Who would guess that the outcome of the following set of ingredients is absolutely delicious? I love it!
Sheep's heart, lungs and liver
One beef intestine
3 cups finely chopped suet
One cup medium ground oatmeal
Two medium onions, finely chopped
One cup beef stock
One teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
One teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon mace
Jackson
Shaun!
Great to see you back here- congrats on the new house and HUGE CONGRATS on the little one... and good timing too... Capricorns are the best! 
Now get some sleep!
p.s. BTW... just to show that we can pick up where we left off... are you still using Vue? I've all by given it up for Vray for SU... SO much faster and better workflow. Funnily enough I still use Vue for doing spherical sky backgrounds though.
Mike,
"No matter what career your kids head towards
they will no doubt need computer skills. It
seems that computers are becoming part of
everyday life."
Absolutely- in fact I was gobsmacked a few months ago when I discovered that my girlfriend is a total whiz at graphic layouts, presentation and animations in Powerpoint- a program I have yet to master. I thought her computer skills would be soley scientific in nature- statistical analysis, spreadsheets and word processing; I had no idea that her graphic presentations were so advanced for presenting findings- I was blown away with her graphic and animation work.
Jackson
Bruce,
No worries, I don't mind Corner Bar threads meandering a bit- I like it when they feel like natural conversations. If we meander too far for too long, I'll just gently ease us back on topic. I envy Lily's computer capabilities at such a young age- makes me wonder if there's a recorded intance of a child's first word being "Mac" or "Windows" or some other computer related term? Imagine the sponsorship "opportunities" if Jobs or Gates heard about that! Perish the thought.
Jackson
Bruce,
That's very interesting about your daughter teaching signing to your granddaughter- did she read up on it or was it her own system? I've often thought that most of the reason babies become so upset so often is due to an ability to express themselves properly. I admire her "guide, but don't push" approach.
Your link doesn't seem to work- is the site down or is there a typo?
Jackson
I don't think there's any doubt in anyone's minds that the earlier we learn a skill, be it physical, intellectual or lingual, the easier we find it in the long run and the more advanced our skills will be in later life. Languages are a perfect example: I am Scots while my girlfriend is Swedish and we are in total agreement on this subject. Although we will bring our kids up in Sweden, I intend to speak English to them at home while Kristina will speak Swedish and she and I will speak Swedish or English. We already speak a very weird mix of the two languages with each other (Swenglish or Svengelska) with sentences half one and half the other. When our kids come to learn English formally in school, they will find it a breeze (I hope!) and be able to dedicate extra time to other studies.
Anyway, I digress. What I'm getting at is that your native language is one of those skills that you start learning almost from birth and you almost stop having to think about it by the time you're 5. You just keep improving as you go along without having to study particularly hard. Vitally, being multilingual is a key skill in later life and can create employment opportunities in other countries as well as making you more employable in our own.
The same undoubtedly applies to computer knowledge- the majority of this forum's users are between 20 and 60 and I (at 31) am one of the youngest age groups for whom computers weren't a big part of my childhood. In other words I had to learn almost everything I know about software and hardware as an adult, by sitting and studying or asking questions on forums like this. Although this has undoubtedly made me more employable it has meant I have had to curtail my social life considerably to achieve my educational goals.
So, after the loooong introduction, the short question is- how young do you start teaching your kids SU and computer skills? On one hand computer skills are such a vital part of the modern employment skillset that it would seem the earlier the better. On the other, do I really wish that I'd been addicted to SU from age 5 as I have been for the last 4 years? By teaching your kids fairly advanced computer skills at an early age would you run the risk of channelling them towards a computer-based career, when they may in fact have become fantastic sculptors, police officers, musicians, builders or athletes? As I am an art and philosophy obsessed architect and my girlfriend is doing a PHd in Biochemistry it's a total coin-flip on whether we produce right-brainers or left-brainers! We both loved playing with Lego as kids on either side of the North Sea so that doesn't explain our respective career paths.
I'm really interested in other's opinions on this- I'm as yet unconvinced either way and the clock is ticking! 
Jackson
... and does anybody think my ugly mug scrolling across the screen is going to entice visitors? 
