blog nauseam » Navel Gazing

Australian Fencing Championship 2011

Steve Johnson — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 03:04:25 +0000

I have been away in Sydney for a while, attending the Australian Fencing Championships. I fenced in five events with uneven success (I came 52nd out of 70 in the Open Foil, for example), but a few things made me happy. First, I was able to fence for Western Australia in the Team Foil event as captain of the WA ‘B’ team, which put up a decent performance in going down to a strong ACT ‘A’ team. Next, I came 6th in the Veteran Foil; down from last year’s 2nd, but quite respectable given the strength of the field.

The event I was really concentrating on, the one in which I most wanted to do well, was the Veteran Sabre. I fenced pretty well through the pools and direct elimination bouts and got through to the final. There, I faced an opponent who had beaten everybody else that day, and I had trouble maintaining the same level of performance. Who would come through to be crowned national champion for 2011? Watch the video (YouTube, 3:02 long) of the Veteran Men’s Sabre Final to find out:

I’m on the left. If a red light goes on, I’ve hit him. If he hits me, it’s a green light. If both lights go on, we’ve both hit each other within 120 milliseconds and the referee awards the hit based on right-of-way rules. Veteran direct elimination bouts are fought until one fencer scores ten hits. Link to results.

Cloud discussions generating interest

Steve Johnson — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:39:19 +0000

This is one of those self-indulgent posts you probably hate, so feel free to skip it and just read the more interesting stuff.

Last month, my site statistics went through the roof. Here’s a graph that shows the number of unique visitors and the number of visits per month since I started the blog in February 2008. Page views, hits (a pretty useless statistic) and bandwidth all spiked in a similar fashion.

I remember being very surprised when over 1,500 people visited my blog in the first month, as I would have been very happy with a few hundred readers. I was astonished when more than 5,000 people visited here on the second month. Last month, there were 30,921 unique visitors who visited 58,342 times, viewing 129,206 pages. I’m sure there are other CAD blogs with many times the traffic, but for this blog, October’s numbers were crazy. The mentions on upFront.eZine didn’t hurt, but the daily statistics were already high and didn’t show a huge leap afterwards.

So what’s going on? Well, just posting anything rather than little or nothing (as has happened here from time to time) obviously helps a lot, but I think it’s more than that. I think it’s the Cloud generating interest. While it might be tempting for Cloud proponents to associate interest with excitement, that would be a mistake. Judging from the comments and poll responses here and elsewhere, I’m convinced that many more people are interested in CAD in the Cloud because they are concerned about it, they fear it, they even hate it. Given that atmosphere, I think CAD in the Cloud is going to be a very hard sell.

Fencing in Canberra – video

Steve Johnson — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 23:53:36 +0000

It’s about time I posted about something other than the Cloud, or even CAD.

Every year, there are four national-level fencing competitions in Australia. As they are almost all held on the other side of the continent, I don’t get to compete in them as often as I’d like. However, a couple of months ago I did have the opportunity to compete in the third of these competitions for 2011, held this year in Canberra.

This was very special to me because my mother and sister were in the audience and it was the first time either of them had ever seen me fence. It was also special because my sabre coach, Frank Kocsis, flew out to be with me and his other students. Frank has taken only two years to move me from complete sabre novicehood to being competitive at national level, particularly in the veteran (over-40) events.

This is not an entirely Cloud-free post, because this video of me fencing in the Veteran Men’s Sabre Semi-Final (2:49 long) is hosted on YouTube:

I’m on the right. If a green light goes on, I’ve hit him. If he hits me, it’s a red light. If both lights go on, we’ve both hit each other within 120 milliseconds and the referee awards the hit based on right-of-way rules. Veteran direct elimination bouts (like this semi-final) are fought until one fencer scores ten hits.

If you want to see how the winner of the semi-final did, here is the Final (4:46).

Will Autodesk have to explain itself to the SEC?

Steve Johnson — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 05:06:02 +0000

The observant among you may have noticed that for many years, Autodesk’s free patches, service packs and updates haven’t added any new functionality. Bugs may get fixed, severe performance issues may be addressed, but design errors generally have to wait for the next release (at the earliest), and new features definitely don’t get added.

