Through the Interface

Looking back to look forwards

Over the weeks since AU, I’ve been heads-down with writing a chapter for a book that’s due to be published in this summer. The book is about innovation in the construction industry, and my chapter will talk about opportunities related to digital twins and generative design. Which means I haven’t had much time to write “serious” posts for this blog, of late. I did want to put pen to paper in this new year about the sheer joy I’ve been getting from recording Floppy Fridays, though. It’s clear there’s been a strong “retro” trend in recent years. I’d probably... Read more →

Floppy Friday #12

In this week’s episode of Floppy Friday we take a look at two games that came on a Game On floppy from April 1991: Turrican II and Pure Seed. I realised afterwards that Turrican II was made available as a demo version on the floppy – and that I’d loaded the “main” program rather than the demo loader, which explained the lack of loading screen, etc. I used a Commodore 1311 joystick – known as the worst joystick ever created, and apparently a poor copy of the classic Atari CX40 – to play the games, and liked it a... Read more →

Realtime collaboration inside the Forge viewer: a hackathon project

Just before the holiday break I had an interesting chat with Elias Cohenca (someone I’ve mentored on and off over the last few years). He was about to participate in his 6th annual hackathon in the Tel Aviv office, and wanted to bounce a few ideas off me regarding technologies. Our Tel Aviv office has held these hackathons – named Bazinga, after Sheldon Cooper’s catchphrase in the Big Bang Theory – since 2015. Elias has used the hackathon to try out some really interesting concepts, over the years, from adding BIM 360 issues into a mixed-reality environment using HoloLens... Read more →

Floppy Friday #11

In this week’s Floppy Friday we take a look at three more games on the Commodore 64: Rick Dangerous 2, North Sea Inferno and Black Panther. I actually recorded this one before the holiday break (which I’m still enjoying with my family up in the mountains), but I have to admit I’m looking forward to being able to record more episodes over the coming weeks. I’ve been researching what I need to do to fix my “breadbin” C64, and I’m cautiously optimistic I’ll be able to coax it back to life. I also have a C128 to pick up... Read more →

Floppy Friday #10

Happy New Year!!! I’m sure everyone’s thankful that 2020 is behind us (what a year that was). Let’s all hope 2021 is going to be at least somewhat better. At the time I recorded this Floppy Friday, I hadn’t connected the dots on the date (i.e. that Friday was due to fall on New Year’s Day). So please do forgive it not being mentioned. What I do mention is Batman from 1986 and 1989 – at the suggestion of Francesco Cappilli – as well as Arkanoid and Spacefighter. Enjoy! Read more →

Floppy Friday #9

It’s Christmas Day and another Floppy Friday! Today’s episode looks at two quite similar horizontally scrolling shooters, R-Type and Katakis/Denaris. There’s a brief mention of Arkanoid, at the end, but that’s really something we’ll see another day. Read more →

Dynamo Core 2.10

Santa (meaning Sol Amour) has left one last Dynamo release under the tree for us all to enjoy over the holidays: Dynamo Core 2.10. According to Sol’s post there have been a few updates to Node Autocomplete – which I mentioned a few weeks ago – but that we should expect many more to come. And there are other updates that are likely to be of interest in this release, too – check out Sol’s blog post but also the release notes. There are a few new nodes in this release, for instance: AnyTrue, AnyFalse and a Math.Random node... Read more →

Another robotically constructed bridge

This week Autodesk offices around the world are closed for an extended holiday break. I’m grateful for this additional time off at the end of a crazy year, as I’m sure all my Autodesk colleagues are. My children are still in school until Wednesday lunchtime, so I’ve taken the chance to hit the slopes for a few days before heading back down for a quiet family Christmas. (We’ll be back up in the mountains afterwards, assuming we’re still able to ski then.) As I’m largely at a loose end in the evening after coming back from the slopes, I... Read more →

Floppy Friday #8

It’s the last day of school! Well, of work. My kids still have school until Wednesday, but Autodesk has very generously insisted that its employees take an extended break over the holidays starting this evening. I’m planning to make the most of these two weeks – such as is possible with the pandemic-related restrictions – so I do hope to be able to queue up a couple more Floppy Fridays for the holidays, all being well. In today’s episode we look at two games – 1942 and Back to the Future – and mention a 3rd (Slap Fight, in... Read more →

Hyperion at last week’s Forge Accelerator

Last week was a big week for the team developing the Data Visualization Extension (codenamed Hyperion) for the Forge viewer. And for the Dasher team, of course, who were very excited to see what our development partners can do with the new Dasher-like capabilities being built into Forge. As it’s still early days for the extension, the decision was made to limit the number of organisations (I won’t say companies, as a university was included) who would work with Hyperion to just 5. With hindsight this was a very wise decision, as there were a number of teething issues... Read more →

The MX3D bridge on Quarantime

My friend and incredibly inspiring former colleague, Mickey McManus, has been co-hosting a regular (I want to say weekly) live-streamed event under the name of Quarantime. They’ve just posted the 51st episode (which means they must be doing this more than once per week) which featured another friend and current colleague, Alec Shuldiner. Alec has been the real workhorse driving forward the MX3D Smart Bridge project and Autodesk’s involvement in it. He joined Quarantime to talk about the project in the context of our cities’ future digital infrastructure. Here’s a snapshot with Project Dasher as a backdrop: It’s really... Read more →

