It illustrates the point that it is error to measure a man by his weakness or his works alone...

64 times around the sun is quite an impressive trip...congrats! Tom.

Where's the button that gives me Spidey powers?

Hi everyone, I was out of town for a few days and came home last night to find the Google sneak attack on our forum. I guess it is their's to mess with, but we don't have to take it - thanks to the VERY FINE work of Coen and the moderators. I really like the layout and features. The hard core SU family has spoken!! (Thank you RonS for the PM which alerted me to this disaster) Jim Smith

Another way to say to Google, "I f..t in your general direction"...

Well, First it just came into my mind because we are now indeed here at SketchUcation. On the other hand, there used to be (ahm... still is a "How-to" section in the "Old Forums", too, though it was mainly intended to provide some basic knowledge (however some were obviously useful) I don't know really - especially if the whole community is not interested, there shouldn't be another "useless category" I think. I myself made a few tuts, too (as I also post a lot at the Groups Forum, mostly to help "newbies") so I think tuts can be useful. I'll think about it and we can get back to this.

Great to see you here John! Boy do I love Sydney! My sister lives there and I dream of it often.

Thanks for the feedback Alex. Because of the nature of my day-job, I've always tended to over-emphasise the glints and highlights to produce a persuasive sales visual. I was trying to avoid that polished look here - but the result is (you are dead right) a little muddy and lacking definition. The chosen colour palette may not be helping too. I'll try re-working it a little when I can. The sketch (or in this case collage) before SU was a really interesting exercise for me. The collaging threw up a couple of shapes that I probably wouldn't have thought to draw. I suppose it might be possible to use SU6's photo-match tool to use the collage to texture the model, but I like to get it out of SU as quick as possible, and do the fun stuff in PS and Painter. Your comments were appreciated as usual

Dean, Personally I don't care how many we get - I've just perused the members list, and for this 136, the list couldn't be stronger of heavy hitters and often contributors.. and now that we know Tom looks like father Christmas - why would you want to be anywhere else! poster-Shaun Tennant

I hear what ypu're saying, but in my experience people are reluctant to pay for anything if there is a free alternative. To be fair, this isn't the only sketchup forum. Having said that, why not look into deals with advertising on the forum? Another forum I frequent has various levels of membership, not that it has restricted areas, however if you want to sell anything that is new you have to be registered as a dealer (subscription fee). They also have deals with various companies for advertising on the pages (no pop-ups or silly stuff, info is there but not in your face). Using the same concept could work here and help fund the website / forum. Also wouldn't hurt to upgrade the board software to the latest stuff that is a little more attractive...

I needed that also

My seven-year-old was following Santa this evening, it was all we could do to keep her from going to bed at 7:00 because she was afraid Santa would get here while she was still awake and she wouldn't get any presents. I've been doing a "really bad" job of keeping secrets this year. I hope she figures it out so I don't have to maintain the lie. She figured out the tooth fairy, but she didn't make the leap to Santa. Hope this doesn't confuse anyone. Yes, I know Santa is real .

Well, that only goes to a certain extent (age). After she (or me) are getting way out of the age, no-one is interested any more...

And to think, she is a huge country music star. Wow. I think Jeff's response was priceless

Wow, looks like some interesting times ahead Mike

Wise old saying: "If it sounds too good to be true, IT IS!

Happy birthday Tavi and keep up the good work!

A belated Happy B'day, Tom. Sorry i missed it yesterday.

TBD, that's what we ended up doing. Now people can get to my site. Click that url I posted again then click that first image of mine and you'll see how it works. So glad I got this Yahoo Image Search thing resolved!

That was great, thanks for the link.