@unknownuser said:

so while its possible to see apple the corporation as some incredibly smart/innovative corporation.. it's also possible to see them as an incredibly smart set of business people with powerful ways of luring the necessary technicians into working for them.

I think Apple is both of these things. And like I said, it is also a corporation not afraid to place big financial bets on things that may not pay off, which is part of the reason it can attract top-notch talent. Same for Google.

@unknownuser said:

right.. i fully see what you're saying.. but to me, the actual technology & the money side of things are not very closely related..

To me, they are very closely related. Anybody can dream about using some great new partially developed technology for all sorts of things, but turning those ideas into useful, practical products is a difficult & expensive process. If you don't invest enough in R&D to get the details right, it doesn't matter how good you are at marketing.

For example, the basic concept of wearable computers with some kind of heads-up personal display, touch and/or voice input, & so on has been around for years (for decades, if you include "movie magic" & science fiction novels) but over the past three years Google has invested millions in turning that concept into a practical consumer product & the development team freely admits they are still a long way from that. They aren't even certain it ever will become anything more than a curiosity with no mass market appeal.

An interesting article about the Google Glass project is at http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/22/4013406/i-used-google-glass-its-the-future-with-monthly-updates.

@unknownuser said:

Well, they do not have to but (especially with for less experienced users), these are good suggestions.

I certainly agree that it is a good general suggestion. I really just wanted to point out it isn't absolutely necessary to follow it & mention a few of the reasons why someone might want to do something else.

@gilles said:

Never do this!
All geometries must remain in layer 0.
Layers in sketchup is just a way to show/hide things so only put groups or components in them.

All geometries do not actually need be on layer 0. I can't think of any reason why you would want all of a group's or component's entities in a layer other than layer 0 but you might occasionally want to put some of them into a different layer to exploit the 'color by layer' option or when you want a quick & easy way to hide/unhide only specific entities in one or more groups or components.

For the same reason, it is also occasionally helpful to put some ungrouped entities into a layer other than layer 0.

@unknownuser said:

... to me, apple is basically a marketing firm.. except they have enough money to just buy the inventions/products/technology then claim them as their own...

There is a lot more to it than that. Apple is among the very few major corporations willing to take big financial risks on innovative new products with no proven track record of success. They don't just buy new technology, they also invest heavily in developing it, both in house & through collaborations with other companies.

In one of the earliest (& often forgotten!) examples, almost nobody saw the potential of GUI interfaces until Apple developed PARC's crude implementation by adding key usability features like drop-down menus & overlapping windows … & even after they did, it took many lean years for that investment to pay off. Apple is among the very few computer manufacturing companies to ever have taken an active role in the design & development of CPU architectures optimized for a specific OS, first with the ill-fated (for Apple) AIM Alliance & currently in partnerships with Intel & Samsung.

We even have Apple to thank for Gorilla Glass. Only after Steve Jobs went to Corning in 2006 looking for a rugged, scratch resistant glass for the iPhone project did Corning commit a factory to manufacturing it in large quantities, initially just for the iPhone & now for around two hundred products from many different companies.

I think Apple is without peer in this respect. Its track record is far from perfect but it does seem to have an uncanny ability to make the right bets far more often than anybody else. That's a powerful inducement for other companies to follow suit.

@brookefox said:

This is a non-vid. Is that why the canned linkage fails?

??? Seems to be working for me with the BBvideo tag, at least in preview...

I'm sure many of you are already familiar with the Animusic projects from the Pipe Dreams video that 'went viral' several years ago, but if not, here's a sample of its unique blend of 3D modeling, animation, & music:

@unknownuser said:

alternatively
{…}
(doing it like this also creates a hotlink above the video which will take you to youtube itself)

However you choose to do it, please keep posting more videos to this topic. Now that I have discovered it, the first thing I do when I visit scf is open this topic in a separate browser tab so I can listen to the clips while browsing the rest of the site in another tab.

It's like scf has its own music channel.

@chris fullmer said:

Why do you guys have so many PM's?

'Cause there are some things too dark or dangerous to discuss in public forums, like how to model geometries capable of tearing holes in the space-time continuum, what the SU inference engine really infers from user input, the bizarre effects of bowler shapes on higher brain function, & so on.

@unknownuser said:

And leave so many as unread?

I generally skip the ones from Nigerian princes, people of indeterminate gender wanting to be my girlfriend, etc.

@unknownuser said:

(@marcus- i do have the scf/forums bookmarked and i guess i could make a secondary one for new posts but i'd rather have just the one if possible)

Have you considered making a bookmarks folder for scf stuff & putting that in the Bookmarks Bar (or the equivalent if you aren't using Safari)? You can then add as many bookmarks to it as you want & they will all have one click access, yet won't clutter up the browser interface with lots of individual bookmarks.

I have organized all my often used bookmarks that way, with one bookmarks folder for all the SketchUp-related pages that I frequent, another for Mac-related stuff, & so on. I find it a real time saver, if for no other reason than I don't have to scroll long web pages to wherever the built-in links appear on the page.

@solo said:

I think it's working very well, not sure who gets to manage it but with Time Warner cable I have noticed a significant improvement...

