Hi! My name is Nikolas Gazo and I am the creator of this site. You could think of me as the Emperor penguin with respect to this site.
Before getting into my background, the name of the site comes from an experience I had when I was about 5 years old. It must have been around Halloween as I was dressed up in a penguin costume. From the photo, it seems I was very upset to be the only one (of my siblings) dressed up.
One could say that I was an angry penguin that day. Nothing too elaborate, but something unique to me, so I like it.
I grew up in southwestern Ontario in the 90’s/00’s. Being in a rural locale, I was outdoors a lot and fairly active; I fished a lot. I played soccer and hockey (like a good Canadian kid) for most of my life. I was decent, but never good enough to go anywhere. Luckily, in high school I had an affinity for the Sciences, specifically Physics. Once I realized the dream of playing in the NHL was a very low probability, I decided I should try to get into university.
In 2010, I started at McMaster University in Physical Sciences with a specialization in Astrophysics. There were two main reasons I decided to study Astrophysics: first, I liked Physics and was decent at it, and second, in the year I was applying, the two films 2012 and Knowing were released, and in both movies the protagonists were Astrophysicists. So, I thought, “Hey, the Astrophysicists save the day, I should try and do the same schooling!”. And so, I applied to McMaster (and to York, for film, but that is another story) and luckily got in!
I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Mac across the board and would gladly go back and do it all over again. Although, while there I realized that the Astrophysics life was not the life for me! I had a second-year electromagnetism course where we learned about Faraday’s law and then looked at its repercussions in a lab with an experiment on EM induction; I was hooked! I looked into it more and realized I would be more suited for the field of Geophysics, specifically using electromagnetic induction to image the subsurface.
So, I went north to Sudbury, to complete a Thesis-based Master’s at Laurentian University. My thesis looked at the possibility of detecting the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signal from freshwater using a system similar to what an airborne EM system would look like. The thesis can be found HERE
I had a great time in Sudbury and was lucky to study under the supervision of Dr. Richard Smith. He is a legend in EM Geophysics, and I was extremely fortunate to study under him.
After finishing my MSc., I joined an airborne geophysics company, but for a mere 7 months. I liked the work, but had a serious case of FOMO. So, I decided to shift gears, and work on my own personal horse racing project, which has morphed into a substantial project and dataset.
In the meantime, I work at Scotiabank as a Developer in their Group Treasury Analytics group. I am fortunate to work with great people and am able to use Python and various other data analytics tools. I will continue to work on various data analysis and web development techniques to better my skills overall. That was the impetus for the development of this site; getting my work out into the aether and also help myself develop some much-needed web development skills.