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The next few posts may seem a bit anomalous – yes, I more commonly write about programming with AutoCAD – but then I've been sitting on a variety of beaches on the Greek island of Andros for the best part of the last two weeks, so for now it's all I have to write about. 🙂 In today's post I'm going to introduce Andros, one of the islands in the Cyclades island chain, while in the next post I'll talk about its beaches. Here's a quick Autodesk-centric anecdote, though. I wore a pair of flip-flops with the Autodesk logo during…
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My Quanum Nova arrived from Hong Kong, yesterday. I'd just been tracking the parcel's progress when the doorbell rang and the postman handed it to me: he seemed surprised I didn't mind paying the additional SFr 47 customs fee (on top of the $299 price-tag and what I had to pay for batteries) and even let him keep the change. I was in that good a mood. 😉 Reality gradually set in as I assembled the device, although that was pretty straightforward, overall. The assembly instructions were better than expected, and I was soon able to turn the device on…
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A quick reminder – as I already posted on this topic a few months ago – about the "early bird" $600 discount that's available now – and until August 19th – for this year's AU. It's a great way to get first dibs on the classes of your choice, as you get to register a week before people who don't hold advance passes (such as Autodesk employees, sniff-sniff ;-). It's already shaping up to be a hectic AU for me, again: both the classes I submitted got accepted (thanks, developer track leads!) and it turns out I'll be participating in…
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Most of this week I've been heads-down trying to finish a sample demonstrating the API that's coming for the new Autodesk 360 viewer (of which we saw a sneak peek in this recent post), so today I don't have much to talk about. The sample is pretty cool and involves my favourite car. But hopefully you'll be able to see it in action before too long, so there's really no need to say more about it, for now. 🙂 A good portion of this blog's readership is currently grilling meat and celebrating the 4th of July, so I won't beat…
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I woke up this morning thinking "it's about that time of year". Sure enough, it was eight years ago today that I made the first post to this blog. [This reminds me that the blog really could use a face-lift, if only for my photograph: I keep meaning to get a new profile snap taken, as I now have significantly more facial hair… nothing too crazy, just a small part of my ongoing southerly follicular migration ;-). And as I'm bound to look older – especially as I'll forgo the Photoshopping my photographer friend insisted on, last time around –…
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I'm nearing the end of my trip to Toronto: our annual internal Technical Summit was a great success – there were 500 attendees, this year, and as always is a really good opportunity to find out about other parts of the organisation and to meet new people – and today I've been hanging out at a specially hosted open house at Autodesk's King Street office. To mark the end of the summit, last night there was an event at the Ontario Science Centre, where we had lots of fun experimenting with some interesting "reality capture" technology. They had a special…
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Last week was very quiet for me: starting with Memorial Day in the US meant a gentle start for me in Europe, too, and the week ended on Wednesday evening as we then had our own long weekend for Ascension, here in Switzerland. It was nice to have some time off just before a work trip: I'm getting up before dawn tomorrow to head across to Toronto for Autodesk's annual internal Technical Summit (generally a really interesting and useful event – I'm very much looking forward to it). Over the last few years – as those of you who follow…
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My good friend and colleague, Christer Janson, was named 123D's Maker of the Day a couple of weeks ago. This post is to congratulate Christer but also to talk about Christer's background at Autodesk and the key role he plays in the AutoCAD team. I met Christer during the second round interview for my first job at Autodesk, back in 1995. I'd flown across to Switzerland for the interview, although the job itself was to be in the UK: it was a couple more years before I managed to move to Neuchatel for the first time. Back then Christer was…
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It's been a great week of holidays, so far. There's been a lot of driving: we booked our flights in and out of Stansted – as our main purpose was to attend a good friend's wedding in Suffolk – but fairly late on we decided to drive up to Cumbria to visit my grandmother. My birthday dinner at The Windmill Inn in Redmile – a pub used to film certain episodes of the classic UK series, Auf Wiedersehen Pet. As my old friend Charles McAuley used to say, the difference between England and America is that in England 100 miles…
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This is without a doubt the coolest office Autodesk has anywhere in the world. Pier 9, on San Francisco's waterfront, houses the Autodesk Consumer Group, including the Tinkercad and Instructables teams, as well as members of Autodesk Research and visiting artists-in-residence. And it has the most phenomenal workshops, kitted out with cutting-edge technology. I'd been hoping to visit for some time but this was really my first real opportunity since its official opening back in September. I wandered across from our 1 Market office (which is also pretty cool, but relatively lacking in toys 😉 with Gaurav Sachdeva, a colleague…