A few nice construction project manager discussions images I found:
TED fellow Cesar Harada
Image by cesarharada.com
blog.ted.com/2010/06/fellows_friday.php
From pollution-eating robots to abstract animated films, TED Fellow Cesar Harada is involved in an ocean of projects. He was able to squeeze in this interview with TED, where he talks about architecture, his love of the sea and a special cartoon cat.
What are the most important things you’re working on right now?
The project I’m working on right now is called the "Energy Animal." I had the first iteration when I was working for the British government Renewable Energies Department at the University of Southampton in the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory.
I built a prototype that makes energy from the waves, the wind, and the sun simultaneously. It’s a device that can be working in any type of weather condition, anywhere. It doesn’t necessarily produce a lot of energy, but produces it steadily.
I’m still working very much on the World Environment Action. It’s in coordination with Ushahidi [another TED Fellows project]. Three weeks ago I was in Kenya working on this environmental monitoring software that I’m going to use in the next application.
Since two weeks ago I am a researcher at MIT SENSEable City Lab and I am working on the project I mentioned before called Energy Animal. We’re trying to build devices that make energy while collecting pollution — apprehending pollution as a resource. Originally I was commissioned by MIT to collect the North Pacific Garbage Patch, but I’ve been redirected to work on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, so now I am designing a machine to collect oil. It will use oil as a combustible, as a gasoline fuel to actually move around. The idea is to make autonomous robots that would swarm around and collect garbage or different types of pollution.
I’m designing not one specific device, but a floating open source design "framework" so it can generate many other boats for different applications. It can be used for the oil spill, or the North Pacific Garbage Patch or even for fresh water to purify, for example, the Laguna Venice, where the prototype will be presented for the International Architecture Biennale to represent the MIT SENSEable City Lab.
I am now pushing the lab staff to help me make this robot self-replicating: a robot that can fabricate its own children. Since we are collecting a lot of raw material, the best use we can make of that material is fabricating more robots to accelerate the cleaning. So that means that you make a robot, and if it accumulates energy and raw material, it can build, if you want, a baby -– the same of its own. So it’s very futuristic. That is also why we are not working at solving this precise problem but more for longer-term.
We have problems that are very big, like the North Pacific Garbage Patch, and we never have the money to actually build an entire fleet. So we’d rather build a fleet that builds itself!
How will one device feed off of completely different types of pollution?
What I was saying about "framework" — it’s very much like the evolutionary process. You can’t have a robot that does everything. The idea is that we build a framework, for example from a simple kind of boat, and you can swap organs. So say that you go for the oil spill — you will have some oil combustion chamber. In Venezia you will have some anaerobic digester so it will make energy from gas — methane, propane — from organic waste digestion, and also create fertilizer. And if it’s in the case of the North Pacific Gyre, it will collect the plastic, process some of it, and some will be reused to fabricate more raw materials. So the robots themselves will be made of plastic.
Read more of this interview with Cesar Harada after the jump >>
(Continued)
You have different labs like the "Energy Animal" that make up your overarching project, Open_Sailing. Tell me more about this project.
The purpose of Open_Sailing is to build an International Ocean Station. That’s really the main target. Whatever the intermediary experiments we’re doing, the objective is the International Ocean Station. So if NASA has as a target to explore space, Open_Sailing’s would be to explore the ocean, and to do so, involving probably inventing this new generation of devices.
Open_Sailing has many different applications. For example the Instinctive Architecture could be inhabited human beings. For the Energy Animal, it’s autonomous drones. The Nomadic Ecosystem are moving farms. They are designed for a world even without humans.
ABOVE: Cesar and a Nomadic Ecosystem float prototype
You compare your project to the International Space Station. A lot of expertise, money and time were invested in that. You’ve said you expect to achieve something comparable with a fraction of the resources. Why are you convinced you can succeed?
The first reason is that many, many people have access to the sea, so the testing ground is near us. Secondly, I’d like to actually probably moderate what I said because I said this when I was quite early in the research. And a few days after I wrote these words for the first time, I went to meet Professor Masubuchi in the MIT Center for Ocean Engineering. He happens to also have been the chief welding engineer of NASA for the rocket that went on the moon.
