I did a silly video. It’s only 10 seconds long. Enjoy.
Tag Archives: Fun
Attention Autodesk Pier 9 facilities staff
Brenda is trying to get hold of you, it’s time you renewed your wastewater discharge permit.
There may be no Ideas page for AutoCAD, but at least somebody’s found a use for the Fabrication Ideas page.
Not renewing things is alive at Autodesk.
When spambots get it wrong
I’ve posted before about the amusement that can be had at the expense of the clueless spammers who set up their bots with poorly written strings. Thanks to the various anti-spam tools now protecting this blog, there are few comments appearing in my spam folder. There was one today though, and the cluelessness reached new heights. The dolt writing the spambot was too dumb to set it up correctly to spew out a series of inane generic comments from a list, but instead put the whole lot of the comment strings in a single self-contradictory comment!
Here it is in all its glory:
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Hot tip for Autodesk
Hey Autodesk high-ups, I’m sorry you’ve been having so much trouble persuading your customers to throw away their perpetual licenses and throw themselves on your perpetual mercy. It’s clearly difficult to persuade technical types to do dumb things like rent your software at enormous and ever-increasing prices. I feel for you. But there’s an answer.
Find dumber customers.
Lots of them. And fast, before the stock market notices that you’re no Adobe and we’re not buying it. Sorry, I mean not renting it.
Look no further! Simply buy this company, discard the product when you’re bored with it (you’re very familiar with that process) and get hold of the customer list.
- Who comes up with a $700 Wi-Fi-connected juicer?
- Silicon Valley’s $400 Juicer May Be Feeling the Squeeze
- Juicero CEO Begs You: Do NOT Open Our Juice Bags
- Juicero offering refunds to all customers after people realize $400 juicer is totally unnecessary
- I Just Love This Juicero Story So Much
Sell subscription software to those people. They’ll have no idea what they’re renting or why, but that doesn’t matter. They’ll buy anything that’s pretty, hip, now, connected, and preferably organic. They will commit to perpetually shelling out large sums just to keep using it, no matter how poorly it performs. They’re rich and dumber than rocks. All of this makes them ideal customers for you.
If you’re a bit strapped for cash at the moment, just have a word with the investors (including Google) who pumped $120M into an Internet-enabled $700 (sorry, now $400) machine that squeezes expensive pre-squeezed juice out of DRM-protected short-lifespan bags, and manages to do it slower and noisier than you can do it with your bare hands. They’re even dumber than the customers, so squeezing money out of them will be easier than squeezing juice out of a bag when the Wi-Fi’s down.
This is a perfect fit for you, Autodesk. It has everything you need to ensure mission-friendly proactive synergistic compatibility on a going-forward basis. It’s disruptive. It looks good. It’s an overpriced, poorly functioning product. It has on-point (but pointless) compulsory connectivity. It ties users into paying whatever you ask, for ever. And best of all, it connects you to a collection of completely clueless cashed-up customers.
Thanks to @internetofshit on Twitter for making me aware of this and other hilarious Internet of Things (IoT) idiocy. Examples:
- Bose headphones spy on listeners: lawsuit
- Dishwasher has directory traversal bug
- Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware
- SSE customers charged up to £33,000 a day by faulty smart meters
Enjoy!
Automated anti-telemarketer script – brilliant!
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.
Would the real Autodesk logo please stand up?
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:
- The topmost of these three logos is the normal, correct one. That’s what you will see if you visit the main Autodesk web site, whatever browser you are using.
- The second version of the logo is what you will see if you use AutoCAD 2011’s online Help, if your browser happens to be Internet Explorer 6. Yes, I know that’s a terrible browser and yes, I know it’s not officially supported. However, there are quite a number of larger organisations that still mandate the use of IE6, because expensive corporate software has been developed around its various quirks. It’s still in common use, with 9% of this month’s blog traffic coming through IE6 (just for comparison, it’s 12% IE7, 25% IE8, 33% Firefox 3.x and 8% Chrome). The problem is caused by the browser not correctly handling transparency in PNG files. I have a transparent PNG as the stripe at the top of this blog, but the pale blue background that IE6 uses in its place still looks fine in that context. The Autodesk ghost logo looks awful. This could easily have been avoided with a few minutes’ work.
- The third version is from the new Autodesk Homestyler page. Oops, wrong font! The word Autodesk is actually used in five different fonts on that page, in various contexts. Unfortunately, none of those five are the approved logo font. Somebody didn’t read the style manual properly. (As mentioned by Donnie Gladfelter on Facebook).
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?
Shorn Shaan – you saw it here first
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.
Clealiness of toliets in schools
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.
Another mystery person
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.
Who is this person?
The first person to identify the pixellated personage below will win a virtual doughnut. Bonus sprinkles will be provided if anyone can identify the other people, the event, the location and the year.
Picture courtesy of Donnia Tabor-Hanson (CADMama), from this thread in the AUGI Coffee Without CAD forum. I encourage you to read that thread and see if you can contribute to the idea it is promoting, but not until you’ve had a guess here! Readers of that thread and the people appearing in the photo should recuse themselves. Over to you!
Edit: lots of right answers (which I’ve now unhidden). Well done, Owen!
Gaahl’s Tr00 Life Adventures Week 10, and Peter Beste
Time for my own bad Photoshop. Truly, truly awful work here. This is the tenth and last (so far) edition of Gaahl’s Tr00 Life Adventures. Click the thumbnail to see the full size image.
This one contains a few in-jokes (e.g. “many Norwegian countries”) from the Mike Portnoy forum community that was the original audience, so much of the original amusement will be lost. I am posting this one mainly to complete the set.
