Nieces Christina and Julia! Everyone is having a great time!
Vacation in North Carolina
July 3rd, 2010
Scribing? What is it?
June 26th, 2010Over the years, I've been involved in a ton of brainstorming sessions. Some good, some bad, some GREAT! I don't know if there is a basic formula for success, but I've always believed getting folks involved was a key ingredient. Fast forward to something Dan recently shared with me, a scribed re-presentation by a talk given at RSA:
Wow! Of course this isn't a brainstorming session, but rather an animation of a whiteboard drawing in sync with a talk which was given earlier. The compelling nature of this sort of presentation cannot be denied. There are several reasons why I think this is the case:
- First of all, there's the whole viewer completion angle. The person watching the video has to 'connect the dots' regarding how the picture relates to what's on the screen. I believe this sort of approach creates a hypersensitivity for viewers enabling them to create a larger comprehension bandwidth than if watching video, a slideshow or someone talk. And for this reason, I believe this sort of presentation can only last at the most 7 to 10 minutes because after that point the brain just wears down and quits trying to make the connection.
- Also, a whimsical presentation like this one can liven up a presentation which had no life before. A friend of mine, Floyd Wray, who has done 20 years of research into "Cognition Records" points out rightly that over or under stating a situation can be funny, and engaging– which we see clearly in this video.
- And, watching this video, one gets the impression "It's not that hard to do!" Sort of like viewer completion only we feel it's something possible. So, unlike watching a full features 3D animation where you know $300 an hour experts used a billion processor cycles to create 10 frames of animation, here we have just one guy using a marker on a whiteboard. Of course upon further inspection, actually, it's not that easy. But the fact the scribing animation is done AFTER the talk allows for more time to think, setup, create trial pictures and then animate the whole thing. More on how I believe this can be done easily later.
What may be a harder job is the realtime scribing of a brainstorming session. For these it's more difficult as you pretty much have to think, and draw, on your feet, with little time for contemplation or mistakes. And it has to make sense– at least to the participants. Again, the concept of viewer completion helps significantly. While a casual observer may look at a scribed brainstorm session and not understand what is going on, you can be sure the folks who were present remember exactly the points the pictures made.
So, to that end, I thought I'd try scribing a brainstorm session with a client of mine who had hired a brand new Ad Agency and PR firm to begin the process of creating campaigns for a new product we've been working on for months. While I have never tried scribing before, I have moderated these type of sessions. Turns out it's pretty hard to provide direction, ideas, and scribe all at the same time. Lesson learned!
While 7 hours was a bit daunting, and very tiresome, I was able to create a number of whiteboard drawings, of which here are two of them. There's some distortion as I had to combine multiple iPhone camera shots together to get the whole picture, and I did have to whiteout the clients name, but it's a start. And there certainly is room for improvement. I have some ideas on how to do better. I'll talk about those on a later blog post.
ASKetch speed sketching
June 22nd, 2010Here’s another fast sketch–
Which I then quickly added some color using the iPad app Brushes–
ASKestch ROCKS!
June 22nd, 2010Wow! Just found this very cool iPad sketch app. It’s called ASKetch and it’s incredible. First sketch just doodling…
Then the obligatory personal spacecraft…
This thing is pretty cool. Grab yourself a copy and I’m sure you’ll have a great time!
Are 2 million AppStore apps a Good Thing?
June 20th, 2010I've been reading lately how Steve Jobs touts the huge number of high quality apps in the AppStore as proof of what a great job they're doing. And, in the next sentence, he mentions how IMPORTANT it is to make sure all the development environments support the very latest API's. This is his excuse for kicking out the likes of Flash and RunRev's own iPhone development environments.
So, I took an extremely quick look in the first couple pages of apps at the AppStore on my iPad and this is what I've found:
For a buck, this app apparently lets you calculate pi to whatever length you would like. I'm hoping the developer isn't counting on retiring any time soon– or even eating out.
And for 2 bucks, you can actually iPing someone on your iWhatever (isn't PING free on Mac and Windows?). I guess you pay extra for the, um, err, fancy interface.
This is better, it's a free clock, but still counts toward the target of 1 billion apps in the AppStore. It does an amazingly clean and clear job of… displaying the current time in any colors you like, as long as they are black letters on a white background.
Keeping with the clock theme, this one shows the time in two places at once– all for 3 bucks. Speaking of time, I suspect it would take all of 3 minutes to create this App using the now disallowed RunRev or Flash development tools. And what a beautiful interface it is!
