Posts made by August

@Remus -- Um, Macs don't have brains?? Hey!?

On Sunday Alan posted:

@alan fraser said:

Not so much funny as jaw-droppingly unbelievable.
Apparently Chinese Intersection Etiquette is non-existent.
No need to worry about who has right of way...you just wade in regardless.

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=179&t=6064&start=1995#p253386

I'm surprised no one commented on the last clip where two people apparently just drive off the road into the embankment next to a building, one after the other, no collision.

My father-in=law used to be an insurance adjuster in Arkansas and had a story of going out to an accident scene on a bridge where two cars going opposite directions in the fog had side-swiped each other -- on their passenger sides. Both drivers were so drunk they were both driving on the wrong side of the road -- on a bridge.

@alestenos said:

... Every time I hit download my computer saves a file called file.php. ...

There are three places in the first post by which you can download the file:

• two large size lines that say "Download Shape Bender"
• an attachment to the post for a zip file.

Which are you using and what are you doing? Are you just clicking on the link or are you right-clicking and selecting "Save link as..." or whatever your browser says for a download choice?

Both of the text links go to this URL:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/download/file.php?mode=view&id=47534
and the attachment goes to this URL:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/download/file.php?id=47534

That is indeed a file.php, but your browser is supposed to interpret that specially. Obviously it is not.

What ever you are doing, right-clicking or left-clicking, have you tried doing the other?

I hope this helps,
August

Hi tbender,

@tbender54 said:

... Everything went fine as far as putting the files in but when I open the Sketchup preferences I don't get a bezier extension to turn on.

You didn't post in the Bezier Plugin topic. Did you get it solved?

After installing the files, you have to restart SU because SU only reads what's in the Plugins directory when it starts up -- that includes adding the option to the Preferences > Extensions menu.

It's also possible to have the Bezier Extension installed but have the toolbar turned off. Go to View > Toolbars to check.

I hope this helps,
August

It's really, really hard to not get upset at the Congressional crap.

@unknownuser said:

When BP CEO Tony Hayward testified before Congress this morning, many expected to hear him apologize for the disaster his company has caused. Instead, GOP Congressman Joe Barton was the one saying he was sorry -- to BP.

In his opening statement, Barton, the top Republican on the committee overseeing the oil spill and its aftermath, delivered a personal apology to the oil giant. He said the $20 billion fund that President Obama directed BP to establish to provide relief to the victims of the oil disaster was a "tragedy in the first proportion."

Other Republicans are echoing his call. Sen. John Cornyn said he "shares" Barton's concern. Rep. Michele Bachmann said that BP shouldn't agree to be "fleeced." Rush Limbaugh called it a "bailout." The Republican Study Committee, with its 114 members in the House, called it a "shakedown."

It leaves me with one question: do these people have any soul left to sell?

I just found this at

http://spillfighters.com/2010/06/bioremediation-makes-the-news-finally/

"June 7th, 2010

"The Gulf Oil Spill Bioremediation Industry Alliance has just been formed.

"In summary, this alliance brings the top bioremediation companies and their scientists together for the purpose of using microbes on the entire Spill. They are in the process of creating an implementation plan (for release this week) that focuses the expertise of each company on either the beach, water (shallow and deep) or wetlands depending on their historical success with a particular topography. If adopted, they will focus first on the areas where there is oil present on the beach or marshlands, then apply to the water near land, then work on the oil in the middle of the Gulf both on the surface and at various depths below. They have the production capacity to quickly ramp up to provide the “googol’s” worth of microbes to do the entire Gulf of Mexico.

"From a draft version of the Alliance agreement, it is clear that all members have agreed to work with each other in harmony and put their competitive differences aside to get the entire Spill remediated."

@juanv.soler said:

... That folk does not count on us (non American People), yet ...

Thanks again Juan,

You may not be able to sign it, but you got me to and I'm passing the link on to others.

"God willing, we will prevail, through the purity and essence of our natural fluids." -- Gen. J.D. Ripper's last communique to the assembled Joint Chiefs in "Dr. Strangelove"

@escapeartist said:

@august said:

Beatcha to it, look up about 8 posts!

OOPS. My apologies. Yes, indeed, you found it first. In fact, it was your link that got me started.

