Using your suggestions and a few of my own, I have added two polls for you to select what are, in your opinion, the best and worst features ever added to AutoCAD. To help us find The Answer, there are 42 items in each poll, from which you can choose up to three.
A few items (e.g. Action Recorder) made it into both lists, while several items in the ‘worst’ list (e.g. 2012 Array, Ribbon, Annotative Scaling) were suggested multiple times. It will be interesting to see how the poll results pan out.
Audience participation time, I think. A comment on one of AutoCAD 2012’s new features recently set me thinking about what were the worst features ever introduced to AutoCAD. That in turn got me thinking about what were the best.
I’ll keep my opinions to myself for a while, as I’d like your input and don’t want to influence it. Please add a comment with your list of what you consider the best three features ever added to AutoCAD and the worst three. If you can’t think of three of each, you can submit less, but please don’t submit more. By all means discuss at length the things you love or loathe, but make it clear what you’re submitting by using a clear format like this (meaningless examples only):
Best:
1. Content Explorer
2. Online Help
3. Nudge
Worst:
1. AutoLISP
2. Transparent zoom and pan
3. Paper/model space
What do the words “feature”, “best” and “worst” mean? I’ll leave that for you to decide for yourself. You might consider “worst” to be something that’s a bad idea, poorly implemented, slow, inefficient, poorly documented, bloated, buggy, half-baked in the short or long term, clueless in some other way, or some or all of the above. It’s up to you.
When I have enough submissions, I’ll collate the most popular (and unpopular) features into a pair of polls for you all to vote on. Have fun!
Edit: I have now added the polls and closed comments on this post.
I have just posted the Release Candidate of ClassicArray™ (version number 0.6.0). The main changes from Beta 2 (0.5.0) are:
Regrettably, the download file size has blown out to 787 KB because of the inclusion of the Help files and setup executables. There are two setup choices; one for all users (requires admin rights) and one for the current user only (admin rights not required). When installing the Release Candidate, it is not necessary to uninstall the Beta first. I would appreciate any feedback you might have, particularly on installation and uninstallation. If there are no significant problems reported with this version, I intend to release it in this form, except for version information and the timebomb mechanism.
Please see the main ClassicArray Beta post for the download, and add any comments there.
Congratulations to Ralph Grabowski, winner of my AutoCAD WS contest. His entry of Workspace was chosen by the greatest number of voters as the hidden meaning behind the WS in AutoCAD WS.
Ralph, your prize awaits! Just visit the App Store and you’ll soon be running a real live AutoCAD on your iPod Shuffle!
This blog has been a bit quiet over the last couple of weeks, as I have had other things to occupy me. I have recently returned from the Commonwealth Fencing Championships 2010 which were held in Melbourne from 30 September to 5 October. There, I was representing my country in the veteran (over-40) events. Which country? Read on.
Fencing is one of the few sports to have featured in every modern Olympic Games, but at Commonwealth level it has been held separately from the main Games since 1970. Although not part of the Commonwealth Games currently being held in Delhi, fencing is a Commonwealth-recognised sport and the Commonwealth Fencing Championships is a sanctioned event. It is a fairly large event, with representatives from 15 nations. There were 51 fencers in the England squad alone.
You may recall me mentioning my participation in August’s Western Australian International Tournament, where I managed to snag a win in Veteran Men’s Sabre and a third place in Veteran Men’s Foil. At that time, several people raised with me the possibility of national representation. After some thought and with the support of my family, I nominated for Australian selection in Veteran’s Sabre at the Commonwealth Fencing Championships, where there were still a couple of places available. However, I was eventually knocked back and others were chosen for those places.
Not entirely content with the way in which this had been handled, and with just a couple of days to go before the deadline for entries, I contacted England Fencing. That organisation was happy to find me a last-minute spot in the team representing the country of my birth, England. This was the place where I had learned to fence and spent most of my fencing life. As a bonus, I could fence in both Foil and Sabre and would have a chance of qualifying for the team events based on my results in the individual events.
When I turned up in Melbourne, I was wholeheartedly accepted by both my new England team mates and the generally amused Australian fencing community. The spirit of camaraderie and sportsmanship among veteran fencers is excellent, and there were handshakes and back-slaps all round. My England team mates enjoyed having a “tame Aussie” on their side. I doubt that any of them had ever before been encouraged by one among them shouting the very Australian expression, “You bloody beauty!”, but nobody seemed to mind.
