I lost the avi file for a YouTube video I posted here a long time ago. I cannot access YouTube anymore from China. John [driven] told he can't do it with his Mac but maybe a PCer would be kind enough to try.

The reference is http://www.youtube.com/v/cBDihpeXkFQ (animated sanitaryware).

I see there is a free downloadyoutubevideo.org/.

Please post here if successful and pm me the file.

Many thanks

The Archbishop of Canterbury and The Royal
Commission for Political Correctness announced today
that
the climate in the UK should no longer be referred
to as 'English Weather'

Rather than offend a sizeable portion of the
UK population, it will now be referred to as:

'Muslim Weather'

( Partly Sunni, but mostly Shi'ite )

I am very interested in this and in fact made some effort in a similar direction in this topic ...

@chrisglasier said:

...

Just today I wondered what would happen if I opened the localhost in a webdialog. Surprisingly (to me) the localhost worked just as before. I closed Sketchup and added a link in the localhost to a .skp file in the same directory. Clicking on the link launched Sketchup and opened the file. I also added a simple skp:callback which worked OK once I had opened the webdialog from the plugins menus.

...

I guess there are many if and buts but I very much like the idea of having a universal interface that can call up Sketchup as a kind of plugin and then transform itself into a plug in to Sketchup. So I think it is worth pursuing.

I may have got the wrong end of the stick but would be interested in whether any of this type of approach fits with yours.

I am using my localhost hosted site to make blog entries and so forth directly in contentEditable divs. onload or reload IP address is read and if 127.0.0.1, an event is added to allow the revised content to be saved. This is very convenient but I wonder if I am heading for some security breaches.

Whatthink brains?

Well it seems to me that a better promotion for social networking rather than riot coordination is the possibility to naturally adopt and support group leaders who are interested in finding consensus about solutions for problems. Such leaders might evolve from local right up to national interests. A massive digital house of commons - "Would the honourable gentleman agree ... " gone Twitter.

@unknownuser said:

@unknownuser said:

... the whole thrust is to expand modelwork at the expense of paperwork type processes.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean chris

Just that this type of thing is about passing around labelled models (think cans of soup in supermarkets) rather than documents like ortho drawings and voluminous specs that need interpretation to be usable. In this case, if it catches on, modelers like you will be much in demand.

@ Alan Fraser

As for approaching manufacturers, you'll have a little catching up to do.

As this is my special interest I would like to add something about it. First of all I would not approach manufacturers but specifiers ... for them to say "if you want me to consider your product you will have to submit models and data like this" - i.e. the manufacturer is responsible for the quality of any model and data supplied. In return manufacturers get the opportunity to present products at the right time and in the right place. If some models escape well any publicity is better than none. I think, Alan, what Formfonts provides is very good for making models whereas what I (and I think Kris) want is to use models in order to create the real thing. A little different I think you will agree.

@modelhead

you will put me out of work...

I have always liked reading your posts, particularly as you seem to like to add a little dottiness. But I wonder if here you have added too much when the whole thrust is to expand modelwork at the expense of paperwork type processes.

@krisidious said:

...

of course this idea would need a sales staff of sorts approaching companies and offering the service and then someone assigning the work list and people arguing about who gets what work...

You may be interested in this topic and its accompanying web site from three years ago.

You are right (although I think your idea in quotes is a bit wonky) but be prepared for some irrational rants about advertising and webdialogs as I got in similar topics around that time.

But good luck - it might just happen if people can accept necessary commercial reality.

I am trying from a different perspective based on very similar ideas.

@alan fraser said:

I'm assuming from the name, that it's a legacy of French rule in N. Africa and therefore probably Catholic. But it looks very Byzantine/Orthodox, except for the dome shaped like a papal crown. Then there's the minaret-like towers. A strange fusion.

... or a natural consequence of pied-noir concepts and Algeria itself. Worth a visit if you are around those parts I think.

Here's an interesting looking building and location.

@dave r said:

Apart from the obvious boxing the compass could it be cannot find the way to think outside the box?