I was so appalled at the so-called experts not having learned anything in 30 years except to parrot the same, tired, non-solutions (all the experts agree that they are doing everything that all the experts agree are the only things that can be done) that I started sharing it everywhere, including back here (forgetting that I'd found it here in the first place).

Better twice than not at all.

Thanks,
August

Thanks Juan,

I appreciate the help.

It's about moving -- moving forward -- NOW, not blaming. The blame is obvious and cultural and endemic and entrenched and inevitably corrupt and all too american and completely international and business as usual and too long ignored. That is not the issue.

The issue is doing something that has a hope, not just a prayer, of working.

GreenPeace is a good candidate to play hero and ACT. They haven't worried about permission before, this is no time to start. Whatever the bio fallout from the microbes (and the video suggest next to none) it will be easier in the long run than crude oil and dispersants. Microbes have been tested and have had decades to identify any long term consequences. The oil industry solutions have been tested and don't work.

But the downside is that it will show the oil industry as incompetent to clean up their own mass. That is a PR disaster that will last decades and is worth billions to prevent.

You can bet that is being talked about in oil industry CEO conference calls, even if Obama and the new P.M. are not.

This blog post from 2007 is still useful.

How To Identify Fonts Being Used In Images

Both sites mentioned are still in operation:
http://www.identifont.com/identify.html
http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

Anybody got any other Font resources? Sources?

OMG! IT"S REAL! News footage from JUNE 13! (Yes, tomorrow's date) Pipeline leak in Alaska while well leak in Gulf cannot be stopped. I did a spit-take when I heard about Operation Sombrero!

Here is documentary proof that the entire industry has not learned because they don't have to.

http://www.wimp.com/oilspills/ (Sorry, can't figure out how to embed it. It really is worth your time.)

When they are the most profitable industry in all of human history, they don't want to change and they don't have to -- and they can buy anyone and anything that gets in the way of those profits. (Every crime drama on TV has a mantra: follow the money.)

And yes, how do we get decision makers to even consider microbes? I mean it: How?

Right now, the "authorities" keep deferring to the oil industry "experts". It doesn't matter whether those "experts" are BP or Exxon or WTF, they have proven that they don't learn and have no new ideas and they are going through the same sequence of half-baked ideas that have not worked before and they are only motivated to prove they are trying as hard as they can, not motivated to change their ways.

We need real experts. How do we get them listened to?

Thanks Roger,

Watkins, my wife and I were part of a candlelight vigil in our town for Bhopal when it first happened, one of hundreds of protests across the U.S., because we were outraged at the lack of real response by our government and its apparent siding with Union Carbide.

For a look at the U.S. Bhopal protesters' side of the story, check out:

Protests in US over Bhopal Gas Tragedy

Bhopal Activists Arrested in Non-Violent Demonstration Against Dow

There's lots more to be found.

I'm sorry if your local media presents a biased, anti-U.S. slant, but we are not all corporate drones.

When you say

@unknownuser said:

Your concern, as a people, was completely lacking!
you insult us all. I certainly felt it. I'm glad Roger put out a more even-tempered response first. We may be more homogeneous than the EU, but not much.

Do you remember Baghdad Bob, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, who insisted, "Don't believe them, they are nowhere near Baghdad" while Coalition tanks rolled by in the background?" We all laughed at him then, but he seems to be becoming the new standard.

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/06/10/baghdad-bp/

Seems to me BP is doing a hatchet job on themselves well enough.

A subtle but wonderful touch: all the players and even the people on the sidelines are tilting so they are standing vertically.

This 15 minute talk on the future of User Interfaces was given at the TED talks this February. The video was posted in June at
http://www.ted.com/talks/john_underkoffler_drive_3d_data_with_a_gesture.html

The presenter is part of an R&D group at MIT who created the 3D UI in then movie Minority Report based on research work they had already been doing.

When Bill Gates, in the audience, asked "When?", John estimated five years for this to be standard on all new computer systems. Such predictions have a way of being way off, in either direction, but the possibilities for 3D interfaces for all of cumputing have implications for how we might see the future of SketchUp.

