From the 27th May – 13th of June the Sydney Harbour is being lit up with dazzling range of light installations as part of the Sydney Vivid Festival. The centrepiece is a 3D projection on the Sydney Opera House, what better canvas could you ask for?
Still photography really can’t do the festival justice, I learnt that its surprisingly hard to capture light displays on film! That didn’t stop me trying though and without further ado here are a few of my better shots taken during the show:
Posted in Art
So with all this raw computing power harnessed into shiny laptops and iPads for our convenience, are we using them to surf the laws of physics and deliver revolutionary engineering design? I’ll let you ponder the answer to that…
I’ll admit beyond excel I don’t use computers to complete revolutionary design in my day to day work as a building performance engineer. I use my grass roots fundamentals, combined with computer number crunching. But I do use computers to enhance my skills in one of the most vital areas we need to excel at as engineers, communicating design.
I would like to share with you my top three programs, used in my day to day engineering, to greatly enhance the communication of my work. The best thing is they are all affordable and easy to learn. In my view these are tools which are well worth investing some time in learning, as they can produce powerful results.
What is it? Paint.net can be described as the microsoft version of paint, with all those features that were missing added in. Think layers, effects, image editing, its really a simpler cut down version of photoshop.
What do I use it for? Colouring in. The addition of colour to a sketch really gives it life, Pantone markers are expensive so I use Paint.net which is just as fun, and I can erase stuff if I go over the lines. Simply scan in a hand drawn image, and add color.
Time required to learn? Experienced computer user will be up and away in under ten minutes.
Cost? My favourite price, free.
What is it? SketchUp is the easiest to learn 3D design program. Its small but powerful tool set means you can push and pull your way into 3D design the easy way.
What do I use it for? Concept design of plant massing, solving complex coordination in 3D, site shading analysis and communicating design. It has far too many uses to list here, but you can find all the tutorials you’ll ever need in two places, youtube and the SketchUp website
Time required to learn? 1 hour to get up and running. To become proficient 5 – 10 hours. To become an expert 20 hours.
Cost? Free for non-commercial use, so you can use it at home to design your new kitchen, or landscape your garden. For commercial use licenses start at $495, a bit more expensive than it used to be, but still good value.
What is it? Bluebeam is a pdf workhorse and engineering tool. It has many powerful features including: pdf creation and editing; mark-up tools; comparison tools; measurement tools. Most documents are issued in pdf format these days, and Bluebeam gives you a powerful toolset to help you work with pdfs and create high quality work.
One tip is to make sure you flatten the copy you send to the outside world, this ensures that they can’t accidentally modify your comments. Keep an unflattened copy for future edits.
What do I use it for? I use this program for so many tasks: marking up drawings; creating annotated sketches in combination with paint.net; comparing architectural layouts; analysing areas and floorplates. All without having to print or scan a thing.
Time required to learn? An hour to get up and running, a few hours to master some features, and then you will keep discovering new features as you go.
Cost? Starts at $179, an absolute bargain for how much value you will get out of it. I use it day in day out.
So there you have it. Three programs that once you have got into you will wonder how you ever lived without.
Posted in Engineering, Technology
So you’ve decided you want to build a website. Be it part of a plan to take over the world, or simply to share your stamp collection, this post explains my method of building an interactive professional website for free, using WordPress.
First I describe why I decided to use WordPress, before going on to explain how you can do the same. If you want to get stuck right in skip directly to page 2. You will need to be fairly experienced with computers to complete this process, or find a friend with the skills that can help you out. The best part is once the site is set up it’s very easy to edit and create new content.
Can you remember the last time you went without using the Internet for more than 24 hours? I don’t think I can. The Internet has grown to become a vital part of our society, be it for work, rest or play. We use the Internet at work to research and collaborate, at home to keep in touch with friends, plan holidays, find new recipes and many for many other everyday tasks.
Therefore it makes sense you might want an online portal to share information. For many this portal is only used for social interaction, which is taken care of by setting up a Facebook account. For large companies an expensive professionally designed website is more fitting.
So what about the inbetween? There are many small companies or organisations which require an online portal but without the cost? There is a free solution based on the open source concept called WordPress. I want to share with you the reasons I decided to use WordPress to build my website, and also show you how you can do the same.
There was a thought process behind what I wanted my website to achieve, it needed to fulfil the following including the reasoning why:
Easy to build without expensive software. I don’t want to have to purchase and learn an expensive program just to build a website.
Easy to update on a regular basis from any computer. Static webpages are boring. Regularly updates keep visitors coming back, therefore it should be easy and fun to update.
Professional looking. First impressions count, the first glance at your website will set the tone of what visitors expect to find. If you want to be taken seriously you need a website look that helps convey your message.
Allow comments as a source of collaboration. A feedback loop is key to improving any kind of process, therefore connecting with visitors to understand their impressions of your website is an important.
This thought process led me to WordPress, an open source publishing platform that fulfils all of the above.
Read more on the next page…
On rare occasions my Dad busted out his much contested cooking skills (his claim to fame is making eclairs but I’ve never seen evidence of this culinary feat) to create this tasty French Onion Soup.
Served on Saturday afternoon piping hot with molten cheese croutons on top, this is the perfect soup to warm the cockles on a cold winters day.
When its cold and miserable outside, or if you are feeling a bit off colour, this tasty tomato soup is real comfort food that will brighten any mood. My mum used to make this with any tomatoes leftover from a bumper tomato harvest, served up for Saturday lunch with plenty of warm fresh bread.
Now there are plenty of tomato soup recipes out there, but what I especially like about this one is keeping it simple and letting the flavour of the ripe tomatoes do the talking!
Fresh Homemade Tomato Soup
Posted in Food+Drink
Posted in Technology
Posted in Technology
Posted in Food+Drink
