Consulting Work - December and January Schedule

I've been very fortunate over the years to find project delays, postponement or cancellations easy to deal with. This year each of those things have happened at the same time. As such I'm putting it out there that, to use the phrase from the very British TV show "Are You Being Served?", "Mr. Stafford are you free? Why yes I'm Free!"

I'd be pleased to hear about training, implementation, modelling ...anything Revity...that I can help with! Just send me an EMAIL.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. Really hoping this isn't indicative of a cycle returning...

Mr. Revit OpEd at The Whiskey a Go Go

This provides ample distraction from writing as much as I used to. I can hit ALL the THINGS!!

Yes, I've been earnestly playing the drums again. When I moved to California the three piece band (Angry Neighbors) I had been part of for roughly ten years found themselves without a drummer. They've kept themselves busy since, most recently as part of a group they call Harmonic Dirt.

For many years steady travel for work made it impractical for me to be part of a band here. I haven't needed to travel nearly as much for the last couple of years and I realized I could make it work. So far so good.

Last May I joined a band called Parker Street Gypsies. It is led by and features songs written by Michelle Kasajian (vocals/guitar). Armando "Mondo" Lopez (guitar/vocals) contributes songs as well. Add in Charlie Peck (bass guitar) and yours truly to provide the foundation and we make four. We've been rehearsing regularly working toward playing in front of people more often. Our first time out was at the O.C. County Fair.

Our next gig is THIS Saturday, December 2nd at The Whiskey a Go Go.

We open for The Baby's, a favorite 70's band of mine (and many others)!! I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing them as well hoping to meet their drummer Tony Brock. His playing was/is a strong influence on my own approach to the drums. I think my favorite album is Union Jacks but I tend to waffle on favorite anything.

Believe it or not, there are FIVE bands leading up to The Baby's performance Saturday night; they are: Parker Street Gypsies (us), Alinea, Nation of Salvation, Union of Saints, and Kirk Randall & the Back Beat. We play last but just before The Baby's set.

Despite what you may read or hear live music is still out there waiting for you to experience/enjoy. Musicians are still struggling, as ever, to satisfy their muse and play for you/us, no matter how much the business has changed.

If you are in the LA area and looking for something to do on Saturday night we'd love to have your support. The Whiskey is an all-ages club, as well as being a famous venue for music historically.

We love to rock!

P.S. At the recent Autodesk University several of us musician types got together one evening after the primary events had wrapped up. We played some tunes at a local rental studio, some were planned in advance and many others weren't. Some turned out pretty well and others...well it was fun to play...

The AU Band consisted of: Robert Green (guitar,vocals), Guillermo Melantoni-Cortabarria (bass guitar, vocals), Steven Shell (guitar,vocals), Shaun Bryant (vocals), Kate Morrical (vocals), Jim Balding (Cowbell-aka Whiskey bottle) and Kelly Cone (vocals)..oh and me. This is a nice shot of Jim Balding helping Steven Shell play guitar or vice versa.

We didn't have a cowbell so JB made do with a Four Roses whiskey bottle that somebody conveniently emptied so it could be used. This was my second year playing with them, good fun!

January Posts

This is the only one!

My first Revit OpEd blog post was December 2004 (though a pretty useless "Hello World"). At any given moment it doesn't feel like I've been doing this for ten years. That written, after my previous post and the holidays I found myself adrift, not feeling motivated to write at all, nothing, zip, nada. I was now keenly aware of how long I've been doing this and I was too busy to challenge that feeling so I just let it go. I figured it will pass. I'll decide to write stuff again. Besides how long could it last?

Well...all month precisely...

I apparently have NOT lost the will to write entirely. The well still has some water in it, Revit is still annoying enough to write stuff about. I enjoyed the break! (ask me about my new Bourbon problem sometime)

Sorry...there will be more posts.

The Mgmt.

P.S. I've have been editing and posting many Revit JOBS blog posts this month. It's been quite busy this month.

Revit and Satch

The other day I mentioned that I generally include at least a few tracks of Joe Satriani's music in a playlist for walk-in music at conferences. I find his music is particularly conducive to spending hours pecking away at a project and Revit. I've been up late working on something just a little longer so I can hear one more tune.

