AUGI Survey Says

AUGI has a "curiosity" survey running right now. Visit the site and take a look at the right hand side of the page, scroll down a bit.

The option I need isn't there..."Brochure inside AutoCAD Software Box"... that makes me a bit of an old timer. I first heard about AUGI in the late 90's. I joined a couple years before my first AU and participated in the "Guilds", email based community support network. You sent a question to a guild email address and it got passed on to everyone in the guild and whoever had time, an interest and hopefully the answer responded.

If you are interested in helping AUGI discover how people are finding out about the group, wander over there and check off the one that best fits you.

What Happened??

I couldn't keep up. The month of June and running into July was over the top for me. When I returned from RTC Australasia at the beginning of June there were many distractions preparing for RTC North America. Then the event itself.

The Revit part of it didn't worry me...it was the drumming part! ;)

Steve Shell and his band Shell Shock were nice enough to let me play for four songs! Thanks to the guys and especially Chaz for letting me take a little more life out of his drum heads and sticks! Next time you find yourself in Tuscon be sure to check them out!

The week after RTCUSA left me and the family with one week to prepare for moving house. Our lease was up for renewal and we decided to split the difference between our kid's schools. One advantage of leasing over owning anyway, besides when we moved to California there was no way we were getting into the crazy housing market here.

All that is behind me now so I'm attempting to fall back into routine, not that the life of a consultant is ever really routine. It's kind of like being a keeper (soccer goalie), periods of extreme boredom (looking for work) mixed with periods of terror (having more than one can handle)! With the economy (Aussie's just refer to it as the GFC - Global Financial Crisis) the way it is a little more terror than boredom is a good problem to have!

At least there are many other active bloggers to fill in the gaps when I get too distracted! Others like: (check them out!)

Luke Johnson - What Revit Wants
Jason Grant - Arch in 3D
David Light
The Revit Clinic (Autodesk)
Zach Kron - Buildz
Jay Polding - Revit in Plain English
Phil, Eddy and James - Arch | Tech
Jeffrey Pinheiro - The Revit Kid
Greg Arkin - Revit 3D

Dept. of Spell Chuk - King and Kong

Years ago I was reading a specification for theater rigging equipment. The text describing the necessary chain was written as "proof coil chairs" instead of "proof coil chain".

Another project referred to the Porte Cochere (roof and structure that covers an entrance and driveway in front of a building) as "potty coacher".

Today, reading a BIM modeling guideline, the following line grabbed my "funny bone", regarding modelling primary studs, "All King and Kong studs will be modeled".

Better get busy modelling those Kong Studs!

Methinks "King and Corner studs" is the more likely combo?

Dept. of Workarounds - Inspiration

I saw this picture on There I Fixed It, an amazing collection of odd things and solutions to problems.

It made me think that I should use it as my "mascot" for Dept. of Workarounds.

Dept. of Off Topic - Are You a Target?

Ever feel like you are this guy? I hope not! Thanks to my friend Bruce for making me aware of the image. I found it on Scrape TV, don't know if credit belongs elsewhere.

Dept. of Cool Stairs - Australia Style

Took these while in Sydney...nice stair!

Dept. of Off Topic - Calatrava's Dallas Bridge

Drove by Santiago Calatrava's bridge design in Dallas tonight.

The "hoop" is up.

I didn't try to get closer to see more though. I used Auto Stitch (iPhone app) to build this panorama.

Dept. of Off Topic - Kuwait Sights

I'm currently on my second of two weeks in Kuwait working with ARETAS and their client here. We ventured out a bit on Friday (first day of the weekend here) to see a bit more of the city than the routine of the inside of the car to the office, the office, the car and the hotel each day.

We started out with a stop at The Scientific Center, a museum that features a dinosaur exhibit and IMAX theater among other things. We saw The Fires of Kuwait, a IMAX documentary about putting out the oil field fires that raged after the war. They expected it to take four years or more to put them all out but they ended up getting the job done in just nine months. Pretty impressive!