We had a long discussion and I asked him why we don’t have already an International Ocean Station if we already have an International Space Station. And he told me that it’s because the International Ocean Station is much more complicated to make. And that is also why he himself was transferred from NASA to ocean engineering –- because the ocean is the next frontier.
Space is empty, cold, and the gravitational forces are very predictable, depending on where you are in space. You can deploy these very huge solar panels, like 100-meter long solar panels, with almost no support because there is little gravity. It’s mostly empty space, it’s cold and there’s no acidity.
But in the ocean you have the mechanical action of the waves, some of which impact can be tens of tons per square meter. You have salinity, UV, winds, strong currents all the time, and the conditions are changing very, very quickly. In other words the surface of the ocean is very, very difficult. And on the bottom you have extreme high pressures, darkness….
How did you move from architecture to designing ocean structures?
I’m not a qualified architect, I didn’t graduate from architecture. My family is in construction. Most of my uncles are structure engineers in Japan, which is subject to a lot of earthquakes, so since I’m a kid I’ve been building houses and participating in architectural plans for buildings. When I was in Kenya, again, I was construction manager, so I’m not an architect officially but I’m an architect in the fact. Also my father actually is a professor in an architecture school. These 2 last years I was assistant of the Architect Usman Haque, Angel Borrego Cubero and the biochemist Natalie Jeremijenko.
I’ve always been passionate about the ocean. Since I was a kid –- before I could walk — I was a very good baby swimmer [laughs]. Actually the first time I went to the hospital, it was because when I was four years old, I was left alone and I went smashing myself in the waves. I was found on the beach side, my lungs full of sand and my nose cavity full of pebbles. So I had to have my first operation to remove the pebbles out of my nose when I was four.
ABOVE: Cesar on his boat, Vela
And since I’m passionate about sailing and windsurfing … that is also why I’m in MIT, because a few minutes from the office I can sail. So 3 or 4 times a week I am windsurfing and sailing now. I’m really happy here.
Let’s talk about World Environment Action.
World Environment Action is a website that is crowdsourcing environmental data. The idea is that to be getting everybody to participate to create the most reliable and multi-platform service. We are using Ushahidi, which is a crisis reporting system, so people can use their mobile phones, they can send just a simple SMS, MMS, they can make a phone call, or they can go directly on the website w-e-a.org and report an environmental problem.
The idea is very simple. If you are passing in front of some environmental damage, you can just take a picture with your mobile phone and you upload it to the website, and almost in real time –- maybe just a couple of hours after because we have to moderate every post — then you will be able to see this environmental report, amongst a lot of others. So the idea is that everybody can become an environmental activist. You don’t have to be part of an NGO, or you don’t have to be part of a government, or claim that you belong to anybody, you can just actively report and take action against environmental problems.
Ushahidi was started by two TED Fellows. Can you tell us more about that partnership?
The whole TED experience instantly bounded a TED family that one can only be delighted to be part of. I was looking for partners in software development and environmental monitoring, I found Erik Hersman and the Ushahidi project. I was looking for good programmers, I found Jessica Colaco. Together Erik and Jessica are building the iHub in Nairobi, the Kenyan innovation incubator that will soon be the hottest place in mobile application development in East Africa.
ABOVE: Jessica Colaco, Erik Hersman and Cesar Harada: A TED Fellows Coalition
I brought them an ambitious project clearly answering the question TED asked: "What the World Needs Now." The answer: a powerful environmental governance. We are currently looking for partners and contributors for this world-changing project. We can make it happen, together.
Let’s talk about the films you’ve produced.
Films used to be my goal, but now I consider them only a way to share ideas. So I actually studied animation film until I was 23. I made a couple of things but now when I look back at them I feel they are very intimate and poetic.
Maybe three weeks ago I just republished a film that I re-masterized. One is called Arvo Part — it’s a remix of Arvo Pärt, one of my favorite composers, and it’s really abstract. The second is called disponible (available), a roadtrip I made in nature on a boat I fabricated for the purpose of the film.
What cartoon character are you most similar to?
I wish Doraemon! Doraemon is a mechanical cat. He’s such an important character. Basically he’s a big lazy cat and he’s really funny and ingenious. He has a big pocket in front of him like on his belly here, and he always pulls out the craziest gadgets from it. He’s the best product designer in history.
Anything else before we wrap up?
