Let the games begin. Today marks the torch lighting and opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, BC. Now, although it is technically winter, this part of the country has seen so little snow. You have to wonder why the climate change deniers still continue to talk conspiracy theories, when all I have to do is see the brown topped mountains where we have previously held the world annual snowfall record. Yes Mt. Baker, practically in my backyard, had a record 1,140 inches of snow fall on it’s peak during the 1998-1999 season. Put your calculator away, that’s not a typo – it was 95 feet! This year, snow needs to be trucked in to Whistler, and the other locations. Well one sport that suffers from no ill effects is speed skating.
Perhaps I’ll see Stephen Colbert practicing for his bid to take all the gold. Seriously, we wouldn’t even be taking part in these events had it not been for his generosity in getting a leg up, and sponsoring the team along with donations from fans. Apollo Ohno may not be favored to take home the gold for Team USA, but always a fan of the local underdog, I’m routing for him. The five-time Olympic medalist, and 2007 Dancing With the Stars champion is back. There are so many taleted athletes in the men’s and women’s speed skating, I just think it will be interesting to watch. I grew up playing hockey, and how could I not, growing up in Boston and watching the likes of Bobby Orr, and Raymond Bourque glide across the ice, and occasionally crushing bones. Go Bruins! Although never as good as this guy, I really enjoyed the sport, and especially the feeling of the cold air and the pungent smell of the ice and sweat in an arena.
Which finally leads us to…
What do you think? Photo or Fake? Is this a clever rendering technique? Think about it, then hit the Read More link if you are on the main blog page. Otherwise, scroll down, when you’ve decided.
Found on the Revit Kid blog… Nearly forgot about this project, it’s been so long in the making. I must say: even us old timers, who vaguely remember the studio experience, will get some enjoyment from this film. I cannot wait for it to begin making the art house rounds. Here’s a teaser.
FILM SYNOPSIS
Archiculture is a feature-length documentary that explores the role that architecture and design play in our daily lives. The film follows five architecture students through their final senior design projects in order to shed light on the critical issues impacting our built environment.
Just so you all don’t think I am all Apple, all the time; I must admit I do have a sweet tooth for Office. It’s perhaps the best thing coming out of the offices in Redmond, and it just keeps getting better. Sure, there are choices out there these days, other competitive, and free software, and some that isn’t even software at all, but a service. None have ever fully done the job compared to Office, even though there are attractive reasons for using all of them. I need not go into my reasons, that would be another, and lengthy post. Maybe some other time.
Just installed the newest version of Office. It’s beta software, running on my laptop with Beta Windows 7. I think you need to be invited to this, but since there is no longer a gag order non-disclosure agreement, I will say this: I like where Office is heading.
Mini Review
Three things:
The interface is much less cluttered looking, which is hard to explain without seeing – image included below.
The ribbon, done right. Colors are easier on the eyes, and fit better with the Windows 7 themes. The text is very readable. No shifting tools, very fast redraw, and context only changes when you double click. Very elegant.
But here’s my favorite part, I counted the number of seconds to launch Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, individually. It’s Fast. *
Time Trials
For a year old laptop, and a Mac running in BootCamp I wasn’t hopeful. Here goes: One… One. That’s it! One second. Well, I am not sure what is happening under the hood, and maybe I don’t want to know.
Voodoo, black magic, or maybe they re-employed Clippy to run a virtual hamster wheel or something. All I know is, this can only help with productivity. Unless or course like me, you also get writers block staring at a blank page. Maybe it’s time to edit the Normal.dot to include some encouraging words.
Road to Recovery
Autodesk, listen up. Future versions of software should be more responsive, load quickly and just work. Revit Architecture 2010 now takes, 1 minute and 5 seconds to launch and manually open a blank project document. AutoCAD Architecture (yes I run both), takes 59 seconds. Word is nearly 60 times faster than either. That is just unacceptable. If I had been writing in Word, I could have typed 45 words in that time. I know, I’m not a pro touch-typist by any stretch, but just the same it would be nice to have a nearly instant clean canvas from which to work in Revit.
