Saturday, August 7, 2010

The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps...

"It is therefore unholy to desecrate the symbol of manliness, hairiness."

Attention young people: this list of 11 rules you don't learn in school is worth a few minutes of your time.  It leads with my favorite (#1.  Life is not fair - get used to it.) and includes one that's rather self-serving (#7 Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now.).  While we're on the topic of lists of 11 items, here are 11 web design blunders.  How many have you made?

Lots of people want you to share your CAD models.  Marechi, currently in beta, is an online site dedicated to sharing 3D CAD models.  There is some cool stuff here at Moment of Inspiration, 3D modeling for designers and artists. Deelip Menezes thinks it's sexy.  Dassault Systemes' 3Dvia can now publish your CAD models to FacebookSolidWorks World 2011 will be held 23-26 January 2011 in San Antonio.  SpaceClaim 2010 was released.  (Also, if you check out the URL you can see these folks are exploiting the file name for SEO.)

Caption Contest!  Mine are too NSFW even for this forum.  Bonus points if you can guess the message it's really supposed to convey. (No fair using TinEye.)

The Dezignstuff blog poses the provocative question "Does geometry creation and editing still matter?"  Of course, the answer is yes.  The question itself is simply a counter argument to all the recent buzz about CAD-in-the-cloud and other web-related CAD stuff.  It is very similar to my thoughts on cell phones; all the apps and touch screens are swell but when are they gonna make the damn phone call quality and reliability better?

Why executives HATE social media.  Here's a brief summary.
  1. Executives aren't narcissists and therefore don't need to blog, tweet, or post every accomplishment.  (Counterexample: I am the poster boy for narcissism. Counterpoint: Even if this were true for the executive as an individual, it's not true for the executive as leading an organization.  Psst: it's called marketing.)
  2. Executives aren't joiners.  (Counterpoint: Should've thought about that before you started the whole "company" thing.  Think about the literal meaning of the word.)
  3. Executives don't like small talk.   (Counterpoint: Step down off your throne every once in a while, your highness, and get to know the little people.)
  4. Executives fear technology because it's out of their control.  (Counterpoint:  Another candidate for your Word of the Day calendar: trust.)
  5. Executives have been burned in the past by unfulfilled promises.  (Counterpoint: stop getting hung up on words like "twitter" and "flickr" instead think about engagement.)
  6. Executives don't like fads.  (Counterpoint: This shouldn't count as it's the same as #5.)
  7. Executives are inherently introverts.  (Counterpoint: Don't make me go all Myers-Briggs on you, but I'd like to see data to support that claim.)
  8. Executives don't like hype.  (Agreement.  Just bring the data.)
Here's part 1 of a guide to Practical Social Media by Mark Burhop, the SolidEdge product manager at Siemens PLM.  Maybe you should participate in #TechChat, a Twitter-based conversation with Guy Kawasaki about social marketing for the high tech industry.  The best blogs on the interwebs.  (Don't bother - I already looked.)

Artist Shi Jindian really knows how to make mesh generation tangible with his wireframe motorcycle.  (Be sure to click through to his portfolio.)  Damn - there I go with the sculpture again. 

Trippy music from Starstreams can be heard on KNTU 88.1 in the DFW area.  T-Rex cufflinks.  Don't know how useful this mini keyboard and trackpad would be, but it sure is cool.  A crack primer.  Curious about what a 3D mouse is?  Watch this video from 3Dconnexion.  I am not doing calculus just to get past your captcha.

Cool flying things: BAE's Taranis UCAS demonstrator, Sikorsky's X2 demonstrator, an F-15 lands with only one wing (an oldie but a goodie).  And although it's not strictly flying, this video illustrates the International Space Station coming together.  If I can't have a flying car, I want a feces-powered car.

I gag just looking at this canned pancake milkshake.  Our Japanese friends are no slouches when it comes to massive burger goodness

Litemind offers strategies for using your mind more effectively (or in my case, using it at all).  Your brain apparently has to be able to identify sounds as having certain patterns of rhythm and tone before you can comprehend it as music.  Watch the Abbey Road web cam (with sound!). Something you've already heard about: R.I.P. Google WavePencils.

I despise contrived acronyms on big engineering projects like the EU's CRESCENDO (Collaborative and Robust Engineering using Simulation Capability Enabling Next Design Optimisation).  It's OK to just use an evocative word without the linguistic gymnastics. 

Functional Color is a blog about color choices for information display.  The current lead article is about orange on black displays which reminds me of the old VT-240.  Here's the August 2010 issue of the UserFocus newsletter.

You're going to have to work a little for this joke.  Go to studio Klass, click on Works and then Slide Eat.  The annoying brats with this combo dinner table/slide are probably going to be sitting at the table next to mine tonight.



If your assets are worth protecting, try this knife-proof t-shirt.

We're a little late (29 weeks to be exact), but here's 52 Weeks of UX, for all your user experience needs.  Stanford University's Entrepreneurship Corner provides a free collection of over 1,600 lectures by entrepreneurial leaders.

I'm sorry to have to slam a second Duct Tape Marketing post this week (the first was done via Twitter), but I disagree with his assertion that the purpose of a business is to "create and keep purpose."  Circular reasoning aside, the position is that a business creates a cause around which employees and customers can rally.  It's a variation of Peter Drucker's relatively well-known statement that the purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.  The latter is closer to the mark but let me be more direct: the purpose of a business is to generate profit.  If this makes you feel dirty, maybe you should reorganize into a non-profit.  The manner in which a business accomplishes this (presumably by creating value for its customers) can indeed involve creating a rallying point.

 Last week we were MRIing vegetables - this week it's x-rays of flowers.


...so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash, or thunder in.  --Dylan Thomas

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