President Obama on Health Reform

Watch President Obama answer every question the press had for him on health insurance reform at a press conference at the White House recently:



He's the man!

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PAUG Meeting on July 15, 2009

Image via Wikipedia

The Philadelphia AutoCAD User's Group, Inc. (PAUG) is scheduled to meet for the third time this year on July 15, 2009. Board Members met two weeks ago and ironed out a detailed agenda for our next meeting which will include a continuation of PAUG Vice President Jesse Moore's presentation on AutoCAD Dynamic Blocks. PAUG Webmaster, Rob Smith will be giving us a look into AutoCAD Menu Macro creation as part of a potential series of presentation on the subject. I'm going to push for handouts to be produced for these next presentations so people have details on these topics to use as a reference back in the office. I'll possibly suggest using information in Autodesk University (AU) handouts as a basis to simplify matters a bit.

John Hodgman roasts President Obama

Image via Wikipedia

John Hodgman, known best as the PC in the "I'm a Mac" commercials and ads, spoke to Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner about nerds, Trekkies, and President Obama's favorite "name-brand smartphone [he] shall not name, for contractual reasons."

Personally I feel relieved that President Obama pushed to use technology. The obvious name-brand smartphone John Hodgman was not able to elaborate on due to contractual reasons is the Blackberry that Obama pushed to continue using after becoming President. It's true that this type of request has not been traditional in the past, it can only force better security technologies to be implemented. I think this type of push drives improvements in security technology that will eventually make its way into public use.

Watch John Hodgman roast Obama and more funny videos on CollegeHumor

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Freeware Options to Replace Those Pricey Apps

Here are some freeware options to possibly replace those pricey apps such as AutoCAD LT, AutoCAD, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, QuarkXpress, Dreamweaver, and many others during these hard economic times:

CAD (AutoCAD LT, AutoCAD, MicroStation)

• DoubleCAD XT (http://www.doublecad.com/)
• Google Sketchup (http://sketchup.google.com/)
• SmartDraw (http://www.smartdraw.com/)
  

Office Suite (Microsoft Office, Corel WordPerfect)

• OpenOffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org/)
• IBM Lotus Symphony (http://symphony.lotus.com/)
• Yahoo Zimbra Desktop (http://www.zimbra.com/)
• Thinkfree (http://member.thinkfree.com/)
• Zoho (http://www.zoho.com/)
• Google Docs (http://docs.google.com/)
• Adobe Buzzword (https://buzzword.acrobat.com/)

Graphics (Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW)

• Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/)
  
• Xara Xtreme (http://www.xaraxtreme.org/)

Photo Editing (Adobe Photoshop)

• GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/)
• Paint.net (http://www.getpaint.net/)

Photos & Video

• Google Picasa
• VLC
  

Productivity

• Foxit Reader
• Notepad++
• Texter
  

Page Layout (QuarkXpress, Adobe PageMaker)

• Scribus (http://www.scribus.net/)

PDF Creation (Adobe Acrobat)

• PDFCreator (http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator)

HTML Editor (Adobe Dreamweaver, Microsoft Frontpage)

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner)
• Amaya (http://www.w3.org/Amaya)
• KompoZer (http://sourceforge.net/projects/kompozer)

Utilities

• 7-Zip
• Everything
• µTorrent

File Backup/Syncing

• Dropbox
• Mozy
  

Music

• WinAmp
  
• Songbird

Security

• KeePass
• AVG Free
• Spybot Search & Destroy
• Ad-Aware
  

I'll continue to add, update, and remove items from this post over time.

AU 2008 - day 2

I began today having breakfast with a representative from my employers Autodesk VAR (Microdesk). Following that I attended the "AU Keynote: Autodesk AEC - Out of the Box!" which was lead by Jay Bhatt, Autodesk Sr. Vice President, AEC, and a team of AEC experts that covered how BIM and Integrated Project Design (IPD) process, and how BIM and Integrated Project Delivery have revolutionized the new Autodesk LEED-certified AEC Division Headquarters. This Keynote also contained a few live demonstrations by Autodesk application experts showing a proposed project design and delivery workflow from concept to construction which I found to be impressive.

My next scheduled session was "Preventative CAD Management" which I chose to replace with attending one of the AU Unplugged sessions titled "Create and Deliver Custom Video Training for Your Users" which was an open discussion focused on methods of creating video content using various software applications and choosing appropriate publish formats for sharing that content over corporate Intranets/Extranets, the Internet, as well as offline. I was able to gather some new methods of sharing video content from those who attended this session and were gracious to share the methods they currently use within their companies. My hope is to develop a robust video training library in the coming months to aide my company in some current and future training initiatives.