Here's a short excerpt that sets the stage:

"Today $84.97 at Best Buy buys you more graphics power than you could have gotten for a million bucks from SGI only a decade ago. ... we've got that incredible ramp up ... [but] we've forgotten to invent new interfaces.

"... we've seen, in recent years, a lot of change in the regard. And people are starting to wake up about that. So what happens next?

"The problem, as we see it, has to do with a single, simple word, "space" or a single, simple phrase, "real world geometry." Computers and the programming languages that we talk to them in, that we teach them in, are hideously insensate when it comes to space. They don't understand real world space. It's a funny thing because the rest of us occupy it quite frequently and quite well.

"So what happens if you start to explain space to them? One thing you might get is something like the Luminous Room. The Luminous Room is a system in which it's considered input and output spaces are co-located.

"So you've got an interface that has no interface. You operate the world as you operate the real world, which is to say, with your hands. Similarly, a digital wind tunnel with digital wind flowing from right to left. Not that remarkable in a sense; we didn't invent the mathematics. But if you displayed that on a CRT or flat panel display, it would be meaningless to hold up an arbitrary object, a real world object in that. Here, the real world merges with the simulation." [In the video, the wind-tunnel lights flow around the object placed on the table.]

"And finally, to pull out all the stops, this is a system called Urp, for urban planners, in which we give architects and urban planners back the models that we confiscated when we insisted that they use CAD systems. And we make the machine meet them half way. It projects down digital shadows, as you see here. [The wireframe model on the table has simulated shadows.] And if you introduce tools like this inverse clock, [Made of cardboard with colored spots on it] then you can control the sun's position in the sky. That's 8:00 AM shadows. They get a little shorter at 9:00 AM. [Moving the cardboard clock hand changes the projected shadows.] There you are, swinging the sun around."

When I saw that part, I knew I had to share it with SketchUp folks.

From there John proceeds to describe how the MIT project folks got involved with the film and to demo the Minority Report UI on stage, minus the holographic display. Definitely worth your time.

Also, there are subtitles in English and an interactive transcript: click on a phrase in the text and go right to that spot in the video.

Enjoy,
August

---

I saw an article a while back that had some evidence for a plus side to all the realistic depictions of gore: people are not as freaked out by blood and gore in emergency situations and are more able to respond quickly and calmly. The article had some statistics about bystanders at auto accidents that seemed to support the idea.

Years ago my wife pointed out that only men faint at the sight of blood. Any woman who did so would be falling off the toilet several times every month.

And on another sub-thread, Solo's list of "Glenn Beck, Bill O'Rielly, and Bill Maher" missed an obvious distinction. Maher presents himself as a stand-up comic. He goes on tours, plays Vegas, does HBO specials, etc. He comments on the absurdity of political reality. Beck and O'Reilly, on the other hand, present themselves as legitimate political reporters and commentators yet they make things up to further their political agendas, as regularly pointed out by comedians like Jon Stewart and political commentators like Keith Olberman.

One person's art is another person's piece of feces. Literally, one buyer (they hope), one creator (presumably).

My question is, has it been preserved, or will it change/decay over time? Should the collector keep a photographic record of the changes over time to preserve or even enhance the value of the piece?

Just asking...

Email or Bacon, your choice.

Or maybe you'd prefer an adjustable mix.

Like art, the meaning of icons is in the mind of the beholder.

@paul_marsh said:

... When prompted 'Please select a single line that lies on the red axis' is simply won't let me select the line???

Hi Paul,

If you are getting the prompt, I presume the script is installed properly and you have a group properly selected, and I assume there is indeed a line that you are trying to select, so I don't know what to suggest.

Over to you, Chris --- (or someone else) ---

@judy nielsen said:

I am not getting the error message in the second step

Let's start there. If you can't get there, the tool is not working.

Do you have the Shape Bender button in your Toolbar?

If not, the script is not loading properly and we need to go back to the script installation.

If you do have the tool button, try clicking it with nothing selected. Do you get the error message?

Try deliberately selecting two objects, then click the tool button. Do you get the error message?

If you have the tool button but cannot get error messages, something is wrong.

Sorry this is a slow process, but I cannot look over your shoulder. I hope it is as simple as a glitch somewhere in the sequence:
What you are doing >> What you are writing >> What I am reading >> What I am imagining

August