For me, it's a tie for the coolest (pun intended) techniques they used to put out the fires. A tie between using explosives (C4) in a barrel and the pair of Soviet jet engines used to "blow" the fire out. They mixed water into the stream of air generated by the engines. They created the contraption on the chassis of a tank. Pretty amazing images, you could almost feel the heat from the fires. The velocity and force of the oil spewing from the pipes and the intensity of the fire was incredible. I can only imagine what the teams felt right there. The narrator, Rip Torn, said that they'd sweat out 12 liters of water per shift.

After the movie we walked around a bit and then caught a ride to the Kuwaiti Towers. They are one of the more recognizable landmarks of Kuwait City naturally.

Great views of the city from the observation level at 120 meters (at least that's what the elevation read out when we got to that floor). There is the new Al Hamra 74 story tower rising, nearly topped out, designed by SOM. This is it, but not the interesting twisty side of it though.

Dan and Haitham walking along the path around the Kuwaiti Towers, the SOM building under construction in the distance.

Another twisty tower (Al Tijaria Tower) on the way out of the city heading back to the hotel that was done by KEO. You can just see it in the previous image at the left side.

This is my view from the hotel room, made me a bit nervous about construction noise but there hasn't been much activity while I'm in the room.

I used AutoStitch to create the image above. It's an iPhone app that Phil Read sold me on while riding the ferry back to Manly (when we were in Sydney). He stitched together a nice panorama of the harbor as we left. (used Autostitch to do it)

Dept. of Nice Guys - Aaron Saves the Kitty

Aaron Maller recently joined a new firm (new for him) in Dallas, Texas (The Beck Group). He's one of their Revit/BIM guys now. On a trip to Atlanta this week, for some Revit work there, he discovered a tiny kitten in the elevator shaft when he arrived at the hotel to check in. He lay down on the floor to keep the door open, called the hotel staff and got the kitten out. It was sitting on a piece of metal stud between the car and the door.

Story doesn't end there. He got the hotel staff to watch the kitten while he headed out to find some supplies, food, milk and a pet carrier. He took the Kitten to work and he found it a home with one of the local staff families. Aaron shared his tale on Facebook, that's how I learned about it. He posted a little video of the kitten recovering in his hotel room. Looks like it is doing fine.

Attaboy Aaron!

Off Topic - Retro iPhone Accessory

While using my iPhone as a phone, which I don't really do very much, I accidentally engage Mute or Speaker phone. My cheek apparently is a sufficient source of inspiration for either mode unfortunately. To counter this tendency I end up holding the phone at an angle near my ear which is actually uncomfortable after awhile. Maybe this new product is the solution?

It is available to us via Native Union, from their about page:

...snip...

Product designers with a simple goal
To create simple, robust and chic products that are
functional both at home and in the office.

International business people
We travel all the time and we rely on our mobile phones.
We see ourselves as customers.

Great talkers
We believe in the art of conversation - the most powerful form of communication. We look to enhance this art

...snip...

It reminds me (well the color does) of the phone my parents had and STILL have in their kitchen, a red wall mounted dial phone. I found this picture, it's practically the same phone they have, at Vince's Cavalcade of Phones, proving once again you can find just about anything on the internet!

Off Topic - Pisa

My son just returned from a school trip to Italy, wish I went along! He had a great time and apparently arrived just in time to take his shift holding up the Tower in Pisa.

Welcome home Jake!

Off Topic - Hotel Rooms

I've stayed in a few over the years. Between traveling as a roadie, theater technician, convention services and now consulting I'm not sure I want to know just how many. I'm not an expert on hotel rooms or what most people expect from them but I do know what I like. I'm not after extravagance. My typical choice is Hampton Inn or Hilton Garden Inn or Courtyard Inn by Marriott. They are consistent, have a meal in the morning, free internet and almost always reasonably fresh/new. Two things will ruin a hotel stay faster than anything for me, the shower and the bed. If I can't sleep or have a nice shower in the morning it's hard to get going. Why this post now?

The night before, in the Boston area (Lexington to be exact), I stayed at a hotel called Aloft by Starwood.

It's a new hotel that features interesting design elements giving it an upscale feel at a mid-range price. Overall I liked the hotel but for some reason this one poked at me repeatedly causing me to think harder about it and its design.