I have to stress that a lot of what I do is very propositional. The International Ocean Station is a very, very big endeavor, and the World Environment Action is the same –- it’s a very ambitious project. What MIT has asked me to solve are global-scale problems.
Look at me, I’m just a little guy, I do my best, I don’t sleep very much already, I don’t know how much I can do for the world, but I have lots of ideas and I try hard. I really consider myself a contributor. Even if in my lifetime none of the stuff that I’m talking about and working on everyday exists before I die, it’s ok. If I can contribute to the fact that it comes into existence one day, for me it’s a very big satisfaction.
Posted by Alana Herro
John T. Milner
Image by Dystopos
JOHN T. MILNER, THE GREAT ENGINEER.
John Turner Milner was born in Pike County, Georgia, September 29, 1826. His father, Willis J. Milner, was a native of Wilkes County, Georgia, and his mother, Elizabeth Milner, nee Turner, was born in Edgecombe County, North Carolina. His grandmother, on his father’s side, was a sister of the Rev. Joshua S. Calloway, who, in his lifetime,
was one of the most eminent Baptist divines of the State of Georgia. The Galloways and Milners of Georgia, and the Turners of North Carolina, were plain, matter-of-fact people, and the subject of this sketch comes honestly by his simple and unpretentious manners. Like most boys of his part of the State, of that day and time, he went to school
and worked on the farm alternately.
He was ten years old when his father moved to Lumpkin County, Georgia, to engage in gold mining. This date records the beginning of his eventful and interesting career. It commenced in the following incident : A little negro boy, a year older than himself, and who had been his playmate from birth, was employed as a laborer in rolling the
earth, containing the precious metal, from a tunnel, or drift, under the mountain, on the Pigeon Roost gold vein. This naturally led to a desire on his part to be similarly engaged, and he was indulged in the privilege of taking a wheel-barrow, suited to his strength, and, joining his playmate, learned his first lessons in mining. Learned them, too, in a far
more practical and valuable way than could have ever been gained from books.
In the interim, from his twelfth to his fifteenth year, his father was engaged in railroad contracting, on an extensive scale, in Georgia, and here again we find the future engineer engaged in all kinds of work rendered necessary in railroad construction, not even refusing to lay his helping hands to anything that required his personal superintendence. He
was everywhere, an active and progressive spirit, and the valuable experience thus attained was of inestimable service to him in the labors of manhood. He attributes his great success in later enterprises to the early-learned value of a day’s labor by the actual observation and personal experiences of his youth. Labor is the source of all wealth, and no one can direct it so well and properly as he who has performed that part himself which he directs others to do.
At the age of seventeen young Milner is again found in the gold mines near Dahlonega, Georgia, laboring in wet and mud from daylight until dark. This is not exaggeration, but a truthful realization. It was impossible for one to have become a practical and skillful miner without complying with such hardships and fulfilling such conditions as fell to his lot.
While engaged in this work one of those incidents which seem to be the premonition of fate, and which, in their effects, have controlled and directed the destinies of many a man, was encountered by this youth. To the uninitiated it is well to state that the gold in placer, or deposit mines, lies usually in streaks along the branches or creeks, sometimes running along the bed of the creek, and again on the one side or the other, often crossing from side to side in a zigzag course. The Pay streak, on the south side of Cane Creek, at the mouth of Pigeon Creek, had given out or been lost, or was covered by alluvium from twenty to forty feet deep. The father had a suspicion, but only a suspicion, where it lay. The practical execution of his theory necessitated a deep excavation, and, besides costing a great deal of money, required much labor. To such an ardent spirit as the subject of our sketch, however, this task appeared very inviting, and no sooner had his father’s idea been made known to him than he set about to attempt its practical attainment. He took four old negroes, who by age were incapacitated for active and hard labor on the farm, and began with their assistance the work of making the excavation. For weeks and months his father watched the progress of the work with patience and hope, earnestly promising himself and his God, as he frequently afterward told his son and his family, that if the undertaking proved a success, " John should go to college." At last the bottom of the excavation was reached and a little hole was scooped out, and a trial with the first pan of earth yielded one dollar, showing that the rich Pay streak had been struck. Without further parley the old negroes were called out of the pit, and the next morning, in fulfillment of the conditional promise, John went to Dahlonega, had two suits of clothes made, and soon left for Athens, the seat of the University of Georgia. It was in June, near the Commencement Exercises of the institution, and he could not be allowed to enter any of the college classes at that season. He did not know the Greek alphabet, but Professor McCoy undertook to prepare him for college, and in August he entered the Freshman class, and, after the second session, stood at the head of his class, where he maintained himself for nearly three years, until failing health forced him to leave college.
