In another example of Andy finally gets around to using something he bought a book about, I’m using Google Sketchup v6 to work out some dimensions in a bathroom we’re upgrading. This is partly an exercise in saving money, as the Ceramilite sheets we’re gonna use are expensive. It’s also a training exercise for me before modeling the entire library. This lengthy post discusses the SketchUp features I used for modeling the bathroom, complete with pictures.
Archive for August, 2008
Dimensioning a Bathroom with Google Sketchup
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008iPhone Advertising Fakes Performance
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008A great video comparing the suggested performance in an advert vs the real-world iPhone performance. I’m sure the ad is perfectly legal as the voice-over mentions only twice the performance and whilst the video clip suggests much faster performance, it is a legitimate illustration to show stills or short videos blending into a sequence. The suggestion, of course, is that the elapsed time of the ad is all it will take for the illustrated tasks.
The Silverlight 2b2 “not installed” debacle
Sunday, August 10th, 2008Right now, most of the Silverlight samples indexed by Google are for version 2b1, such as Microsoft’s own gallery.
Given the key role of Silverlight in broadcasting the Olympics, I assume anybody and everybody related to the team is either exhausted or busy and if they aren’t working, are on standby should disaster strike. We will probably see some progress in a few weeks’ time.
However, it has been irritating the whatever out of me for weeks now that when I try to point people at a Silverlight example, I’m left looking faintly like an idiot because the behaviour of a Silverlight 2b1 site when you arrive there with 2b2 installed is to tell you that you don’t have Silverlight installed and give you a nice shiny button to click on to install. If you bother to click on the button you get a nice MS page explaining how you really do have Silverlight installed but the previous site is to blame for not realizing that. That kind of exception handling and disclaimer looks professional and works, up to the point where it is in your face all the !@#$ !@#$ time because practically every site of interest is hitting the exception.
Oh, and should you go to MS to install Silverlight, of course you are offered the current 2b2 installer, hence every new user gets dropped in the same mess.
Note to MS – whoever thought up the “ain’t installed” approach for handling a later version needs their butt kicking – that is never a good way to go. A lot of people, I suspect the majority, will not bother following the link to find out they are running a later version.
Why I don’t want an iPhone
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008This posting is inspired by a recent comment on a local MacGeeks mailing list assuming anyone on that list would be thinking about or already own an iPhone. The iPhone 3G has recently been released in Australia with the expected fanfare, advertising blitz and stock shortages. It was even a topic of iconic reference and conversation at the excellent Readify .Net course I attended last week!
If I had genuinely been hanging out for an iPhone I might be feeling a bit stupid right now about my decision to jump ship to Telstra and get the 6120C but, frankly, I wasn’t. I want a small phone and a better, eyes-off PDA than an iPhone. (more…)