To start with, take the front entrance, two automatic sliders that are offset, from one another, so you have to enter at an angle. The first door slides left from the right side and the second door slides right from the left side. The openings are mirrored from each other but their overall width is aligned and the same. Cool if the angle pointed you at the front desk but it points you toward the lounge. I also would hate to be in a hurry out of the hotel in the event of a fire since I'd be inclined to run out the first slider and head straight into the fixed glass of the second, ouch...my nose!

Once I got to my room the door featured a sliderless key system, just touch the key to the "fob" on the door. At least I don't have to figure out which side of the key to slide. Inside I found the room turned ninety degrees compared with most hotel rooms, the bed facing the exterior wall. The appearance was quite modern and nice. Note the window at the left side of this picture. It is frosted glass and looks into the shower stall.

My focus turned to the windows since I was on the ground floor. I wanted to close the shades which were operated by chains and had aluminum guide tracks at each side. It was a bit hard to reach them and unfortunately the fit and finish was pretty bad. The shades didn't stay in the track and one window's shade wouldn't completely close off the window. For exhibitionists it's no problem I suppose? I ended up climbing up on the desks to try to get them in their tracks again.

I wanted to get my phone charged up. It baffles me when I go to hotel after hotel and find they don't put a convenience outlet near the bed. Most are buried behind a bed or just far enough away that you have to put your phone across the room somewhat. In this case I was intrigued to find what was a great spot for me to plug in except it was filled up with the rooms phone charger and clock. The switches for the reading lights over the beds took up the rest of the space. I saw something underneath that kept me optimistic till I realized that it was a RJ-45 jack and empty slot for something "else". No big deal I suppose, no chance I'd use the phone so I unplugged its charger. I use my phone for my alarm clock anyway so the perfect setup for me is the iPhone ready clock/radios that some hotels are starting to use.

The new light fixtures used in hotels are terrible for a guy in his forties who needs to shave. It is as if the designers are chuckling to themselves, "yeah, let's see him try to shave in this room heh heh!" The "green" "sustainable" lamps just don't put out the color temperature I need to see with my aging eyes. The only rooms that really work for me are the ones that have the magnifying mirror with integral light. I don't need the magnification, just the concentrated light source. I muddled through it here.

The arrangement of stuff in a room is always interesting to me. When you stay in a lot of hotel rooms little stuff starts to pop out at you! The trash bin under the sink was at the end by the sink but the tissue container was at the other end. Plus the bin was right where your left toe wants to be while using the sink. The bin ought to go at the other end methinks. The placement of the refrigerator seems like an after thought, "Oh, nuts we need some place for the refrigerator, ah this'll do!"

Speaking of little stuff. I stayed at an older hotel once that had a small mound of what looked like kitty litter next to the dresser. I noticed it the second night and watched it for the rest of my stay just to see if it would get noticed by the cleaning crew. It lasted for all but the last two days of my stay (two weeks!). I also find it interesting to see when I get a bath mat or not, how many days a tissue box goes unfilled, to see how they rearrange my stuff each day in the bathroom etc. Sometimes they replace the shampoo and soap every day or every other day or not at all. It is also fun to see what cleaning stuff will get left in the room from time to time. A bottle of glass cleaner sat on my sink counter for several days one time. What an intriguing life I lead eh?

Another item, the shower. These cool shower heads that are supposed to rain on us, no thanks. Most just feel like I'm getting rained on instead of taking a shower as it is supposed to be, a nice drenching rain instead! That and reaching the shower controls, it would be nice if we could turn on the shower without getting frigid cold water on us at first.

The room included a large flat screen TV and a remote device to allow you to connect your pc or other video source into it. Shame that it doesn't include a set of cables. I don't travel with a VGA cable though I suppose others do. Not like I had any time to really use it though. If you visit the hotel site you can see some pictures of a typical room, like this one.

As a wrote earlier I liked the hotel and their staff was great. I'd stay there again but it is odd that it provoked so much thought about it and hotel rooms in general. As you were!

Off Topic - Contrast and Boredom

I write this as an escape from the pain of reviewing a document for references to figures...figure 1 to image 1 - check...next figure 2 to image 2...check - "help me" I know I have to finish this...deep breath...