And then for another $2 you can have your own iPad app which animates a plaid colored fan. I'm not kidding– all these apps found on the first few pages of the AppStore!
And then there's my personal favorite called, "Your cat,what age?" (sic), which as far as I can tell calculates how old your cat is based upon knowing what day it was born. It's a steal at a buck.
While this all seems fun and cute, the fact is any of these and others like them can be created using any tools (including a web browser), so why the big high mighty from Jobs? It's clear there are literally tens of thousands of extremely low quality apps available for sale at the AppStore– all programmed by Apple's own blessed XCode tools. Someday, when Android owns the market for decent apps by professional developers, just maybe Steve Jobs will get a clue.
Diagram your websites!
June 19th, 2010I've added a plugin architecture to DiagramCreator, and now you can download a plugin to automatically diagram a website. One of the cool aspects of this is you can edit the diagram after it is auto-generated by the Website Diagrammer plugin. Here's how it works:
(1) DiagramCreator launches the (2) Website Diagrammer plugin. (3) The user enters a valid URL for the Website Diagrammer Plugin to begin mapping. (4) The plugin downloads the HTML of the main page and then (5) searches for links within the HTML code. (6) This process repeats for the number of iterations specified by the user. (7) When done, the plugin converts the data to DiagramCreator XML code and passes it on to DiagramCreator, which then, (8) renders the chart. At this point you can edit the diagram just like any other diagram, and save the source as well.
Getting the Website Diagrammer Plugin
You can download the Website Diagrammer Plugin here:
Installing the Plugin
In order to install the plugin you need to first locate where your DiagramCreator folder is. There you will find a file called InstantDiagrams.rev. You should create a folder there called dc_plugs and put the downloaded file in it: WebDiagram.rev
Launching the Plugin
After you've successfully installed the Website Diagrammer Plugin, you will now find it available in the File menu. Just click it to launch it.
Using Website Diagrammer
Here's a quick How-To to get you started:
(1) Instructions- always a good idea to check out. (2) Remember, this is beta software! Check for Updates often. (3) Here's where you put the URL- don't forget http:// (4) After you enter the URL, press the Crawl Web button to start the process. It can take several minutes! (5) At any time you can press the STOP button and the plugin will generate the data already captured. (6) The number of levels for the plugin to search through the website. The more levels, the longer it takes and the bigger your final diagram. (7) Typically, you will want to limit the level iterations to only your website domain. It's best to leave this checked. (8) After completion, the DiagramCreator XML file code is generated and passed to DiagramCreator by pressing the (9) Generate Diagram button. (10) You will see the status of the process in this lower area and when finished it will tell you some relevant statistics.
Here are some pages which were generated using this plugin. I'll be creating more plugins as we go, and if you have RunRev, you can develop your own plugins for DiagramCreator. You can look at the source code of the Website Diagrammer plugin to learn how. Let me know if you find any problems.
The Genius of Design
June 15th, 2010For a limited time, the BBC series The Genius of Design is available on Vimeo. Good stuff. Reminds we why I became an Industrial Designer.
DiagramCreator in beta. Get yours NOW!
June 12th, 2010At SWG, we create diagrams for just about everything. Finally, I decided to write our own diagramming tool to help us. We've been using and updating this tool for quite some time now, and I think it's time to release a beta version of DiagramCreator, so others can try it out. It's a very cool tool for making your own diagrams using basic English sentences. It is based on the Open Source GraphViz tool and, for the time being, is free to create your own diagrams on both Mac and PC.
Diagrams are created simply by typing a simple Noun, Verb, Noun sentence such as:
Jack likes Jill
This creates two Nodes, Jack and Jill with an Edge (arrow) between them with the word likes. There is no need to draw boxes or arrows or move things around to keep them from overlapping. Diagram Creator takes care of the diagram layout for you. All you need to concentrate on are the relationships between the Nouns and Verbs.
Anytime the same Noun is used in a sentence, it will reference the existing Node. So, for instance we add a couple more sentences:
Jack doesn't like Sally
Sally likes Jack
We now have a three Node diagram with Jack having two Edges.
We can Group Jack and Jill and give it a label easily by just (1) editing the Node properties of Jack and Jill.
As I mentioned, the killer feature is the simple fact these diagrams automatically create themselves. They optimize the positions of Nodes and Edges based upon rules, such as trying to keep Edges from crossing and spacing Nodes from top to bottom according to the order of the sentences. These other images show how complicated diagrams can be created.
