Model Fight: Maison de Roulement 004

Finally some more work on Maison de Roulement.

I added the walkway around the bottom of the building. There will also be some way to get down to the ground. Also some detail around the front doors and selected a wheel design. The axles are there, but no connecting bits or protection.




I like the way SketchUp lets you have components, and groups, but I've found myself getting into groups of groups of components, and multiple components rolling up into single components, and I haven't found an easy way to absorb parts of models into other components easily, like I'm used to in 3D Studio MAX. It's probably just my workflow.

More bees to love

The Halo 2 videogame had an elaborate Alternate Reality Game (ARG) called I love bees that tied in with the launch of the game. It involved real world people getting emails, text messages, phone calls, etc, from in-game entities, artificial intelligences, and other characters.

It looks like those crazy Bungie guys are at it again, but this time for Halo 3.



Click on the image or go to http://halo3.com/comic/ to check it out. I accidentally found the clue that lead me to more parts of the game.

Dell Inventors Awards Banquet

Monday night was the Dell Inventors Awards Banquet. It's for everyone who has had at least one invention/patent disclosure make it through the (Engineering) Patent Committee to get submitted to the US Patent Office.



This was my third Inventors Banquet. This year it was at the Renaissance Hotel in the Arboretum, and everyone gathered in the atrium (360degree Java image) for cocktails and mingling. We've started our diets again, so I was bummed at the idea of not taking them up on free wine, but eventually we had some (hey - we've been really good!).

Michael Dell gave an opening speech about innovation, simplification and the contribution to Dell from patent submitters. We unknowingly sat two tables away from him, who was spirited away when I wasn't looking.




After The Big Dog spoke there was a mad rush to the buffet. Salads included Caesar and some kind of Thai salad. Moving up, there was some sort of pasta area that we skipped. Next came the meat of the dinner...the meat. Moroccan chicken with some sort of great curry dusting, some kind of roast, and Halibut steaks...all very good. We said no to the rolls and desserts, but of course said yes to coffee.

During the dinner our Chief Technology Officer (my manager's manager's manager) talked more about our patents, future trends, actual crazy patents and gave awards, alongside our patent counsel.

The event was semi-formal, and we'll take any opportunity to dress up when we're out of the town sans bambinos. After some last minute changes (new purchases) to our wardrobe before leaving the house we were a pretty good match.

Lost in translation?

This is from a recent motherboard. My guess is that this system is gooder at saving your CMOS values.

I can see you!

Some interesting fallout from the Google Street View's Privacy-B-Gone mode. Slashdot picked up a Wired story about some privacy complaints from the picture-taking-van, as well as Wired finding a lot of interesting features from the photos.

Unfortunately, Denver, CO, is the closest place to me with Street View enabled.



I've seen a van drive around our subdivision with cameras, but so far no luck finding front views of our house online, which may not be a bad thing.