The original Gaahl photograph is by Houston documentary photographer Peter Beste, who has this to say on his site:
In the last two decades a bizarre and violent musical subculture called black metal has emerged in Norway. It’s roots stem from a heady blend of horror films, extreme heavy metal music, Satanism, pagan mythology, and adolescent angst. In the early-mid 1990’s, members of this extremist underground committed murder, burned down medieval wooden churches, and desecrated graveyards. What started as a juvenile frenzy came to symbolize the start of a war against Christianity, a return to the worship of the ancient Norse gods, and the complete rejection of mainstream society.
I have spent the last 7 years photographing in this insulated and secretive community.
I am pleased to report that Peter has no objection to his original photograph being (ab)used in this way. If you’re intrigued or amused by these black metal guys, check out his site for more images. There is even a book called True Norwegian Black Metal, available (of course) in a limited edition of 666 copies.
Peter has taken photographs of other subjects, including similarly confronting ones of Houston rap culture (some include nudity), with a book due to follow on that subject later this year.
Revolutionary new Apple laptop
Come on Autodesk, why isn’t AutoCAD already running on this little beauty?
Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
I’m not usually a huge fan of The Onion, but I certainly found this one LOLworthy.
Bad Photoshop 4
Pathetic perspective, courtesy of the work experience person doing Clark Rubber‘s brochure images:
The same background is used for another table set. The perspective doesn’t match in that one either, but it’s not as bad as this. Maybe it’s just CAD geeks who notice this sort of thing?
One more to come from this brochure, and it’s the worst one of the lot!
Bad Photoshop 3
More Fotoshop phun courtesy of Clark Rubber:
We’ll allow the oversized box and balls as an artistic device. But the woman has been cut out (badly) and pasted in with little regard to scale; that water is about 30″ deep. She either has very stumpy legs compared with her skinny top half, or the Autodesk shark is in there and it has given her an amputation at about the calf level. Why is her forearm oddly shaped, and shorter and thinner than that of the girl? And what’s going on down by the ladder?
Why is it darker one side of the rail than the other? Why is the edge of the water higher and darker on that side? Why does the ladder cast no shadow? Inquiring minds want to know.
Bad Photoshop 1 & 2
I’ve mentioned before that I love the Photoshop Disasters blog, and I’ve also mentioned that Clark Rubber has provided me with great service.
Here’s the first of a few posts that combine the two. I recently received a Clark Rubber brochure, and from the look of it (and the web site), Clark Rubber is not receiving the same kind of service from its Photoshop people that it provides to its own customers. I could fill this whole blog with disasters from that one brochure, but here are just a couple for a start.
Putting aside the awful water spray, the cut-and-paste problems, the strange lighting/shadow issues, the unrealistic water edge and the rest of it, how did that picture of the kid in the pool also manage to appear on the water cannon itself (sans pool and with the toy at a different angle)? Eddies in the space-time continuum, perhaps? He probably is.* My head assplode.
This magic device not only fires oversized lemons, it also emits a strangely unrealistic jet of water of significantly smaller diameter than the inside diameter of the tube. I must have one!
* Joke stolen from Douglas Adams.
blog nauseam Terms of Use
It seems that not only EULAs but also web sites must have onerous, unconscionable, ridiculously restrictive and utterly unenforceable sets of rules these days. I don’t want to miss out on the fun, so I have added mine to this site. There’s a link at the top of the page that points here:
http://www.blog.cadnauseam.com/terms-of-use/
Enjoy.
Photoshop disasters blog
I love this blog:
http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/
OK, some of the “disasters” are a bit nitpicking, but there are some truly awful image manipulation efforts out there, some associated with very big companies. Look back over the archives, there are some real classics. Lesson to large companies: don’t penny-pinch, it’s not worth it.
I can’t remember any Autodesk marketing image disasters, although some of you may remember being bemused by the relevance of the the short-lived Subscription Cow. The BENTLEY BIN image is pretty funny, though. Does anybody have any other CAD-related examples?
Geek joke
If you get this joke, you are officially a geek.
Q: What’s the difference between Halloween and Christmas?
A: Nothing, because 31 Oct = 25 Dec.
Lost in translation
Shaan Hurley says he feels a “Lost in Translation” moment coming on. Perhaps this story will do? (Slightly geeky fun from Wales, safe for work).
A true AutoCAD teaching story
Reading Ralph’s post about going back to teaching reminded me of a time some years ago when I taught some AutoCAD evening classes at a technical college. As Ralph points out, students have a wide range of abilities. Although they were all supposed to have completed a prerequisite introductory Windows course, it became apparent that during that course at least some of them must have been absent in mind if not in body.
Here’s an example, where I was explaining to the class how it was possible to modify toolbars.
Steve: “Move your mouse pointer over any toolbar button and right-click on it.”
Student: “Nothing’s happening.”
Steve: “You should see a menu appear with the word Customize on it. When it appears, left-click on that word.”
Student: “There’s no menu on my computer.”
Steve: “Did you hover over a toolbar button and right-click on it?”
Student: “Yes, and nothing happens. Do I need to press Enter?”
Steve: “No.”
Student: (Presses Enter anyway) “It says Unknown command.”
Steve: (Going over to see what’s going on) “Can you please show me what you’re doing?”
The student did so. I returned to the front of the class.
Steve: “If you haven’t already done so, hover the mouse pointer over any toolbar button, press down the right-hand mouse button and release it.”
The student had been hovering over the button and typing C-L-I-C-K. After all, I had told him to write “CLICK” on it.