Starting Monday June 15th I will be enjoying my sabbatical (extended vacation) until July 26th. Woo Hoo!
I will be doing home projects, enjoying the family, hiking, camping, and photographing the beautiful Utah, Nevada, and Arizona landscape. I will continue blogging and Twitter but will try to reduce the frequency of posts and enjoy some time off.
Cheers,
Shaan
On June 15th I will be taking a 6 week sabbatical. With so many United Airlines frequent flier miles to use before the end of the year since I no longer fly them I am looking for ideas.
INDIA:
I know I have a large readership from India so please post your suggestions in the comments on locations and why that location. Are their local Autodesk customer groups and students there that I can also meet with as I love talking with students and also customers from all parts of the world. Yes shocking I get time off and still take work with me.
I want to do short backpacking trips around on the cheap but the main purpose of getting off the beaten path seeing the true country, people, and the nature and wildlife like snakes and scorpions and birds most never see. I want to capture some great memorable photos as well as meeting the people and sharing in their cultures and food and making more friends and making India look simply amazing in photographs each with a story..
I was thinking perhaps Delhi,Mumbai, Bangalore, Goa, Chennai, Hyderabad or . What are your thoughts?
Shukriya,
Shaan
TURKEY:
I am also considering a trip in Istanbul Turkey to see my friends from the Daily AutoCAD Blog Erhan, Orhan, and Can.
çok teşekkür ederim
Shaan
I thought this was a really short and fun interview. You can find out a few details about me that are not normally in a published interview.
Since April 22, 1970 Earth Day has grown in awareness and participation worldwide. Consider a green sustainable project or volunteer project for Earth Day or in the near future.
Kermit the Frog - “It’s not easy being green”
Below are some links regarding Earth day as well as Green Sustainable Design.
Do your part as we all need to leave Earth better than we found it for our future generations.
Shaan
This post was made using recycled text and electrons
With computers and visualization software becoming more and more powerful it is getting more difficult to tell real from computer generated. Take this fun little challenge. I got 8 of 12 the first time and 12 of 12 the second time learning from my mistakes.
Using Autodesk Showcase I have two real-time renderings that are almost impossible to tell from a real object. Autodesk Showcase is downright amazing for visualization of your 3D content.
Cheers,
Shaan
In 3 hours I will be headed about 6 hours South to the Utah Arizona border for 3 days of hiking, climbing, and cold weather camping.
I plan to hike the WirePass to Buckskin Gulch slot canyon, The Rimrocks sandstone hoodoo formations, The Wave, Coral Pink Sand Dunes, and North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Should be a fun and adrenalin filled adventure trek with many photos to be taken and posted to my Flickr Photostream when I return.
As usual in addition to using my Garmin Mapsource for my Garmin portable GPS plans I use Scott’s excellent Topofusion for hike planning. I also carry a PhotoTrackr Pro GPS photo tagging unit. I am basically a walking photo lab and GPS unit.
Here is the link to my photos from the last hike into the famous wave were you must win a lottery for a permit. The Wave (Set)
Cheers,
Shaan
Having worked in a design office in the past I know how there can be office pranks to liven up an office and blow off some steam. Sometimes projects can cause pressure, time crunch stress, and conflicts causing some to go to prank mode to relieve stress. Lynn Allen used to offer a few great pranks to do in AutoCAD including the one where each ZOOM would perform two UNDO commands and a SAVE, but that one could be a little dangerous and lose some work and design data if you had no backups of the DWG.
Pranks should always be in fun and not cause damage or negative impacts as those can be career limiting moves as well as be just downright mean and destructive. I will not officially admit to what I may have done myself, but mention a few pranks I know of:
Post your fun (and safe) AutoCAD pranks in the comments to this blog post. Let the fun begin.
Shaan
For those brave souls that like to test pre-release beta versions of an Operating System the opportunity to test the next Windows release Windows 7 is available to the public from Microsoft’s TechNet site. Be aware with tens of thousands downloading at once the speed could be very slow. also be aware there are risks to beta testing and more so with an Operating System than an application. I would strongly suggest not upgrading your current system and instead use a dual boot to another drive or partition as a safety measure.
The Windows 7 Beta Download aka Windows 7 Beta Customer Preview Program
Update 01/11/09: I know many are curious how AutoCAD or if AutoCAD installs and runs on the next OS from Microsoft. The simple unofficial answer is it does in my limited testing.
There is no official support or completed testing from Autodesk yet but in my limited testing AutoCAD 2009 appears to work very well on the next Windows OS, Microsoft Windows 7 Beta version.
