Friday Night Movie

Go outside and play, kids!

Sparked

From Cirque du Soleil



... as in, spark your attention? Much more about this at Slate. Enjoy!

Friday Night Movie (on Saturday)

You've never seen holiday fireworks quite like this! If your connection supports it, turn this one up to 1080p, set the speakers on, go full screen, and sit back and enjoy! Happy Holiday everyone!

Friday Night Movie

Your "projectionist" has been a bit under the weather and otherwise occupied these past few weeks... so apologies all around for that. But enough excuses, let's get on with the show!

Tonite, we learn about how things work. And specifically how the gizmo you happen to be using to view this page are working right now. It's elemental stuff... but did you really understand it before stopping by? Don't tell. We won't.

Instead, just Enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday

Lynn Allen's Tips & Tricks 2015

It took Lynn a little longer than usual to get her annual tips and tricks booklet out this year, but it's every bit as good as always. So if you want to get the most out of your new version of AutoCAD, or just want to see what new features were included in the 2015 release, this publication is for you.

Go grab your copy of Lynn Allen's 2015 Tips & Tricks booklet now! It's free!

Wordless Wednesday

I am part Swiss, which probably says enough about why this attracted me. Watch and enjoy.

The Expert

Engineers everywhere will recognize this. We've been in these meetings. All of us. And way too many times.

Chilean Tsunami Animation

After many, many years of absolute quiet the Pacific Ocean has been alive with tsunami activity the last few years. The last major tsunami that took lives and caused significant property damage in Hawaii originated with the 1960 9.5 earthquake off the coast of Chile. Waves from that event were up to 35 feet high in Hilo at a time when technology was not as advanced as today.

The 8.2 magnitude quake that struck near Iquique, Chile on Tues, and the 7.6 tembler that struck in the same region yesterday both generated tsunamis. Luckily for everyone outside of the immediate quake area the waves were relatively small. But even these events will roil the entire Pacific basin for hours and hours and create dangerous currents. In Hawaii local officials closed all beaches until about noon on Wednesday to avoid having to rescue the unaware.

The short animation below, produced by the US NWS Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) shows quite clearly what happens when the earth moves suddenly like this beneath the ocean surface. The best thing you can ever, ever do if you are near an ocean beach area and feel a strong earthquake, is to pick yourself up and get as far upland as you can as quickly as you can. Waves from the Chile quake hit shorelines within 5 minutes of this event. You don't have time to think! Just run as fast as you can!



Best viewed at the highest (HD) rate your connection will allow.

And the neighborhood has been quite active with aftershocks, including a 7.6 and many 6.0+ shakers since. Having been thru a 6.7 and a 6.0 in rapid succession myself I know how frazzled a persons nerves get after these things... and how long it takes for a body to settle back down. Large earthquakes are downright terrifying.

Patamap

Have you ever been told you have a "tin ear"? Or maybe you feel like you have no ability to make music? Can you only carry a tune if you have a radio? But even then you get static on it? (roughly quoting something my Dad used to say...)

Well, if you answered "YES" to one or more of the questions above, you have to see this.

Patamap.

Let the page load. Nothing may seem to happen, but type in your name anyway. It may be just about the coolest thing you've seen... in a few minutes.

AU 2013 Live Streaming Videos

It's Autodesk University 2013 time in Las Vegas, USA once again!... that time of year for almost 10,000 users, vendors, and others to descend on a city that never sleeps to talk all things Autodesk and high tech. If you can't be part of the crowd be sure to visit the 2013 AU Live Streaming Video page and take part from your desktop. You will find a great lineup of things there that you can see live during each day of the conference, including the Keynote, Closing sessions, and much more.

All events this year are once again being held at the palatial Venetian & Palazzo hotel convention and exhibition center. So check the schedule page above and look in during the week if you can! It will be well worth the time and bandwidth!

Leftovers!

Something of comet ISON actually survived the trip around the sun! Yesterday during the Google+ Hangout session with NASA scientists the outcome looked bleak. In fact many of them predicted doom but justified it by saying that "comets are notoriously unpredictable". That may be... but the pictures don't lie. Something made the passage. Now it remains to be seen if anything is out there for viewing come the first few weeks of December. If so look to the same eastern skies before sunrise.

Nuclear Testing

This should give us all a moment of pause. It's a graphical diary of every nuclear explosion that has been set off from the first Manhattan Project "Trinity" test in 1945 through Pakistan's tests in 1998. The only ones missing are North Korea's three alleged tests this decade. How many confirmed blasts have there been so far in total? A: 2,053.

Produced by Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto.

The Geospacial Revolution

As a civil engineering student I took just about every surveying course that was offered including six weeks of summer school in the mosquito infested forests of northern Wisconsin and a 12-week stint the following summer as an instructor. About the only surveying course I can think of that I didn't take back then was one on remote sensing, and in retrospect I wish I had taken that too. I also wish I'd had the money to hang around for a master's degree after getting my B.S. because almost surely I would have continued with some branch of advanced surveying.

In the early 1970's the technologies related to remote sensing were just getting going. Photogrametry was the primary tool used at the time to determine geometric properties (elevations, locations, etc) of ground objects from aerial imagery, but it required many man hours, expensive and complex equipment with glass plates. Global positioning systems (GPS) and geographic information systems (GIS) then, given the status of computer systems, were but a dream. But it was all on the horizon and we dreamed of the possibilities... and now most all of it and more is really here.

The following series of outstanding videos done by Penn State University provide a wide range of information about how important GPS and GIS have become in our modern world and how much we depend on them in integrated ways to manage our businesses, respond to emergencies, conduct warfare, and generally improve life in so many myriad ways.

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


I find this stuff incredibly exciting. I hope you will too. Enjoy!