During lunch I was invited to a "Civil Direction Briefing" where we reviewed the future direction of AutoCAD Civil 3D, AutoCAD Civil, and the Autodesk Civil Solutions in general. I was required to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) so I'm not able to talk about any details discussed during this enlightening meeting, sorry. Following that special lunch I attended two sessions titled "Learn to Hack AutoCAD Installations for Custom Deployments" and "Get Your Head Out of the Point Cloud: Using AutoCAD Civil 3D for Large Surface Data Sets" which I found both to be filled with excellent information.

Later is the AUGI Annual Meeting followed by the AUGI Beer Bust which I plan to check out for a short time but expect to head back to the hotel room early to get a good night rest for tomorrow. During the AUGI Beer Bust which will be in the Exibit Hall the AU Design Slam Preliminary rounds will be held which looks to be an exciting competition for some of the elite design professionals in attendance and those watching. Quite a day!

I plan to post additional details about everything AU 2008 following this week so be sure to check back.

Till then...happy CADing!

AU 2008 - day 1

I finished up AU 2008 day 1 attending the AU Keynote focused towards Design Innovation, Lunch, a brief look at Enterprise Data Interoperability with US National CAD Standards, Tips & Tricks for printing from Autodesk applications, AU Blogger Social (Mixer), International User Community Meeting / Technology Main Stage, and finally a first look at the Exhibit Hall. Obviously my first day was quite busy with much information to share but that will need to wait till later.

Till then...continue CADing!

AU 2008 - day .15

Okay, I'm already getting excited about the information presented and how we may use it back in the office. The use of an Enterprise CUI file seems to be getting easier to implement and I feel we may need to incorporate it following the major overhaul of our corporate CAD standard is implemented. The presenter offered some excellent information about things to avoid due to trial and error at his company which I'll take advantage of during our implementation for sure.

I'll be off to the "AU Keynote - General Session (Design Innovation)" soon which I'm sure will be exciting and insightful.

Happy CADing!

AU 2008 - day .1

The time has come, up at 5:30 am and out at 6:00 am to head over the the Venetian with my boss to get him registered for AU 2008. Luckily we got there early, we flew through the registration line and made our way to breakfast which was sponsored by nvidia. I felt it was a little skimpy from previous years but it worked to get me fueled for the morning.

My first class was covering a disliked subject for most, the CUI. More specifically how to empower the user but still have a managed enterprise environment. I'm actually attending this session as I write this so I'll plan to follow-up shortly.

Till then...happy CADing!

Autodesk University 2008 is here!

I arrived in Vegas early yesterday (Monday, December 1, 2008) to attend the AUGI International Community Leadership Meeting prior to the Autodesk University 2008 (AU 2008) kick-off today (Tuesday, December 2, 2008). To attend the AUGI International Community Leadership Meeting yesterday I needed to fly out of Philadelphia quite early (6:30 am) which forced me to wake up around 3:00 am. I arrived in Vegas 40 minutes early, around 9:00 am Vegas time. The registration for AUGI Community Leadership Meeting began at 12:30 pm and started at 1:00 pm and ran until 6:00 pm. Following this meeting they had a big International Community Reception which I attended the first part of but needed to hit the pillow a little early to make up for the 3 hour time difference. Waking up at 3:00 am EST and going to bed around 11:30 pm EST made for quite a long day but look forward to the huge array of classes and presentations during AU 2008.

I expect to post detailed information about the AUGI Community Leadership Meeting soon.

Till then...happy CADing!

New Batch Print Utility for Revit 2009 extension now available!

Monday was the unofficial release (Press Release) date of all the new 64-bit Revit products which also included new versions of some of the extensions previously available such as the Batch Print Utility for Revit 2009 extension. Below is a link to the download page on the Autodesk Subscription site.

http://subscription.autodesk.com/sp/servlet/download/item?siteID=11564774&id=11586302

Batch Print Utility for Revit 2009
Release Date: 2008-09-29
Batch Print provides an easy way to print a large number of drawings (views and sheets) from a Revit® Architecture 2009, Revit® Structure 2009, or Revit® MEP 2009 software project.

After preparing the default printer and the Revit software project, use Batch Print to send any number of drawings to the printer and to control the order in which they print. When you start the print job, Batch Print manages the printing of the drawings, requiring no further interaction from you. If desired, you can monitor the progress of the print job using a status dialog.

Batch Print is now compatible with the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Revit Architecture 2009, Revit Structure 2009, and Revit MEP 2009 software.