Once the Operating System completes beta stages Autodesk will address the support of the new Operating System. While we are working closely with Microsoft as one of our partners and also looking at and testing Windows 7. It is important to keep in mind it is a pre-release beta and a moving target.
Cheers,
I am in my final week of holiday vacation (all of Autodesk is) as well as the last Monday of the year 2008. What better time to reflect on the year. There were many highs and lows for 2008 in my life I thought I would mention a few.
The year was filled with travel to visit friends, Autodesk product user groups, and customers around the world including the countries of Brazil, China, Kuwait, Turkey, Kuwait, and UAE in addition to all over the North America. I now have a full passport and need to get new pages added or I will be left unable to travel Internationally. I really enjoy speaking with users of Autodesk software around the world and learning how they use the software and what they design.
Other highlights in no particular order:
Getting milk and cookies in my room from the AU2008 Team. 
Meeting celebrity Autodesk customers Jay Leno and Eddie Paul. 
The First Blogger Social at AU2008 was a success and will be even bigger and better next year. 
Traveled with the Matt Murphy Clay Head Sculpture for a year including a visit with entertainer Jay Leno and then gave it to the real Matt Murphy at AU2008. 
Made so many new friends around the world. 
Presented at FOCUS Kuwait, and over 500 people attended. Thank you Binu! 
Presented in Istanbul, and while in Turkey I visited Cappadocia and experienced the wonderful food, people, and scenery. Thank you to my 3 Turkish friends Can, Orhan, and Erhan of the Daily AutoCAD Blog! 
Had a great time with members of AUGI Japan in Yokohama Japan and a spectacular trip to Kamakura with a traditional Japanese lunch included. 
Meeting the Techsmith Team who develop the two software tools I have used almost daily for 12 years. Lows of the year:
As I spend the remaining few days of 2008 on holiday, I am spending that priceless time relaxing with my family as well as some fun with the kids sledding on the large amount of snow we received here in Northern Utah.
Have a very happy and safe New Years,
Shaan
OK not exactly see Wayne Newton aka Mr. Las Vegas, but just perhaps one more reason to attend Autodesk University 2008 granted it would be pretty low on the top 1000 reasons. When flying into Las Vegas on approach to land when you are really close to touching down, you may pass over a large house and horse stables, this is Las Vegas entertainer Wayne Newton’s house. I am not sure why he has located it at the end of a runway as I would imagine he could afford a more quiet location.
Here is a photo of Wayne's place when I was landing in Las Vegas this September. 
I had the please of also flying over Valley of Fire, Hoover Dam, Lake Mead and was able to see the new Colorado River Bridge under construction. I hope to get a chance to see the bridge while attending Autodesk University next week. 
Hope to see you at AU! I will arrive Sunday and am driving there as I am just North in Utah.
Cheers,
Shaan
On Friday I had an unplanned emergency at my home. I survived a natural gas fireplace explosion.
What happened was that I saw that my homes downstairs gas fireplace pilot light was lit, switch was turned on, but the fire flames of the gas fireplace were not operating. So I went to investigate closer out of curiosity and also for safety reasons to see what was happening. After checking a few things out, I heard the gas valve make the sound that it was opening to release a larger amount of gas to make the flames of gas fireplace. The pilot light was still lit.
After maybe thirty-forty seconds I had a last second thought of what if this explodes, it did just then in what seemed like slow motion. It blew me across the entire family room. When I realized what had happened and came to some of my senses after being knocked silly, I ran for the stairs to call my wife who after hearing and feeling the blast downstairs was already on her way down. What my wife found at the bottom of the stairs was a bloody mess of a person (me). I had glass from the fireplace stuck in me as well as had cut me and then singed hair and burns. My shirt was scorched and cut up and my eye glasses were blown apart with only half remaining on my face. With all the blood from my face and unable to open my left eye, I thought for sure I had lost my eye. There was a great deal of firemen and paramedics that arrived within about the longest five minutes of my life. They were figuring out whether to helicopter me to the hospital or transport me in a rescue ambulance. I ended up in one hospital to only be transferred to another with a larger trauma unit. After a great deal of work on me, a bunch of morphine, medical tests, and some stitches I was amazingly allowed to go back home after 6 hours.
The downstairs was full of glass and the fireplace metal bent outwards. It was amazing I survived and better me than one of my children having been the one to test the fireplace. There was glass embedded in the walls twenty five feet from the fireplace and located behind me. I had been standing only four feet in front of the fireplace when it exploded.
