In one of my previous posts I speculated that Autodesk is planning to use Qt framework to bring its most important products to other platforms. A few days ago I was proven wrong. Now I know that Autodesk has other plans. Unfortunately I cannot share the details of what I know. All I can say is… stay tuned. There’s more news coming.

On a completely unrelated note, since we almost have winter here in New Zealand I’ll now go and have a cup of hot cocoa in front of the fireplace.

The best (in my opinion) thing about it is the voting/reputation system. Every user can award 1 positive or negative point to every question or answer . Those votes build the reputation of people who ask questions as well as those answering questions. If you just ask good questions they will be voted up and your reputation will grow. Naturally if you provide a good, comprehensive answer it will be also voted up and reward you with lots of reputation points. This causes the best answers to quickly “bubble up” to the top of the list, so if you found this question through Google, you don’t have to dig through the whole discussion on the forum to find what you are possibly looking for. Additionally the person who asked the question can mark one answer as the one they find most helpful for them. This way the best answers get the most attention. It is brilliant in its simplicity and works beautifully.

The next thing about this system is how it accumulates huge amounts of knowledge and makes it easily accessible to anyone. No login is required to explore the website in search for an answer to your problem. The website is also build to be friendly for search engine robots so good questions are easy to find through Google search.

A very important aspect of the StackExchange based systems is that they are vendor agnostic. No company decides which products can or cannot be discussed. There is no marketing beyond real users opinions about a given product. Popular products are popular because they there is a lot of people discussing them not because someone decided that other products are “off topic”.

This is what I think makes StackOverflow work as well as it does and I always thought that the wide CAD community could benefit immensely from having such a website. Now an opportunity emerged to make that reality. Please, support the idea by voting for it here. No matter if you’re using AutoCAD or Microstation, ProE or SolidWorks, Revit or Archicad. A community like that will be a great benefit to everyone.

Links:

StackOverflow: http://www.stackoverflow.com
StackExchange 2.0 announcement: http://blog.stackexchange.com/post/518474918/stack-exchange-2-0
StackExchange for CAD proposal: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5692/proposal-for-engineering-software-se-cad-cam-cae-bim

I’ve had a draft of this blog post lying around since May 2007. When I first started it, it was titled “AutoCAD on alternative platforms”. It was mostly my thoughts on why it would be good for everyone involved if Autodesk decided to make AutoCAD run on systems other than Windows. Last week, with release of 2011 line-up of its products, Autodesk has deprecated that blog post.  It no longer is a question if Autodesk is going to offer their main products to customers running “alternative” platforms. Now it is just a question of when is it going to be officially announced. If you can’t wait to dump Windows and only AutoCAD/Revit are holding you back, read on and see what the future holds.

Why do you think Autodesk is working on cross-platform versions of AutoCAD and Revit?
A few reasons actually, but one of them leaves no doubt. AutoCAD and Revit 2011 ship with a few core files of the Qt framework. Qt what? I recommend you click the link and read a bit more but long story short it’s a library for building user interfaces that runs on wide range of platforms. All the major desktop ones (Windows, Mac Os X and Linux), but also a number of mobile and embedded systems.

Oh really? How can you tell ?
Go to the main application directory of your AutoCAD or Revit 2011 and see if you can find those files: QtCore4.dll, QtGui4.dll and QtXml4.dll. There you go. The core of the Qt framework inside your Autodesk product. What more evidence do you need?

Seriously? Do they use it already?
Seems like they do. Here’s an error message that was displayed when I renamed one of those files inside the Revit 2011 installation:

Revit error message - Qt library file missing

OK, but why does it mean that they *will* release those products on other platforms?

Because that is the only reason that could justify using Qt. It simply wouldn’t make sense to waste time and money to migrate away from native Windows API and not take advantage of what Qt offers. Thanks to using Qt the same code base can be used to build an application running on different platforms, which means reaching new customer base at minimal expense. Seriously, using Qt and not going cross-platforms would be like buying a plane to use it for drag racing instead of flying.