I was very pleased with my results, coming 12th in the Veteran Men’s Sabre event, finishing above 8 Australian fencers. I was even happier with 9th in Veteran Men’s Foil, which placed me above not only 9 Aussies, but also above most of my England colleagues, thus qualifying for the Team Foil event. It was very exciting to fence on the Finals Piste with full ceremony in front of a vocal crowd. Unfortunately, England was beaten by Australia and New Zealand into the bronze medal spot, but at least I was a Commonwealth medalist!
It was a very emotional experience for me to receive my medal on the dias alongside my England colleagues, even if I had to remember not to sing along to Advance Australia Fair when the flags were raised.
Thanks to all entrants in the AutoCAD WS contest. I have now closed the entries and added a poll (see right). Although I did state that there would be no prize for this contest, I have some exciting news! I am happy to announce that thanks to an exclusive* arrangement with Autodesk, the winner of this contest will receive a free** copy of AutoCAD!*** I will keep the poll open until I feel like closing it or the entry I like best is winning, whichever is the most convenient.
Autodesk’s linking app to allow iThings to connect to Project Butterfly is called AutoCAD WS. Never mind the “AutoCAD”, that’s just there to confuse matters. What does the “WS” stand for? William Shatner, perhaps?
There’s no official answer, but I thought it might be fun to run a contest for the most appropriate and/or amusing answer. I have some ideas of my own, but most of them are rude so I’ll keep them to myself.
Please just add a comment with your idea(s), up to 3 per person. When I have enough responses, I’ll run a poll. No prizes, this is just for fun.
Last weekend, I competed for the first time in a national-level fencing competition, the “Be Active” Western Australian International Fencing Tournament (AFF#3). Most people compete in one or two events within a competition, but I thought I would challenge myself and had a go at all six of the individual events available to me. I set myself what I thought were realistic goals for each event. Here is how I did at chasing those goals:
Open Men’s Foil – goal: top 32 – result: 22nd – achieved.
Open Men’s Epee – goal: top 32 – result: 42nd – failed.
Open Men’s Sabre – goal: top 16 – result: 16th – achieved.
Veteran Men’s Foil – goal: top 8 – result: 3rd= – exceeded.
Veteran Men’s Epee – goal: top 8 – result: 6th – achieved.
Veteran Men’s Sabre – goal: top 4 – result: made the final – exceeded.
If you are interested, have 5 minutes to spare, and your access is not blocked at work, you can have a look at me competing in the final of the Veteran Men’s Sabre using this YouTube link. Hopefully, you should find it a pretty entertaining contest, even if you don’t entirely understand what’s going on. If I hit him you will see a red light, if he hits me it’s green, and if both lights go on that means we have both hit each other within 120 milliseconds and the referee decides the point based on right-of-way rules.
I have only been fencing sabre for about a year, so I was very happy to reach the final. That I did so is all down to my sabre coach at my club Excalibur, legendary Hungarian master Frank Kocsis. You can see him briefly on the video as he approaches me during the break to calm me down and get me to focus. I don’t think I’ve ever been that pumped!
In a thread in the Feedback & Questions about the Discussion Groups section of the Autodesk discussion groups, somebody called ACADuser contributed what I thought was a highly amusing bar graph as a test image. Inspired by this, I contributed a couple of test images of my own.
A few hours later, the whole thread magically disappeared! It seems a shame that I went to the effort of making those images, and all for nothing. The handful of people who would have seen them on the discussion groups have now missed out on the experience. So I’ve decided to make up for that by posting them here, where thousands of people can look at them instead.
Here’s the first one (not that amusing):
Here’s the second one. Given the circumstances, it seems somewhat prescient:
If ACADuser wants to get in touch, I’ll be quite happy to post his image too.
Any Internet resource that allows public comment has to deal with spam. Fortunately, Akismet takes care of the vast majority of the spam on this blog so I don’t have to worry about it. Most spam is just moronic and I’m saddened that there are still some people around who are clueless enough to fall for it, making it worthwhile for the spammers to continue their evil ways.