I believe that I was close enough the half inch thick fireplace glass cover that the glass was coplanar to me in flight instead of perpendicular like spears. Perhaps had I been further from the exploding glass, the glass shards would have hit me like a wave of spears and I might not be here today. I was also lucky to have been wearing my glasses which saved my eyes and instead of loosing an eye or two. My eye glasses were blown into the bridge of my nose causing a deep laceration. I had a large tear in my shirt from glass but my chest was not hit but we found the Blackberry phone in my pocket took the blast of glass with a little damage but still is working and had prevented glass from hitting my chest. Yes my trusted Blackberry may have saved me, at least from further glass hitting me in the chest. I have several cuts and minor burns and pieces of glass under my skin, but survived and was really lucky.
I lost another of my nine lives Friday and am truly lucky to be here blogging and with my family. My neighbors have been beyond amazing bringing dinners over for the past two evenings and checking in on us to make sure we were fine and if we needed any assistance I also received a ton of phone calls, Twitter tweets, and emails from people wishing me well. I even received flowers one nice arrangement from my Autodesk Team.
I am only really sore from the blast force and cuts and stitches, bruised, had my hair and beard trimmed the fast way, and shaken up, but starting to recover just fine.If you have gas appliances, please make sure to have them inspected and serviced once a year to prevent a serious problem. I could have easily lost my house, and my children and family could have lost me.
I have more to be thankful for this Thanksgiving holiday...
Shaan
PS: Yes, I will be at Autodesk University no matter what.
The new version of TechSmith’s product Camtasia was released today after beta testing. Camtasia is excellent to create presentations and training videos. I use TechSmith products daily like SnagIt and Camtasia. Camtasia in a nutshell is for recording video from your computer screen, editing, and then publishing in a wide variety of formats like HF Flash, Animated GIF, WMV, MOV,MP4 and more.
I finally got to meet the team while I was in Michigan this year after knowing them for over 10 years.
Record, Edit, Produce and Share.
Just some of the new enhancements in Camtasia 6 are:
RECORD:
EDIT:
PRODUCE:
GOING
In the future, we'll stop producing RealPlayer files. It is used by less than 2% of our customers and is becoming less robust compared to other formats.
GONE
In general, they removed features and replaced them with something better. In the case of LiveOutput, it was used so infrequently, that the continued QA / Testing of it had a negative impact on our ability to test and improve other features.
Below is a screenshot of the main editing screen after I recorded a quick tutorial of AutoCAD’s Dynamic UCS I then edit and add voice narration and publish it and post it on my blog in this case. Very quick and painless. You can even record your PowerPoint presentation.
Sometimes text describing how to do something can be hard to understand, but a image or video can explain clearly and bypass even language barriers. I know many trainers and CAD Managers using Camtasia and SnagIt to show and demonstrate techniques with software or for training sessions.
TechSmith has a blog! http://visuallounge.techsmith.com
Cheers,
Shaan
The big news for me today is not just the US elections (US residents please make sure to vote regardless of your choice), but rather the news that Mike and Melanie Perry have a new son.
Mike and Melanie are some of the most active volunteers for AUGI and I have known them for many years and appreciate all they do, and they do do a lot.
Thanks to Richard Binning @Binrock on Twitter alerting me to this momentous occasion of the birth of a new Autodesk product user.
Congratulations to @MikePerry & @MelaniePerry!
”Birth of beta son:
Declan Glen Perry
7lbs 12oz and 21"I wonder if Declan Glen Perry has long frizzy red hair and an English accent like his father? Baby photos are soon to be released, I am sure of that and if not I will Photoshop Mike on a babies body.
The only sad note is Melanie wont be attending Autodesk University in Las Vegas this year but she does have a valid excuse and I will keep an eye on her hubby to keep him out of trouble.
I am currently in Shanghai China preparing to go to the first day of Autodesk University China 08. Yesterday was spent exploring Shanghai and an area just outside the city with fellow Autodesk coworkers Joseph Wurcher, Ray Eisenberg, Matt Murphy Clay Head Sculpture, and Matt Olding.
Cheers,
Shaan
If you are attending Autodesk University in Las Vegas Nevada December 2 - 5, 2008 and love to take photos then this might be for you. You will need to bring your sense of adventure, camera, coat, and fun attitude. I posted about this event and possible locations back in July Autodesk University 2008 Shutterbug Tour Planning. If you wish to participate make sure to sign up on the link below so we can plan dates and times as well as consider how many vehicles there will be so we can set up some ride sharing, The longest photo treks will be on the Sunday proceeding AU (12/1) and the Saturday following (12/6), We will be doing sunrise and sunset photos treks during the week.
This is an ideal chance to escape the casino and get some fresh air, see great scenery and take photos, as well as make new friends. Places we will visit are Valley of Fire, Red Rock Canyon and a few other local gems perhaps even the famous Las Vegas Neon Sign Graveyard where those flashing Las Vegas signs go when they retire.