What do you mean by alternative platforms?
Qt can run on pretty much anything that runs on electricity, so possibilities are endless but I think that Autodesk will just dip their toes in cross-platform development by releasing those products on Mac OS X. It already is a reasonably sized market with a high growth rate, so in makes a lot of economic sense. Hopefully, later they’ll also decide to go to Linux as well, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

Why wasn’t it announced officially?
I don’t know, ask Autodesk. Seriously… go and ask. Call, email, send a pigeon. I guess it just the usual mixture of politics and marketing. The news that Maya 2011 is getting a Qt UI was made official long time ago. I hope that we’ll hear more news during the April 19th event but nothing is guaranteed, and even though I would be really disappointed there is a chance that nothing will happen in the 2011 product cycle. We’ll see.

What does it mean in terms of UI look and feel? Is it going to change a lot?
Certainly not in the 2011 cycle since that ship has sailed, but even later not necessarily. It is possible to mix elements of Windows toolkit with parts using Qt framework – Qt widgets can live inside traditional Windows interface and the other way around so the Windows version doesn’t have to change in a major way. I expect the Windows versions to evolve around the same concept that Autodesk was trying to get us used to for the last few versions. Fear not, the ribbon is here to stay.

It’s a different story on the Mac. Qt hasn’t got an equivalent of the ribbon in its toolbox so it will be either replaced by a bit more traditional UI or recreated as a custom widget (which I find hard to believe). With Maya 2011, Autodesk decided to use Qt only on both platforms and it makes a lot of sense if you decide to start from scratch. In case of AutoCAD and Revit both of which have just got nice new interfaces it would be a bit of waste of time and money and in my opinion a step back in terms of visual quality. Below you can see screenshots of the new UI for Maya running on Windows and Mac OS X. I’m not hugely impressed with the result, but for Maya it is probably a step in a good direction. For AutoCAD and Revit that would be a big regress. You shouldn’t also judge Qt by what you see below. It is a very flexible and a highly customizable toolkit and the quality of the interface created with it is completely up to the developer.

Maya 2011 running on Windows

Maya 2011 running on Mac OS X

Is Qt the best solution? Cross-platform vs native?
Good question. Unfortunately it is quite hard to define best. In a perfect world, without lawyers and accountants, best would mean fully native version of given application on every platform. While not very cost effective, this is the solution that guarantees the best possible integration of the application with surrounding environment. There are some good examples of this approach. Microsoft’s own Office 2011 for Mac OS X is created as a native Cocoa application. As you can see on those leaked screenshots, they have even recreated the ribbon! Mac version of Mindjet’s MindManager is also a completely native port, providing Mac users with an interface that provides experience similar to other Mac apps. That would be the best solution in a perfect world but that’s not where we are. We already know that Autodesk has gone the Qt way, so let’s just hope that their developers do a good job and get the best out of what they have to work with.

OK. What else?
Have a look here. It’s a web page that lists all the LGPL libraries that Autodesk is using. Since they chose to use the open source version of Qt they are legally obliged to redistribute the libraries that they use. That page alone wouldn’t mean much, since Maya 2011 also has a Qt UI, but we’ve already established that AutoCAD and Revit 2011 actually include those files in the default installation. It will be interesting to keep an eye on this page and see what other open source software Autodesk is going to use.

Final words
Back in 2007 when I researched the topic of AutoCAD running on Linux and Mac, I was hugely surprised with how aggressively current AutoCAD/Revit users were opposed to the idea of Autodesk bringing those products to other platforms. A lot of CAD “pundits” have been displaying an incredibly hostile attitude claiming that by investing in alternative versions of its products Autodesk would lose focus and the quality and the pace of development would suffer from that. This was a very strange thing to see since it pretty much meant that there is a lot of people that are not really happy with the quality/feature set of Autodesk products but they still use them for some reason while waiting for Autodesk to magically fix them. Some of those opinions sounded so demanding that it was obvious that their authors thought that by buying a product they gain shareholder-like powers and rights. I’m happy that Autodesk seems to have ignored those lunatics.

I really hope that Mac OS X versions of AutoCAD and Revit will be announced soon. I’m pretty sure that majority of Autodesk customers will appreciate the freedom of choice of the system in which they have to work every day. A lot of users that have been running Autodesk products in virtualized environments will be relieved that they don’t have to compromise on speed and system integration. For me it means that I’ll be one step close to the dream of coming to work and not booting into Windows.

