Personal
-
For those of you who may have missed it, I really like the Morgan Motor Company, and in particular the latest incarnation of their iconic Morgan 3 Wheeler. Which is why I was very happy to see it featured during Autodesk's recent 2014 launch event: What's fascinating to me is the use of a high-tech design process to create something – which is then built by hand, with a wooden chassis – that has such a low-tech, no frills driving experience: I'm also a big reader of science fiction, so the idea of donning steampunk aviator goggles and leather helmet…
-
The last few Wednesday mornings I've swung by Place de la Gare to visit the recently-opened Fab Lab in Neuchâtel. Here's a quick video description of what Fab Labs are about (and here's their charter): I was new to the concept of Fab Labs, but was excited to find out one now exists here (thankfully my wife listens to local radio! ;-). I've been jealous of my US-based Autodesk colleagues who have access to the excellent TechShop (Autodesk employees get free membership, which is a pretty fantastic benefit if you have one nearby). Having a Fab Lab nearby at least…
-
As I had to meet someone at Geneva airport, this morning, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and spend a few hours visiting the 83rd International Motor Show. The show opened its doors to the public, today, and includes such stunning vehicles as the $4.6 million Lamborghini Veneno: Yes, that wasn't a typo. This car would set you back the best part of $5 million. Ouch. I went quickly past most of the stands, though, and spent most of my time at Morgan Motor Company's. As I've mentioned before, MMC is a big user of Autodesk software.…
-
I'm up in the Alps enjoying a week of skiing (in my case snowboarding) with my family. Swiss schools have a very civilised "ski week" where the kids get a week off school sometime between the Christmas and Easter holidays – the specific week varies from canton to canton and this week happens to be Neuchâtel's (it extends the usual March 1st holiday celebrating the 1848 revolution leading to Neuchâtel joining the Swiss confederation) – so I decided to take the week off to be with them. Here's a quick snap I took this morning before heading up to the…
-
Being a bit of a Star Wars fan, I was delighted to come across this blog post by former MakerBot employee Todd Blatt (now working at Custom 3D Stuff), who modeled an Imperial Scout Trooper Blaster in AutoCAD for 3D printing. You can download the STL output and the original DWG file from here. Here's a view on the finished gun with the "shades of gray" visual style: And here's one that's "realistic" with a nice metallic material applied to it: 3D printing functional weapon parts is clearly a contentious subject – which, according to some, may sadly lead to the…
-
It's always a bit of a shock when the annual Autodesk "week of rest" comes to an end: it's the one time during the year during which the internal flow of email drops down to a trickle and you can truly relax. Although it seems that social media-related traffic no longer means much of a disconnect, these days, but that thankfully comes down to personal choice. So now it's over: over the coming days Autodeskers will be returning to their normal routines, preparing for the end of the financial year and/or thinking about our usual first quarter activities (there should…
-
One of the ulterior motives (although you might really consider it a mere side benefit) for my recent trip back to the UK was to pick up the Christmas presents I'd bought for myself on behalf of my wife and kids. 🙂 The first – one of the new Raspberry Pi Model B's with 512 MB of memory – could have been ordered from Switzerland, but I was a bit frustrated at the mark-up added by the local reseller (the previous one I bought from the UK and had shipped directly here from China… that no longer seems possible now…
-
I've taken a few days off to visit some very old friends who are back in the UK from New Zealand for the festive season, but thought I'd go ahead and share some code I've been playing with, even if I can't actually tell you what it's for. I can tell you what it does, of course, but I'm using it in conjunction with some other capabilities that I'm probably not allowed to talk about explicitly. Feel free to speculate at your leisure, I may or may not be able to confirm or deny your suspicions (I need to check…
-
As I inexorably head towards the end of my 30s (just a few months to go, now), I feel more and more justified to get cracking on a proper midlife crisis. And I've been told that to get the most out of a good crisis, you really need to invest in at least a little crisis planning. 🙂 My most recent bout of rumination kicked off at AU2012, when – to my huge surprise – I stumbled across a new Morgan 3 Wheeler. Here's a picture of the car with Jon Wells, the Senior Designer at Morgan Motor Company Ltd.,…
