Great stuff Fred, your posts never disappoint and always entertain.

I can agree with some of that, however 'IF' you were the decider you'd have one heck of a time getting the 2 parties to allow you to do all that. They're both responsible and thus will both do whatever necessary to cover their arses which would send you spiraling down in a series of investigations of investigations ad infinitum.

@unknownuser said:

I have to say that the car reminds me of some crazy matchbox car design. It is just different. Not bad modeling or rendering though.

Scott

Yeah, Scott, that one is called Buzz Bomb. (one of my son's favorite)

Take a look at this...

Adding color to your Earth snapshots

Follow the SketchUpdate blog for SketchUp news, modeling tips and tricks, user stories and more.

(sketchupdate.blogspot.com)

First off DON'T PANIC. (Ha! Arthur Dent!)

Once you have the component in your model you can right-click it and do 'Make Unique', then you can make changes to it without affecting other instances of it elsewhere. When done editing it you can right-click it again and do a 'Save As'. Repeat as necessary.

Good one Alan, we used to ride our metal saucer sleds down the shag carpeted stairs, great fun until you hit the turn. There's still a small dent in the panelling.

Easy, that's Sonny Bono.

This is a perfect example of why I get most of my news from his show.

Here's another...
http://www.youtube.com/v/aFQFB5YpDZE

Queued up in the playlist for the morning:

Built to Spill
Gomez
Mother Hips

We'l see what the mood brings this afternoon. Maybe some North Mississippi All Stars?

Great stuff Fred, this is why I watch for your posts. I'm seeing it like a root structure with the roof being the ground surface and each floor being layers in the soil/rock below with the whole thing being thrust up from below like a core sample. Great stuff.

Maybe you've already mentioned this about your stuff but do your concepts go so far as to incorporate green building techniques for energy efficiency and recycled/sustainable materials? (I DO see the obvious pun here but, come on, you guys know what I mean by GREEN )

I think TIG's roof script is pretty useful and cool.

Agreed Solo. I think that listening to your favorite songs in the loo is a good way to ruin them.

That's a great graphic kwisten, thanks. I dind't see Terrorism on there anywhere. I wonder just how far off the bottom it would fall below 'fireworks discharge'?

Clemantine, there are a couple different ways to get your elevation data into SU. A TIN like Gaieus suggests has worked well for me, let me know if you have trouble creating that in GIS and I'd be glad to help, send me a PM. You could also do contours. I haven't used the cloud.rb but based on what I know about LIDAR it's probably your best bet and worth the time to figure out.

What GIS software are you using?
How large is your study area? Large terrain models with a lot of detail can get unwieldy.

Eric

@tomsdesk said:

Interesting....

So, is death (the aura of it) a human condition? Can this condition become societal? One can certainly live for death, live with death...can we live death? If circumstances are such that one can be convinced death is a preferable option to life...can death societies develop? What circumstances would that take?

Wouldn't this then be an epidemic?

I think most of us think of death in terms of it's causes. The aura of death as a human condition is too abstract for me without the cause(s) of death. Widespread disease, suicide, and homicide are 3 very different scenarios but the end is the same: death. All are dependant on behaviors (contracting the disease, killing onesself or another) so is it the behavior the epidemic? Is the aura of death the motivation for the behavior so the causes of death don't really matter? It seems we've already tried to control/avoid death-causing behavior with laws and religion (suicide IS illegal, right?).

Engaging topic Tom.

If you see death this way then it is undoubtedly the most contagious of all conditions. We all catch it the moment we are born and it lies dormant until awakened by a particularly nasty environmental influence such as disease, injury, or time.

I'm voting for Shemp.

Keep your head up, Pete, the Virgle error page says that Virgle isn't real "YET".

A quick example of how I'm using SU to make custom symbols in ArgMap. I exported some north arrows that Eric Lay did (Boofredlay, thanks for those!) as .bmp files and created new picture marker symbols in the Style Manager. Once they're in as symbols they can be rotated and resized as needed.

This is a great little technique to help make my maps look more conceptual or 'sketchy' when necessary.