The moon landings had one critical aspect lacking in most of the more recent space projects... ...it was a race! A race with real live all American heroes vs. the dreaded 'commies', in a time when folks still fully expected the eventual winners to plant their flag and begin colonisation a few weeks later, with all kinds of cool 'stuff' like they saw in the movies. And then they just bought back some stones and dust, and some holiday snaps of a big grey rock with dents in it. Hell, it wasn't even made of cheese after all that effort! Sadly, most of Joe public don't give a rodent's posterior about the scientific value of space exploration any more (or science in general)- all they see is geeky people chewing their way through this boring stuff called 'data', and maybe if you're lucky a few pretty false-colour pictures of something incomprehensible. Stick some random people they never met before in a field and get them to slug it out to see who is best at doing something utterly pointless - they'll buy in some beers, and sit there glued to it. I apologise for my cynicism - but, as I see it, unless/until the Chinese catch up enough to lend space exploration an element of competition again, I just don't think it has the 'bread and circuses' appeal to win anything like the public backing that it enjoyed back then. Folks might accidentally miss a celebrity wedding or some such trivial nonsense, and that just wouldn't do! At the very least, the public like to see real people "boldy go" up there, so that they can identify with their trials and tribulations (tribble-ations?) - but that is the most expensive, inefficient and scientifically restrictive way to find out anything of value. I'm not suggesting that it is a worthless thing to do, but when projects are struggling for funding, it just isn't going to happen. Still, I don't really feel as if our generation has 'nothing'. Maybe what we have is less 'visceral' somehow, but I never cease to be fascinated by the incredible things that have been discovered by projects like the Hubble telescope etc. In fact, I kind of like the idea that these incredible far-away things are not sullied by humans going up there to 'sensationalise' and trivialise them - science without the 'soap-opera' aspect. I doubt that the aliens want us out there anyway - at least not until we've learned to behave ourselves in our little play-pen a bit better!

[flash=600,370:3act613h]http://www.youtube.com/v/IwPHy17Iu6E[/flash:3act613h]

I thought this would make a nice little Ruby Challenge, and is now posted over on the Dev Forum.

Yes like this: http://www.360cities.net/london-photo-en.html

@unknownuser said: They just need it in a STL file format, do we have a plugin I can buy for that. And of course, there's TIGs obj exporter to blender. Export the STL from this app. Blender, another swiss army knife.

Thanks very much Bob, actually the issue was resolved overnight, it seems my dad's will had gone missing, but it turned up after a few phone calls. Baz

@richard said: @john.warburton said: I was offered a sponge bath too - but by a male nurse. EW! Yeah I had to get my nuts shaved by a male nurse, not the most fun thing I've ever had done! Now I do it myself every couple of days just in case, so I never have to experience that again! I did it myself before my hernia operation. They gave the option in advance and while I was about to go under the knife, I felt more at ease shaving myself in that area. Operation went well, went home the same day, the main discomfort was that during the trip back I started feeling sick - which I was the instant I opened the car dock. Think it was the drugs I reacted to - never could take too much liquor either without the same effect. I was told to stay in bed for a couple of days, with option in morphine, ibuprofen and paracetamol. Never used the morphine in fear of going sick again - didn't really need it. My fellow students was eye-balling it though - had to keep it safe. Quit the ibuprofen very quickly as well, don't really want to take pills - I'd rather have some slight discomfort than whatever side-effect the pills might bring. Nurse came around after a couple of days - then I was on my own and I opened the door to her surprise. When I was at the hospital there was a guy who went into surgery before me - I was in a room with other hernia patents - and he was crawling in pain. I looked over at the guy in the bed next to me, and he had the same puzzled look as I had - "did it hurt so much for you?". Guess it depends on how quickly it's taken. But I'm glad the lump was just a hernia and not something else. My doctor said to not worry - but to me a hernia was good news compared to what I'd started to worry about.

@linea said: My problem was that I could not get passed an unresponsive green SU startup screen, I just got the hourglass and then an error message at which point SU crashed. Somehow the mac shop guy managed to freeze the hourglass so that he could un-tick the "show on startup" box on the green window. He said he had come across the issue before. This would have helped if you described when you first posted about your problem. All this info is valuable when trying to find the cause and a solution. Also, error messages are normally extremely useful in determining the issue - include them in your description of the problem.

A beautiful image Pixero. Love it. On the other hand, the basic principles of modeling remained the same. What has changed is the huge development of render engines and the ability to support huge meshes. Having this 3d digital sculpting. (ZB, MB, 3DC, Sculptris, Blender) Most importantly the tremendous power of modern CPUs and the excellent freeware around. Back in 1996... when a quadra 700 and in 1997 (mac G3) where more than enough to run the excellent macromedia freehand. I was able to construct a 24 pages brochure, full of quality scans. If I recollect right, it was more flexible than Indesign or QExpress are today. In 1998 when the best ever Illustrator (V8.01) was able to run a 2dCAD plugin.

@rich o brien said: If you have a camera already then all you need is TGI3D. You also don't need to sit in a dark room and the results can be super accurate. I use it quite alot. [EDIT] TIG to the rescue Ah ok, im hoping our DSLR is compatible im sure i can wrangle some software that will make it so. Yes thanks Tig and Rich.

Coool. I can't wait to fight some ghosts. [image: http://www.studiocreations.com/howto/gb_protonpack/images/gbpp_june2007_front.jpg]

It's nice to see that personal drive and initiative are still alive in today's youth...

and I lose... doh!

@leedeetee said: Just thought I'd post this up in case anyone was interested in entering ... http://www.ronenbekerman.com/the-museum-maxwell-render-challenge/#utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=%27The+Museum%27+Challenge+-+Ronen+Bekerman%27s+Newsletter+-+June+2012+&utm_campaign=%27The+Museum%27+Challenge+-+Ronen+Bekerman%27s+Newsletter+-+June+2012&utm_term=Go+ahead+an+read+the+announcement+on+the+blog___+and+join+the+challenge_21 Thanks for doing so And yep - The prizes are great and the subject even greater. I would love to see as many SketchUP users giving this one a go. See you on the challenge Ronen [image: http://cdn.ronenbekerman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/the-museum-challenge-preview-001.jpg]

I got a look at the Cube printer recently and wasn't really impressed. Their target market is kids, and so the whole system from printer to the software used to run it is dumbed down and not at all customizable. The print quality was not great either. For a printer in this home user/hobbyist class, I think most people would be better off with a Makerbot, or if you want to build it yourself for a cheaper price, look at a Reprap. If you want to see other options, here's a huge list of them: 3D printers under $1000. These little printers can't really be compared to the commercial ones like Z-corp and the ones used by Shapeways and other 3D print services. The commercial printers often cost upwards of 100K, and have much bigger build space, better resolution, and better quality in general. The home printers are good for getting quick results for concept testing and for simple low resolution functioning parts.

Thanks Tig, I will pass this along. Baz

It's like off-shore casinos...

Update, No-cost Windows 8 desktop development returns with Express for Desktop http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/no-cost-windows-8-desktop-development-returns-with-express-for-desktop/

Some heads-up: http://googleblog.blogspot.hu/2012/06/never-ending-quest-for-perfect-map.html and the "what happens to my GE models" announcement: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/3dwh/-GQj7OlZshA/discussion