Through the Interface

This year’s snow week

I think I’ve mentioned in the past that in Switzerland the annual winter half-term break – the Winterferien or semaine blanche – is basically meant for skiing or snowboarding. Or sledging, I suppose. The canton of Neuchatel has its Republic Day on March 1st, so the holiday week always falls to include this day (other cantons have theirs sometime earlier in February). Frankly, with the shifting seasons, this is starting to feel a little late – snow is far from guaranteed, these days, at this time of year, and this winter season turned out to be exceptionally dry in... Read more →

Reflections on what’s coming in 2023

Today is my first day back after a much-needed 3-week break. For most of that period we were up in the mountains, and split our time between snowboarding and snowshoeing with the puppy. We had some unseasonably mild weather in the Alps, over the break, but we did still manage to make the most of what snow there was. During the course of the break, I spent some time thinking back on 2022 and looking ahead to 2023. For me, 2022 has brought a significant amount of change and uncertainty, between changes in role, escalating climate issues or the... Read more →

Winding down for the festive season

Autodesk offices in most places around the globe have been closed this week as part of an extended holiday break. From my side I’ve managed to spend a couple of days on the slopes, here in Switzerland, although I ended up coming back down to the lakeside as there’s a strange weather blip where it’s currently warm and wet enough to be raining in the Alps for the lead-up to Christmas. Ah well. I’ve been having fun working through Advent of Code, although – as ever for this time in December – the coding challenges are starting to get... Read more →

In Dublin for the APS Accelerator

On Wednesday I came across to Dublin for the latter part of the APS Accelerator being held, here. Jaime Rosales – who has been here with Sergio Leone and Adam Nagy from the APS Developer Advocacy and Support team – has taken some lovely pictures during this trip. The better ones in this post were taken by him. I unfortunately just missed Peter Schlipf – who was here for the first half of the week – which was a great shame. Here are some pictures of the city. We were mostly staying in the Hilton Garden Inn, so to... Read more →

Kicking off the holiday season

Last week – coincidentally on Thanksgiving in the US – Autodesk Switzerland held its first Christmas event since the beginning of the pandemic. The team based in our Gümligen office (which is on the southern outskirts of Bern) joined those of us working from home from various locations throughout the country at a nice restaurant in Bern’s city centre for a delicious meal. It was lovely to catch up with old friends and even meet a few new ones. This week has been busy with (largely administrative) year-end tasks, but I have found a few minutes at the beginning... Read more →

Your input on the future of AEC professions

[Firstly, apologies to regular readers who have struggled to load this blog over the last week or so. Typepad has had the mother of all outages, but things seem to be back on track now.] One of my oldest friends, Matt Armitage, lives in Kuala Lumpur and participates in a regular show on a local business-oriented radio station – BFM 89.9 – talking about technology. The show is called Mattsplained (abbreviated to MSP) and I have to admit I’m completely hooked on it (I happen to listen to it via Spotify, but I think it’s on all major podcast... Read more →

Ballenberg, Ticino and the Bernese Oberland

Our children’s school holidays came right after this year’s Autodesk University in New Orleans, so I was highly relieved (and not a little stunned) that I came back from such a large event without Covid. (I managed to get it at the last large gathering I attended, so it’s just possible that my resistance is still in place. Either way, it was a relief!) We had some things to take care of on the Monday of last week, but on Tuesday we hit the road for Ballenberg, the Swiss Open-Air Museum. It’s basically a historical celebration of Swiss culture... Read more →

Of hiking and climbing

I’m back from our 2-week summer break, which we spent this year in Switzerland and Germany. The majority of the first week was spent up in the Bernese Oberland, a region we enjoy immensely. We were there all together – I was with my wife and our three kids – but in the mornings the “grown ups” left the kids to sleep in while we walked up to the centre of Adelboden. This was partly to give our puppy, Daisy, a bit of exercise… … but also because we love having a quiet breakfast at Haueter, considered one of... Read more →

An eventful start to the summer

It’s been some time since I’ve shared any personal news, so I thought I’d throw a whole load of it together in an easily ignorable post. I’ve structured this post on themes, rather than chronologically, as it feels more coherent that way. The summer has been lovely this year, in Switzerland, which is in stark contrast to last year’s horror show. We haven’t been away anywhere much – as yet, at least – but I’ll explain more about that a bit later on. For us the summer thus far has largely been about music. We’ve taken the opportunity to... Read more →

Our 20th anniversary balloon trip

My wife and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary back in November. We celebrated as a family with our three great kids making vegan sushi for us all. At the time my wife said that there was a present on its way, but that it may take a while. I didn’t think much of it, until this weekend. On Saturday I was told “you need to get an early night, as tomorrow we’re leaving for our anniversary surprise at 5am.” At the time it didn’t seem like much of a gift – getting out of bed at 5am isn’t... Read more →

Happy 40th birthday, Speccy!

