I’m The Yard Ramp Guy®

Posted on September 22, 2015September 22, 2015 by McCoy

Well, I’m just pleased as punch to be officially presented as The Yard Ramp Guy. It’s not complicated, but those of you who know of and have been reading me understand that I’m gonna try explaining anyway.

Guy named Jeff Mann called me about a year ago. Said he’d started reading my blog and my Facebook page and my Twitter tweetings. Said he’s the original Yard Ramp Guy but enjoyed my musings and wanted to know if I’d be interested in becoming an official Yard Ramp Guy licensee.

And, yes, I must admit that it cracked me up. Now, I was there when Unser won at Indy (I’m not gonna say which Unser and which year, in order to keep you from thinking me full of formaldehyde). Just being there was like I won the darn race myself, even though I personally drive so below posted speed limits that my Chevy has probably attained consciousness in order to become offended by me.

So, when Jeff contacted me and floated the idea of my becoming a Yard Ramp Guy, it felt like the second thing I’ve ever won.

I said yes…with the following conditions:

1. I can write about whatever I want—yes, the ramp rules but I need to explore everything (just ask Maggie and the kids).

2. No editing or censoring (just ask Maggie and the kids).

Jeff was game with the additional requirement that I put my face on his logo so I am using the licensed trademark correctly. I LOVE that part—which is about the only instance of vanity I’ve ever had (just ask Maggie and the kids).

Jeff and I have been friends ever since.

Why Mr. Mann likes me, I don’t know. I’m just a guy with a fascination for things that work (and a soft spot for things that don’t work). I like inventions and ideas that help advance civilization and culture. And I like to write about them.

Really, though: the ramp is central. It’s not for nothing that this site is called The Ramp Rules. I love the invention of it, the idea behind it, the things that have been constructed with its sheer and fairly simple brilliance. (Click HERE for my Top Five favorite inventions.)

Beyond that, I like the way Jeff and his team conduct business. I like what they call the weaving together of “old-school values with 21st-century technology.” I think The Yard Ramp Guy is proof positive that it’s still possible to conduct yourself as a gentleman and be successful in business.

World needs more of that.

Grading Kinds of Grating

Posted on September 15, 2015September 15, 2015 by McCoy

Everyone knows what bridge grating looks like. It’s seemingly part of everything—from stairs to ladders to ramps to fire escapes to flooring. You know this: the stuff that comes in four-foot by eight-foot panels.

Grating is easy to clean (it doesn't get dirty, really), allows light to permeate a space easily, makes a fantastic drain cover, and weighs relatively little for its strength. It's a pretty basic and essential part of construction.

What most people don't consider, though, is its composition. Not all gratings are made of the usual, default-mode steel. Like all matters involving construction, there are very specific trade-offs that need to be made in choosing your material.

Yes, steel gratings are easily the most common: strong, not too heavy, and not too expensive. There's a lot to be said for sticking to the old classics. You know what you're dealing with.

Aluminum is the next most-common material and is usually present in structures that need to minimize weight. These gratings tend to show up in ships and, on occasion, airplanes.

One of the less common materials for grating is fiberglass. (Actually, fiberglass is reinforced plastic, but let’s not get too picky.) Made through a pultrusion process, fiberglass-reinforced plastic grating (or FRP grating) is non-corrodible, unlike steel or aluminum gratings.

This makes the fiberglass type ideal for environments filled with corrosive chemicals or gases; chemical plants are one obvious setting for them, depending on the plant. Another is geothermal generating stations, which tend to have sulfur and other chemical deposits accumulating on everything.

Material isn't everything, either. You need to choose the joints in the grating with care. Welded joints, the most popular, provide both strength and lightness and are good enough for most projects.

Also to consider: the size of the gaps in the grating. If your inventory features lots of small objects, it might make sense to use a heavier grate with much closer meshing. Tends to keep things from falling through.

(I need to invent a personal, portable grating system that I can use whenever I take my house keys and car keys somewhere. Maggie, of course, would just hand me the colander she uses to drain pasta.)

Kiva Robots: A Bit Like Forklifts

Posted on September 8, 2015February 23, 2021 by McCoy

The Kiva robots are like big, square Roomba robot vacuum cleaners, though they function more like forklifts. They're about 16 inches tall and weigh 320 pounds When a customer orders something on Amazon, a robot is dispatched with orders to retrieve the tall, thin square shelf that the item is on.