How much confidence do I have in what I have written here? Well, if I had some loose cash lying around I would certainly buy some Autodesk stock. Implications of going cross-platform will certainly sound very optimistic to investors and once it is all officially announced I’m sure the price of Autodesk shares will go up, probably quite a bit.

Oh, one more thing. If you actually know that anything I have written here is wrong, let me know. I’ll be happy to either correct it or admit that my predictions have been wrong.

Update: I have just confirmed that the same set of Qt files can be found inside Inventor 2011 as well. Looks like Autodesk is planning to go cross-platform with the whole product line. I love it. The sooner the better.

Links:

Qt framework website: http://qt.nokia.com

Examples of Qt application: http://qt.nokia.com/qt-in-use/target/desktop

MS Office 2011 for Mac gallery: http://www.boygeniusreport.com/gallery/?gallery=23&pid=295

Open source libraries used by Autodesk: http://www.autodesk.com/lgplsource

Disclaimer:
All information included in this post comes from publicly available sources and in best case can be considered as bold speculation. I have no privileged or inside information. All opinions expressed here are my own and not those of my employer or Autodesk Inc.

Let’s start from the beginning. Project Bluestreak was announced last week through the Autodesk Labs blog. As you can see in project’s overview, Autodesk defines Project Bluestreak as:

“Autodesk Project Bluestreak is a web-based collaboration environment for accelerating building information modeling through the open exchange of design information and ideas between desktop applications, web-based services and people.”

When I read that I immediately thought: “Wow! Must be something like Google Wave or Novell Pulse, but with more emphasis on engineering oriented workflow.” Boy, did I set myself up for a disappointment… but I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Let’s have a look what it’s all about before making any judgement.

The first screenshot shows the home page on which you land after logging in. That page is divided into a few areas. At the top you have a sort of menu bar which appears consistently throughout all pages. Just below that you have some space where you can type a message to “share something with your contacts”. The length of that message is limited to 150 characters. Clearly, this is supposed to mimic a  Twitter or Facebook status. Next to it is the “Messages” window, which doesn’t seem to be used at all at the moment and just below it is a window with all your contacts. The main part of the home page is occupied by the “Activity Stream”. This is simply an area which displays activity notifications from all your contacts and groups that you belong to. Think of it as an equivalent of the Facebook wall.

Next up is the profile page. You can reach it by clicking on any name, including you own if you want to see your profile. It will show you this person’s name, contact details, their contacts (even if they are not your contacts) and finally this person’s activity stream. Again, something pretty close to Facebook profile.

Now let’s have a look at the groups functionality. Clicking on “My Groups” link from the Groups menu at the top will take you to the page listing all groups that you belong to – ones that you have created and ones that you have joined. There is also a link which allows you to create a new group.

When you click a group’s name you are transfered to this group’s individual page where you can see some more information about it and perform some tasks related to it. As you would expect after seeing previous pages, you can see the activity stream related to this group and a list of group members. Similarly to your own home page, the group page also allows you to “share information with the group” by means of a short message. This time however this message’s length is limited to 250 characters. A message posted here will show up in the group’s activity stream but not in your personal activity stream, which absolutely makes sense – only members of that group should be able to see what you have posted here. Other members of that group can also comment on your messages. Finally, there’s something new that we haven’t seen on any of previous pages – the “File Sharing” window. This allows users to add files to the group to share them with other members.

If you click the maximize button in the top right corner of “File Sharing” window you will be taken to file sharing page which allows for some basic operations on files (adding and deleting at the moment). Group members can also comment on files, which in a collaborative environment makes a lot of sense.

Clicking the “Personal Files” link takes takes us to our personal file store. Unfortunately, as you can see in the image below I wasn’t able to add any files to it, but at this stage that’s not something we should be concerned about.

“Contacts” from the top menu takes you to the contact manager which apart from showing the list of your existing contacts, allows you to invite new users and search existing Bluestreak users.

The last element of the top menu is “Applications” and that’s where I think the future of that project lies. Let’s start with the “My Applications”. Here you can see what applications you have “installed” for your account and by clicking the little pencil button you can select for which groups this application should be active.

Clicking “Find more applications” link will take you to the last but, in my opinion the most important page of this project. This is where the user can find and “install” applications which will provide additional functionality to the project. First Autodesk need to create some good core applications and then it wouldn’t hurt to open up an API allowing for 3rd party applications.

