Personal
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I'm still on pseudo-vacation. We really had a great week in the snow: sun during the day (everyday!) with the odd bit of fresh snow overnight on a couple of occasions. It's snowing again now, but unfortunately this time it's set to snow all the way through to the end of the day tomorrow, so it's quite possible we'll head home a little earlier than expected. Which, on the plus side, will allow me to do some prep-work for Monday's Geneva Motor Show project installation. Anyway, all this to say that I've written this post really quickly with plenty of…
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I'm up in the mountains for the week as the kids have their winter half-term break (which in Switzerland is actually intended for kids to ski… very civilized :-). I'm going to take a few meetings and probably write a few blog posts, but otherwise I'm planning on hitting the slopes whenever I get the chance. I did want to comment on how my research into right-click menus ended up, last week. I put together some code that made use of the technique shown in this previous post to create and load a partial CUIx file containing our OBJECT_ACAD_TABLE shortcut…
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Well, today was the day I printed my first 3D object. The missing feeder tube from our site's MakerBot Replicator 2 hasn't yet been replaced, but Francesco Tonioni, friend, colleague and probably the most practical person I know, cobbled something together as a stop-gap. So the game was on. 🙂 This initial project stems back to May of last year – when I was in Boston for our internal Technical Summit – when my son talked to me about an idea of his. My children really like LEGO, and, at the time – the specific product tie-in tends to vary…
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Aside from being St. Valentine's Day, Friday is notable as it marks the beginning of the first ever ETHx class, "AMRx – Autonomous Mobile Robots". ETHx is the moniker being used by the prestigious technical institution ETH Zurich for the MOOC courses they're delivering as part of edX. This is exciting: despite the fact I live close enough theoretically to attend classes at ETH Zurich in person, I'm very happy to be able to do so from the comfort of my home. The topic is itself very interesting… the "environment perception" piece alone looks as though it should cover algorithms…
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I've been a fan of TED for many years (and am very happy to be working for a company that has sponsored such an important conference). Yesterday was the first time, though, that I actually had the chance to attend a TED (or in this case, TEDx) event in person. TEDxLausanne was held at the University of Lausanne, about an hour from my home. It was held in English, which isn't a requirement for TEDx but seems a good choice for a multi-lingual country such as Switzerland. The agenda contained an interesting mix of sessions: there were (of course) a…
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I was up in the mountains with my family, over the weekend, but as Sunday was "un jour blanc" I decided to stay on an extra day and make the most of the superb conditions (i.e. bright sunshine and fresh snow) predicted for Monday. Hence the title of this post, which is the British equivalent of playing hooky, for those who're wondering. (And yes, it was yesterday, but I've just realised I don't remember ever using that particular verb in the past tense… "I skived off" is more likely than "I skove off", I suppose. 🙂 Here's a quick animated…
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It's been a really interesting and productive few days here in Tel Aviv. In a sense it was too short a trip – I was penned in by commitments during the weekends either side of it – but despite that a lot was achieved. I didn't get to see very much of the city – apart from the hotel, a restaurant, some nice lunchtime eateries and a bar or two – but I'll definitely try to come for longer, next time around. After arriving on Tuesday and meeting with the people I'd be working most closely with during the course…
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I arrived yesterday morning on the EasyJet flight from Geneva to Tel Aviv. I'd ended up spending the previous night at an airport hotel – I'd have had to leave home at 3:30am, otherwise – which meant a somewhat more tolerable 4:40am wake-up. I admit I'd been a bit concerned about security, arriving in Israel the day after Ariel Sharon's funeral, but it turned out to be an extremely smooth arrival. Someone with my name on a board was waiting for me at the end of the jetway and they whisked me through security and customs (I could really get…
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I was up in Adelboden, this weekend, for the Men's FIS World Cup Slalom and Giant Slalom events. Yes, just watching – not participating 🙂 – although I did get the chance to catch a few much gentler slopes on my snowboard during the course of the weekend. On the Saturday – during the Giant Slalom – there was a pretty amazing incident: a young Norwegian competitor, Henrik Kristofferson, very nearly hit a television worker during his first run down. Thankfully no-one was hurt, and Henrik was very understanding about the whole thing (he was given a restart but, given…
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Yesterday I was reminded that 200 sessions from Autodesk University 2013 were recorded and have been made available on-demand – for free! Many great classes are available as well as the keynote and innovation forum sessions. I believe you need to create a free Autodesk account to view them, if you don't already happen to have one. In fact, here's a screengrab from the closing keynote which happens to include a photo (taken by Shaan Hurley, of course) of me with Scott McFarlane (love the sweatshirt 🙂 and Owen Wengerd at the Blogger's Social. I did a quick search for…