The last time new functionality was added to AutoCAD in a free maintenance release was Release 13′s c4 update which shipped on 12 February 1996. (There was a public beta available some months earlier; I picked up a copy at Autodesk University 1995). That free update contained not only a host of bug fixes, but also more useful new features than some later full-price upgrades (e.g. AutoCAD 2000i). In an outbreak of outstanding customer service, a c4 CD was shipped free to all registered users. Maybe Autodesk was trying to recover from disastrously shipping Release 13 prematurely, but issuing such a comprehensive update free of charge was still highly commendable.

Why did Autodesk stop providing new functionality in free updates? While it involves more work for Autodesk and hardly encourages paid upgrades or Subscription, the reason we’ve been given over the years is that there are accounting regulations that prevent Autodesk from providing new functionality in free updates. This does not apply to benefits from paid Subscription, and various new features for Subscription users have indeed appeared (albeit in fits and starts) over the intervening years.

I have to admit that I have always thought that this accounting thing was a pretty unlikely-sounding excuse for Autodesk’s inactivity. This attitude was reinforced by a lack of Autodesk response to my requests for further information about the alleged regulations. Until recently, I didn’t care enough about this matter to bother finding out for myself, but something extraordinary just happened that piqued my curiosity.

What happened? Autodesk released a free Service Pack that included new functionality for the first time in over 15 years. I was particularly interested in this, because part of what’s new is a new command providing a subset of the functionality of my ClassicArray™ plug-in. When I put in the time and effort to develop this product to fill a hole of Autodesk’s making, I did so on the assumption that Autodesk wasn’t going to provide an Array dialog box until at least AutoCAD 2013. It turns out that this assumption was wrong.

So what’s all this about accounting regulations preventing new functionality being provided free between releases? Was I right to be vaguely cynical about that? After some research, it would appear that I was wrong about that, too. There is an FASB (responsible to the SEC) accounting standard called SOP 97-2, which covers software revenue recognition. I’m no accountant and the regulations are large and complex, but here is my layman’s understanding of the basics.

In a simple case where a vendor (e.g. Autodesk) sells a complete product (e.g. AutoCAD 2012) at a given date, it records and declares the revenue for that product in the appropriate period as a single unit of accounting. If there are multiple elements of the product, things get more complex. If Autodesk ships part of AutoCAD 2012 (the main product) at one time and part (e.g. a Service Pack with new functionality) at another, then it is required to separate the elements into multiple units of accounting. It is required to make available vendor-specific objective evidence (VSOE) for each element of the product. If Autodesk has not done so (which seems likely), there is probably a problem. My understanding is that without VSOE, Autodesk is required to allocate the revenue for AutoCAD 2012 sales not at the point when it was received, but when all the elements have been delivered (i.e. when SP1 was released).

What about an argument that the new ARRAYCLASSIC command and new SNAPGRIDLEGACY system variable are not new functionality in themselves, but merely mechanisms to restore functionality that was available in previous releases? I don’t think that matters. The functionality is new to those customers who purchased AutoCAD 2012 and thereby provided Autodesk with revenue between March and September 2011. If that revenue has been allocated incorrectly, then Autodesk has some revenue shuffling and explaining to do.

I repeat that I’m not an accountant and this is all a layman’s uninformed opinion. It is quite possible that the regulations have recently changed, or that a relaxed interpretation is now permissible, or that I have the wrong end of the stick entirely. I’ve admitted being wrong in this post twice already and it could well be thrice.

If I’m wrong and Autodesk is in the clear, that’s great. Why? Because it means Autodesk customers can look forward to a lot more functionality being provided in future service packs.

Why do you comment here?

Steve Johnson — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 02:38:15 +0000

One of the things that most pleases me about this blog is the amount of comments it gets. I’m sure there are several AutoCAD-related blogs that are much more frequently visited than this one, especially the Autodesk ones. However, I’m not aware of another AutoCAD blog with the volume of comments I see here. On average, each post here receives just under 5 comments, and the most popular subject for discusssion is now not far short of the 100 mark.

I recently went four complete calendar months without making a single post, but comments kept trickling in anyway. When I returned to normal posting, the commenters returned as if I had never been “away”. What’s up with that? I’m curious. Why do you comment here and not so much elsewhere? Or am I mistaken and there’s an AutoCAD blog I’ve forgotten that’s a hotbed of commentary?