On Saturday the ZX Spectrum turned 40. Does that make anyone else feel old? When first released on April 23rd, 1982, Sinclair Research’s ZX Spectrum had 16K of RAM, a horrible rubber keyboard and some very quirky colour graphics. In fairness, though, it was a quantum leap (another Sinclair reference for the astute observer) beyond the ZX81, which had – unexpanded – just 1K of RAM, a truly grotesque membrane keyboard and low-res black and white graphics. Both of these devices changed the world: the Spectrum went on to become the UK’s best-selling microcomputer, launching an industry and many,... Read more →

Back from the long Easter weekend

In Europe many of us have been enjoying a four-day weekend for Easter. As my birthday this year fell on Maundy Thursday, I decided to extend it to five (fantastic) days. We’d previously planned to meet up with some old friends from Singapore who are visiting Italy, but we a) wanted to stay around to support our eldest son who’s busy revising for his baccalauréat exams and b) didn’t want to have to worry about Covid-related restrictions that are still in place in Italy. So we ended up staying in Switzerland. During the day of my birthday itself, we... Read more →

A belated Happy New Year

I’ve now been back at work for a few days after an extended holiday break, so my head is back far enough above water for me to write a quick blog post. At Autodesk we were extremely lucky to have an extended holiday shutdown, this festive season, so employees around the world clocked off after work on December 17th. For me this meant a perfect opportunity to hit the slopes ahead of the Christmas rush. My kids were in school until the 23rd, but I managed have a few days hanging out on my own, up in the mountains,... Read more →

Daily coding challenges in December with Advent of Code

My old friend Simon Breslav pointed me to Advent of Code a week or more ago, but at first I was hesitant. Where would I find the time to tackle a daily coding challenge that wasn’t related to work? Would I even be up to the challenge, given the fact I’m not coding full-time and may not be up-to-date with the latest techniques? Here’s a speech by the creator of Advent of Code, Eric Wastl, where he talks about the origins of AoC from back in 2015, and how it’s gone from strength to strength since: Anyway, come Friday... Read more →

Frustrated by travel restrictions? Join the last virtual Forge Accelerator of 2021!

The subject is basically a perfect description of my own situation, today, but I thought there might be others out there in the same boat (as it were). I have a feeling that more people will end up being stuck at home over the next few weeks, whether they like it or not. From my side I was very much looking forward to a trip to the UK, next week, where I’d have had the chance to catch up with my UK colleagues for the first time in-person in probably 2 years. And to join for the team Christmas... Read more →

An interview and an anniversary

Recently Mayur Mistry from Engineering ArchiTECHure asked me to join him for a YouTube livestream. Mayur often holds his interviews over the weekend, but he very kindly accommodated my schedule and held the session during the week. So while it was “live”, it wasn’t at the usual time for Mayur’s subscribers and the discussion remained very much between the two of us. I’ve seen some really good sessions on his channel – several of his guests have prepared extensive material to show – so my apologies if you’re expecting something more formal: we just chatted for an hour. Many... Read more →

Rome and Sardinia

This is my first week back after a lovely 10-day trip to Italy, most of which we spent scuba diving on the beautiful island of Sardinia. We’d planned this trip some time ago, but that didn’t mean it was without its worries: between last-minute doctor’s visits for medical certificates (not strictly required for scuba diving, but it’s generally a good idea to have them) and fast antigen tests for the (so far unvaccinated) kids, there were more logistics to think about than usual. We also needed to check a couple of suitcases – which were basically full of neoprene... Read more →

Floppy Friday #48

This episode of Floppy Friday is dedicated to the memory and legacy of the late Sir Clive Sinclair, 1980s computing pioneer. Sir Clive invented the slimline pocket calculator and worked tirelessly to democratize technology, whether home computers or electric cars. His impact on today’s computing landscape is undeniable, as he helped launch the careers of countless IT and software professionals (me included). Thank you for everything, Sir Clive. It felt like episode 48 was the right one to crack open the ZX Spectrum (48K, of course), especially given last week’s news about Sir Clive’s passing. On a side note,... Read more →

Going viral during a pandemic

I’ve been getting quite a bit of unsolicited email of late. It started with this one, in late July: Hi Kean, Did you know that a QR code of your email address is currently being circulated all around the globe in a viral meme? Cheers, It came with a couple of images attached: Perhaps somewhat rudely I largely ignored it, as I thought it was some elaborate spam or phishing attempt. I did scan the QR codes and found some curious things encoded: my email address, the URL to blogs.autodesk.com, my old Autodesk office phone number, the location of... Read more →

AU 2021 update & MX3D on the AU blog

The count-down to Autodesk University 2021 continues, with registration for the event now open. I’ve gone ahead and registered, as I expect many of you will at some point during the remaining 54 days. It’s free, after all, and I’m sure will have lots of great content, as usual. Be sure to put the dates in your calendar – October 5-7 for the Americas, October 6-8 for EMEA & APAC, October 13-14 for East Asia. The timing of this year’s event – being several weeks earlier – means that it falls during our children’s half-term break. This year –... Read more →