Between the Lines

Weekend in the Islands

Its Monday and a gloomy overcast winter one here in the Autodesk Portland office, but the past weekend I finally visited a place in the Pacific Northwest I had been wanting to go to for awhile and thought I would recommend you do the same if you visit Washington State. I drove up to Washington's San Juan islands and then down the beautiful forested Olympic peninsula. The islands are not tropical and can be cold especially in the winter, but... Read more →

Sweet Layover Last Evening

On my flight back to my Portland Oregon home from Toronto I had a 55 minute layover in Salt Lake City. My kids live near there including my youngest, my amazing 17 year old daughter. My sweet daughter drove to the airport and waited outside security just to see her dad. Awe, that made my week. Sadness is the 3 bottles of fine Canadian maple syrup in my carry on baggage that I wouldn’t be able to carry back through... Read more →

See You this Week in MaRS Toronto

The Accelerate with Autodesk event is this week in beautiful Toronto for those interested in the future of design and manufacturing. The location is the MaRS Discovery District which is the world’s largest urban innovation hub and also where the new Autodesk Technology Center is located. We can say with all honestly that we are going to MaRS this week. Explore the future of design and manufacturing This year's event will focus on the convergence of design and manufacturing technology,... Read more →

Back Online

For the past week I have taken some time off while traveling to our Sheffield UK office for Autodesk Design Night Sheffield and some Autodesk customer and partner meetings. I spent a couple days in Iceland on a stopover finding out I could save the company over half the airfare doing so and then spending some adventure time exploring Iceland and staying in yurts on my own personal dime and taking in some amazing geography for photography and some hiking.... Read more →

Weekend Flashback

Those who know me well know that I love getting outdoors on the weekend and time away from the job. I also love to share them and show off the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. On Sunday I got up to the Mount Hood National Forest and did some hiking, photography, and also some fun UAS practice flights to keep my skills up for the next project. Snow and big old growth trees. Locations: Oregon's White River SnoPark and the... Read more →

New Year

I'm back after just returning from my extended annual week of rest vacation. I spent my vacation snowshoeing a weekend in the snow up on Mount Hood then escaping away from the computer in sunny warm Mexico SCUBA diving with friends and seeing maker space\s and beaches. It was an amazing experience and a tradition to spend New Year Eve there I may do every year now. More details on the trip later as I need to go chip my... Read more →

Back in Hawaii for the 75th Anniversary December 7th Remembrance

I am in Hawaii to attend the 75th anniversary of December 7th. The event is not a celebration of the event or war, but to remember how bad war is and how we must never repeat this as well as honor all those that on that Sunday morning died or were forever affected. We had expected and hoped President Obama would be attending but it appears he may not be able to attend and cancelled his speaking events. I do... Read more →

First Day Back in the Saddle err Office

I have been on sabbatical since mid-June and returned to the Autodesk Lake Oswego office this morning – a little too bright and early. I absolutely love working for Autodesk and truly appreciate that they still believe in giving employees a real disconnected break every four years to rejuvenate and reflect and come back with a reinvigorated energy. I feel rested, relaxed, and ready for many great products, projects, and events and of course more blog and social media information... Read more →

Beautiful Mt Hood

I absolutely love seeing Mt. Hood on my flights back home to Portland Oregon. I took this photo Sunday evening with my iPhone after returning from surprising my mother in Idaho on her 70th birthday. If you look closely you can see Mt. Jefferson in the background. Read more →

Got Trashed in Bali

It’s not what you think, I promise. What I did was spear trash and recycle it in rural Bali. I am currently working in Bali Indonesia on a special project with an Australian colleague Brett Casson and a few other people, and not on a vacation unfortunately. We are working extremely long days on a tight timeline in the heat and on Saturday we took a break to meet the amazing and energetic designer John Hardy at Bambu Indah for... Read more →

Long and Memorable Weekend in Utah

For the past four days I have been enjoying a trip to Utah with my girlfriend Amy to visit my mother, my 3 kids, and some friends. It was so great to visit with friends and family but also get to show Amy around a place she had never visited. We did so much in 4 days including lunch at my favorite Mexican mole spot The Red Iguana,haunted house fun, Park City, Brews and Blues festival at Snow Basin to... Read more →

PDX Carpet Designs in AutoCAD DWG

I will never forget many years ago flying into Portland International Airport and seeing the iconic and sometimes visually loud carpet. Over the past 20 some odd years flying into the airport I always felt fairly nostalgic when seeing it and actually looked at carpets in airports around the world and nothing compared it. This last Spring I remember flying into PDX and doing the ceremonial photo of my feet on the carpet. It was that very day I knew... Read more →

Wind Flooding Crocodiles Corals Training - Amazing

I have been traveling a fair amount recently and about to enjoy some Summertime with my young daughter. I just returned from a work project in Mexico helping to train artists and scientist using Autodesk Memento to digitally capture corals and sculptures in 3D. While in Mexico a big storm hit the day after I arrived bring high winds and flooding leading to power outages and preventing me from some work related SCUBA dives on the worlds second largest barrier... Read more →

Be Safe This Weekend

It is Memorial Day weekend in the United States which kicks off Summer. Sadly it also is the start of more traffic accidents and many related to long holiday drives while tired. Please, if you are driving long distances this weekend stop and take resets and arrive alive. The photo was taken by me this week from a UAV Quad Copter a rest area along Highway 26 between Portland Oregon and Cannon Beach. Read more →

Corals in 3D for SCIENCE

Our good friend and a smart innovative marine scientist Sly Lee of The HYDROUS had a nice online piece covering his work in Wetpixel.com. Sly uses Autodesk Memento to generate 3D textured models of coral from photos he and teams take underwater in coral reef locations around the world. The ability to document a coral in 3D with textures is far more rich than 2D underwater sketching or 2D photos. The 3D models in addition to looking amazing and artistic... Read more →