Fencing at the Commonwealth Championships

Steve Johnson — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 05:41:58 +0000

This blog has been a bit quiet over the last couple of weeks, as I have had other things to occupy me. I have recently returned from the Commonwealth Fencing Championships 2010 which were held in Melbourne from 30 September to 5 October. There, I was representing my country in the veteran (over-40) events. Which country? Read on.

Fencing is one of the few sports to have featured in every modern Olympic Games, but at Commonwealth level it has been held separately from the main Games since 1970. Although not part of the Commonwealth Games currently being held in Delhi, fencing is a Commonwealth-recognised sport and the Commonwealth Fencing Championships is a sanctioned event. It is a fairly large event, with representatives from 15 nations. There were 51 fencers in the England squad alone.

You may recall me mentioning my participation in August’s Western Australian International Tournament, where I managed to snag a win in Veteran Men’s Sabre and a third place in Veteran Men’s Foil. At that time, several people raised with me the possibility of national representation. After some thought and with the support of my family, I nominated for Australian selection in Veteran’s Sabre at the Commonwealth Fencing Championships, where there were still a couple of places available. However, I was eventually knocked back and others were chosen for those places.

Not entirely content with the way in which this had been handled, and with just a couple of days to go before the deadline for entries, I contacted England Fencing. That organisation was happy to find me a last-minute spot in the team representing the country of my birth, England. This was the place where I had learned to fence and spent most of my fencing life. As a bonus, I could fence in both Foil and Sabre and would have a chance of qualifying for the team events based on my results in the individual events.

When I turned up in Melbourne, I was wholeheartedly accepted by both my new England team mates and the generally amused Australian fencing community. The spirit of camaraderie and sportsmanship among veteran fencers is excellent, and there were handshakes and back-slaps all round. My England team mates enjoyed having a “tame Aussie” on their side. I doubt that any of them had ever before been encouraged by one among them shouting the very Australian expression, “You bloody beauty!”, but nobody seemed to mind.

I was very pleased with my results, coming 12th in the Veteran Men’s Sabre event, finishing above 8 Australian fencers. I was even happier with 9th in Veteran Men’s Foil, which placed me above not only 9 Aussies, but also above most of my England colleagues, thus qualifying for the Team Foil event. It was very exciting to fence on the Finals Piste with full ceremony in front of a vocal crowd. Unfortunately, England was beaten by Australia and New Zealand into the bronze medal spot, but at least I was a Commonwealth medalist!

It was a very emotional experience for me to receive my medal on the dias alongside my England colleagues, even if I had to remember not to sing along to Advance Australia Fair when the flags were raised.

I got into a fight. Caught on video.

Steve Johnson — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 04:30:00 +0000

Last weekend, I competed for the first time in a national-level fencing competition, the “Be Active” Western Australian International Fencing Tournament (AFF#3). Most people compete in one or two events within a competition, but I thought I would challenge myself and had a go at all six of the individual events available to me. I set myself what I thought were realistic goals for each event. Here is how I did at chasing those goals:

Open Men’s Foil – goal: top 32 – result: 22nd – achieved.
Open Men’s Epee – goal: top 32 – result: 42nd – failed.
Open Men’s Sabre – goal: top 16 – result: 16th – achieved.
Veteran Men’s Foil – goal: top 8 – result: 3rd= – exceeded.
Veteran Men’s Epee – goal: top 8 – result: 6th – achieved.
Veteran Men’s Sabre – goal: top 4 – result: made the final – exceeded.

If you are interested, have 5 minutes to spare, and your access is not blocked at work, you can have a look at me competing in the final of the Veteran Men’s Sabre using this YouTube link. Hopefully, you should find it a pretty entertaining contest, even if you don’t entirely understand what’s going on. If I hit him you will see a red light, if he hits me it’s green, and if both lights go on that means we have both hit each other within 120 milliseconds and the referee decides the point based on right-of-way rules.

I have only been fencing sabre for about a year, so I was very happy to reach the final. That I did so is all down to my sabre coach at my club Excalibur, legendary Hungarian master Frank Kocsis. You can see him briefly on the video as he approaches me during the break to calm me down and get me to focus. I don’t think I’ve ever been that pumped!

What proportion of Autodesk customers really are on Subscription?