@ Tim

I mean WWW is not owned by a single entity. All those companies you mention are replaceable. And the same is true about those parts that are patented or copyright protected; something Berners-Lee refused for html. I guess something similar happened with JavaScript. These languages are then free just like the spoken ones.

Apple decided not to include floppy disk drives in one of their computers and it seems everyone else followed suit. I'm not saying the decision was wrong just that in pursuit of the cloud other local storage devices might just go the same way, fait accompli.

Yes the net has become terribly concentrated and will become more so as less companies control bigger server farms, just as, in its case because of all the failures, the financial sector has become more concentrated than ever before.

I think the problem is when the general public get mixed up in things corporate, which is true with server farms. If banks were able to add personal mortgages to unrelated instruments in their derivatives, maybe IT can do something similar with access to information. Then if one farm or corporation went down all may be affected like the Japanese national grid after the Fukushima tsunami or any of the other OP concerns.

I think your idea of distributing information is well worth discussing (even though you spelled PRON wrongly).

@johnsenior1973 said:

No.

I see.

@johnsenior1973 said:

What are your concerns?

It just seems to me that the idea of server farms is the antithesis of all that many praise in WWW, which is:

not owned by anyone,

not controlled by anyone,

highly resilient, has never stopped working for any reason,

free of patent or copyright restrictions on its enabling software (html/javascript),

...

Another point is that server farm owners have the power to determine what technology is available - ever think about who decided to stop floppy disk drives?

I thought it might be a hot corner bar discussion - benevolence turning into absolute power type thing.

Does anyone else have concerns about these ... concerns like:

natural disasters (Fukushima)

terrorism (9/11)

too big to fail (Lehmann Brothers)

privacy/security (Wikileaks)

plus ... ?

Strangely I just wrote this post about this sort of thing yesterday. Of course it is not much use to you in the short term but it provided me with a much better link for the Sketchucation example here - so hopefully it might help in the longer term. Thanks for that!

@thomthom said:

Open standalone localhost - open the URL in a normal web browser? UI.open_url http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/ui.html#openURL

That's great thanks

@driven said:

...

BTW. how the website going?

john

Hopefully there will be more thoughts tomorrow.

I totally stripped out the website just to demonstrate the mechanised words (mechonyms) as an alternative to paperwork metaphors.

@thomthom said:

What's exactly the question?

http://localhost/ is just an alias for http://127.0.0.1/ - when WAMP/LAMP/*AMP is installed it makes localhost act just the same as any other website...

My point is that if you use localhost rather than a local file (file.html) you can work outside SU locally (and via a server I guess) and then plug SU in as and when required. I didn't ask any direct question but was rather hoping for some discussion of the points in the penultimate para:-

@unknownuser said:

It would be good if when the file is opened it could also open the webdialog. The file is really just a space to lay out components so it does not have to be saved. There are questions about having two instances of the localhost on screen and what happens when Sketchup is closed (can a Ruby launch the standalone localhost?)

I have to say I got pretty disillusioned with webdialogs. I thought I would try a different route by first making a web machine to automate and reuse information and then look for a way to generate 3D models. In doing so I belated discovered localhost (with Apache and PHP). All my stuff is based on generating instructions from plain text (json) records; these instructions link to script devices (the simplest to produce listings). The localhost easily copes with reading and writing files, works with any browser and most importantly does not have to have Sketchup present.

Just today I wondered what would happen if I opened the localhost in a webdialog. Surprisingly (to me) the localhost worked just as before. I closed Sketchup and added a link in the localhost to a .skp file in the same directory. Clicking on the link launched Sketchup and opened the file. I also added a simple skp:callback which worked OK once I had opened the webdialog from the plugins menus.

It would be good if when the file is opened it could also open the webdialog. The file is really just a space to lay out components so it does not have to be saved. There are questions about having two instances of the localhost on screen and what happens when Sketchup is closed (can a Ruby launch the standalone localhost?)

I guess there are many if and buts but I very much like the idea of having a universal interface that can call up Sketchup as a kind of plugin and then transform iself into a plug in to Sketchup. So I think it is worth pursuing.

edit: 'adjusted' subject may 12 2011