2020-01-27

Planning & Strategy.

• Love letters to Andy "Train Daddy" Byford, who officially resigned as President of NYC Transit last week. Byford's departure is a huge disappointment; my heart goes out to anyone at the MTA in what will inevitably be another couple years of turmoil before Cuomo is up for reelection.
• In what reads suspiciously like an example of the Peter principle, Boston Dynamics founder and now former CEO Marc Raibert has "been promoted to chairman" as the company transitions to making and selling market ready products. I recommend watching the Adam Savage video at the bottom of the story, as it gives a sense of what it's like to actually unbox a Spot and run it through its first obstacle course.
• Worth revisiting: Chuck Klosterman's 2007 piece arguing that the two people most important to your success are your archenemy (who you hate "so much that you try to keep your hatred secret") and your nemesis (who "if he died, you would attend his funeral and--privately--you might shed a tear over his passing").

Making & Manufacturing.

• A 1000 bed hospital made of prefabricated components began construction in Wuhan; its completion date is one week from today.
• An overview video of the Howick Frama line of semi-portable metal framing component machines, capable of taking a coil of steel up to 1.2 mm thick and 200 mm wide and converting it into whatever steel studs, trusses, and joists your project requires. I saw one of these in person last week, and it's pretty nifty - it's apparently intended to be delivered right to a jobsite and kept busy with CSV cut lists straight from a BIM model.
• A nice, short video of a CNC router making a topo map out of a multi-material wood lamination.

Maintenance, Repair & Operations.

• A pretty awesome set of photos of a 1500 ton press being torn down to have its controls replaced.
• The Wikipedia list of examples of Theseus' ship, which is a concept that really everyone should be aware of.

Distribution & Logistics.

• As a matter of curiosity, I'm trying to find data on the number of machine tools (let's bound the discussion by saying "CNC machine tools," though to be honest I'm also curious about other industrial control systems) that are connected to the internet. On Twitter I got a variety of responses but hard data is proving elusive; if anyone has something that can stand a little light scrutiny I'd love to see it!
• A rather magical set of photos of the Central Social Institution in Prague, which had a set of very tall card catalogs and custom desk/elevators to access them.

Inspection, Testing & Analysis.

• It's cow burps, not cow farts, that release a lot of methane.
• "Since *2014* Paris has reduced car traffic by 22% and reduced nitrogen dioxide emissions by 11%."
• The "Flying banana" train is a specially equipped high speed train that drives around the UK inspecting tracks with a variety of specialized equipment. "On the roof of the train, a non-contact overhead line inspection system from Fraunhofer IPM uses lasers to triangulate the lateral and vertical position of the contact wire. A camera can detect wear in the contact line to within 0.3mm."

Tangents.

• A new LEGO model of the ISS.
• Prior to its acquisition by Oracle, NetSuite had put Billy Beane, the Oakland A's general manager of Moneyball fame, on its board of directors.

A glimmer of hope in NYC transit: The first look at the new R211 open gangway subway cars.