I've been growing less and less fond of the blog format here and recently Blogger starting offering some more template features. I experimented a bit with Revit Inside and Revit Jobs tonight. I went with a stark contrast of a change for Revit Inside and a slightly evolutionary change with Revit Jobs. I'm curious if any of my readers care for one or the other or if they even care.

I like the real contrast between the text and the background of Revit Inside. Usually I find a black background to hard to read text on. This template's choices are surprisingly legible, to me that is.

I also like the contrast and clean order to Revit Jobs. Can you sense my indecision here? It is the only reason I didn't just do one or the other tonight. When I'm waffling...I tend to keep waffling for a bit longer.

Any opinions??

Off Topic - Revit Founder Donates Sculpture - 2007

Stumbled across this while searching for something related to the history of Revit. This from a Technion press release dated June 24, 2007

"Sculpture “Books and The Written Word” Dedicated at Technion
The 4-ton sculpture by Boris Zaborov was donated by the entrepreneur Leonid Raiz"

A giant sculpture, weighing 4 tons, which depicts a book out of which emerge letters in various languages, was dedicated at the Technion last week, in the presence of the donor, Leonid Raiz, his wife Alexandra, the sculptor Boris Zaborov, architects Shaul Kenner and Michael Seltzer, and the heads of the Technion.

The bronze sculpture is 3.80 meters high, 2.60 meters long and half a meter wide. Platinum has been delicately mixed with the bronze, giving it additional color nuances. The architects created a concrete base that connects the sculpture with the ground. The base is made up of two elements – an elliptic element and one that look like a narrow, long shelf. The concrete shelf is 15 meters long. The elliptic base is 10 meters long. The shelf is solid concrete with white pigment while the ellipse has a gray pigment.

Leonid Raiz immigrated to the US from the former Soviet Union in 1980. He developed highly successful computerized software for architectural design that is now used in most architectural offices around the world. In 1997, Leonid Raiz established another company – Revit Technologies – that also develops software for architectural offices.

Off Topic - Fun at #Laboratory

Words don't do this site justice. Greg Demchak shared a link to this tonight and I spent 30 minutes playing with the different experiments there when I was supposed to do something else. The site is called #Laboratory Andre Michelle

Warning, don't go there unless you have a few minutes to spare! This image is from the Unstable Connections experiment.

Off Topic - Unhelpful Help and the Cheeky Devil

Tonight I was working on a PC with only 2 GB of RAM and I started getting warning messages about having too little memory. I saved the file naturally but purposely pushed my luck. I made Revit keep working with less and less RAM until it finally choked, sputtered and gasped..."seeya!". I got the nice message from Autodesk asking me to submit a problem report, like this one.

I knew exactly what was wrong but I was feeling cheeky. I wrote the following (not exactly, I don't remember exactly what I wrote earlier):

Dear Autodesk,

My computer crashed tonight because it was running out of memory. Why don't you provide enough memory for your software. When I bought it I assumed that it had enough memory. You guys make the software after all, can't you put enough memory in when you make it? Please make sure the next time you send me the software that it has enough memory, I'm trying to get my work done and have enough trouble with my own memory.

Thanks!

I'm imagining the poor technical support person that reads the report when it comes in. It probably will be something like this, "Hey Harlan!! Check out this trouble report! This guy thinks that the software comes with its own memory and is complaining that we don't ship enough with Revit, haha!! What a knucklehead! Oh, wait...the email address says it's from Steve Stafford. Definitely a knucklehead! Guess we can toss this one eh?"

I'm sure I'll get a polite formal response letting me know that they appreciate my concerns and will keep it under advisement and thanks for filing my report. "They help us make the product better." What will be unsaid is, "Until guys like you submit cheeky crank support cases." ...as you were!

Off Topic - Blog Alterations

I've made some changes to the places that information is located on the blog. The screencast videos were causing longer page loading and I didn't much care for that. I've added pages to the blog now so that I could move some sidebar overload off the main blog site. Here's what I'm referring to.

I moved these items, listed in the image above, to their own pages. I get a bit more control over what is displayed there and this page doesn't have to carry as much weight. I know a few people liked being able to visit and see the current build number right away...so, sorry about that. It is listed first so you can click that if you like...or save a shortcut for it?

