Content tagged with “construction”

There are 8 item(s) tagged with “construction” on this site.

Other tags used by these items: engineering, design, tech, architecture, infrastructure, rpg, military, buildings, history, business

Bitumen
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
February 24, 2024

“This is another name for what we call ‘asphalt’ in the United States. It’s the very sticky component or petroleum. It occurs naturally. Most of it is used to construction and road-making, but it can be refined to form crude oil. The ‘oil sands’ of Alberta and North Dakota are naturally occuring…”

Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
December 31, 2022

“This book was written by two board game experts, one of which is a professor at the NYU Game Center, which I didn’t even know was a thing. The book breaks down games into patterns – the ‘building blocks’ of the title. It groups them into categories: Game Structure Turn Order and Structure Actions…”

Cement vs. Concrete
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
August 13, 2022

“Cement is the base aggregate. It’s limestone, silica, and some other things. It’s a very fine powder. Cement, when mixed with other things, makes concrete. You mix it with sand, rocks, and water. So, the sidewalk in front of your house is technically concrete , not cement. Cement is just one…”

Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
May 19, 2021

“A magisterial history of the Hoover Dam, all the way from the problems of the late 1800s that it was meant to solve, through the arguments during its planning, to the construction and beyond (in fact, they don’t even start building the dam until halfway through the book). The Hoover Dam was an…”

The Soul of a New Machine
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
October 5, 2019

“Honestly, I just didn’t get it. This book was described in near-mythical terms, but it seemed tedious to me. Maybe I’m just not used to hardware design, or I’m not an engineer anymore – I don’t know what, but the over-arching point of this was lost. There was some philosophy toward the end of…”

To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
May 21, 2024

“This is an interesting book. It’s a collection of essays, really, about engineering, and specifically about engineering failures. I call it a ‘collection’ because there’s no narrative thread to any of it. All the chapters (‘essays’) seemed to be relatively disconnected, and I couldn’t really figure…”