Category: <span>Navel Gazing</span>

Category: Navel Gazing

Autodesk, Cloud, Music, Navel Gazing, Other Blogs, Thoughts

Why owning stuff is still important

 , , itemprop="discussionURL"9

Let’s start with a few questions: Do you own your home or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why? Do you own your car or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why? Do you own your TV or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why? Do you own your computer or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why? If you’re like me, you answered the same for most or all of those questions. I own all of the above and rent none of it. I prefer owning all of the …

Autodesk, Cloud, Fun, Navel Gazing, Nostalgia

Dilbert and the Cloud

 , itemprop="discussionURL"2

I have an Autodesk-related Dilbert story to share. Back in the late 90s, I was visiting Autodesk’s San Rafael offices (at Autodesk’s expense) and had an appointment to see a product manager. There was some confusion when I arrived at Reception, but after a few phone calls I was shown into a meeting room containing the manager and a lot of other Autodesk people. However, the open mouths told me that they were discussing very confidential stuff. They were clearly shocked and horrified that an outsider had been allowed into that particular room at that particular time, even though I had …

Fencing, Navel Gazing, Video, Win

Australian Fencing Championship 2011

 , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"3

I have been away in Sydney for a while, attending the Australian Fencing Championships. I fenced in five events with uneven success (I came 52nd out of 70 in the Open Foil, for example), but a few things made me happy. First, I was able to fence for Western Australia in the Team Foil event as captain of the WA ‘B’ team, which put up a decent performance in going down to a strong ACT ‘A’ team. Next, I came 6th in the Veteran Foil; down from last year’s 2nd, but quite respectable given the strength of the field. The …

Cloud, Navel Gazing, Thoughts, Web Stuff

Cloud discussions generating interest

  itemprop="discussionURL"0

This is one of those self-indulgent posts you probably hate, so feel free to skip it and just read the more interesting stuff. Last month, my site statistics went through the roof. Here’s a graph that shows the number of unique visitors and the number of visits per month since I started the blog in February 2008. Page views, hits (a pretty useless statistic) and bandwidth all spiked in a similar fashion. I remember being very surprised when over 1,500 people visited my blog in the first month, as I would have been very happy with a few hundred readers. …

Fencing, Navel Gazing, Thoughts, Video

Fencing in Canberra – video

 , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"6

It’s about time I posted about something other than the Cloud, or even CAD. Every year, there are four national-level fencing competitions in Australia. As they are almost all held on the other side of the continent, I don’t get to compete in them as often as I’d like. However, a couple of months ago I did have the opportunity to compete in the third of these competitions for 2011, held this year in Canberra. This was very special to me because my mother and sister were in the audience and it was the first time either of them had …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2012, Autodesk, Autodesk University, ClassicArray, Customer Service, Navel Gazing, Nostalgia, Other Products, Thoughts

Will Autodesk have to explain itself to the SEC?

 , , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"5

The observant among you may have noticed that for many years, Autodesk’s free patches, service packs and updates haven’t added any new functionality. Bugs may get fixed, severe performance issues may be addressed, but design errors generally have to wait for the next release (at the earliest), and new features definitely don’t get added. The last time new functionality was added to AutoCAD in a free maintenance release was Release 13’s c4 update which shipped on 12 February 1996. (There was a public beta available some months earlier; I picked up a copy at Autodesk University 1995). That free update contained …

Comments, Navel Gazing, Other Blogs

Why do you comment here?

  itemprop="discussionURL"14

One of the things that most pleases me about this blog is the amount of comments it gets. I’m sure there are several AutoCAD-related blogs that are much more frequently visited than this one, especially the Autodesk ones. However, I’m not aware of another AutoCAD blog with the volume of comments I see here. On average, each post here receives just under 5 comments, and the most popular subject for discusssion is now not far short of the 100 mark. I recently went four complete calendar months without making a single post, but comments kept trickling in anyway. When I …

Announcement, Fencing, Fun, Navel Gazing, Win

Fencing at the Commonwealth Championships

 , itemprop="discussionURL"13

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, Fun, Navel Gazing, Video, Win

I got into a fight. Caught on video.

  itemprop="discussionURL"4

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 …

AutoCAD, Autodesk, Interview, Navel Gazing, Other Blogs, Polls, Spin, Subscription

What proportion of Autodesk customers really are on Subscription?

 , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"7

In my recent interview of Autodesk Subscription VP Callan Carpenter, he made these statements: …there is a very small fraction of our revenue that comes from upgrades at this point in time. We’re down to very low single digits of customers who upgrade, and of those only half of those upgrade 1 or 2 years back. So we’re talking about approximately 1.5% of our revenue that comes from customers upgrading 1 and 2 versions back. …[customers who upgrade] 1 or 2 [releases] back, a very small percentage of our customer base, less than 2% of our customer base that was …

Navel Gazing, Spin, Thoughts

The Machine that Won the War

 , , , itemprop="discussionURL"5

I just wanted to get on the record that I don’t trust claims based on statistical data without being able to review in detail the methods used to obtain and interpret the data. Even with the best intentions, full integrity and honesty, it is not difficult to come to completely the wrong conclusions based on apparently compelling statistical evidence. This isn’t just theory, I’ve seen it happen. Detailed percentages presented at upper governmental levels, based on huge sample sets, giving a totally false impression because of errors and assumptions that occur at various places in the process. The exact same …

AutoCAD, Navel Gazing

What do I think of the Ribbon?

