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 25/07/2026

I’ve got my eye on a new #aquarium. Does anyone have any experience with #fluval #roma? I am just looking for a tank and light, but it seems that full packages seem to be the best value. I don’t need the filter or heater, so I will probably sell those on. #fishkeeping #fish

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Peter Coles 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @telescoper.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/07/2026

Composition Derived from the Equation y= −ax²+bx−18 with Green, Orange, Violet (Black) – Georges Vantongerloo I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine how this painting is derived from the stated equation […]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 18/07/2026

Tomorrow is my first completely free day in as long as I can remember: no work, no children’s activities, no parties, no travel. Just rest. Possibly silence. At this point, sheer momentum is doing most of the work.

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 11/07/2026

Already a busy weekend: eldest’s #SchoolLeavers Mass and party yesterday; two #dance performances for the youngest today; then #GrassrootsFootball for the eldest and a birthday party for the youngest tomorrow. #ParentLife: running a small logistics company with unreliable clients.

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 07/07/2026

Interesting Liverpool-led project from Juri Smirnov and colleagues using #AI for molecular discovery across #ParticlePhysics, cancer-cell inhibition, and #AntimicrobialScience. The key feature is the closed loop: predictions tested experimentally, results fed back into the next round. AI in the […]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 05/07/2026

Good day, all told. Daughter’s football team won 5–0, which was excellent, but better still they’ve started passing properly and playing actual football. Dangerous stuff. The panda corys have settled in and are patrolling the tank like tiny moustachioed inspectors. Also finished A Darkness […]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 04/07/2026

I *may* have wandered into our local fish store this afternoon. I *may* also have bought more #fish. On an *entirely* unrelated matter, please meet Kung Fu the Panda Cory 🐼. I haven’t had chance to think of suitable punny names for the rest of the school yet […] [Original post on colquitt.xyz]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 03/07/2026

@davidsuculum I might be missing the point of what you’re asking, but Lagrangian and Hamiltonian field theory for continua mechanics is very much a thing.

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Alexander Karn @xankarn.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy · 03/07/2026

Continuing with Norwegian church theme. A quick stop in Borgund. #Norway

800 year-old Norwegian stave church with shingled roof and ornate wood carvings.

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 02/07/2026

Well that was a stupid set of #connections… Puzzle #1117 🟨🟩🟦🟪 🟨🟪🟨🟨 🟨🟨🟩🟨 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟪🟪🟩🟦

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 02/07/2026

The University of Liverpool has launched a call for ten 150th Anniversary Chairs. 🎓 In #Mathematical #Sciences, we read the priority areas broadly. We already work across four of the five: materials, AI/data, health, and clean energy/oceans/maritime — and we’re keen to build further capacity […]

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Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖ @christineburns.mastodon.green.ap.brid.gy · 02/07/2026

Britain is currently running on an electricity generation mix that is over 90% renewables. The amount generated is in fact 112% of demand and the rest is being exported. That means that, were it not for the need to currently keep gas running to provide frequency and voltage stability, the […]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 02/07/2026

On the train to Edinburgh for a meeting of the ICMS Programme Committee. Lots of interesting proposals to discuss. Coffee in hand, which is doing the heavy intellectual lifting at this stage of the journey.

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 01/07/2026

Over three hours of interviews for Marie Skłodowska-Curie doctoral network positions, one paper review, drafting a review article, and reviewing workshop proposals. A busy day, but full of good academic things: interesting people, thoughtful work, and worthwhile projects. I just wish there […]

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Daniel Colquitt @daniel.colquitt.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 30/06/2026

For years my #Mastodon database backup strategy was nightly pg_dumps, which worked perfectly well until I started thinking about all the ways this could fail. Now #PostgreSQL is backed up properly with #Barman: base backups, WAL streaming, retention policies, and off-site storage over WireGuard […]

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