Steve Johnson — Fri, 28 May 2010 04:55:18 +0000

In my recent interview of Autodesk Subscription VP Callan Carpenter, he made these statements:

…there is a very small fraction of our revenue that comes from upgrades at this point in time.

We’re down to very low single digits of customers who upgrade, and of those only half of those upgrade 1 or 2 years back. So we’re talking about approximately 1.5% of our revenue that comes from customers upgrading 1 and 2 versions back.

…[customers who upgrade] 1 or 2 [releases] back, a very small percentage of our customer base, less than 2% of our customer base that was buying those upgrades.

Others are calling those numbers into doubt. Deelip Menezes (SYCODE, Print 3D) estimated the numbers of AutoCAD users not on Subscription at 66% (or 43%, depending on which bit of the post you read), by counting the AutoCAD releases used by his customers and making assumptions about their Subscription status from that. That’s an extremely suspect methodology, as I pointed out:

Your numbers don’t really tell us anything about Subscription v. upgrade proportions. All they tell us is that large numbers of people wait a while before installing a new release. We all knew that, surely.

However, Deelip’s post did prompt me to point out this:

…there is a fair point to be made about people on earlier releases who have hopped off the upgrade train altogether, or at least for a significant number of years. How would they be counted in Callan’s figures? They wouldn’t exist at all, as far as his income percentages are concerned.

Owen Wengerd (ManuSoft, CADLock) asked a random sample of his customers and came up with 82% of them as non-Subscription customers. He also noted that he could come up with a 3% non-Subscription figure if he cooked the books by selectively choosing a convenient time slice. Owen doesn’t state the numbers in his sample, or indicate (or know) how many of the non-Subscribers are also non-upgraders.

I’ve added my own poll (see right) just to add to the mix.

Nothing we can hang a conclusion on yet, then. But Ralph Grabowski (WorldCAD Access, upFront.eZine) uses Autodesk’s own figures to point out that upgrade revenue has increased 18% and Subscription revenue only 7% in the last year. I’m not qualified to perform an analysis of the 2011 Q1 fiscal results, but I can find the figures listed as Maintenance revenue ($195 M) and Upgrade revenue ($51 M). That looks to me like about 21% of the Subscription/upgrade income is coming from upgrades.

Also, according to the published figures, Autodesk has 2,383,000 customers on Subscription. If that represents about 97% of customers, does that really mean Autodesk has only about 2.5 M customers? If I’m looking at these figures in the wrong way, feel free to put me right.

So, what’s the truth? What proportion of Autodesk customers really are on Subscription? 3%? 21%? 43%? 66%? 82%? I’m going to ask Callan a follow-up question about this and will report back on what he has to say. In the spirit of this post, I’ll be asking him for a lot more detail. Watch this space.

The Machine that Won the War

Steve Johnson — Wed, 19 May 2010 00:04:23 +0000

I just wanted to get on the record that I don’t trust claims based on statistical data without being able to review in detail the methods used to obtain and interpret the data. Even with the best intentions, full integrity and honesty, it is not difficult to come to completely the wrong conclusions based on apparently compelling statistical evidence.

This isn’t just theory, I’ve seen it happen. Detailed percentages presented at upper governmental levels, based on huge sample sets, giving a totally false impression because of errors and assumptions that occur at various places in the process. The exact same question asked twice in the same survey, giving very different results depending on the section in which the question appeared, providing an unstated context to the question. The devil is in the details, and the details can be extremely subtle.

I have a “put up or shut up” rule that applies to anybody who makes claims based on unrevealed statistical evidence. It applies to corporations, news outlets, bloggers, government ministers, everybody. Without allowing scrutiny of the full details, all statistical claims are null and void, as far as I’m concerned. “Trust me” doesn’t cut it. Sorry, no exceptions.

What does this have to do with the title? Those familiar with Isaac Asimov’s short story of that name will understand. I’m sure Robin Capper worked it out immediately.

What do I think of the Ribbon?

Steve Johnson — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 05:26:34 +0000

I’m curious. What do you think I think about the Ribbon, particularly in AutoCAD? Do you think I’m a hater, a lover, indifferent, or what? Now, on what evidence do you base that view? Feel free to quote back to me anything I’ve written on this blog or any other public place to support your opinion. If you can’t find anything that gives you any clues one way or the other, feel free to mention that, too.

