When I was in school I had to do some stuff with prolog. I got my wife interested enough that she added some rooms and items to a game like this. Good times!
When traveling by vehicle (pickup truck for me) I've thrown in a 5 gallon cooler of water from home. It was so nice to want to drink water because it was my own good well water that tastes like I'm used to.
When I had to fly to NY for work I felt like I couldn't get water anywhere that was worth drinking.
Where in New York? If NYC, this sounds insane to me, because New York municipal water is objectively speaking among the purest (if not the purest) in the country.
San Francisco tap water is almost as good. It was better before they started mixing reclaimed water into it, though I’ve either gotten used to the new taste or they’ve fixed the treatment process.
I question this as a bad take or a data-point of one, because NYC water is the best of Upstate water.
I’ve travelled and lived across the country during my high school and college years; and I’ve travelled my
extensively within Upstate very (Adirondacks, Catskills, and Finger Lakes) and the taste of local water is the first thing I notice.
Bad building pipes aside, I have not tasted any water that exceeds NYC’s tap water in taste.
I’m not the only person who’s expressed this, and guests from other regions have also admitted the same consistently over the years.
I'm just a homeowner with a decent size piece of land and lots of trees. The ground is glacial till/drumlin, so rocks vary from gravel, to bowling balls and table size boulders.
I have a 7,000 lb excavator and couldn't imagine using smaller for my needs, but there is a right size for everyone!
I'd love it if mine were electric. I don't use it all of the time or all day, but the smoking old diesel is not the part of it that I enjoy.
I have owned a 3.5T mini excavator for over a decade. This class of machine is around 8’ wide and almost 10’ tall. Any bigger any I couldn’t haul it with my pickup truck. I use it regularly on my farm and love it, but it is far too big for many tasks.
Consequently, I recently bought a 1.3T micro excavator. It’s only 36” wide and less than 8’ tall, and even shorter with the canopy off. It opens up a whole new world of jobs that I can do without breaking my back, but it cannot come close to doing the same amount of work as the bigger machine.
Recently, I mucked out a livestock shelter with the micro machine, as my mini could barely reach into the structure without bumping the roof. The micro can drive all around in the structure; however, it can barely reach high enough to dump its bucket into the dump trailer. As a result, the small machine made a big pile outside the structure, then the big machine loaded it into the trailer.
Each machine did its portion of the work at least twice as fast as the other would take. It was a great demonstration of using the right tool for the job.
Would it be feasible to have micro-excavator drone? It seems like for one in article, a lot of space is used by the human driving it. They could make a smaller one that doesn't have cab and is controlled by remote. That would especially lower the height.
I would not try to convert one of these micro-excavators into a remote piloted unit, for a variety of reasons.
First, these machines are extremely unstable. You can find videos of people getting thrown off these micro-machines or laying them on their side. While removing the human operator would lower the center of gravity slightly, I would not expect that to be enough to change the equation.
Second, operating the machine involves sensing force feedback from the machine as it encounters resistance. I am not sure how that feedback could be translated to a remote operator. The operator seat also gives the best vantage point for seeing where you're driving, swinging the arm, and using the bucket/attachment.
Sure, you might be able to upgrade the controls to use solenoids for remote piloting, sensors on the hydraulics to send force feedback to your controller joysticks, and add a FPV camera system and AR headset that gives roughly the same visual perspective. Those extra systems would likely double or triple the cost of the machine. Even then, I think those solutions would be grossly inferior to the sensory feedback (and overall visceral experience) that you get from sitting on the machine and operating it directly.
For perspective, I spent less than $6K for a brand new machine, a pallet full of attachments (quick connect, two augers, several buckets, rake, and grapple), as well as a variety of performance and convenience upgrades (oil cooler/filter, swing motor cushion valve block, hydraulic thumb, auxiliary valves, and much more). At the end of the day, that is significantly less than the medical costs involved with repairing an intestinal hernia or ruptured disc.
Please, the exceedingly wealthy don’t muck out their own barn.
Where I live a piece of equipment like an excavator is a great investment. It’s a tax write off and it frees up time for you to do other more valuable tasks instead of breaking your back with a shovel for far too long.
Many (most) people will take out a loan to purchase a piece of equipment with the expectation that it will “pay for itself” over it’s service life.
Ah yes, the classic trope of the wealthy farmer, mucking out the barn and then checking the time on his Patek Philippe watch. I bet his pigs only drink Voss water.
Yes, insulation works both ways. My garage is unheated and insulated. If I go out there to work on something in the winter I always compare the temperature outside. On a sunny day it might be pleasant outside and freezing in my garage - so I'll open the door and let it warm up.
Insulation makes the house more resistance to temperature change (relative to the inside and outside).
One thing people forget is the delta is very different in the summer and winter. Lets say your thermostat is on 70 year round. If it is 100 degrees out you only have to cool 30 degrees. When it is 0 F out you have a delta of 70 degrees. So for this scenario, expect to use more energy in the winter.
I've built three houses in the USA. I don't use conduit everywhere, but have always installed some in places where I think I might want something in the future. I've never regretted it.
Most useful was from my attic (not livable space) up in the trusses to my basement utility room. When I convinced a local WISP to use my roof for a back haul and access for the neighborhood it saved them (and me) from running wires all over the outside of my house and was a quick, clean install.
Conduit is common in commercial work here, but almost never in residential.
"It's also why houses typically don't have attics anymore."
As someone who framed houses as a job and designed and built three of my own I disagree with your take on attics.
It is common for houses not to have an attic because builders must build cheap to compete. Attic space can be cheap square footage, but it has to be part of the plan from the beginning and is difficult to make it an option to pick.
You can indeed have an attic with "attic trusses". They are still built out of dimensional lumber and stamped connectors - the bottom chord will be much larger. I've seen them span 36', not sure what the limit is.
On one house, to do a partial attic was only $2000 extra for the trusses. Attics present other problems/expenses too, like additional stairs. (Many plans didn't have a place where extra stairs can be added as an option AND work with the truss layout.
HVAC is another issue. You either end up with a second system for the attic or need to have space in the floor below to run ducts to the attic space. Again, most of your cookie cutter plans didn't leave a space for this. When walking my HVAC guy through my house to plan ducts he asked how much of this closet he could have for ducts. I told him "as much as you need to make it work correctly". From the look on his face you'd think he won the lottery. He replied "no one ever says that!".
Attic spaces require different insulation techniques, they aren't difficult, but cookie cutters don't like different.
I've used attic trusses on 2 of 3 houses. The one where I didn't was because stairs, HVAC and I didn't need more space (full extra height basement, daylight windows - that was enough).
I've been eyeing the R6 mark ii, which is u understand correctly will connect to a computer and present itself as a video device so you don't need any additional software. I only run Linux, so that sounds great!
I haven't pulled the trigger on it, can anyone who owns it confirm or deny this?