 , , itemprop="discussionURL"9

I’m curious. What do you think I think about the Ribbon, particularly in AutoCAD? Do you think I’m a hater, a lover, indifferent, or what? Now, on what evidence do you base that view? Feel free to quote back to me anything I’ve written on this blog or any other public place to support your opinion. If you can’t find anything that gives you any clues one way or the other, feel free to mention that, too.

Autodesk, Navel Gazing, Other Sites, Web Stuff

Incoming link: “Important Revit information”

 , , itemprop="discussionURL"4

One of the things my blog’s WordPress dashboard shows me is a list of incoming links, i.e. who is pointing to this blog. One line intrigued me: unknown linked here saying, “318 random votes.. http://www.blog.cadnauseam.com/ …” Clicking on the link took me to the Autodesk Discussion Groups, but only as far as this message: Error: you do not have permission to view the requested forum or category. A Google search showed up the link as follows: Important Revit information Saturday, 3 April 2010 9:23 AM 318 random votes.. http://www.blog.cadnauseam.com/2009/09/09/ribbon-acceptance-in-autocad-and-revit/ Call me self-obsessed if you like, but I find this curious. …

AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk, Fail, Navel Gazing, Other Blogs, Spin, Thoughts

Some meaningless AutoCAD 2011 numbers

 , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"2

According to David Cohn, at yesterday’s blogger event in San Fransisco prior to the 2011 launch, Autodesk provided the following figures: 76,000 man hours spent on Q/A of the new release 6,000 total code reviews of new release 2,000 commands tested 4,600 Beta customers involved in AutoCAD 2011 1.4M lines of old code were removed Well, that’s all very nice, but those numbers are completely meaningless without context. Autodesk may as well have just published the equivalent numbers for Release 13; I’m sure they would have looked impressive in isolation. Did anybody in the blogger audience ask the obvious question? …

Navel Gazing, Thoughts

Interesting times

  itemprop="discussionURL"4

The past few days haven’t been so great for me. Here’s what has happened lately: A family member had an expensive musical instrument case burned when it was placed too close to a stage light. As I was driving home on Monday to escape a major oncoming storm, my car was hit out of the blue by a single golf-ball size hailstone. This caused damage on a styling crease, which will be difficult to repair. As a single dent, it’s probably not worth getting fixed, and will therefore remain to irritate me every time I see it, until the car …

Fencing, Navel Gazing, Video

This is what I do in my spare time

  itemprop="discussionURL"3

Fencing. With swords, not pickets, barbed wire, etc. I gave it up 25 years ago, then took it up again about 18 months ago. I now fence all three weapons, having started Sabre about six months ago. Fencing is a very aerobic sport, and participating in it has done wonders for my fitness and mobility over the past year or so. Here are a couple of videos of me fencing foil in a Masters competition last year. YouTube link. YouTube link.

Comments, Navel Gazing, Other Blogs, Thoughts

Comment censorship

 , , itemprop="discussionURL"10

I want your views on how much control I should exert over the comments that people make here. I’ve been led to thinking about this by a couple of things. Mostly by the occasion of the first troll comment on this blog, and to a lesser extent by Shaan Hurley turning off comments on posts older than three months on his Between The Lines blog. (I am not complaining about this; it’s Shaan’s justifiable reaction to mass spam attacks and it has nothing to do with censorship. There are some Autodesk blogs that don’t allow comments at all, which may …

Navel Gazing, Thoughts

If you admire somebody, please let them know

 , , , itemprop="discussionURL"1

This post has nothing to do with CAD or the other subjects I occasionally cover. Last month, I unexpectedly lost two of my colleagues to cancer. Wayne was a loud, larger-than life character, full of life. Paal (pronounced like Paul) was a quieter, more reserved man, but very friendly, funny and positive. Wayne occasionally rubbed people up the wrong way with his robust manner, but everybody who knew Paal liked him. I thought he was a great guy, but I never told him that. Now I wish I had. I never even knew he was ill, so when I read …

AU2009, Fun, Image manipulation, Navel Gazing, Other Blogs, Photography, Pictures

Shorn Shaan – you saw it here first

 , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"1

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.

Hardware, Navel Gazing, Nostalgia

My first computer

 , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"8

My first computer was a Dragon 32, which I think I bought in 1982. With a massive 32 kilobytes of RAM and a proper typewriter keyboard, it was quite advanced for a home computer of the time. The Commodore 64 may have had more RAM, but a lot of it was grabbed by its very basic BASIC. I preferred a computer with an ELSE to go with its IF, thanks. Microsoft Extended BASIC for me, not the crummy old BASIC 2.0 of the Commodore. The Commodore 64 was one of the great consumer electronics sales successes of all time. The …