Thanks for reading! Overanout...

Off Topic - Blogging Trivia

As of tonight (on this site) there are:

• RAC - 77 blogs (in English)
• RST - 8 blogs
• RME - 11 blogs
• API - 4 blogs
• BIM - 50 blogs
-------------------------
• Total - 150 (nice clean number eh?)

There are also 39 foreign language (foreign to me) blogs listed here for RAC/RST/RME representing roughly 14 languages.

These are only those I'm aware of. Some started off with a bang and have been more of a whimper since. Others are pretty consistent. I have practically all of them in my reader and each day there are between a half dozen and a dozen new blog posts (some with multiple posts). That's just the Revit blogs I check out.

I find new blogs by checking the Google Analytics stats for this site. I always marvel at how many countries are represented in this report (for the last 30 days). It makes me feel awkward that I can only speak, read and write with one language while so many others seem to manage in my native tongue in addition to their own.

What's a Revit blogger got to do to get Greenland going?? WikiAnswers claims there are 196 countries right now and 192 that are members of the United Nations. Still some more Revit ground to cover eh?

I also find them by visiting the other blogs and checking out their links. It isn't as easy because I'm usually only keeping up with their sites via Google Reader. I don't bother to mention each time I stumble on to another anymore. It was getting too frequent to do so. I also find them by searching for Revit related terms.

If you find one that I'm not already listing just let me know, I'd like to add it on, the more the merrier! It would be cool if more were more active but then it would be that much harder to keep up with it all!!

Overanout!

Off Topic - Twitter Data Comparisons

I've been reading a thread at Linked In (in the BIM Experts group) lately that started out with the premise that people who use/chose Revit only did so because of the influence of Autodesk and that they most likely already used one of their products, namely AutoCAD. The assumption is that if they hadn't been stuck or biased for this selection and had given other applications a fair chance...they'd have chosen something other than Revit. The thread was started by an ArchiCAD proponent and it is the software most represented by other responses, other than Revit. One person supports Bentley's products in the discussion. Technically there are only a handful of respondents and naturally everyone believes they are correct.

I stayed out of the discussion except when the subject of using Remote Desktop Server technology like discussed in the "BIM and the Cloud" article was brought up. It was published at AECBytes and mentioned in an earlier post. It's my opinion that the way it was mentioned, as it relates to Revit, in the thread wasn't accurate. It's my opinion that every aspect of a firm's technology infrastructure stands to benefit from the technology and that it also supports scattered Revit project teams and staff is a win/win.

This evening I was reading the post at the Harvard Business Blog post regarding Twitter and data visualization. I thought I'd use these four Twitter data mining tools to see how Revit and Archicad compare in the Twitterverse. I don't think they are particularly meaningful or even useful, but they make nice images? All four of these examples are hosted at Neoformix. The site title reads, "Discovering and Illustrating Patterns in Data".

This is from Twitter Venn. Use three words to see how they stack up in tweets. ArchiCAD includes the acronym CAD so I'm not sure how much is the complete word or just factoring CAD. I'm not trying to discount the product but the other two words are harder to find used in other common usage. BIM clearly is hotter! The image remind me of a microscope's view of bacteria on a slide and if so clearly BIM is a more active virus.

This one is from Twitter Spectrum. Enter two values and see the related terms found for each keyword. Interesting that NEW is part of the Revit collection and PASSIVE is part of ArchiCAD, though I suspect it isn't passive, as in the opposite of aggressive, rather passive solar energy. I suppose that ArchiCAD proponents might agree that the marketing of the product has been passive considering how quickly Revit has grown in less than half its lifespan.

This one is from TwitArcs. Enter two keywords and see the arcs created by the tweets for each. Clearly Revit wins this comparison though from the few arcs on the other side it appears that they are referring to CAD.

The last two are from Twitter Stream Graphs. These use one keyword and provides the results from the last 1,000 posts. Not sure what to garner from these two though, pretty pictures!

I suppose the title of the blog indicates which side of the fence I fell on? Added this a couple days later. After reading Seth Godin's post, Moving the Line which product has been more successful in the role of "zealot"?

