Between the Lines

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 →

Kenya Changed Me and I Will Never Be The Same

I recently was in in extremely Northern Kenya near the Ethiopian border on Lake Turkana for a few weeks with Dr. Louise Leakey, Deming Yang of Kenya National Museum, and my colleague Gonzalo Martinez for an Autodesk research project. It changed my perspective on the world, and life. Read more →

Autodesk Octo-Copter Video of Kenya

Last month myself and Gonzales Martinez spent a few weeks in Kenya with Dr, Louise Leakey of the Turkana Basin Institute and Yang Deming of the National Museum of Kenya. We were researching several aspects of aerial photography and from a remote controlled copter to not only capture video and photos by map and locate areas of interest for fossil artifacts. We were in the Northern most part of Kenya in the Lake Turkana basin where the earliest evidence of man has been discovered over the years including several skulls dating back millions of years. Gonzalo has taken some of our video from both my camera and the onboard Octo-Copter video as well as photos and posted the video for everyone to enjoy. Read more →

Never Sleep Near a Hyrax

Recently while in Kenya I found out what a Hyrax is, and why they are evil and not to be slept near. A Hyrax is a small rodent looking thing that is actually related to the elephant with little small tusks. Now here is why I call these cute unique animals evil, they have a tendency to scream at about 160 decibels from 10pm to 5am sounding like someone is being murdered. Read more →

I Kissed a Giraffe, and I Think I Liked It...

I recently spent a couple weeks in Kenya mostly working from sunup to sundown with Dr. Louise Leakey of the Turkana Basin Institute, Deming Yang of the National Museums of Kenya and my colleague Gonzalo Martinez.of Autodesk. I thought I might share a fun photo with you from the Giraffe Centre located just outside Nairobi Kenya before our research work in Northern Kenya began. So here is me taking a big wet kiss from a rare female Rothschild Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi.) Read more →

Back from Kenya

To sum it up in one word “Amazing” would be appropriate. I will be posting more on what we did in Kenya and the experience including a couple crazy travel stories over the next couple of weeks. As I review and edit my 6000+ photos, I will be uploading many of them to my Flickr photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/btl/. Read more →

Capturing Ancient Remains in Kenya with a Remote Octo-Copter

Jambo! Gonzalo Martinez and myself (Shaan Hurley) are currently in the extremely remote Turkana Basin of Kenya where many of the hominin fossils (our human ancestors) were found along with a great deal of other fossils and tools. We are researching aerial video and photo capture with Louise Leakey using a state of the art eight bladed remote copter mounted with lots of high tech equipment and cameras that we have named the Autodesk Octo-Copter for many exciting potential uses. Read more →

Flying the Autodesk Octo-Copter in a very very very remote region of East Africa.

If you go to the middle of nowhere in East Africa, go North, and turn right, then drive another couple hours in the blazing heat, you will be where I am. Gonzalo Martinez and myself of Autodesk are capturing some of the most remote geography in Africa using a remote controlled eight bladed Octo-Copter. The photos and video are amazing as are the reaction from local nomadic tribe members when they see the copter fly by and they run to... Read more →

Saved From Being Eaten By Wild Animals

I have posted to this blog regularly for over 8 years and even found remote connections to post to the blog even while in the deepest of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. Over the next couple of weeks I will be in a extremely remote region without any real connections other than voice satellite phone. To save me from having to stand in the middle of an open area to try to post a message at a very slow speed oer a satellite phone and looking like a fat juicy meal to a large carnivore, a few bloggers have graciously provided guest posts.The guest posts will go live over the time I am traveling. Read more →

Airline Humor – A Good Thing?

I thought I would share a travel related experience from this week. I thought I would share a travel related experience from this week. In addition to being late for a flight, hungry, and creating the first Airline Stew, I had opportunities to hear multiple airline announcement styles. Read more →

Pecos Conference 2011

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Pecos Conference 2011 in the forest at a campground near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. There was over 350 archeologist at the event and several papers presented. I had a table to show Autodesk Labs Project Photofly which can take photos from a standard digital camera and produce a 3D model in textured mesh as well as .LAS point clouds. Read more →

An AutoCAD 2012 Nudge to Get Going after Vacation

Just returning from a week long vacation although you may have noticed in social media, the blog, and on email I failed in remaining disconnected during the week long wind down. Read more →

Spaced Out this Week

This week I will be in Florida on vacation for the final launch of Space Shuttle Discovery STS-133 on Thursday February 24th, 2011 at 4:40pm EST. I will be tweeting and posting photos from the launch pad 39A during the Rotating Service Structure retraction Wednesday night and the live launch from the turning basin location at Kennedy Space Center. Look for me near the famous countdown clock in any broadcasts of the launch including NASA TV Watch NASA TV. Read more →

AutoCAD for Mac London Trip

This week I have been in London for a few events with Apple and with Autodesk customers. I love the reaction when people get their first taste of the new AutoCAD for Mac, they usually say something out of shock, then focus in and say how native the Mac Mac experience, but it is AutoCAD with the real native DWG. Read more →

A Week Off

Autodesk is closed this week so I am trying to relax, unwind, and enjoy the time. For the past few days I have been hiking around Southern Utah from Capital Reef, to Escalante, and then over to Bryce Canyon. Read more →