Incoming link: “Important Revit information”

Steve Johnson — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 02:08:22 +0000

One of the things my blog’s WordPress dashboard shows me is a list of incoming links, i.e. who is pointing to this blog. One line intrigued me:

unknown linked here saying, “318 random votes.. http://www.blog.cadnauseam.com/ …”

Clicking on the link took me to the Autodesk Discussion Groups, but only as far as this message:

Error: you do not have permission to view the requested forum or category.

A Google search showed up the link as follows:

Important Revit information
Saturday, 3 April 2010 9:23 AM
318 random votes.. http://www.blog.cadnauseam.com/2009/09/09/ribbon-acceptance-in-autocad-and-revit/

Call me self-obsessed if you like, but I find this curious. If anybody has any more information about it, please let me know.

Some meaningless AutoCAD 2011 numbers

Steve Johnson — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:41:33 +0000

According to David Cohn, at yesterday’s blogger event in San Fransisco prior to the 2011 launch, Autodesk provided the following figures:

76,000 man hours spent on Q/A of the new release
6,000 total code reviews of new release
2,000 commands tested
4,600 Beta customers involved in AutoCAD 2011
1.4M lines of old code were removed

Well, that’s all very nice, but those numbers are completely meaningless without context. Autodesk may as well have just published the equivalent numbers for Release 13; I’m sure they would have looked impressive in isolation.

Did anybody in the blogger audience ask the obvious question?

How do these numbers compare with previous releases?

If so, I’d be interested to see the answer.

If not, why not? I’d like to think that I would have asked such a question rather than sitting there unquestionably accepting whatever was being presented.

I’d like to think that, but I can’t. I’m in no position to throw stones. I had a similar opportunity at the equivalent event last year and failed to take advantage of it. I was operating at a very sub-optimal level for a variety of reasons (some of which were entirely of my own making, so no excuses there). It was a small, fairly informal event at which Autodesk actively and repeatedly encouraged two-way communication. But sitting there absorbing what I was told was pretty much all I did. I even caught myself on video doing this (i.e. very little), so I have absolutely no right to expect anything better from anyone else this year.

Still, it would have been nice to have had that question asked. It would be even nicer to have it answered. Otherwise, the numbers will remain meaningless.

Interesting times

Steve Johnson — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 05:53:41 +0000

The past few days haven’t been so great for me. Here’s what has happened lately:

A family member had an expensive musical instrument case burned when it was placed too close to a stage light.
As I was driving home on Monday to escape a major oncoming storm, my car was hit out of the blue by a single golf-ball size hailstone. This caused damage on a styling crease, which will be difficult to repair. As a single dent, it’s probably not worth getting fixed, and will therefore remain to irritate me every time I see it, until the car is sold.
Our lovely big Protea tree was blown over and uprooted, and the top half of our lovely flame tree was sheared off and dumped some distance away.
The trees took our overhead power cable with them as they died, leaving a live cable end on the wet ground. This was isolated but not fixed the next day, just before parents started dropping off their kids in our street (we live near a primary school). We were left without power for most of two days, during which we had no idea when the power would be restored, and which made meal planning a little tricky. This outage resulted in the spoilage of a fridge-freezer full of food, and left me unable to work from home or prepare some planned future blog posts.
My wife bashed her nose and eye this morning when a heavy washing machine lid fell on it. In addition to her own pain and suffering, this will probably come up in a lovely bruise and leave people wondering if I’m a spouse abuser, a form of life for which I have nothing but contempt.

All in all, not the best time of it. But I’m OK. I’m feeling pretty positive about things. There are lots of people in my area with destroyed homes, well-hammered or flooded cars and still no power supply. I still have a source of income, my health and that of my family. There are large numbers of people in the world without adequate shelter, food and clean water, let alone a convenient power supply that fails for a couple of days only once every few years. Many of them live a miserable and fragile life under oppressive regimes or other sources of potential or actual violence or injustice.

No, I reckon I still have things pretty good.

This is what I do in my spare time

Steve Johnson — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:46:53 +0000

Fencing. With swords, not pickets, barbed wire, etc. I gave it up 25 years ago, then took it up again about 18 months ago. I now fence all three weapons, having started Sabre about six months ago. Fencing is a very aerobic sport, and participating in it has done wonders for my fitness and mobility over the past year or so.