I generally just let his albums play through without concerning myself about assembling them or any particular tracks into any coherent order. I recently decided to create a Spotify playlist that assembled some of my favorites, a time to crank some Revit list. My short list ended up with 24 tracks spanning 15 albums (2 hours worth of material written over almost 20 years), at least one track from each album.

For the most part they all groove, drive forward without too much quiet time or lulls. There are lots of tracks to choose from for that too but for working...driving, grooving works best for me.

Speaking of driving. When I visit clients in San Diego or Los Angeles that means at least a couple of quality hours in the car (or train) for music. There are some tracks that I've listened to together long enough that they don't sound finished unless they play together no matter the situation.

It's kind of like what radio did with Journey's two hit songs Feeling That Way and Anytime or Jackson Browne's Load Out and Stay. They played them together so often that it's like they are really one song. I think DJ's called that grouping "bathroom breaks", combined they played long enough to let them sneak away without the fear of dead air. In this list I purposely didn't put them next to each other just to see if I could cope.

Check out Satch!

Whadya think?

RTC and my Playlist

I don't recall whose session, or which event, it was that I first heard some music played while we all gathered in the room. I just remember thinking, I LIKE that! I've played music ever since then, before and after my sessions, if it was possible.

I just returned home from speaking at RTC in Melbourne. It was great, even if Melbourne was a bit damp! In keeping with other events, at least one person always asks me about the music I'm playing. I've chosen to use Joe Satriani's music as a prelude for the last couple years. His music is melodic, energetic, and mostly instrumental. I used his new album Unstoppable Momentum for my What's New... session. It features Vinny Colaiuta, one of my favorite drummers, as well as a bunch of other excellent musicians.

I used a shorter playlist for my other session "Grumble, Grumble, Snort". I knew I only had 15 minutes between the end of the previous session and the beginning of mine so I chose Jeff Beck's "Hammerhead" (a tribute to musician Jan Hammer and featuring Australia's own Tal Wilkenfeld on bass), Joe's "Jumpin' In" and "Can't Go Back" and finished with The Tubes "Mr. Hate". I figured we'd start off the session after hearing a "grumpy" sort of tune, to set the mood.

I don't know about you but music is always "on" in my head.

Use Spotify? Here's a LINK to the short Playlist

Or We Could Do That

I read Bob Borson's blog post this morning and it made me think of a something that happened to me years ago.

Timmy and I were busy packing up our truck for yet another theater rigging installation in some other city in yet another state. I grabbed our Ramset gun and started checking our ammo. I saw that we were out of the smallest charges so I told Timmy that we'd need to stop by our local supplier to grab some more. He said he didn't think we'd need it. I replied, "What if we need to use it (Ramset gun) on wood?" He replied, "uh, Steve we could use a hammer?"

Yeah I suppose we could do that!

Post Scraping

I think Revit OpEd is part of a pretty narrow slice of life on the internets. Having that opinion, I find it bewildering how much comment spam it receives. Even more so that there is another blog out there that just scrapes off my stuff here and posts it on their own as their own.

I used to have a link on my list of BIM blogs that pointed to the site, removed it today. Beginning in 2013 it has apparently shifted from writing original work to just using mine. There isn't any older work, copied or original, there now either.

Since the comments are most likely generated by web-bots I imagine this is also true of the blog in question. I'm writing this to see if they scrape this post and add it to their own too. If they do it will prove to me that there isn't an actual person doing the work of creating the replication of my work.

Standards are Unicorns

Pointed to it by Don Rudder (with Case), I read this post titled Programming Sucks on the blog Still Drinking yesterday and loved it, I particularly liked this line:

...The first few weeks of any job are just figuring out how a program works even if you're familiar with every single language, framework, and standard that's involved, because standards are unicorns... (bold is my emphasis)

I can attest to standards are unicorns even in the work I do, let alone programming. I'd be rich if I had a nickel for every time I heard, "Oh, we just use the standard symbol for this".

