Tag: excavator

The Build 8, 7 Dec 24

There’s been work on the escape route into Banchory Court. This will be a one lane access road that cuts through the middle of the site. The asphalt and parked car in the background of the photo below are in fact in Banchory Court.

While Surbiton Court is mostly one level and floodable along most of its length, Banchory rises quite quickly to higher ground, even useful for workers on the site, given we’ve now had two flood events in the past month.

This machine was a surprise giant in the elbow of the little road where it exts the site at the base of Parkland building. Working in the distance, flattening once more the piles of ‘fill’ dug from the lower part of the site, it looks much more proportional.

And speaking of flattening piles of dirt, JW and I standing chatting, were seeing that in action. That was a couple of days ago. And here, on Saturday (20 December 2024) there’s more flattening happening …

Looks like overtime but could be the schedule is running behind … too many days lost to rain.

The Build 6, Monday 13 Oc

The past two weeks were dedicated to ripping up concrete house pads and the asphalt drive-ways. An almighty storm about halfway through with a couple of days of rain.

And an ailing steel beast might’ve slowed progress a bit but today everyone is in fine form.

The orange plastic and metal parts are being loaded for taking away …

This photo from inside, through glass. I love that moment of ‘thought’ as the operator lines up its mouthful with the waiting truck.

Then the load needs patting down so the truck’s dust cover can be drawn over.

Never seen this kind of scoop before, have you? Then you know what’s coming!

Make sure you have the sound on so you can imagine how a rock is sieved out from the soil.

The Build 4, Days 11 – 13

Thursday 12 September, day 11 of the build, there were two excavators on site … one that began ripping out concrete in the northern corner to the side of Carinya.

Just visible behind the tree, filling up one of the trucks with chunks and slabs.

The second excavator squated desolate in the upper section apparently suffering a break-down.

The operators here seen washing the great steel animal down, as if thinking they might as well use the down-time for something useful.

A little later they had a repairs truck on site, the doctor coming to see the patient. There can’t have been any resolution because it sat there all through Friday ( day 12) and was left behind when the working machine was carried away at the end of the day by low loader.

Saturday morning it was also taken away.

Leaving just a spare scoop sitting by the side of the access road. And that was that for the week.

The Build, Days 8-10

This first part of the week was entirely taken up with further demolishing of the structures on the site and trucking them away …

Here the final duplex has been taken down .

In the foreground a pile of metals, another to the right. Seeing the fine-grained sorting of metal from rubble by the excavator arm with a two part scoop on the end serving as a hand, was totally impressive.

A computer gamer said the excavator operator was using it as a ‘skin’ and I suppose operating an actual excavator is probably not very different from operating a digital excavator, except that the ‘real’ operator has the rest of his crew to keep alive, make sure he stays on task, doesn’t break through the sewage pipes if any, etc etc. Meaning that there are real-world consequences.

This operator’s skill, though, makes me think that this job at least will be safe from being automated for a good while … the adult human brain is still very capable of out-thinking the AIs we’re all so worried about.

A reddit dot com/r/singularity discussion nine months ago considered that AIs didn’t yet have the capabilities of most mammals in that though AIs can be very smart on isolated tasks, they have no sustained intelligence the way most animals have.

All work stopped early on Wednesday afternoon as rain was forecast and we indeed had a good downpour.