We all know that project files, which can be very large in Revit, also take a while to open and parse the database. Any user who has worked with the tool has come to terms with this. It does seem that Revit has taken longer to load with the last successive releases, and it’s hard to justify why. If we could just eek out a little more performance, especially with regards to launch and the Ribbon redraw, life would be great. Just 30 seconds faster, is all I ask. This would be like a small economic stimulus package for all 300,000+ Revit users in the world. Imagine it. We could all get on with economic recovery by saving and estimated 4 hours, per user, per year. If you conservatively assume that a user will launch Revit 2 times per day, 5 days a week, for 48 weeks, you get 240 minutes, or 4 hours, equalling $340 at a billable rate of $85/hour. That’s the equivalent of half the cost of a subscription renewal right there. You could use the money saved to buy a full seat of Office Small Business edition. Getting that time back would be the equivalent of about 24 blog posts like this one… or four more hours a year to be more productive, have more fun, or take up yoga. Makes you think.
I recently purchased Spore Galactic Edition, and yes it’s really a time drain. I had not realized why I like this game until recently. You get to design things parametrically, for fun!?
OK, this is silly, I know. But very addictive. The controls are interesting and so easy to learn to use. If you are unfamiliar, I’ve embedded a link to one of their tutorials on YouTube. Be prepared for silly-tecture. The return to serious posts will be soon, promise.
While updating the look and feel of this site, I inadvertently duplicated some of the posts to the RSS feed. I hope this doesn’t cause too many problems out there. For some reason, all data that I migrated from the old version of the SQL database came in with the wrong dates, even though they appear correct within the structure of the site, the feeds are messed up.
One bonus for those out there who were reluctant to comment, I no longer require user registration. You must have to answer a simple question to avoid the spambots (let’s hope).
25 Years today! Thanks to Shaan Hurley for posting the links to John Walker, a founder of Autodesk back in 1982. The screen shots bring back memories in a kind of chilling way. Now that’s something worth jumping for joy! Speaking of…
Autodesk Founders Picture “Flying Founders”
Do you think we could get a camera large enough to capture the more than 4,000 employees worldwide now working for the company, jumping? Probably not.
No cake today, but I am happily exploring all the new architectural products that were delivered to the door last week. Yummy.
One of the many sights that must be soaked in have you the opportunity, is the Badlands National Park of South Dakota. During the recent 8 day cross-country trip, we all stopped to take a slight detour through this amazing landscape. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the most pleasant day so the brilliant colors typically shown off by the sun are not evident in these photos. It was grand nonetheless. There’s a boardwalk that is partly ADA accessible, except in a few spots. Now that’s a lot of stairs.
Speaking of stairs, there’s a feature improvement that may have been missed by many AutoCAD Architecture (ADT) users, beginning in the 2007 version. Stairs can now wrap over themselves in a single object. Yes, even spiral stairs can be more than 360 degrees around. So go ahead and experiment. Just don’t try to add railings in anything but a plan view, as the location is slightly unpredictable in a 3D view. See… it can be done. ->
The distance from our old home in Rhode Island to the new house in Washington when typed into Google Maps. We decided early in 2007 to start off the new year with a new home in the Pacific Northwest. Although I love New England dearly and have lived in various corners of it for over 33 years, and except for a short 4 years living in Charlotte, I have often dreamed of far away places. I do still consider myself a Bostonian, and I won’t lose my allegiance to the Red Sox and Bruins. However, my wife Elizabeth is from Seattle and we decided to live closer to her familiy and old freinds. Since I travel for my work – it’s wonderful to have a strong support system.
So, here we go… Day number one:
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
Five states in 9 hours, driving just 470 miles – yes the moving van is a bit slow up those Pennsylvania Mountains. We’re looking forward to the Rockies. Sigh. I don’t quite understand how it’s possible. The states do start getting larger as we move west. This evening we stay in DuBois, PA. Oh, and did I mention the Bluegrass Festival here at the hotel? Don’t forget to set your clocks forward tonight – daylight savings time starts early! Awesome music, poor timing. Sleep is such a precious commodity. Tomorrow: South Bend, Indiana.
Did your mother ever tell you to “Turn off those lights if your not using them? You’re wasting Electricity.” Or have you ever played with the light switch to create your own disco club? Hey, it was the seventies… and we didn’t have a dico ball. Well now, those words come back to haunt me like some kind of cursed tiki. Along with age comes wisdom that mother was right. I’m trying to attone for those old sins and here’s one way, share it with all of you.
I first learned about this while reading the latest issue of Wired. Are you aware of the amount of energy you are using right now? Now, not calories–energy that your home or office is consuming, in real time, can be calculated with a product from Lucid Design Group. It’s called the Building Dashboard™. Once sensors are placed in the building, you can see the data in a very simple to understand widget that sits on your computer’s desktop.
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We’ll be watching.
However, my wife Elizabeth is from Seattle and we decided to live closer to her familiy and old freinds. Since I travel for my work – it’s wonderful to have a strong support system.