We watch a mix of Time Warner cable & over-the-air TV programming available in the Dallas TX area. I noticed a big improvement in ads coming from network feeds but a lot of the locally originated OTA ones are still cranked up to 11.

@srx said:

I stopeed watching new videos long time ago...

It's hard to beat that live performance by these four great blues guitar masters … but how about one with a few more greats thrown in?

If you are not up for watching the whole 1 hour 20 minute show, at least skip to about the 1 hour 7 minute mark & check out the finale jam -- beyond awesome!

Heck, just the roll out credits are worth watching for the SRV clip.

@unknownuser said:

what?!.. nice..
i was too young to see him live.. definitely one of my picks though if i ever come across a concert time machine..

Isn't that what YouTube is for?

Funny though. Among all those YT clips of live concerts, the only one I've found that I actually saw live was this one:

It was a particularly memorable event for me. The audio you hear in that clip was mixed from the TV truck. But I was doing the "house" (audience) mix from a riser in the middle of the tent, running it at thunderous levels so the huge overflow crowd outside could hear it & not be tempted to force their way into the tent.

It was so loud I was worried about breaking noise control laws & getting hauled off to jail but the local Dutch engineers assured me Den Haag had no such laws. I did not know whether to believe them or not, but I did not get arrested so I guess they were right.

@gaieus said:

• The link up there say I have a "[number of] new messages".
• I go there, read (say) one of them and if I navigate away from the inbox, no matter how many unread messages remained there, now it say "0 new messages".

For me at least, I don't even have to read a new message. Just going to the inbox page resets the link to "0 new messages."

I can't be sure but I think this just started happening during the last week or so.

@mike lucey said:

The TV advert analogy you mention is also so very correct! I keep the remote close to hand for the very same reason, those adverts that pump up the volume and annoy me!

If you lived in the U.S., as of last December 13th you would theoretically never have to suffer through these overly loud ads again.

That's when CALM (the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act) went into effect. It is now a violation of Federal law for average ad volume to exceed average program volume.

Of course, in the real world the FCC depends on consumer complaints to identify offenders. Not many people know how to file a complaint, so it hasn't had as much effect as one might hope for.

Chris: PM resent after getting yours, which helped me clarify what's happening:

I expected the 'new messages' link to always show the number of unread PM's in my inbox. But it doesn't do that. As soon as I click on any link to any page of the PM tab of the user control panel, it resets to "0 new messages" -- even if there is one or more unread messages in the inbox. And as long as I am viewing any of those pages, it will always show zero new messages, even if a new PM comes in & I refresh the page.

So, as a practical matter, the only place that always shows the number of new, unread messages is in parentheses in the "Inbox" link on the left of PM pages.

@chris fullmer said:

I don't know, send me a PM

Done!

Starting about a week ago, whenever I visit the site the 'new messages' link at the top of the page always shows "(0 new messages)" even when I have several unread PM's in my inbox.

Am I the only one experiencing this?

@mike lucey said:

I honestly don't think that the adverts we have here are obtrusive or too large. As a matter of interest we insist that they must be sub 150Kb in size. also not too 'flashy'. I would go as far to say that all are well designed and to my mind add a 'splash of colour' to the site.

Just my 2¢:
I don't mind static ad banners. I even agree (to some extent) that they add color & interest to the site. But the highly animated ones are very obtrusive; a constant, highly annoying distraction from the site's content and/or anything else I have running on my Mac that actually has a legitimate need to display dynamic content to attract my attention.

The worst offenders are the ones that cycle through several completely different banner images to deliver their message. I think that sort of thing should be reserved for click throughs, or at the least set to cycle just once through all the images & then stop on a single, static one.

As it is, they are the visual equivalent of the obnoxious, ridiculously loud TV ads that have me scrambling for the mute button on the TV … & resolving never to buy the products they tout.

@way77 said:

Discovered the trick... duplicate the list, delete first one and then the copy. Both color lists are gone.... finally.

What worked for me: duplicate the EZdraw list, but remove the " copy" suffix that is automatically added to its name before clicking "OK." Then delete it & SketchUp will pop up a dialog box complaining that it can't delete "null" but both copies will be gone when you dismiss the dialog.

EDIT: This method does not persist -- IOW, the EasyDraw color palettes lists will be gone, but they will reappear the next time you launch SketchUp. To get rid of them forever, check the ~/Library/Application Support/Google SketchUp 8/SketchUp/Materials folder (the user Library folder, not the system or root level ones) for any folders with a corresponding name (like "EasyDraw") & trash that folder.

Also check the ~/Library/Colors folder (again, the user Library folder) for any files with the extension ".clr" with names corresponding to the unwanted EasyDraw palettes (like "EZD_WebSafe.clr" or "Toolbar.ezdraw.clr") & trash those too.

Note that Easy Draw creates these color list (.clr) files the first time the app needs to access something that uses them (like the Easy Draw toolbar) so if you run Easy Draw after removing the unwanted color list files it has already created, it is still possible that other ones will be created & show up in the SketchUp Materials lists (or that you will get unexpected results if it needs one you have removed).

FWIW, page 14 of this Easy Draw version 3 manual lists all the color list files that version might install, & may be helpful in determining where some of the "mystery" color palettes came from.