Here are a couple of videos of me fencing foil in a Masters competition last year.

YouTube link.

Comment censorship

Steve Johnson — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:25:20 +0000

I want your views on how much control I should exert over the comments that people make here. I’ve been led to thinking about this by a couple of things. Mostly by the occasion of the first troll comment on this blog, and to a lesser extent by Shaan Hurley turning off comments on posts older than three months on his Between The Lines blog. (I am not complaining about this; it’s Shaan’s justifiable reaction to mass spam attacks and it has nothing to do with censorship. There are some Autodesk blogs that don’t allow comments at all, which may in itself be justifiable).

I’m a proponent of freedom of speech and don’t want to restrict your ability to say what you think. I’m perfectly happy to see you express your contrary opinions and would never dream of removing or editing a comment simply because it contains viewpoints with which I disagree. There are plenty of comments on this blog from people who disagree with my stated views, and at least one containing an insult aimed at me personally using a variant of a word that many people would consider very offensive. I haven’t touched those comments. I haven’t even touched the troll comment.

Spam, on the other hand, is mercillesly dealt with. The vast majority of it is automatically excluded by Akismet, a handful I have to remove manually, but in all cases the comment is deleted and the sender’s IP is banned from accessing the site. I can do that with other commenters too, but I have not yet done so.

My question to you is where do you think I should draw the line? If a discussion leads to a vendor commenting to let people know that his company provides a service relevant to the discussion, is that spam or should I let it go? Should I remove deliberate trolling attempts? What about comments or words based on race or religion? If somebody drops an f-bomb or a c-bomb without attacking anybody, is that a problem for you? How about attacks on companies or individuals? If commenters start personally attacking each other, should I let it go? If somebody has a go at a company in a way that looks unhinged to some, is that OK? What if somebody else says it is loony bin material? What if that then leads to a flame war?

I’d like to draw up some moderation guidelines so everyone knows where they stand. I know I will have to make judgement calls wherever the line is drawn, but I’d appreciate it if you would give me an idea about your own preferences. I’ll consider adding a poll later if the discussion throws up a few options.

If you admire somebody, please let them know

Steve Johnson — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:32:48 +0000

This post has nothing to do with CAD or the other subjects I occasionally cover.

Last month, I unexpectedly lost two of my colleagues to cancer. Wayne was a loud, larger-than life character, full of life. Paal (pronounced like Paul) was a quieter, more reserved man, but very friendly, funny and positive. Wayne occasionally rubbed people up the wrong way with his robust manner, but everybody who knew Paal liked him. I thought he was a great guy, but I never told him that. Now I wish I had. I never even knew he was ill, so when I read the email telling me he was dead it was quite a shock.

It’s not my place to tell you what to do, so please take this purely as a suggestion. If you know somebody and you admire them for whatever reason, let them know it. They will feel better, you will feel better, and if you come in to work one day and find they are gone, you won’t be left wishing you had said something positive to them while you had the chance.

As for cancer, I can’t prevent or cure that, but I have a little idea for something I can do to help. More on that later.

Shorn Shaan – you saw it here first

Steve Johnson — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 04:03:04 +0000

I was amused to see Shaan Hurley losing his locks at AU. Some of you may recall me suggesting this course of action a couple of years ago. How close do you think I got with my artist’s impression?

My first computer

Steve Johnson — Thu, 14 May 2009 09:04:11 +0000

My first computer was a Dragon 32, which I think I bought in 1982. With a massive 32 kilobytes of RAM and a proper typewriter keyboard, it was quite advanced for a home computer of the time. The Commodore 64 may have had more RAM, but a lot of it was grabbed by its very basic BASIC. I preferred a computer with an ELSE to go with its IF, thanks. Microsoft Extended BASIC for me, not the crummy old BASIC 2.0 of the Commodore. The Commodore 64 was one of the great consumer electronics sales successes of all time. The Dragon, er, wasn’t. It lasted less than two years before the Welsh parent company went under.

Inside, it was pretty much a Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer. Outside, it was this:

I cut my coding teeth on this beast. The first thing I did with it was to write a parametric 3D bottle design program. I later spent several all-nighters developing what I thought was an awesome space game in BASIC using its limited graphics. I bought a plug-in cartridge that provided me with assembly language facilities. Real nerd stuff.