Finally, if you click the “Feedback” tab on the right edge of you screen, you’ll be able to share you thoughts about the project with the team and other users. If you decide to take Project Bluestreak for a spin I also encourage you to head over here, have a look what other people thought and share your experience. The feedback you provide will certainly help to shape the project and get it as close as possible to your needs.

OK, so now it’s time for some comments and my own subjective opinions. At this point I should probably mention that this is my own personal view and opinions expressed here are not those of my employer.

Let’s start with what I think is good about this project. First of all it’s great to see Autodesk trying to do something in this area. I strongly believe that BIM/CAD/CAM/CAE users could use a good collaboration tool closely tied to the software they use all day, every day. Something that could mimic Autodesk’s own, ridiculously overpriced Buzzsaw service – providing the same level of control and confidence in security but also offering some social features that we got used to with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Plaxo.
The next thing that I find quite positive is that Project Bluestreak is based on open standards and technologies like OpenID and OpenSocial. The only thing that spoils this picture are Flash buttons used in a couple of places (i.e. “Add Files” button in the file sharing application), but that should be relatively easy to get rid of. I’m quite happy to report that all the screenshots have been taken from Google Chrome browser running in Linux. It would be nice if this project marked a general shift for the whole Autodesk towards transparency and open standards.
On the technical side side, I think there is one very cool thing worth mentioning. The fact that you can decide which application is active for which group. This should give the group administrator ability to only provide functionality essential for a given team without causing confusion and distraction by things that will not be useful.

Now, a bit about what I don’t like. The biggest problem I have with this project is the fact that at this point it lacks any industry specific vision and functionality. There are dozens of generic, non-CAD oriented services that offer more functionality and a much more polished experience. Yes, I know, this project has just started and it will only improve but even for an early preview it doesn’t really offer enough to allow you make up your mind about it. It feels like a bunch of random ideas pulled from other social services and put together without a clear vision of how it is supposed to be useful for an engineer or a draftsperson. It certainly is a good framework to build on but it will need much more functionality before users can figure out how to integrate it with their existing work environment.
Next thing that I’m not very keen of is that Project Bluestreak tries too hard to be “social”. First of all I don’t like the fact that all my contacts can see my contact list. In a professional environment, there may be situations where I don’t want everyone to know who I cooperate with. Just like I don’t want everyone in my email address book to know who else is there. It’s not a networking website, like LinkedIn, that can be used for finding interesting “contacts”. It should be a working environment streamlined to make your work easier and life less stressful. On a related note, I’d like to see “Teams” or “Projects” rather than “Groups”. Just a minor wording issue that makes it clear where you are.
One thing that is pretty clear is that Autodesk didn’t make a big commitment to this project. When you look at where Novell has gotten with their Pulse product without even asking users for feedback, you can see that they are building something that is destined to get to the market. There are probably dozens of people working on Novell Pulse for a year or more and when users get their hands on it they will be able to benefit from using it from day one. With Project Bluestreak you get the feeling that it’s the work of just a few people that was slapped together in a few months. Autodesk will probably have no problems shutting the whole thing down if it doesn’t gain enough interest. Well, it will not gain interest if it’s not useful. Remember? “If you build it, he will come.”

So, overall, am I impressed? Well, no… not really. Two years ago – maybe, but not today. Not after using Google Wave since July and seeing Novell Pulse demo at the beginning of November. Not after getting used to how innovative (Inventor Fusion) and visually polished (Project Cooper) Autodesk Labs projects are. In my opinion, if Autodesk wants this project too succeed they need to commit some serious resources to it. Possibly even go back to the drawing board and work out a clear vision of how to integrate all the latest collaboration technologies with their other product. Make the project future proof by embracing new, emerging technologies (like the Wave Federation Protocol) instead of following in footsteps of social projects that have been around for a few years. Finally, Autodesk – be a bit smarter about it. Talk to Novell, talk to Google – they specialize in collaboration tools. Use their experience, buy their expertise if necessary. Spice it up with what you have learned from Buzzsaw and Vault products and you’ll get something useful to every engineer, architect or draftsperson using BIM/CAx software every day.