Three things to know BEFORE YOU GET STARTED
1. Before you do ANYTHING, be sure and CHECK FOR UPDATES, as the files below are VERY OUT OF DATE.
2. You'll need to install the Open Source GraphViz package for all this to work. Don't worry, there are very clear instructions on how to do this in the HELP file.
3. Read the HELP file. It covers everything you'll want to know, except for the Groups feature which has just been added, and demo'ed above.
Here are the locations of the downloads. Unzip and store wherever you like. Because these are beta, they don't have the proper icons, launcher files, etc. yet. Don't forget to keep checking for updates! And, let me know if you run into any bugs or even how you like it.
Dead C Drive. DropBox to the Rescue. Carbonite– not so much.
June 10th, 2010
We’re getting ready for another scorcher of a summer here in Texas. And, we just put in a new AC, but when the power came back on, my desktop computer did not. Turns out the MBR (Master Boot Record) had become corrupted, and I had to reformat it– lost EVERYTHING.
But, actually, I wasn’t too worried. Just last week I had moved off Foldershare (now Windows Live Sync) and put all my current valuable files in DropBox. Super move. Not to mention, about a year ago I signed up for Carbonite. Not so super.
After reinstalling a fresh copy of Windows 7, I downloaded the 12 GBs from DropBox in a few hours. No muss, no fuss.
I also *started* the Carbonite restore process, and that’s where more of my hair started to turn gray. Carbonite represents itself as a “completely automatic” online backup service and says “within minutes you’ll be able to begin restoring all your files.” Well, there were over 90GB’s of files stored, so I figured it would take some time– so I tried restoring just the files I knew weren’t in DropBox. Stuff I didn’t have to have, but would like to have. No go. Carbonite kept stalling on downloads. There is very little information in the Carbonite InfoCenter about what is going on. The interface is incredibly confusing: there’s this button which says “Cancel Restore in Progress” and when you press it, it doesn’t highlight or change and there is ZERO notification you have cancelled. In fact, I can’t figure out HOW to cancel a Restore in Progress. After the button is pressed and you look at it later, you wonder is it saying THE Cancel Restore IS in Progress or is it the same button you pressed which should have said Cancel THE Restore in Progress? It doesn’t help that it has an icon which looks like you shouldn’t press it. This is just one of the MANY confusing interface issues in Carbonite’s Restore process.
And later when you try and view the restored files from InfoCenter, it takes forever and you never know exactly what you are looking at, because it only shows the first 1000 items. Furthermore, it doesn’t backup .exe files, so all the installers for programs were NOT backed up. Not to mention if you restart your machine, it may or may not resume restoring files. I suppose it depends on which way the Internet wind is blowing at that exact moment. Anyway, because of the intermittent stalling I started a FULL RESTORE, which I knew would take some time, but I didn’t expect it to be this DAMN SLOW. It’s been on 58-59% for 36 hours now, and the support folks say it is working (don’t get me started about support– took them 3 days to return an email!). Oh, and if you’re wondering, I do have a fast cable modem connection here, it’s Carbonite’s servers which are slow.
So, it’s clear I need to rethink my backup strategy. It doesn’t appear Carbonite will download all files for another week or so, and that’s just not acceptable.I guess things could be worse. I could have had to actually DEPEND on Carbonite to backup my most valuable files, but DropBox handled those perfectly. Can’t say I’d ever recommend Carbonite to anyone– and in fact I will discontinue service and uninstall it week(s) from now when I finally get all the files back. And, I’ll be sure and remove it from my Dad’s computer and “un-recommend” it to all others. Next up– a NEW backup strategy!
It’s finally PRINTED!
June 1st, 2010A full year in the making, over 450 color renders, screen captures and diagrams all equals a ton of passion, sweat and 120+ pages of 3D render know how and fun!
Create 3D like a SuperHero!
Here are some pics from France of my book, fresh off the presses and soon to be published by e-on software, makers of Vue3D. So, what is it? It's a 120+ page handbook on 3D which has everything you need to get started creating PHOTOREAL renders, both outdoors and in– plus it COMES WITH A FREE VERSION OF VUE!
Yup. So if you own a Mac or PC, you can be up and rendering incredible scenes with just this book, a little bit of time, and your imagination. And, for those intermediate and advanced users, there are some special chapters on modeling in Vue and interior renders you will find invaluable. All at the unbeatable price of…hmm…I don't even know what the final pricepoint will be. Check back and we'll post more information on pricing and availability– as soon as I find out!
