Quite worryingly, del.icio.us appears to have lost all my tags which has a bit of an impact on categorising the posts on this blog. No response from support as yet for an explanation. Just hope they can fix it. The bookmarks are all there and tagged but no tag list is available as it tells me there are no tags :( *bugger*.
posted by Ricky Dee at
3:48 PM
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0 comments
I'm loving the shit that is flying regarding the "Apple bricked my iPhone with an update" thing. Short summary for those that don't care.
Apple release iPhone in the US for a staggering amount of cash.
Apple Tarts flock to buy it.
Apple Tart Geeks apply hacks to iPhone (invalidating their contract with AT&T and Apple).
Apple announce future updates might break the iPhone if it's been hacked.
Apple release update to iPhone 1.1.1
Apple Tarts apply update to hacked iPhones regardless.
iPhone bricks, duh.
Cue a "storm" of outraged Apple Tarts posting sob stories, legal threats, stunned reaction to Jobs doing this to them... it's endless and completely hilarious.
Here's a vid of some poor sucker "discussing" his brick with an Apple "genius" employee, I love it. The look of incredulity on the guys face, the attitude of the "genius" trying to force it back into the customer's hand... hahahahaha. I mean, hahahahahaha.
Now I'm sure that only a few thousand iPhones will have been bricked, but they're likely to be owned by the most ardent Apple Tarts who will vent their spleen on as many of the interweb's community sites as they can. Reading the comments about this subject on a few of the stories I've seen is the best free entertainment you'll get this weekend. If there was a crime for bad analogies then some of these threads would be up for a life sentence.
posted by Ricky Dee at
9:31 AM
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In a real turn up for the books my Laptop has been built, tested, packaged and shipped all on time (relatively speaking, I ordered it over 4 weeks ago). It'll be in my eager hands come Monday (a holiday for me as well).
Dell are still in deep trouble though as The Register reports more delays on various laptop ranges.
posted by Ricky Dee at
7:21 PM
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A new release for Blender and the second successive release with little in the way of new features (this is purely a bugfix release.) Lots going on in the various SVN branches with drool worthy new features being added and worked upon for the future.
The reason for the apparent lack of development is that Ton (head of the Blender Foundation and all round coding machine and organiser) is fully employed with the Peach Project.
One thing of note regarding Peach is that the deadline for pre-ordering the DVD is fast approaching (1st October) and in addition to a discounted price you also get the option to have your name added to the titles of the finished movie. If it's distribution is anything like the previous project, Elephants Dream, your name will be seen in movie Theatres and Film Festivals across the world. Go on, you know you want to.
posted by Ricky Dee at
2:42 PM
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It's not looking good for delivery of my new laptop. After a faint glimmer of hope my order status changed to "production" for a brief 24 hours before returning to "pre-production" (i.e. they don't have the bits to start building). As they claim to be delivering the machine by October 1st I fully expect they will change that estimated date to something later next Monday.
This seems to be the way Dell works lately. They take your order and cash, give you a delivery date and then on that date increase it by 1 week and rinse and repeat for another 2, 3, 4, 6 weeks! The net is full of such sob stories and Dell blame it on various reasons such as paint colours or a worldwide shortage of LCD panels.
Normally, I'd throw my dummy out of the pram and cancel my order but the problem is I can't find a similar deal for such a machine for anything near the price I've paid for the Dell. I'm just going to have to suck it up and live with the delay. Waiting is one thing it's the not knowing how long the wait is going to be is the real pisser. Dell need to be more honest in their dealings, they are effectively advertising and selling products that are not theirs to sell. Stop inventing unattainable delivery dates and start giving your customers cold, hard facts.
posted by Ricky Dee at
2:15 PM
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You wait for weeks for a Dolphin post and two turn up at the same time. Focusing on my existing desk at work I've created a 3D model (in SketchUp) of that desk as it is along with some of the main items that I've placed upon it. The actual desk is the one as seen in my flickr photoset of the Dolphin Project (click images to visit the set).
Read more...
The first image shows the bare desk along with a few key dimensions. This is probably typical of large desk workstations used by Engineers the world over. Notice that this is an 1800mm desk (larger than a normal corner desk which is usually 1600mm utilised by non-engineering staff in my company).