Links:
Project Bluestreak announcement: http://labs.blogs.com/its_alive_in_the_lab/2009/11/project-bluestreak-now-available.html
Project Bluestreak page at Autdesk Labs: http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/bluestreak/
Project Bluestreak website: http://bluestreak.autodesk.com/
Project Bluestreak interview with Mark Evans: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ85_7s_JO4
Googel Wave website: http://wave.google.com/
Google Wave demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ
Wave Federation Protocol: http://www.waveprotocol.org/
Novell Pulse press release: http://www.novell.com/news/press/novell-unveils-real-time-collaboration-platform-for-the-enterprise-and-demonstrates-google-wave-interoperability-1/
Novell Pulse website: http://www.novell.com/products/pulse/
Novell Pulse demo: http://www.novell.com/media/media.php?media=novell-pulse
Inventor Fusion at Autodesk Labs: http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/fusion/
Project Cooper at Autodesk Labs: http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/cooper/

Compiled binary is here, but good luck getting it to run. Source code it here.
If you decide to run it, I would recommend doing that on Ubuntu Karmic (9.10 alfa 2). When I run that on 9.04 it crashes and I think that an older version of WebKit is responsible for that.

As usual the compiled exe here and the full code here.

This week I have really struggled to figure out how to mix functional and imperative concpets. After a few days of trying to recursively build an F# list I gave up and resorted to using a ResizeArray<> which is simply an equivalent of C# List<>. I really wonder if a bit more “functional” way of building a list is possible.

Compiled executable here, code here. Now, what I’ve done was pretty much a simple “translation” to get it running but I would love to make the code really functional. So, go headed and comment on what I could change to do it.

Another embarrassing udpate: fixed indentation

Update 2: indentation is broken by WordPress editor. Code replaced with a link.

is a result of this tiny bit of F# code:

#light

open System
open Gtk

Application.Init()

let window = new Gtk.Window(“F# Gtk”)
let vBox = new Gtk.VBox()
let closeButton = new Gtk.Button()
let label = new Gtk.Label(“Hello World!”)

window.WindowPosition < – Gtk.WindowPosition.Center
window.SetDefaultSize(160, 40)
window.Destroyed.Add(fun _ -> Application.Quit() )

closeButton.Label < – “Close”
closeButton.Clicked.Add(fun _ -> Application.Quit() )

vBox.BorderWidth < – (uint32) 6
vBox.PackStart(label, false, false, (uint32) 6)
vBox.PackStart(closeButton, false, false, (uint32) 6)

window.Add(vBox)
window.ShowAll()

//brown paperbag update: I’ve missed this line during Copy/Paste
Application.Run()

Next step is piece of code that actually does something semi-useful. I’m thinking about implementing a convex hull algorithm which F# seems pretty well suited for.

• Complete separation of data and its visual presentation.
  Last time round the main object (Topic) was based on Gtk.Widget which didn’t really make a lot of sense. Even though it was using the MVC framework the data was still tightly coupled with the with. That will change and thanks to that it should be possible to write different frontends, not necessairly based on Gtk.
• Mind map widget as a separate Gtk# library.
  The first reason for that is the same as above but there are some additional benefits. I’ll try to make that library usable for others so maybe someone will be able to use it in some other projects. A mind map is an amazing way of visualizing all sorts of data so someone may find it useful. Beside it I was inspired by the amazing work that Aaron Bockover has done on his ListView widget and Banshee in general.
• Using MonoDevelop and Linux as primary development environment.
  I decided that it’s time to put my money… er… my freedom, where my mouth is. I’m complaining about being stuck on Windows all the time and still I’m choosing to use it when nobody forces me to. Of course the biggest factor here is the amazing progress happening in MonoDevelop which actually makes it possible.
• Using Git for local source code management.
  Well, just being trendy here… I’m using Git-svn to communicate with the Google Code SVN repository. I’m actually playing with it so much that most of my commits have around 2 lines. It’s better to commit too often than not often enough, right?
• Supporting Mono.Addins right from the start.
  That’s just something that I’m considering right now. It would be cool to enable other people to easily enhance Psycho’s functionality, but first I need learn how to do it. I guess it should be easier if I start doing that right from the start of the rewrite.