Another favorite is...

...There's a team at a Google office that hasn't slept in three days. Somewhere there's a database programmer surrounded by empty Mountain Dew bottles whose husband thinks she's dead. And if these people stop, the world burns...

And another, I've not seen this particular approach to WTF, reminds me of my habit of using EyeTee instead of IT.

...You're all up to date, so that's cool, then everything breaks. "Double you tee eff?" you say, and start hunting for the problem...

After reading his essay see if you understand why Revit is different from AutoCAD, and Microstation, and ArchiCAD, and... See if Tom and Harry's feud over units resonates?

I've mentioned it before that Revit and AutoCAD had different biological parents and then Revit got adopted by AutoCAD's parents. Except we need to factor in the world that Still Drinking's author describes.

okay, back to work, here's to hoping those people don't stop and the world doesn't burn!

2014 Revit OpEd

Fun Formulas

Saw this via Twitter. Kirklyn provided an example of practical formulas with Revit. You may not need Revit to make this kind of decision for you but the logic can be applied to other decision making. Do you want a sandwich?

PSA Save the Fluffy Kitten

James Vandezande speaks out against callous violence against fluffy kittens occurring at AEC conferences world wide. Please do your part to stop this madness!

By the way, the movement to abolish the saying of "ATM Machine", whose leader Freddy Latherdon, is jealous of the ground swell of support that opponents of saying "BIM Model" are getting. They hope to get sympathy by using this image, suggesting that saying "ATM Machine" will cause the incoming soda to soak this poor girl.

Getting soaked by that soda will be awful for her but compared to harm coming to a fluffy kitten? Please...

Remember, just don't say "BIM Model", save a kitten.

On Twitter: #fluffykitten
Picture from @MeredithFrost (click the image to see her tweets)

An Apology to Mr. Baldacchino

I've made references to David Baldacchino's blog many times in my own posts here. In a casual conversation (at a very late hour) during the last evening at RTC in Vancouver David mentioned to me that I routinely misspell his name. Shock, shudder, dismay!!! Say it isn't so!

I did some research. I found out David is spelling his name wrong, I'm off the hook.

Okay no not really. I found five posts that mispelled his name Baldachinno (two n's) instead of the correct way Baldacchino. There are a total of twenty posts that refer to him or his blog. So I was wrong about 1/4 of the times I mentioned him. Not good, not terrible...still wrong.

Hey David! I fixed them all!! Well I feel better now!

Sorry David, I'll do better from now on! From now on I'm just going to call you Mr. Do U. Wevit :)

Not Enough Time

My daughter plays soccer, it is one constant that she's stayed focused on since she was old enough to play. Jack, her coach, shared a bit of wisdom with the parents the other night during a team meeting. Now this is biased toward our daughters of course but I see some parallels that work for me too.

168 hours in a week
84 hours for sleep (12 a night, hah usually more like 6 maybe 8)
35 hours in school (for me it's work and probably a bit more than 40)
10 hours of homework (I don't have homework do I?)
7 hours for practice (drums?, or commuting in LA traffic)
5 hours "me time" (never enough me time)

Leaves 27 hours of available time for practice, extra effort

I guess that excuse, "I just don't have time to learn the Revit API" is a lie I keep telling myself?

Cheeky Devil - Support Requests

When Revit crashes it will often generate a dialog prompting you to provide some information about what might have caused the crash and a way to contact you if they need to. In the past I wrote about a cheeky response I used once about the computer I was using not having enough memory. In that post I encouraged Autodesk to put enough RAM into their software so I don't have to worry about it.

I was working with Camtasia the other night and I thought of this cheeky support request.

Dear Autodesk,

I recently purchased a high quality microphone to use with my computer. Now when I open Revit it doesn't acknowledge this microphone at all even though other programs do. Camtasia works great with it. I've checked all the settings I can find but nothing seems to resolve the problem.

Here's the thing, I spent a lot of money for this microphone. I should be able to talk to Revit and tell it what I want it do instead of having to use this silly mouse all the time. If Revit isn't going to recognize it and do what I say then I think you should refund the money I spent on this microphone. The microphone works fine so it isn't fair to return it to the manufacturer.