3DRV at Arches National Park this Week

This Thursday morning November 6th, 2014 I will be meeting up with the Autodesk 3DRV and TJ McCue in the mountain bike and Jeep capital of the world, Moab Utah. I live about 4 hours from Moab and will make the drive early for an action packed day of visiting with the fine people of Arches National Park and giving them a 3D printed Delicate Arch created from a laser and photogrammetry scan, hiking up for a visit to the... Read more →

Autodesk ReCap Photo & Coral Reef Preservation

While capturing 3D geometry with a standard digital camera is challenging and takes advanced technology, capturing 3D geometry underwater can be even more difficult. Difficult because of the optical changes and physical demand to operate in subsurface environment while trying to take photos. Over the past few months I have been involved in some of these projects that made use of not only photogrammetry but recently underwater Lidar (yes underwater laser, not mounted on a shark) and handheld sonar generating... Read more →

Making Finned Friends

Last weekend I went down to Southern California to do some scuba diving in the Pacific Ocean unfortunately a huge storm hit while I was there cancelling some of the dive boats myself and my friend Will had arranged to dive for some spiny lobster. On Sunday early morning, after the worst of the storm causing floods, high winds, high surf, and mudslides had passed we were able to get out to Catalina Island by boat to at least get... Read more →

Tarmac Anesthesia

I have traveled a great deal in my lifetime, and when I first started I always had to sit in a window seat and stayed awake the entire flight even the 10+ hour international flights watching rolling landscapes or clouds go by. Maybe it was travel nerves and watching the world fly by was not only interesting but comforting. I don't know what has changed but I now prefer the aisle seat most likely so I can easily escape to the restroom, easily get to the overhead storage, or get off the flight faster. The other oddity besides being able to identify a make of the jet engine whether it is the hum of a GE, the whir of a Rolls Royce, or the heavy metal whine of the Pratt & Whitney engines is that I now sleep most of a flight. Even with the best of intentions of working the flight, reading, or watching a movie I go unconscious even before the flight takes off. Yes before and during the takeoff. Maybe it is the droning people talking and babies crying that has conditioned me to shut off my brain or the planes rocking lullaby down the tarmac to the runway but I go out like a light. Not even a free upgrade to first class or business with fancy food and never ending drinks will be enough to tempt me to stay awake. Yes the airport tarmac is like anesthesia to me...and like magic I go to sleep on taxiway in Salt Lake City and wake up in far away places. Read more →

Toronto Meetup

I will be working in the beautiful city of Toronto Ontario Canada half of this week, and as I have often done in the past around the world hold a casual meetup. I love chatting about Autodesk, Autodesk’s products, design, industry, technology such as reality capture, blogging and social media, or just casual conversational topics and what you are doing with Autodesk products or looking for solutions to. If you will be available Wednesday Morning for a morning coffee or tea meetup chat or Friday night email me. Read more →

Friday Fun - A Few Days on the Mexican Riviera

I am still getting back to speed after returning this week from 5 amazing days on Cozumel Island in Mexico. Cozumel is one of the top scuba and snorkel diving locations in the world with the worlds second largest barrier reef. I had a ladder into the Caribbean from located just 10 steps from the condo where I was staying in the Northern region of the island. I found the amazing condo on AirBnB.com which was all new to me but I will most definitely use it more often as the location was like living in the property instead of a hotel or resort experience. Cozumel MexicoIt was a great deal of fun to go snorkeling on the reef within 5 minutes. I did hit other locations up and down the island but honestly preferred the abundance of coral and sea life behind the condo units. I took many underwater photos using my iPhone in a special Seashell brand case that was rated to 100 feet depth and luckily there were no leaks. Read more →

Friday Fun - Travel MacGyver Creates a Delta Margarita

I travel by air a fair amount of time over the years and have fancied myself a bit of a travel related MacGyver. The first real stroke of MacGyver’ness was using crushed Altoid mints rubbed in my mouth on my teeth with my clean fingers to brush my teeth and end up with a powerfully minty breath. This was to be used when you did not have your toothbrush or toothpaste handy and didn’t want to offend others with the... Read more →

Security Tip on USB Thumb Drives

I know many of my friends are in Vegas this week for CES and thought I would point out one of the biggest threats to your computer and network, thumb drives. You see them at all trade shows or even just laying around in public like the one I found at the gym. Read more →

Self Sufficient Architecture and Construction

Myself and fellow Autodesk CTO office colleague Gonzalo Martinez were recently on an Octo Copter research project on the remote Northern border of Kenya just 5 miles from Ethiopia which is about as far as you can get from civilization, and hot. I joked how to get there was to fly to the middle of nowhere on a small Cessna plane 5 hours, get in a Landrover and turn East drive four hours and that’s where we were. One thing I observed which was amazing and resourceful is that they are constructing some research and study buildings, schools, as well as medical facilities by the Turkana Basin Institute. Materials are an issue as it can take over 4-5 days by truck to get materials to the job site and they are expensive so people have learned to make most of their own from what they have available locally. Read more →

Busy Week and Another Shoulder Surgery

The week started out in San Francisco with some meetings then accompanying Dr. Louise Leakey of the Turkana Basin Institute speaking at Singularity University at the NASA Ames facility. I met many of the brightest young minds looking to change the lives of a billion people, as well as Ray Kurzweil and many other Silicon Valley icons including Autodesk’s own Jonathan Knowles. Early today I head for the airport to Salt Lake City and another shoulder surgery in the morning, this time my left shoulder after having the right shoulder worked on in June. Then I am taking some well needed personal time off. Cheers, Shaan Read more →