Jackson
Coen,
Sorry for the late reply- I've already touched on this in another thread, but I meant the number of forums (26!) and their associated icons. To be honest I think I'm just a bit stuck in my way with the old (I mean a couple of years ago) SU Pro Forums- I liked how simple their front page was: just forum headings and that was it. I actually remember being hacked off when they added the GIS and Ruby forums and I had to SCROOOOOOOOLL DOOOOOOWN to get to the Corner Bar (actually I wasn't the only one to complain). Don't take me too seriously, I know I'm just being pernickety- the board looks good and I definitely understand your argument for sub-dividing certain forums, e.g. the Corner Bar.
Jackson
I don't think it'd add anything to the forums (excep download time). I think there's enough visually going on at the moment (maybe a little too much? 
) and personally I find scrolling banners distracting (especially when they're pics of such handsome guys and gorgeous gals).
Just my two cents' worth,
Jackson
This only works for male moths which have evolved in cities. I have heard it said that a microwave will also not harm a city-bred female moth, but that's an urban myth!
Taxi for Barkess...
Jackson
Those tree images in that link are commercial and almost certainly copyrighted- although the guys's been a bit foolish posting such large previews (and no legal notices!), but nevertheless using them would surely be a breach of copyright. I edited the post with a note to this effect. As usual, if it seems to be too good to be true....
Jackson
Mike,
Sorry to bring it up, but are we to assume you fell off the (non-smoking) wagon then? I must admit I'd forgotten until now that you stopped. As Twain said "Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times." I gave up probably 20 times (half-arsed, usually hungover attempts) and 5 times "for proper". The last time I gave up (which was nearly 5 years ago) it was easy and I haven't smoked since, but I've no idea why I found it easy that time. The previous 4 times were bloody difficult- I reckon there's no point trying to stop if you're not 100% sick of smoking. The right time to stop will come along and then you won't believe how hard the other times were.
Jackson
Jackson Barkess
SketchUp doesn't feature ray traced lighting in any way. Do you actually mean "volumetric light" or do you mean ray-traced lighting for creating photorealistic renders?
If it's the former then you'll have to be much more specific- what render software are you using?
If it's the latter, there are many render programs out there, Kerkythea being a very popular and free comapnion to SketchUp. I prefer Vray for reasons too complex to describe here.
Nice clean model- thanks for posting!
Shaun,
I love it! This is just a very nicely put together scene and render and that over-exposed look is great- I've been meaning to try it on some Vue renders. Ironic that the very qualities that I try to banish from my photography I try to emulate in renders.
Only criticism would be that the letters on that wall look a bit flat. Not sure why that could be when the rest of the render is so good.
And as you said- a Vue/SU forum- HOW GREAT IS THIS?!
Jackson
@tella said:
I'm a bit dissapointed. 20000 faces is quite a low count (that's around 40000 triangles, or maybe a bit more if there are more complex faces).
I'm guessing you're a landscape designer? 20,000 faces for an architectural model is pretty big- in my example it's a large house, fully furnished and about 10 3D trees in the garden. For landscapes I realise 20k is almost nothing- I use Vue6i a lot and one of my current scenes contains nearly 3 billion polys- several thousand trees. I never ever export landscape scenes from Vue to SU as even the smallest one would be completely unworkable in SU. I think any system would crash every time. If I have to work on a large landscape in SU I would only model the terrain (with as few polys as possible) and some of the trees around the site of the building I'm working on. I tend to use 3D trees for foregrounds and 2D face-me images of the same trees for mid to backgrounds. Beyond that, I export to Vue and add distant trees and forests there.
As Gaius suggests, you could try replacing trees with proxy components- just a single vertical line if you have a lots of them, but to be honest you're unlikely to be able to bring a 7m poly model into SU in the first place. You'd have to delete (or replace) all your trees, then bring it into SU. Putting them all on a hidden layer might help, but just switching it back on could cause your system to crash if there's a huge amount of geometry on it.
As far as I know it's a fundamental limitation of OpenGL, although it might also be how SU uses OpenGL. It is worth bearing in mind that unlike some programs SU is always rendering in real time- it's interface is pretty much WYSIWYG, so it can't handle as much geometry as other wireframe progs.
Bruce- I'm not too sure about that, I just go by Google's own info:
"Note: SketchUp isn't optimized for dual processors. While it will run on a 64-bit Windows XP machine, there won't be a performance increase."
That and the fact that when I switched from a single core 2.3GHz Intel P4 machine to a Centrino Duo 1.83GHz SU slowed down and one of the Google guys explained that was because SU only uses one core. Of course, the other core can handle other processes while I'm busy in SU (rendering in Vue or VRay for example) so overall performance is better.