A Tale of Two Programming Languages and Tawny Owls

I joined Hayes McKenzie Partnership Ltd. during April 2017
as a placement student to begin recreating a MATLAB programme in Python. Recording
Tawny Owls hoots for my individual project (IP) at the University of
Southampton prepared me surprisingly well for this specific task as I will now
explain�

MATLAB is a licenced software which handles numbers in
matrices very well. Python is a �lower level language� which means the commands
and functions closely resemble the computer processor�s instructions making it
very efficient. It is also open source so it is free to download and use. When
I began studying Acoustical Engineering in 2014, the University had just started
teaching the new students Python rather than MATLAB for these reasons. The
trouble was, when I came to do my IP, all previous work had been done in MATLAB
which made it difficult to build on their work.

For my IP, I set up 15 data loggers in a wood and recorded
several night�s worth of data during which I hoped to detect male Tawny Owls
advertising breeding sites to their partners. Previous student�s work written in
MATLAB enabled me to detect times when the Tawny Owls had been calling. My idea
was to find the position of an owl using the delay between receiving its call
on four loggers. Again, there were already functions available which could
triangulate a source location given four positions and delays. So I went ahead and
learnt MATLAB well enough to use these functions. The project was unsuccessful
in achieving its original aim due to large drift between data loggers, however,
the skills I learnt from the project became invaluable for the placement. I was
now able to import and handle massive data files efficiently and process them in
either language.

My colleagues at HMPL were aware of the well known saying �Too
much coding drives a man insane�, and so gave me different tasks to break up
the day. These included: checking data results, conducting and collating
surveys, visiting a building site and erecting a 12 metre mast with a wind vane and an anemometer on top.

I really enjoy being part of a small team and
have been lucky enough to work closely with the majority of the colleagues. It
is clear that each brings a unique skillset to the company and thankfully I do
too! They are approachable which is very handy on the first few days when one
has many questions. The work is stimulating and I feel like I am being used to
my full potential. For these reasons I believe it is the right place for me to
be and so I asked and was granted a permanent position with the company.

By Aedan Mansfield