As you can see the desk has been extended with a fixed drawer cabinet along one side. A smaller, moveable drawer cabinet is located along the lefthand side (my personal preference at the moment). The top drawer is where I keep things like business cards, rubber bands, staples etc. Other things of note are the partitions along the edge which offer some sort of boundary from my colleagues as well as acting as a pin board for photos, notes etc. The three grey circles are the cable management entry points.
In the next image I've added models of some of the major items that are placed on or about my desk. Computer, monitors, phone, keyboard etc. I've not added a mouse or my Spaceball as yet. You get a better sense of scale of the desk when you realise that's a 24" Widescreen monitor in the centre.
Whats the point of all this you might ask? Well, to come up with a solution to the perfect desk you must first understand the problems with the existing solution. All will become clearer in the next few posts.
posted by Ricky Dee at
2:25 PM
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Work continues on the Dolphin Project. As a result of the initial research into desks it became clear that I'd need a 3D human model sooner rather than later to spice up some of the images I'm working on to better explain what I'm up to.
Now, I could have used an existing model from the net but I really fancied making my own to suit my needs. I wanted a nice clean model, without clothes, but not a naked model better suited to medical visualisation. It will also need to be rigged for posing in different positions (but not animated).
Based on a 95 percentile male (but sexless) I fired up Blender and started creating the model. You can click on the image above to go to the flickr set for a larger version and a wireframe. As you can see it's a work in progress but I'm quite chuffed with the result. Think of it as a naked body clothed in a skin tight, lyrca full body suit (makes it easier to model by smoothing out all those muscle bulges etc:-).
Still to add the feet, hands and head. I'm debating with myself if I want to model the hands fully with thumb and fingers or go with a simpler "mit" concept. I don't want the model to take anything away from the product it's actually supposed to be highlighting (plus it's damned hard to model thumbs and fingers and then rig them as well :-)
Update: I will release the 3D model, under a Creative Commons License or some such, when it's finished. You may have to remind me though.
posted by Ricky Dee at
1:43 PM
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0 comments
A fantastic result for Scotland last night, a quite unbelievable achievement. A hell of a turnaround from previous campaigns in a group that they really shouldn't have held out any hope of qualifying from. Can they finish the job? Who knows, it's going to be emotional.
Unfortunately Norn Iron have blown it again and are highly unlikely to be making the trip next summer :-(, a brave campaign is going to end in tears methinks, chin up boys, we exist!
posted by Ricky Dee at
8:06 AM
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A couple of weeks ago I finally cracked and ordered a new laptop. The deal I saw from Dell was just too good to miss. Unfortunately a lot of other people felt the same and at the time of order I was advised of a 4 week wait due to unprecedented demand. Currently my order status is showing delivery on or before 1/10/07. It's driving me mad this waiting.
So what did I order? A Dell Inspiron 1720 costing £801.60 delivered (with my Corporate discount).
posted by Ricky Dee at
8:23 PM
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2 comments
Just a quick rant about everybody's favourite figure of hate (apart from the apple tarts) the Evil Empire of Apple. My only two experiences (very poor) of Apple products are my iPod mini, which resulted in being sent back for replacement as it was broken at time of delivery, and in connection with that hardware, iTunes.
iTunes is OK as a tool for organising and playing my mp3 files, and I've even used the store to buy a handful of tunes I couldn't get elsewhere, but what the hell is up with it's software updates? Hardly a month goes by it doesn't need an update and here's what really pisses me off, no matter how small the functionality change or security fix required (Apple seems to need an ever increasing number of security fixes) you have to download and re-install the full package. This months update required a 58.4Mb download and all to stop people from ripping a ringtone. Is iTunes so badly programmed that any change needs a full application download and re-install?
Any twat that clapped me walking into a shop like a bleating sheep would get a slap for their trouble and what's all this toot about genius employees? I'm the only genius in Scotland and I don't work in a fecking shop!
Yeah, I'm in a foul mood about Norn Iron's defeat in Latvia.
posted by Ricky Dee at
6:46 PM
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If you're reading this you've landed at a page on the old Blog, powered by Blogger. All the content has now been transferred to a Wordpress Blog. The home page remains the same and over time these old pages will be deleted. http://www.digital-air.co.uk/
