RobiNZ CAD Blog

9th Anniversary!

March 31st means it is blog’iversary time again. I find it hard to believe nine years have flown by since that first tentative post. To everyone, everywhere, thanks for visiting, reading and subscribing! Statistics: Last year broke the million visit mark and in spite of reduced posting from me this year, this is a hobby!, visits held up. Visits & Subscribers: The weekly “blog beat” is fairly constant apart from a blip caused by over 300 visits to one post, of only two I made, in April. In spite of RSS and feed technology not being talked about much and,... Read more →

The new Autodesk.com and 2014 products revealed

Autodesk have unveiled a new look Autodesk.com and announced their 2014 product updates. The new look Autodesk, hinted at earlier this month, comes with updates to existing products, new applications, revised industry specific Design Suites and Autodesk 360 Cloud Services. Check out the announcement below and details at http://www.autodesk.com/ I’ve had a peak a some of the 2014 line-up and will be posting about the release product when they are available. Read more →

Using Snagit 11 on Windows 8

Techsmith have posted a useful guide on using Snagit 11 with Windows 8. Although it is a desktop app (no RT version yet) you can capture the Start Screen and Modern UI applications with the use of hotkeys. There’s also a guide to adding Snagit to the Start Screen & Taskbar for quick access. Using Snagit 11 on Windows 8 - www.techsmith.com Read more →

The Graphene-Based Super Capacitor future?

I love that something which began with a pencil scribble on paper and bit of sticky tape could be the solution to mobile power compromises. It is a long way from lab to shop floor but this looks promising. The Graphene-Based Super Capacitor - Next at Microsoft - TechNet Blogs “Meanwhile, two scientists at UCLA have made a graphene discovery of their own that could charge an electric vehicle in a matter of minutes or a cellphone in mere seconds. As the video says, this could be a very big deal” Read more →

Thoughts on the demise of Google Reader

Google are killing Reader, their RSS feed aggregator: Official Blog: A second spring of cleaning “We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader.” Who cares about RSS? I do! Google cite declining Reader use and I wonder if Twitter and Facebook have killed RSS? While I use both, tolerating Facebook and loving Twitter, I still use RSS in the way I... Read more →

Autodesk gets a new look

Since I’ve been a customer I can only remember a couple of changes in Autodesk branding. They recently they announced a new logo so it is goodbye to the old: Hello to the new: Autodesk, autodesk, Autodesk, AUTODESK? I like the new logo but wonder about the uppercase text. There was a brief flirtation with lowercase in the early part of this century (see photo below) but now ‘Autodesk’ has become, the little bit shouty, ‘AUTODESK’. I’m glad this seems to be confined to the logo unlike some brands which carry their case sensitivity into normal text use. I’m thinking... Read more →

Windows Live Writer - Changing the Drafts/Recent Posts folder location

I’ve been using Windows Live Writer to create drafts for this blog for several years. The, recently decommissioned, Mesh/Live Mesh sync service to enabled me to blog from my PC or Netbook. When I fired up Windows Live Writer all the post drafts, images and other resources would be identical. SkyDrive, nearly but not quite Mesh Microsoft SkyDrive is the Mesh replacement. It is nicely integrated in Windows 8/Office 13 but it has one (for me) crucial missing feature. Mesh allowed you to sync any folder, anywhere, to any chosen location on the other machine. I could use Mesh to... Read more →