It's just your software that isn't working properly!!

Is there a service pack, hotfix or patch I can download? If not, please let me know how soon I can expect this to be fixed, thank you!!

CASE Apps Go Pro

CASE is desperate to gain new subscribers, so desperate that they are resorting to easter eggs. Very funny image will greet you if you follow the advice at the end of their post. I was tempted to give it away but decided not to at the last moment, tease...

Radio Buttons

Software developers have a lot of tools to manage how we interact with their handiwork. Radio Buttons are one such tool or concept.

They are NOT named because of their shape or appearance.

The name is derived from the way radio station selection worked on car radios, more consistent with older car radios perhaps than current technology (image found at Web Developer AtlanticBT).

For what it is worth, if you do an image search for "radio button" you won't see anything car or radio related, just a lot of examples of software using this radio button concept. If you search for "car radio button" you'll probably find the image I found above.

When you press a button for your favorite station whatever station was selected gives way to your new selection, only one station can play at a time. The same is true for these so called Radio Buttons in Revit. Whenever you encounter a button like these only one can be selected at a time.

How's that for a little pursuit of trivia?

Personal Revit Milestone

I got an email asking about AutoCAD support the other day which set me thinking. I realized that I have been using Revit for as long as I used AutoCAD day to day. My journey with AutoCAD started in 1994 with R12 on DOS. I stopped seriously using it (ACAD/ADT) in 2003 and switched over to Revit. So that's nine years with AutoCAD and nine with Revit. Technically I was using Revit since 2000, but for this I am not counting the first two years since it wasn't my full time work. Some overlap existed naturally, but I've reached the "tipping point".

Cool Lego Assembly Line

A friend shared a link to this video last night, wow! Double wow!

Revit 2013 Downloads - Please Hold

Open the floodgates. People trying to download 2013 products are overwhelming the resources at Autodesk. A visit to the subscription site now offers this apology.

What's that over there? A bird? (clicking download while you are distracted...) no... I guess not.

Book Jinx

A little off topic today. I'm developing a complex. I've been involved with two books that are no longer getting published. The first book is Mastering Autodesk Revit Structure 2010 (Wiley/Sybex). I did the technical editing for it. The following year (and version of Revit) Wiley chose not to continue publishing it. The sales were too slight to justify the effort and expense unfortunately.

That could mean structural engineers are too smart for it, or just weren't interested in a book, or that the authors, editors and publisher didn't do a good enough job marketing it, or that it just wasn't very good. The authors were no slouches, the material was solid, the publisher has a little bit of experience so it seems to me that the only possible conclusion is me....that I'm a book jinx!

The second book is Introducing Autodesk Revit Architecture 2012 (also Wiley/Sybex). I contributed four chapters to the 2011 and 2012 editions. The sales were too slight for this one too, the 2012 edition (2011 year). Same story as the other book, I've jinxed another book! It did take me longer to "kill" this one though. I wrote the foreword for the 2010 version and then contributed to 2011 and 2012.

If I try to deflect some blame I think Wiley's product offering for Revit Architecture is a bit crowded now. They offer Mastering Autodesk Revit 2013, Autodesk Revit 2013 Essentials and Autodesk Revit Architecture: No Experience Required. I don't see a 2013 version for "No Experience..." yet so I'm not sure there is one right now.

In this case (for Revit Architecture) it may just be that the strongest books survived. Can't deny that the Read/Vandezande/Krygiel team plus their supporting cast of specialty chapters and authors make a pretty formidable product!

Books that "expire" to some degree every 12 months because of new versions of Revit generates a cycle of create/sell that only leaves a very short window to sell before the next one needs to be ready. Frankly I'm amazed that any get published at all.

Feel like living dangerously? Like testing theories? Ask me to help with your book! It might be the best way to stop being an author. ;)

New Revit Family - Solar Light Bulb

Okay, we need a Revit family for this guy's unique solution to lighting!

[Added 3/25/2012] Decided to add the video that Alfredo mentioned in his comment, thanks!