Personal
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So far our big trip has gone well: the trip out via the UK went smoothly – we had a 5-hour layover at Heathrow Terminal 5, as we had to collect and re-check our bags (our ticket from Geneva was separate from the main round-the-world itinerary, it seems) – but time passes quickly in a pub when you're eating fish and chips and sipping Guinness. Arrivals in DC were also a breeze: I'd forgotten about having to take mobile lounges at Dulles, but immigration was quick and easy. We booked an UberXL (we're 5 people with lots of bags) which…
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It's now less than a week before my family and I get on a plane and start our big trip: visiting 13 countries on 5 continents (not including the one we're starting from) over the course of 6 months. We leave on July 2nd, 2017, and – if our plans don't change – will return home on January 5th, 2018. Here's a map of where we're going… be sure to zoom into different locations and click on the place-markers to bring up additional information. It's been a deliberate choice, over the years, not to talk much about my family on…
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As always, the annual football tournament – this time in Barcelona – was a complete blast. The Neuchatel team was as strong as it's ever been, in my opinion, and played really well. We were in a tough group (yes, the proverbial "group of death"), but managed to qualify for the knock-out stage with 3 wins, 2 draws and a loss. The weather was scorching… a beautiful early summer's day. We had a few great games in the knock-out phase, eventually losing (again) in the quarter final on penalties to the UK team (who went on to win the whole…
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Autodesk has maintained a health dashboard for its cloud products for quite some time. The good news for Forge developers is that – just in time for next week's Accelerator in Barcelona – Forge has been added as a line item: Given the internal response to the technical issues we experienced during the last Accelerator I attended in Munich, I'm pretty sure we'll be green through the week in Barcelona. Let's hope so, anyway! One great feature of the dashboard is the ability to subscribe to notifications: once you've signed in you'll have the option to do so via the…
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Most of my team has been 100% focused on an event taking place in Toronto, this week, the Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design (or SimAUD). This is a really interesting conference for people working in our space: I'm looking forward to attending myself, at some point. As the only non-Toronto based member of the team, it made sense for me to skip it (and given the fact I'm about to embark on a 6-month trip – including some time in Toronto – I didn't even suggest that I attend). This meant that I ended up spending the…
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I'm writing this on a train to Geneva airport from where I'll hop across to the UK for a week. This afternoon I have a meeting in London at the British Library, after which I'll be checking into the Hilton London Metropole where Autodesk is holding its 9th (at least I think that's right, if the first was – as I seem to recall – in 2009) annual Technical Summit. This is the internal meeting where technical staff from around the world get together to share information and learn from each other. Every year the percentage of presentation proposals selected…
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This one almost passed me by, but I did remember just in time. Have a great Start Wars Day, everyone! photo credit: saoulsliberty Just few days Chewie ! via photopin (license)
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We've crossed a pretty big milestone in the plans for my family's round the world trip for the latter half of 2017: we've actually booked flights. Here's how the latest location tracker looks: You can compare this with the more speculative plan from last time – which still holds good for most areas – to get a sense for the timing and flow. The first image includes prospective destinations reached overland – we'll be renting cars/RVs/motor-homes in various locations, as well as taking a fair amount of public ground transportation. We're crossing our fingers that the bus from Salta, Argentina…
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I have some big news. My wife and I have decided to take our three children out of school for a semester and travel around the world for six months. We'll be leaving at the beginning of July and spending a month in each of North America, South America, the South Pacific, ANZ, South Asia and South Africa, returning at the beginning of 2018. This is the reason I'm likely to be skipping AU 2017 and this year's Forge DevCon, by the way. So it goes. During the trip my wife will be "road schooling" the kids for a couple…
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Autodesk turned 35 years old, today. To commemorate this event, Shaan has suggested we all wear our oldest Autodesk shirt. I know I have an R14 ARX T-shirt somewhere, but I can't seem to find it (it was always about 5 sizes too big, so it may well have been thrown out). The best I could do were these two polo shirts from circa 2000. I'm not sure which is oldest, so here they both are. I'd joined the company five years before that, in 1995, but was based in Europe: a notoriously merchandising-starved continent, back then. It wasn't until…