Thanks to Sean Twomey from Australia for reminding me to post information about the Shutterbug Tour, Sean is a Autodesk Civil 3D master with an Irish accent and a blog http://www.edgeofwedge.com/. He will also be attending the Autodesk University Blogger Social.
When AU starts you will be able to follow the photos as they are posted.
Photos From Last Years Autodesk University
Photos from AU 2007 Valley of Fire & Red Rock Canyon trip.
Cheers,
Shaan
This is really what I heard over the planes audio system when a Southwest airlines flight from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas was preparing for takeoff. Indeed there was a guy in the back wearing shorts with hairy legs and waving who then said “I am here to make the rest of the crew look good”. I have to hand it to Southwest Airlines for some of the happiest and funniest airline employees.
I see myself as that same role here at Autodesk as I am here to show off all the cool stuff they do and make them look good. I am fortunate enough to stand on the shoulders of many very smart and dedicated developers, QA testers, designers, product managers, and many more deskers behind the scenes. Hopefully I make them or what they create more visible.
AutoCAD Tip: Where do I find blocks and symbols?
It has been a hidden gem in AutoCAD for a few releases named AutoCAD DesignCenter,
AutoCAD Command :ADCENTER or use CTRL+2 keys
You can search through files for blocks, leaders, layers and more and drag and drop content from other drawings.
There is the option tab to search the DesignCenter online blocks “DC Online” which is essentially all of the blocks with the former Autodesk product Autodesk Symbols but free inside AutoCAD. I know there are well over 100,000 symbols/blocks in DC Online and perhaps many more as I did not spend the time to count them.
There is also the new Autodesk Seek online which is free and has tons of content in AutoCAD DWG, DWF, Revit formats, DGN, PDF and even SketchUp SKP files. Currently it is in beta and primarily architectural but watch Autodesk Seek grow as it partners with more and more companies and catalog vendors and aggregates the content for use by millions of designers around the world.
Now back to my Saturday night fun of photographing some scorpion specimens I received today all very dangerous or known as “hot” like an Egyptian fattail scorpion Androctonus crassicauda with almost the same lethal venom as a cobra LD50. I like to photograph them under ultraviolet light as they fluoresce and glow. I also got one large mean Kuwait Camel Spider and he was really hungry. I hope to see these invertebrates in the wild next month while in Turkey, Kuwait and Dubai.
Here is a photo of a past ultraviolet photo of a scorpion which makes a great desktop wallpaper. If you watch or subscribe by RSS to my Shaan's Flickr Photostream, you will see my photos when I post them.
Cheers,
Shaan (the hairy legged ugly guy in the rear of the plane)
Cirque du Soleil of Montreal and Las Vegas has been using AutoCAD as their primary CAD software for years in the design of the worldwide shows. We on the AutoCAD Team have got to know many of the people and teams, and it is always amazing to see their designs and pushing the limits of creative set and show design.
They design in both 2D and 3D from very simple work to complex shapes for their innovative shows which have grown in years to span around the globe.
While at Autodesk University in Las Vegas this year you can enjoy a few of their shows.
Are you doing innovative or sustainable projects with AutoCAD and want to be mentioned, just send me an email.
Cheers,
Shaan
I found a service http://mloovi.com/ that provides RSS Feeds in multiple foreign languages. Below are feeds for multiple languages for the RSS feed of this blog Between the Lines. I don’t expect the translations by machine to be 100% perfect but perhaps they will be close enough to understand.
Cheers,
Shaan
I recently celebrated the 5 year birthday of this blog. Between the Lines Blog is now 5 Years Old!. I mentioned I would provide some stats for the 5 years as I was traveling at the time, so here they are.
Rough calculated numbers and sourced from multiple measurement sources over the 5 years.
1,628 posts • 1,089 comments • 341 Trackbacks
Unique Visitors: 1,334,465
Pageviews: 7.64 million+
Average RSS Feed Readers daily: 86,846
Top Keyword: AutoCAD 2009
Top Referrer: Google
Top 3 Sites referring directly: http://usa.autodesk.com, http://discussion.autodesk.com, http://www.caddigest.com
Visitor Details from 222 countries/territories
1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Canada
4. Australia
5. India
6. Italy
7. Netherlands
8. Germany
9. Brazil
10. France
Top browser language
1. English – United States
2. Spanish
3. German
4. French
5. English
6. Italian
7. Dutch
8. Brazilian Portuguese
9. English - Great Britain
10. Japanese
Top RSS Readers
In summary 5 years has been a great ride and perhaps I have another 5 or more in me. I am always interested in your comments and feedback.The stats are by no means firmly based scientific or represent any other site or population.
Thank you for reading!
Shaan
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