energy
Tracing Power Lines with the Pylon Appreciation Society
Pylons
Not all the towers along a transmission line are identical. Look closely at a tower where the line makes a sharp turn and you will likely find it is wider and beefier than other towers along the route. The added strength and weight are needed to resist the unbalanced pull of the conductors, which might overturn an ordinary tower. These special towers are called deviation or angle towers.
The transmission-line tower everybody knows is an Erector Set latticework of steel girders and diagonal braces. The techniques for designing and building these towers are the same ones used in constructing steel bridge trusses or crane booms. The individual pieces can be made cheaply from rolled steel and then bolted together on the site. This last point is more important than it might seem: transporting a fully assembled tower 100 feet tall is an awkward and expensive business.
A haunting, syncopated music
"Rappers" on the roof of the electrostatic precipitator knock the accumulated dust free, letting it fall into the storage hopper. Each rapper is the size and shape of a baseball bat. Inside is an electromagnet that pulls a steel plunger upward, then allows it to fall again, producing a sharp knock. The rappers are energized at seemingly random intervals, producing a haunting, syncopated music. (The rhythm seemed more modern jazz than rap.)
Safety cut rope axe man
In the first nuclear reactor, constructed by Enrico Fermi in 1942 under the bleachers of the University of Chicago football stadium, the control rods were held up by a manila rope. A man with an axe was told to cut the rope if the reactor got out of hand. This "safety cut rope axe man" is supposedly the origin of the term SCRAM for an emergency shutdown procedure.
Color coding
Telephone wires erupt in a multicolor cascade in a ground-level, pedestal-type splice case on a city street.
Dividing the set of 10 colors into two contrasting groups of 5 allows for exactly 25 combinations with one color from each group; thus, each pair in a bundle can be uniquely colored. A similar color code is applied to the ribbons that bind together all the pairs in a bundle, and to those of the superbundles. The result is highly festive! A specific wire might be identified as the blue-red conductor within the orange-black bundle within the brown-yellow superbundle.
In Defense of a Fussy Website
Fussy breakfasts
The other day I was doom-scrolling twitter, and I saw a delightful article titled “The Case for Fussy Breakfasts.” I love food and especially breakfast, and since the pandemic hit I’ve been using my breaks in between meetings (or sometimes on meetings, shh) to make a full bacon, poached egg, vegetable plate, so I really got into the article. This small joy of creating a bit of space for myself for the most important meal of the day has been meaningful to me — while everything else feels out of control, indulging in some ceremony has done a tiny part to offset the intensity of our collective situation.
It caused me to think of this “fussiness” as applied to other inconsequential joys. A walk. A bath. What about programming?
While we’re all laser-focused on shipping the newest feature with the hottest software and the best Lighthouse scores, I’ve been missing a bit of the joy on the web. Apps are currently conveying little care for UX, guidance, richness, and — well, for humans trying to communicate through a computer, we’re certainly bending a lot to… the computer.
Eggs, Easter and poached
When a site is done with care and excitement you can tell. You feel it as you visit, the hum of intention. The craft, the cohesiveness, the attention to detail is obvious. And in turn, you meet them halfway. These are the sites with the low bounce rates, the best engagement metrics, the ones where they get questions like “can I contribute?” No gimmicks needed.
What if you don’t have the time? Of course, we all have to get things over the line. Perhaps a challenge: what small thing can you incorporate that someone might notice? Can you start with a single detail? I didn’t start with a poached egg in my breakfast, one day I made a goofy scrambled one. It went on from there. Can you challenge yourself to learn one small new technique? Can you outsource one graphic? Can you introduce a tiny easter egg? Say something just a little differently from the typical corporate lingo?