Off Topic - The Guinness Storehouse and Other Musing

While in Dublin, do what a Dubliner would do? While a Dubliner might not go to the Guinness Storehouse routinely a tourist is pretty likely to make the trip. I'd say it's worth it and not just for the free pint at the top of the journey. More on this in a minute.

On the weekend between my assignments there I rode the extent of the light rail system Dublin has, called LUAS. They've got a Red Line that runs roughly West/East and a Green Line that runs North/South. I was staying in the Smithfield area and they have a convenient stop there. The Gaeilege (Irish) name for the stop is Margadh na feirme. I heard it announced by the female computer voice enough that I felt pretty confident saying it (but didn't really have a reason to) by the end of my trip. I also got pretty used to hearing "Stad Eile" (stop, next), except I thought she was staying "stab Ella", painful for Ella!

I enjoyed seeing the countryside from the trains. I suppose someone could reasonably dispute my claim of seeing the countryside since I never really got to the real countryside, beyond Dublin. Next time! If I had more time I would have stopped at a few places along the way. In particular Ranelagh looked interesting from the Green Line train. I spent some time in Tallaght at the far West end of the Red Line. I grabbed some coffee and a croissant and took the opportunity to rest my feet watching a English Premier League game on a REALLY big screen in the central atrium of the shopping center there.

I guess you could say I reconnoitered but didn't have time to look deeper. Both days were practically sunny and warm enough all day that I walked many kilometers in addition to riding the trains. I took this photo from the Guinness Storehouse bar one level below the Gravity Bar, nice blue sky with a puffy clouds. The Gravity Bar was too crowded, for my liking, so I went back downstairs to enjoy my Guinness in peace.

Saturday night I was wiped out and my shoes were screaming. My feet were really angry with me too but I was shocked that the next morning they agreed to do it again! I snapped some photos of various buildings and targeted others while looking at Dublin from atop the Guinness Storehouse. Unfortunately I didn't make it to many of them.

It was ironic that when I started work on Monday that most of the buildings I did visit, unwittingly, were projects that the firm did the engineering for. One particular project was quite expansive and still under construction. It's referred to as Heuston South Quarter. Here's a picture I took while standing on a fire standpipe precariously. The far building on the left is the home of Eircom.

Another photo while standing between buildings looking at the same "Burj al Arab esque" tower feature. Taking the picture I wondered why the ribs don't meet. Apparently they were supposed to.

Another interesting feature is the underside of the building over a elevated courtyard. What is difficult to see is the lighting that is part of the design.

Okay, back to the title of the post. I did visit the Guinness Storehouse. They decided to convert the building into this museum. The building is significant as it is of the architectural style referred to as the "Chicago School" that became prevalent after the Chicago Fire. The site says that it is the first such building in the British Isles, completed in 1904.

Central to the interior renovation is a giant pint glass enclosure comprised of large sheets of glazing carefully intertwined with the existing structure. I didn't know this before arriving and I didn't get it while I was there. It was only after arriving on the sixth floor and seeing the next image that I got it. I'm slow at times, a real duh moment. The image of this exhibit was on the level beneath the Gravity Bar. If you look closely you should see the pint glass metaphor in the center of the complex.

I took this photo looking up into the pint glass before catching an escalator, a couple of which feature an unusual combination of flat sections and sloped sections. It was a little strange to ride "out", then up only to ride "out and over" to the landing. You can just make out the escalator doing this in the right side of the next picture, encased in a veneer of drywall.

While standing to take the next picture I had this overwhelming feeling that I was looking at Wonka's Chocolate Factory entrance. I know it is nothing like it but the gate and buildings made me think of it nonetheless. The Guinness Storehouse is on the left side of the gate.

I enjoyed both the work in Dublin and getting a glimpse of the city. Slattery's (the one at 29 Capel Street, not the other one) made it easy for me to get a great pint or two of Smithwick's, a meal and catch a EPL game. It was a blessing that the weather cleared up for the rest of my stay after just a few days of mushy snow, ice and rain. The weekend was beautiful considering the time of year. Till next time!