(WARNING/DISCLAIMER - techniques described here could blind you. I do not recommend that anyone try this. The following is for information only) Laser rangefinders are somewhere between difficult and impossible to use in bright sun. The first thing to do is get red laser enhancement glasses. The red lenses attenuate all but the red wavelengths in light. So your red laser dot will look brighter than all other light with non-red components. But laser dots are quite small and becomes quickly hard to find as distance increases. By attaching my Bosch distance finder to a monocular with a red filter (25A photographic filter) the problem is entirely solved. The only problem is having the laser beam returned to your eye by a shiny surface. Before engaging the laser I use my monocular to scan my target for highly reflective shiny surfaces. Once I am sure the problem does not exist I engage the laser and get a distance reading. Worst case like a mirrored wall, I would have to tape up a paper target. Or just close my eyes just before turning on the laser. From a practical standpoint there is no problem, but accidents do happen so awareness and an abundance of caution are called for. Next I will need to SketchUp a more permanent rig to attach distance meter to monocular.

Thanks, will have a look!

@arcad-uk said: Could solid state drives be an option in you NAS? Not sure how much cooling they need. yes, but I'm not sure if SSD HS's is afforable enough for the size I require.

But I will. Perhaps one day.........

Looks like a much better value than "Mystic Thumbs". I'll download the demo and keep you posted.

Yes, I put up a bad map. The second one is more like the situation. Thanks Marian Csaba, Hungary doesn't need much 'wind' when it has you [image: Pv7W_Wind.jpg]

Thanks for spotting this Pete. It is a pretty impressive/comprehensive bit of kit (and has just got me out of a hole). Regards Sam

I'm working on some painter 12 brushes if anybody wants them: [image: UCFy_1000.3.2352.realblotchywatercolors.jpg] On each of the 6 smaller samples I've overlaid 3 brushstrokes -- the 1st is blue, the 2nd is the base color, and the 3rd is pure white. http://www.spotoarts.com/jason/painter12/Real%20Blotchy%20Watercolor.zip and [image: upZo_1000.3.2354.sumibrushes.jpg] http://www.spotoarts.com/jason/painter12/Sumi-e.zip This will be part of my next video series for VTC... feedback is welcome. Best, Jason.

@mike lucey said: I can't see the opposition ever catching up ..... there must be a good business lesson to be learn in this! Yes, never underestimate the competition! I can remember sweaty Steve Ballmer literally laughing at the the iPhone, iPad and Macbook Air, and since sales of those especially in the states have overtaken all PC sales. The man is a fool, and his company have bombed ever since Gates left. The other probably more important reason is that OSX/iOS is such a good OS. What you can do with the musical side of the iPad already is mindblowing (I like music making stuff too! ). Android only has ONE single decent music-making app. The younger generation (and us oldies too!) are finding that they can be cool at parties, and have the power to be designers in more serious times. It's a very exciting time right now though for both Android and iOS. I don't think Windows Mobile 7 will ever catch up- even if it does one day get more powerful, like Windows did over Mac OSX, mainly due to the hardware, which unfortunately will remain Apple's achilles heel. Lets hope that iOS may be hackable onto these tablets?

had mine for 2 years now (it's the older Belkin version but I will get the new Razor when I build my new system).. I love it. got mine setup for Sketchup, Hexagon, Minecraft...

Does it work as "Stand alone" ?

@solo said: When the large software developers get on board like UBi soft, Valve, EA games, Sierra and Capcom releasing new titles in tablet format, then I will be convinced. I do believe it will happen but not sure when. EA Games: http://www.eamobile.com/iphone-games Capcom: http://www.capcommobile.com/games.php The rest should follow suit soon.

They bought non-voting shares during Apple's hard times in the 1990s, but they already sold those: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/05/apples-stock-rise-could-have-meant-5-billion-for-microsoft.ars

This is a quick summary of the results so far (all with hardware acceleration turned on). Thanks all Operating System, CPU @ GHz, Cores, Graphics card, Shadows ON / Shadows OFF WIndows 7 32 bit, AMD Athlon II X4 620 @ 2.60 GHz, 4 core, ATI Radeon HD 4200, 8 fps / 19 fps Windows 7 32 bit, Intel Core duo E7500 @ 2.93 Ghz, 4 core, Nvidea QuadroFX 380 LP, 22 fps / 34 fps Windows 7 64 bit, Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.30 Ghz, 2 core, Radeon HD 6800 Series , 15 fps / 57 fps So far, all the listed cards benefit (in the region of an order of magnitude faster) from having OpenGL hardware acceleration enabled.

Hope it comes in white.

SketchUp runs on Ubuntu (or other Linux OS) in Wine, and it works only because Wine simulates Windows as much as possible. Because of that, everything is analogue to Windows. You find the SketchUp folder in ~/.wine/dosdevices/c:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 8/ Components: ~/.wine/dosdevices/c:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 8/Components Styles: ~/.wine/dosdevices/c:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 8/Styles Plugins: ~/.wine/dosdevices/c:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 8/Plugins ( ~ is your user profile, .wine is a hidden folder containing a "virtual" Windows environment. It's also called Wine prefix or "Wine bottle", and if several windows programs don't like each other, you can create such a "wine bottle" for each of them.) Note that sketchy styles seem not to work for anyone. In most cases, when an application (1) in Wine wants to communicate with another application (2), you have to install the Windows version of that second application, too. For example: SU7 + Google Earth (windows). But it's possible to use SketchUp (windows) with Gimp (linux version).

@arcad-uk said: I bet "precision" isn't a feature that is ranked near the top? It would be cool to see SU on one of these devices but I don't think my fingers are pointy enough to be accurate. Why not? Can you not use a pen? How about using snap, and then inputting a number representing length? Ala AutoCAD?

I'm only a very part time hardware nerd but graphics cards boggle my mind. Drivers do almost nothing for every other piece of hardware (ok, they're very important but for the most part if your hardware is working your drivers are fine and driver updates only come along every year or so). But with graphics cards, for some reason that's beyond me, which driver you have can matter as much as which card you have. Thank goodness it's not like that with cpu's and every other piece of hardware or I'd go crazy. -Brodie