I sold it to a co-worker just before the company collapsed and replaced it with a Sinclair QL, another great commercial success story. I still have that QL (broken), and another one I bought much later as a replacement. I must get it out one day and see if it still works.

What was your first computer?

Not another SpacePilot PRO review

Steve Johnson — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:41:40 +0000

This post is not about the new SpacePilot PRO 3D controller from 3Dconnexion (a division of Logitech). This post is about the Internet coverage of the launch of that new device, journalism, blogging, freebies and ethics.

It has long been common practice for companies to give out free stuff to journalists. Free gadgets, free transport and other expenses for attending events, free beer, free lunch… oh, wait, there’s no such thing. As blogging has risen in prominence, that practice has been extended to providing free stuff for bloggers. It was traditional in the past for such freebies to go unmentioned in reports about the products of such companies. I think the first time I saw this kind of thing disclosed was by Ralph Grabowski, and I was impressed. Maybe it’s just the sites I read, but I see more of that kind of disclosure in blogs than I do in the traditional press (whatever that means these days).

It seems that 3Dconnexion is distributing its US$499 SpacePilot PRO devices like confetti (particluarly at SolidWorks World), hoping to get as much coverage as it can. It’s working. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with that. If a company wants to let potential customers know about its products, and if those customers read blogs, it makes sense for the company to send samples to bloggers in the hope that they get reviewed. As long as there are no strings attached, I see no ethical problem with that. If a negative review led to a reviewer being taken off the freebies list then I definitely would have a very big problem with that, but I see no evidence of that from 3Dconnexion.

Where I do see an ethical issue is when a freebie is received, a review is written, and no disclosure is made. I think readers are entitled to know about any free stuff associated with a review, and I think this applies equally to press and blogs.

Let’s have a look at some recent SpacePilot PRO coverage to see how we’re travelling at the moment. The following sites have mentions or reports without explicit disclosure. In many cases a mention is made of having one (or waiting for one) but it’s not clear if this is a free SpacePilot PRO, or if the writer has paid for one. If you’re one of these people, feel free to set the record straight either here or on your own site.

Al Dean at Develop3D may or may not have one. He mentions a trip to Germany where he saw a pre-release device. Edit: see Al’s comment.
Business Wire simply reprints the press release.
Lars Christensen at CADCAMstuff reviews it (enthusiastically), and mentions that he has one. Edit: see Lars’ comment.
Jason Raak at RockSolid Perspective reprints the PR and provides a review, mentions that he has one.
Jeff Mirisola at Jeff’s Blog mentions it, does the PR reprint thing, and tells us he is waiting for his to turn up. Edit: see Jeff’s comment.
I4U provides a brief mention.
Josh Mings at SolidSmack had a play at SolidWorks World and will get one soon. Edit: see Josh’s comment.
Lisa Van Giesen at Fisher/Unitech provides a mention and declares that they will be reselling these devices and using them for training.
John Brownlee at Geek.com provides a description.
Gabi Jack also mentions playing with it at SolidWorks World, reprints the PR, and says she is waiting for hers to turn up. Edit: see Gabi’s comment.
Joseph L. Flatley at Engadget issues a straight report.
Stewart Meagher at The Register issues another straight report.
Lee Ambrosius at HyperPics provides a positive report and mentions that he is looking forward to receiving one.

Here’s how I think it should have been done:

Matthew Lorono at SolidWorks Legion mentions that he got to play with one at SolidWorks World and received a freebie, no strings attached. Full and explicit disclosure.

There are almost certainly other reviews and mentions that I’ve missed, so feel free to inform me and I’ll add to the above lists.

I hasten to point out that I’m not throwing stones here. I’m not accusing any of these people of writing positive reviews in return for a cool gadget. I’m just encouraging everybody to unambiguously declare any freebies they receive, that are associated in any way with whatever they write.

On Twitter, I see several of my fellow AutoCAD bloggers impatiently awaiting the arrival of their cool gadget. When they receive them, I expect we will see more reviews, and it will be interesting to see how many of those reviews include full disclosure, especially now I’ve raised the issue.