Today, Akismet caught the first spam I’ve seen for a long time that actually made me LOL. Here it is:
HELP! I’m currently being held prisoner by the Russian mafia xyzrxyz pxxxx enlargement xyzrxyz and being forced to post spam comments on blogs and forum! If you don’t approve this they will kill me. xyzrxyz pxxxx enlargement xyzrxyz They’re coming back now. xyzrxyz vxxxx xyzrxyz Please send help! nitip vxxxx
I removed the bits that would make this useful to the spammer, so I guess I’m now responsible for some poor schmuck suffering a hideous fate at the hands of the Russian Mafia. Oh dear, what a shame, never mind.
Annoyed by telemarketers? Too polite to abuse them or just hang up? Can’t be bothered wasting their time in person? Then you need AstyCrapper. If you’re using the open-source Asterisk PBX, it will crap on for ages on your behalf. It works by detecting responses from the telemarketer and silence gaps and responding with a series of recorded samples. It’s pretty convincing!
OK, maybe that doesn’t apply to you, but you can still have a good laugh at the example calls.
Just for the commenter who said there is no metal on the blog any more, here is a Kylie Minogue song. I hope those attention whores lovely people who intend picketing Ronnie James Dio’s funeral enjoy this video as much as I did.
YouTube link. The original version by Kylie, rather than Aussie metal band Lord, can be found here.
Autodesk, in common with other multi-billion-dollar corporations, periodically spends large sums on redeveloping and then consistently presenting its corporate image. It then spends even larger sums making itself look silly in court by claiming exclusive rights to such things as empty orange rectangles. Strange, then, that Autodesk should slip up online when it comes to that most fundamental image element, the logo for the Autodesk name itself. Spotted on the web this very day:
It’s kind of silly for Autodesk to literally give itself a bad name like this, especially when it’s so easily avoided.
The solution? Let me do it. Autodesk’s logo is kind of harsh, mechanical and masculine at the moment, in common with its previous iterations. The world is changing and Autodesk’s image needs to move with the times. Here’s my redesign.
Comic Sans is such a nice font, don’t you think? The slopes of the A and the k provide a certain symmetry, hinting at the original divider-A logo that is fondly remembered by so many. The bright pink is a bold, positive, affirming statement that says Autodesk is comfortable with its sexuality. The background is organic and human. This logo says Autodesk has a soul. Go for it, Autodesk, it’s a winner!
Where do I send the bill?
Congratulations to Brian Benton from CAD-a-Blog. His alternative name for AutoCAD 2011, R.E.A.L. (Real Expensive AutoCAD License) was clearly the most popular among those who voted in the pin the name on the product competition. Brian is now the proud (or otherwise) owner of a virtual album, uniVers by Voyager:
I’m not sure what Brian will make of the opening moments of the album, where accordion music leads into part-grunty vocals. Maybe it would be best to start with track 8, Falling, instead.
Personally, I find most April fool jokes to be pretty lame. I considered doing one myself, and had what I thought was a pretty convincing idea, but finally decided against it. Maybe next year.
This year, there was one definite exception to the lameness rule. It was well set up, clever and funny. Siemens killed it. Or, to be more accurate, they foolishly attempted to kill it. Fortunately, the Twitter CADville app is still alive and even now being tended by somebody with a fine sense of humour, as you can see from tweets like this:
Sometimes you will see duplicate messages. That can happen after downtime. You want better, write your own CADville #cadville.
Sometimes, the cloud is a big server farm. Othertimes, is a crappy laptop that needs to go to the programmer’s girlfriends house. Back in 1h
Once Siemens pulled Mark Burhop’s corporate blog post, in an attempt to protect Mark, Deelip removed his own related post (edit: now restored). But the very idea that you can hide stuff like this once it has been blogged about is plainly ludicrous. Returning wine to a shattered bottle would be much easier.
Ralph describes the CADville story here, you can also see it on Twitpic here, and the original FAQ has been reposted here. Now I’m posting about it on a blog that gets about 90,000 page reads a month. I expect there will be a fair bit of comment buzzing around the CAD community for a while, none of which will reflect well on Siemens.