The Kivas roll through the Amazon warehouses, carefully guided and controlled by a central computer to avoid collisions. They scoot under shelves, stopping when they reach the programmed location and spin in place to lift the shelf. Then they pilot the whole shelf to a station where a human employee grabs the customer's order. The order then travels through an array of other steps to get to the customer.

Amazon has more than 15,000 of these robots in their warehouses right now, processing a majority of the orders. Establishing a testing a system for a warehouse can take quite a while, sometimes months. Amazon's engineers have to assure that the army of robots on the warehouse floor can move about without running into one another and toppling shelves over left and right, which is no easy task.

They also have to set the system up for prioritizing where to set shelves, in order to minimize retrieval times for the robots.

Surprisingly enough, the Kiva robots haven't resulted in job losses. Instead, the workers move from the picking-and-sorting jobs to train in other positions. In this scenario, when more robots are added, more work is created for the human workers. Seemingly: everybody wins. Plus, as anyone who has ever worked in a warehouse can easily attest, picking is a job tailor-made for robots.

The Lasting Architecture of Vastu Shastra

Posted on September 1, 2015September 1, 2015 by McCoy

Indian architecture has one of the longest histories of any architectural school—or, at least, of any architectural philosophy. It's not like any society really ever stops building for a while, so they all have immensely long architectural histories.

India, however, has an architectural philosophy called Vastu Shastra. Rather than a rigid design philosophy telling you to do this and then do that, it's more a set of guidelines to help with maximizing space, sunlight, and movement within the space, while adding in Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. This all is characterized by square mandalas, which are very distinctive grid-like shapes.

Many of the greatest architectural achievements in human history were designed according to Vastu Shastra. Angkor Wat in Cambodia was designed according to that plan. (Fun fact: the live action version of “The Jungle Book” from the 1960s was partially filmed at Angkor Wat. Great movie.)

One theory holds that they developed Vastu Shastra as far back as 8,000 years ago; many ancient Indian archaeological sites conform to its design principals. It’s been in continual practice ever since, though it was ignored by a lot of architects during the British rule of India. As soon as the British got the boot, though, Vastu Shastra quickly started regaining its popularity.

Part of the reason Vastu Shastra has remained in use for so long is its flexibility. The design matrix allows for adaptation: with new building materials, in more crowded areas, and in non-square spaces. We’ve seen a major resurgence of Vastu Shastra in modern times—among both architects and homeowners in India—and its concepts are spreading all around the world.

Too often, people look at architecture, comment about how exotic it looks, and then just dismiss it as a novelty. People don't build like that, though. There is a philosophy behind every piece of architecture in history.

The Stingless Bee

Posted on August 25, 2015August 25, 2015 by McCoy

I'm not especially knowledgeable about farming. Irrigation? That I know a little bit about. Crops and animal husbandry? Much less. Every now and then, I do run across something really interesting. In this case: the Mayan stingless bee.

The stingless bees, also known as meliponines, are frequently kept in homes as pets. The Central American varieties bred by the Maya are kept in hollow logs with ceramic caps at either end that can be removed to gather honey. They are still kept this way today, in the same way they have been for countless centuries. The hives are often passed down between generations, and it’s common for hives to last 80 years.

They have more uses than just as pets or to make honey. They're also used for religious purposes. Beekeepers would place the hives near certain hallucinogenic flowers, so that the honey made from them kept some of those properties, which were then turned into a sort of honey wine used in ritual practices. I reckon that there's a lot less falling asleep in church there.

Metalworkers also frequently kept bees in Central America in order to use their wax for lost-wax casting. Lost wax casting involves the creation of a wax model, followed by the creation of a mould and then a hollow wax model, after which the model is covered in a more durable material and filled with molten metal. (Yep: I've got a slightly shaky grasp on it.)

Central America isn't the only center of stingless bee cultivation. Brazil and Australia are also involved.

Unfortunately, the cultivation of stingless bees in Central America has been dropping away in favor of Africanized bees (sometime called killer bees, which is actually inaccurate; you're more likely to be hit by lightning than killed by Africanized bees), who produce much larger amounts of honey. One of the major downsides of this is that Africanized bees neglect a number of local flowers, which results in many local plants not getting fertilized.