Here’s my own disclosure about my personal association with 3Dconnexion. I investigated the use of 3D controllers for a client and suggested the purchase of a couple of pretty expensive 3Dconnexion SpaceBall 5000 devices. Within months of purchase, 3Dconnexion made these obsolete without warning and failed to produce any new drivers for them, making them expensive paperweights.

When I attended AU 2006 (at Autodesk’s expense as a MyFeedback Scholarship), I turned up at the Press Room looking for a Press badge, as I am a Cadalyst writer. I received a Press person’s small bag of assorted goodies from various vendors. This included pens, small USB keys and the like, but a 3Dconnexion SpacePilot was the stand-out freebie. I later suggested that my client purchase a couple of SpacePilots to replace the obsolete SpaceBalls. Not because of the freebie, but because they were the cheapest suitable devices available.

So, on a personal level that’s one up and one down for 3Dconnexion. My view of 3Dconnexion is about the same as that of parent company Logitech. I like the devices, I’ll even use my own money to buy them, but I don’t think a good enough job is done of supporting recently purchased devices with updated drivers as new software arrives.

I haven’t received a SpacePilot PRO or the promise of one. I’m not sore about that. I haven’t asked or been asked. If they do happen to send me one, I’ll play with it and if I think it’s worth writing about, I’ll do so in an unbiased way and with full disclosure.

Buying 24″ monitors – is now the right time?

Steve Johnson — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 05:27:25 +0000

I’m doing my bit to reduce the impact of the global financial crisis. Yesterday, I went out and bought a couple of new 24″ monitors to replace my perfectly functional pair of 19″ LCDs. It now looks like I’m facing a huge wall of pixels and I don’t quite know where to look, but I felt like that after moving from my old 19″ CRT to the pair of 19″ LCDs, so I’m sure I will get used to it soon enough. The 19″ LCDs haven’t gone to waste, they are now adorning an older PC which was previously attached to the old and now slowly-dying 19″ CRT.

Why was it a good time for me to buy new monitors? Because of the way monitor aspect ratios are going. The “sweet spot” for monitors right now is 22″ or 23″, where a serious number of pixels are available for very little cash. Trouble is, the pixels are in the wrong place. Almost all monitors of that size have a resolution of 1920 x 1080, a ratio of 16:9, same as a full HD TV. A vertical resolution of 1080 doesn’t provide a significant advantage over an old 19″ 1280 x 1024 (4:3 ratio) monitor.

When I’m not doing CAD or image manipulation, I’m generally doing things that involve lots of vertical scrolling; word processing, reading web pages, that sort of thing. Often, those web pages have a fixed-width design (e.g. AutoCAD Exchange), so adding extra screen width gains me nothing but extra wide stripes on each side. With more and more software having a deep horizontal stripe dedicated to user interface elements, there’s not much point investing in only 56 extra pixels (5.4%) of height.

From my point of view it’s better to pay a bit extra and go for an extra 176 pixels (17.1%) of height: a 1920 x 1200 (16:10 ratio) monitor. These are available in various sizes, but the cheapest ones, and the ones that will fit side-by-side on my desk, are 24″. But these are becoming less common. Even as I’ve been looking over the past few weeks, the number of 24″ 1920 x 1200 monitor models available in my area has dropped off significantly. Unless you’re very careful, if you buy a 24″ monitor it’s likely to be 1920 x 1080.

Why? Many of these monitors are now being used for games consoles; 1920 x 1080 is all they will use. Same with HD TVs; 16:9 is the current fashion in LCD panel ratios, and it looks likely to stay that way. It makes sense for manufacturers to make 16:9 panels, so 16:10 panels are only going to get rarer.

That may make sense for the manufacturers, but it doesn’t help me as a vertical-pixel-hungry customer. Unless I’m prepared to go for much bigger, desk-hogging and expensive monitors, all I’m going to gain with a 16:9 screen is a bunch of width. Even a 27″ monitor I considered, at roughly twice the price of a 24″, offered “only” 2048 X 1152.

I made the decision. I bought a pair of 24″ 1920 x 1200 monitors while I still could. I found a good-value model I could view in the store, with a small enough bezel (important if you’re using them side by side), a height-adjustable stand, and an excellent warranty (3 years pixel-perfect). For me, it was the right time. Maybe it is for you, too?