While wandering around his father’s home, gloomy, disappointed, and in wretched health, he met the late George H. Hazlehurst, the distinguished civil engineer, then engaged on the Macon & Western Railroad, under the presidency of the late General Daniel Tyler. The. magnetic manner of Mr. Hazlehurst was irresistible, and young Milner
immediately went to work for him, beginning at the bottom, cutting bushes and carrying the chain. His advancement here was rapid, for in less than two years we find him locating, as the principal assistant engineer, the Muscogee Railroad, now a part of the Columbus & Macon Railroad.
[...] In 1842 young Milner drove an ox team across the plains to Oregon and California. Here his knowledge of mining and the use of the pick and shovel, learned in the early days, served him a good part. His education and profession also came into play. He was appointed by General Riley, the then Provisional Governor of California, City- Surveyor of the city of San Jose, the capital of the State.
In 1852 he returned to Georgia, and shortly afterward went to Alabama, and began his career in this State on the Montgomery & West Point Railroad, at Chehaw, in Macon County. He was, at various times, employed on all the railroads of East Alabama. December 30, 1855, he was married to Miss Flora J. Caldwell, daughter of John C. Caldwell, of Greenville, Ala.
In 1858 he was commissioned by Governor Moore, under an act of the legislature, to survey and locate a railroad line, connecting the navigable waters of the Alabama River with those of the Tennessee, with the view of developing the mineral regions of the State. The line upon which the South & North Alabama Railroad was built was selected and
recommended by Mr. Milner. He was elected Chief Engineer of the South & North Alabama Railroad Company November 3, 1858, and continued in this position until the railroad was completed, and placed under the control of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad system October 1, 1872.
Apart from the confidence inspired by Mr. Milner’s earlier record, those who became familiar with his work in this latter enterprise, bear the highest testimony to the industry, integrity, and intelligence brought to bear upon the responsible duties of his high position. As chief engineer and simerintendent of this great company his name must live
in Alabama history.
Retiring from the active management of the South & North Alabama Railroad, after its completion, Mr. Milner began to build up his own fortunes. It seemed that everything he touched prospered and turned into money. The splendid saw-mill interests at Bolling, Alabama, were founded and fostered by him. The great city of Birmingham was projected by him, and before Colonel Powell, Josiah Morris, or any others thought of such a place, he had entered into a written agreement with Mr. R. C. McCalla, as the chief engineer and representative of the managers of the Alabama & Chattanooga Railroad, to buy for their respective companies the land at the crossing of the two roads, with the view of building a great industrial city. The ground selected and actually purchased was in Village Creek Valley, several miles north-west of the present site of Birmingham, and extending from a point near Pratt Mines toward the east. The whole tract embraced about seven thousand acres. This location for the city would have been superior to the present one in many respects, and among other things would have possessed the more convenient water supply. He was thwarted in his purposes by the sudden and unwarranted withdrawal of the managers for the Alabama & Chattanooga people from their written agreement. Instead of continuing the construction of their road to the point already agreed upon, they changed the location of their line, and, as a preliminary step, bought the present site of the city of Birmingham, without any notice whatever to Milner.
Not knowing exactly where Milner would cross their line, with the South & North, they, as a matter of precaution, only took sixty-day options on the purchases they had made. After ordering the change of their line from the Village Creek Valley to the Elyton Valley, there was no other available crossing except where Birmingham now is. When the change of purpose above stated was announced to Milner he felt lonesome and forlorn ; as if he were an iceberg, indeed, alone in the midst of the Atlantic Ocean. He had
been reading and hearing of "Yankee tricks " all his life, but his first experience in that line with the Boston men was enough to make the red blood in his veins curdle and refuse to circulate, and the hair of his head to turn gray. The news of the purchase was brought to him by Baylis E. Grace, in his camp in the middle of the proposed site of the new city, where he and the Alabama & Chattanooga engineers were busily engaged laying off streets, railroad lines, etc. The enormity of the transaction staggered the engineers of both companies, and a written protest against the change, signed by Milner and McCalla, the respective chief engineers and actors in the matter of locating the new city, was sent to Chattanooga. No reply was ever made. There was no alternative for Milner but to be "left out in the cold," or to beat his adversaries. The latter he claims to have done, thoroughly and well.