If this gag had been left to run, I would have either not heard about it at all, or would have noticed it as a funny little episode that showed how cool it was that Siemens doesn’t fit the ‘humourless German’ stereotype. The failure of this futile censorship attempt is a classic case of the Streisand Effect. Apparently, there are people with corporate clout at Siemens who either haven’t heard of it, or delude themselves into thinking that social media are somehow controllable from on high. Nope, sorry, think again.
Deelip said this on Ralph’s blog, and it sums it up nicely:
Yes, this whole thing could and should have ended differently. What I find odd is that CAD vendors talk about social networking and social media and how they are embracing it in different forms. What Mark tried to do was exactly that. He got some of us to blog, others to tweet, irrespective of our affiliations, so that this prank (which is exactly what it is) would look as real as possible. I did my part.
Too bad Siemens does not get what social networking and social media is actually all about.
Congratulations, corporate klutzes, you have succeeded in making your company look completely clueless. Out of touch much? Duh!
Compare this with Autodesk. OK, Scott Sheppard’s Autodesk Love Maker 2011 joke didn’t have me ROFLMAOing or even LOLing, and it was pretty obviously an April fool, but it was still pretty well done. The fact that Autodesk corporate doesn’t throw a hissy fit over stuff like this indicates that it’s at least partly human. The fact that Scott can put a funny picture of his CEO (Pointy Haired Bass) on his blog and still remain employed tells me only good things about Autodesk corporate.
The contrast with Siemens is as stark as it could be.
Edit: Mark (not Matt – apologies) has now restored his post and provided an explanation (of sorts) about the post being pulled. I have asked for a clarification.
My name the product competition has only a short time left to run, so please enter soon if you want to be in the running. With only 12 entries so far, new entrants still have a pretty decent chance of winning.
I was amused to see Shaan Hurley losing his locks at AU. Some of you may recall me suggesting this course of action a couple of years ago. How close do you think I got with my artist’s impression?
Original images © 2008 and 2009 Shaan Hurley.
One of the blogs I read regularly is Photoshop Disasters, which recently posted a picture of a Ralph Lauren ad. In common with many fashion photos, this showed a skinny model that appeared to have been further skinnified on somebody’s computer to the point that the poor waif was ridiculously deformed. Like this:
Nothing out of the ordinary there, then. Under normal circumstances it would have received a few dozen comments and scrolled off the front page in a week or so, because there is no shortage of bad image manipulation out there for the blog to snigger at. The image was reposted at Boing Boing, but it would still have been forgotten in a week.
Except this time, Ralph Lauren prodded its lawyers into action and demanded the image be removed from both sites, issuing a DMCA notice. The DMCA request was spurious, as this is a clear case of fair use of an image for the purposes of criticism. Photoshop Disasters is hosted by Blogspot, which automatically complies with such requests. Boing Boing is not, and instead went on the offensive. They refused to take down the picture, instead reposting it with biting sarcasm. Read it, it’s funny. Ralph Lauren, if you’re reading this, please send me a DMCA notice too. I’m feeling left out.
This led to a flurry of comments, reposts and reports all over the Internet, including here. The comments (running at over a hundred an hour right now) are almost universally mocking of Ralph Lauren, its legal team, its models and its image manipulation propensities. The criticism goes way beyond the few snipes at a mangled-body image that would have been the case if Ralph Lauren had done nothing. It has moved on to the fashion designer’s ethical standards and those of the fashion industry as a whole for promoting artificially skinny bodies to eating-disorder-vulnerable people.
Now, is Ralph Lauren really that clueless and out of touch, to think that this kind of suppression would work? Or is this actually a deliberate marketing move, using the Streisand Effect to gain free publicity? Maybe, but it’s a deplorable attack on freedom of speech either way, and a boycott is fully justified. I’m not going to buy any of their stuff, ever, and I encourage you to do likewise. To be fair, I was unlikely to be a rich source of income. Even if I were a female with lots of excess money to throw away on clothes that look really awful, there is no way they would ever fit me. Or any living human, from the look of that photo.
This sign was visible for some months at my daughters’ old school:
It vanished rather quickly after I was spotted taking a photo of it. My daughters don’t go to that school any more. Instead, they go to the school where I took this photo this morning:
Again, the sign vanished almost instantly.
OK, so the last one was too easy. Is this one any harder? Who is this?
Bonus brownie points are available for identifying the time and place.