Floppy Friday #7

This week’s Floppy Friday is slightly shorter and probably no sweeter, showcasing two fun Commodore 64 games that came in as viewer requests. Stefano Metrangolo asked that I try to find International Soccer (which also goes by the names of International Football or Cup Final, in some places) and Clint Brown requested TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or in this case Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles). As you’ll see in the video, to load the game I needed a “mission code” sheet, that luckily still exists online. I hope you enjoy the nostalgia hit, Stefano and Clint! Please do keep... Read more →

’Tis the season to build Dasher

During the last week the kids have been opening their Advent calendars, we had a visit from St. Nicholas (I’ve talked before about this central European tradition), and the Candy Cane accelerator has kicked off. All-in-all things are starting to feel very festive! (And yes, Dasher is one of Santa’s reindeer, so there’s that, too.) The accelerator has upwards of 30 companies and academic partners in attendance, with 5 or so of these focused on “building their own Dasher” using the upcoming Data Visualization Extension for the Forge viewer (Project Hyperion). Yesterday I presented a session on Project Dasher... Read more →

Floppy Friday #6

In this week’s episode we take a look at Missile Command and Impossible Mission, and also talk about Out Run – another of my arcade faves from back in the day. A shout-out to both Matt Armitage and Marco Fiocco, who were the inspiration for the games played. I’m very happy with how my system is shaping up: as mentioned in the video I now have a few hundred more floppies, some new old joysticks and a fixed video cable. For next week’s episode – depending on when the replacement chips arrive and whether they actually help – I... Read more →

Have you tried Node Auto Complete in Dynamo 2.9?

If so (or if not but you’re up for doing so) then the Dynamo team would like to hear from you! For some background, here’s the post on Dynamo Core 2.9 that introduces the feature. To enable the feature via Settings –> Experimental –> Enable Node Auto Complete. Then you can simple place a node (from the Library or by right-clicking on the canvas) and start to use auto-complete to find nodes to connect by Alt-clicking the input ports. Here’s me creating a small graph to create a polygon, for instance. From my cursory inspection it seems a really... Read more →

The Digital World: BIM

Tomorrow (or today for some of you) marks the start of a 3-day event – the Built Environment Summit – being run by BSI in the UK. Here’s the agenda for Day 1 (December 1st 2020, all times UTC/GMT): 09:00 - 09:10 Chairman's Opening Remarks 09:10 - 10:30 DFMA and IoT: What are the possibilities? 10:30 - 10:50 Morning Break 10:50 - 12:00 Build-by-wire: the future 12:00 - 13:00 Asset Performance Management: Who benefits? What could we expect? 13:00 - 13:30 Lunch Break [13:30 - 15:45 Product Data and Standardization] 13:30 - 13:50 Construction Innovation Hub and LEXiCON 13:50... Read more →

Floppy Friday #5

During the last few days I went through and found a couple more floppies for this week’s Floppy Friday. The first contained Rastan, a game where you’re a barbarian warrior off on some kind of adventure. The second contained a game called Druid (although the loader referred to it as “Druids”, for some reason), which was heavily inspired by one of my arcade favourites, Gauntlet. Anyway, here’s today’s episode. Enjoy! I mentioned a couple of things in this episode: this week I managed to find a new joystick (in fact three of them!) which should arrive shortly. I also... Read more →

Build Your Own Dasher during the upcoming Forge Accelerator

Forge Accelerators have always been BYOD. First they were “Bring Your Own Device”, then (on going virtual) they were also “Bring Your Own Drinks” and now for the upcoming event – on December 7-11 2020 – we’re giving people the opportunity to “Build Your Own Dasher”. BYOD3! Attendees at the Candy Cane accelerator (love those codenames) will get early access to to the Forge viewer’s Data Visualization Extension – and the source code for the reference application that shows how to use it – which will greatly simplify the process of building a Digital Twin using Forge. (Something that... Read more →

Winding down after AU 2020

Much in the same way as I felt a little tired last Monday – something I suggested on Twitter might be Pavlovian, as it wasn’t due to jetlag or travel-based fatigue – today has been another low energy day. (Typically the week after AU – and sometimes even longer – is a non-event for me, but this year there’s no good reason for it to be. I expect I’ll be back on top of things tomorrow.) Anyway, it is a good opportunity to reflect back on last week’s “first of its kind” (and many of us are hoping “one... Read more →

Floppy Friday #4

I wasn’t sure I’d find the time to record this week’s episode – what with Autodesk University 2020 being in full swing – but I also thought it might be a nice way to wind down after a hectic week. I hope all of you who attended this year’s AU found it useful (and even fun!) despite the constraints imposed by it being fully online. I’ll post something about how I personally think it went on Monday. Anyway, this week’s Floppy Friday starts with a Star Trek graphic and theme tune, and then looks at a number of games... Read more →