Surveys were made for crossings at every available point above and below Elyton for miles. No human being, not even his principal assistant engineer, knew his chief’s purposes or plans. The late Colonel Powell, Major Thomas Peters, and others exercised all the ingenuity of their acute minds to ascertain where the crossing of the two railroads would be located. Threats of personal violence were made. The president nor any one of the directors knew any more than an outsider. Throughout the sixty days the little dried-up enigma (Milner was a man of short stature) sat in his tent giving out no intimation or sign. The excitement and uncertainty grew apace ; the sixty-day options were about to expire; the owners of the lands repaired, with their lawyer. Colonel Martin, who held their deeds in escrow, to Montgomery, to complete the transaction and get their money. The fifty-ninth day passed and no funds were at the banking house of Josiah Morris & Company to pay the options. The sixtieth day passed and no funds. Five minutes past noon on the sixtieth day Major Campbell Wallace, now of Atlanta, entered Mr. Milner’s office in Montgomery and threw up his hands, and, with that inimitable smile on his face, and that peculiar manner that has won for him so many victories in life, said: " Milner, I want you to tell me something, if it is right for you to do so, and if it is not right, don’t do it. Where will the crossing be?" The major was told to come back in three days. Three days, the three days of grace allowed in such transactions, passed, ‘and punctually to the minute the major reappeared. He was told that the dropped, or forfeited Stanton options, covered the site of the Great City. In a few hours Josiah Morris had taken up the last one of these options and paid the money on them, and the Boston men were left on an iceberg of their own creation. This transaction fully exemplifies Mr. Milner’s character and capacity. Faithful to the trust confided to him as the engineer of the South & North Alabama Railroad, he had arranged for his company to own half of the great city of the future. Thwarted in this he set about deliberately to compass the defeat of his adversaries. Mild-mannered, gentlemanly, and well balanced, he rarely ever fails in the end to come out even with an adversary.
We see displayed here the elements of character, caution, patience, perseverance, and intelligence, which have placed John T. Milner in the lead among the thinking and successful men of Alabama in the new era.
His later achievement, the development and sale of the Coalburg Coal property, near Birmingham, to the Georgia Pacific Railroad people, in May, 1883, at a profit of over two hundred thousand dollars, is in perfect accord with the features of his past record.
Before effecting the sale of this valuable property, Mr. Milner had already begun the development of his present splendid possessions at New Castle, about nine miles east of the city of Birmingham, and situated on the road which he, as chief engineer, located about a quarter of a century ago. New Castle coal, in addition to the usual good qualities possessed by Alabama coals, will also make splendid coke, an indispensable requisite to pig-iron making. It is not at all unlikely that furnace fires may soon be seen glowing there, enhancing, in a threefold degree, the value of this property.
He is also an owner of valuable property in the city of Birmingham, being a stockholder in the most important land companies here, and being yet remarkably well preserved ; and with his present large accumulations of wealth, and with his known energy and sagacity, it would be not easy to predict what his course in the future may reveal, of fortune or honor.
Mr. Milner, while making no pretensions as a man of letters, writes sensibly, fluently, and even eloquently. His book, " Alabama as It Was, as It Is, and as It Will Be," written soon after the war, sustains appreciably the truth of this view of his attainments.
His newspaper discussion of the Convict Question in Alabama, a few years ago, proves him to be a no mean antagonist in that line of controversy.
Mr. Milner has lived to see the verification of his hopes and predictions respecting the mineral region of the State of Alabama. He entertained these views tenaciously, when other men considered them the creations of a vain fancy.
His home is the seat of perfect domestic felicity, and he is now surrounded by his children and grandchildren, who are to him sources of perennial happiness.
- from Jefferson County and Birmingham Alabama: History and Biographical, edited by John Witherspoon Dubose and published in 1887 by Teeple & Smith / Caldwell Printing Works, Birmingham, Alabama
