Thanks for that, just what I need.

7. The fake bricked up window.

About time.

Page not found 404 | Ars Technica

(arstechnica.com)

Thanks Bob

@unknownuser said:

Mike, im not sure aobut other patent organisations, but the UK patent office wont award a patent for a perpetual motion machine (basically what these projects are) without a full working prototype.

Are you sure about this? As I understand it there are patents for some things that don't work yet but might work in the future. For instance, there are several uk patents for baldness cures that involve the use of beta carotene, because there is a theory that regularly taking beta carotene reduces hair loss. But nobody has actually made a formulation that is a proven baldness cure. But they can patent a vague formula that includes beta carotene so that if somebody else does come up with a working formula using beta carotene (if ever) they can say "we patented that first".

Software programming is the same. Greedy software companies can copyright a bit of sourcecode that they can see could be useful as part of an as yet undeveloped application. Then they just sit on it until somebody develops an app that is reliant on that code so that they can claim intellectual property rights.

@unknownuser said:

another thing that pisses me off: (and i know solo has alreay said this) President Bush

and i really wish everyone would stop compltely freaking out about global warming! i mean jeez! worrying about it is only going to make it worse! why dont we all just calm down and accept that this might be a natrual fluctuation in the earth's tempature. and if thats not the case, take a chill pill and hop on your bike and get some CFLs for gods sake!

And that is exactly what George Bush wants you to do, just act like nothing is happening and drive an SUV everywhere, because we're in a war so you can have plenty of oil, so don't cut down! Whether it's a natural fluctuation or not we are contributing to it and denying that is really pissing me off.

As for who uses what software:

Gehry certainly was using Catia. In 1997, as a student, I did a work placement in London. The firm I was working for were designing interiors for the "Experience Music Project" building in Seattle. All the data from Gehrys was from a Catia system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_Music_Project.

I went to a Zaha Hadid exhibition several years ago at the Building Centre in London. Rhino was referenced as a production tool.

British Aerospace (aeroplane builders) is just up the road from me here, they use Catia.

That looks very good Mike.

Well it sounds good Remus. I might try this.

I second the opinions that IMSI customer support is poor, I'll even go so far to say that this is perhaps why they are so out of touch with the marketplace. I've tried many IMSI products and they all fell down somewhere.

So is there enough space left on the usb to store files too? What size usb did you use?

I love the lifehack website.

very interesting

I think we need to all agree on a location as soon as possible, like in the next week. I'm happy to meet anywhere but at the moment Watkins has, it seems proposed the most practical location - Oxford because of the student facilities available.

Well I think it would be quite easy to do a 2d cad / technical drawing program, as most phones have cursors which could be used to navigate an xy plane. Teavuihuang's app works shows the potential for this. Incidentally I have a sony ericson, not a nokia that the app was designed for but it runs fine.

I think a more robust app like this could be extremely useful for drawing on-site surveys accurately rather than fumbling around with a paper pad.

http://teavuihuang.com/maya/

I was bored while commuting the other day so was surfing the net on my phone and found this. It's free, very basic but it works, I don't think you can enter units though. It got me thinking, would it be possible to create a simple floorplan drawing tool for a mobile phone?

Hi Bob!

@unknownuser said:

I don't see why a simple 2D drawing mode cannot be added to SU.

I kind of do this in SU now, everthing I model has 2 layers, a 2d layer with plan geometry and a 3d layer with 3d geometry. Once you get into it is a very efficient way of working.

@unknownuser said:

5. Disable the making of faces function (or be able to toggle it on or off)

That would be very useful!

Hi Stu

I agree, I'd rather give my money to ProgeCad than AutoDesk! ProgeCAD proves that a robust cad program can be produced and sold cheaply. I'm not bothered by the pickbox either, these days I tend to spend as little time in cad as possible anyway because I draw just about everything in SU. I pull off 2d dwg's from the model and then really just use cad for annotating and layouts.

Thanks for the cosshairs, I'll check that out.

I was quite tame compared to you lot but some stuff that comes to mind;

Age 8, scout camp: We had a butane stove that wouldn't light so we figured the gas cylinder might be empty. I tested it by holding a lit match to the cylinder tap and turned it expecting the flame to get a bit bigger if there was any gas left. Impressively the whole gas cylinder caught alight and started rolling around. It came to rest at the side of our tent which caught alight too.

Teenage highlights;

Regularly used to climb a tree in order to jump over a large barbed wire fence that seperated us from the posh girls school.

We did climbing and abseiling at school which was foolish on the schools part as my friends and I used to do "homework". Freestyle quarry climbing was always quite popular.

Various painful bicycle accidents, often as a result of drinking beer and then holding onto a motorbike to pick up speed...

Starting fires. Small rural bonfires that used to suddenly set fire to everything around them. We were experts at beating out fires with blankets.

hurry up!

Listening to old stuff today - St Etienne

edit: track has just changed to "Soul Man" by Sam and Dave