OK, so as you can see I have a lot of plans and I certainly didn’t abandon the project. As usual, some help would be nice. I have a lot of questions and doubts that someone experienced could easily answer. Without those answers I’m wasting a lot of time and I get very frustrated sometimes not being able to progress as fast as I would like to. So, if you were going to mentor a project for Google SoC but it wasn’t accepted, I could really use your help. Especially if you know a thing or two about Gtk(#) and cairo. Please.

Note to self:
Remember, it’s never so bad that it can’t get any worse… :-)

Why would it be so beautiful?

Just a few of my personal reasons why I would love to see that happening:

• Big blow to Microsoft’s dominance
  I have nothing against Microsoft as a software maker. I just hate that I have no choice and when I’m not happy with their product I can’t simply switch to something different. For me, just like for millions of engineers, designers, detailers, draftsmen and other technical professionals there is no choice – we run whatever AutoCAD and other Autodesk products run on.
• I would get to work on a Mac
  Don’t get me wrong – I’m not an Apple fan boy. My system of choice would probably be Linux, but since I am stuck on an evil proprietary platform I’d rather be stuck on something as good as Mac OS (security, performance, stability, usability) additionally running on beautifully designed hardware.
• No funny looks at work
  Our industry (CAD/CAM/CAE) is so Windows centric that when I tell my colleagues at work that I am sometimes using a Mac at home they look at me as if I was trying to be original. A snob with a girly notebook (my gf’s MacBook).
• Just for the fun of it
  It would be really exciting to watch, just like a big storm on the sea. Not a lot of people would probably see that one coming and implications of such a move by Apple would be huge to the whole industry.

What could make you think it is possible?

During the last couple of months a few things have happened that could be seen as signals of something significant going on. No hard evidence but still enough for a hungry mind…

• This job posting.
  Autodesk is looking at hiring a BDM for AutoCAD and Apple is mentioned as one of vendors who would be selling and marketing it. Here’s an excerpt in case the original expires:

Business Development Manager: AutoCAD	Posted 02-Nov-2007
Location: 3950 Civic, SRF
Are you ready to travel the world, develop partnerships with major technology players, and grow a half billion dollar business as the Business Development Manager for AutoCAD? You must be a highly-motivated business person ready to develop a product strategy for selling and marketing AutoCAD with vendors such as hp, Dell, APPLE, Lenovo, Amazon, CDW, and many others.

• Windows application compatibility in Mac OS
  A few weeks ago someone has noticed something that was interpreted as a chance for Windows compatibility coming to Leopard in future versions.
• Autodesk buying out its own shares
  I won’t pretend I know what and why they are doing but maybe they want to accumulate some stock to actually have something to offer to Apple?
  (Edit 1:10 pm, 20 Dec 2007)
• They both like nice new toys
  Multitouch namely. We all know the beautiful and intuitive multitouch interface of iPhone and iPod touch, but if you read Scott Sheppard’s blog you have probably seen this and earlier posts on the subject. Multitouch interfaces seem to be perfect for CAD software and Apple definitely knows a lot about them.

Why I don’t believe it will happen?

I would be happy to eat my gym shorts if I’m not right but I simply think that Apple buying Autodesk is not possible. No matter how strong you wish for something to happen it won’t happen JUST BECAUSE you wish, unfortunately…

• Autodesk and Microsoft are too close
  Autodesk is all buddy-buddy with Microsoft. The next version of AutoCAD looks as if it was an Office 2007 application (ribbon control). They have created their DWFx file format as an implementation of Microsoft’s XPS and it is natively viewable in Vista. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next generation omnipotent file format called DWGx (if rumors turn out to be true) would be somehow based on the OOXML format.
• Too much work to port products to Mac OS
  I can’t even imagine how much time and resources would it take to port, even just the most important Autodesk products, to Mac OS. Maybe temporary use of some kind of Windows compatibility (as mentioned above) would be a good temporary solution but I find it hardly believable that anyone would like to use critical applications in non-native environment.
• Too much resistance from Windows users
  A lot of computer users don’t cope with a change very well. Especially if they use their computers as tools at work and they only care about getting their job done. For them a change of platform would be just an unnecessary disruption.

Why would it make sense for Apple?

Obviously it’s all about the number of users and revenue that they bring to the company. Think about over 8 million of seats of AutoCAD (only legal) and multiply that by the price of a single Leopard license. That alone would give a number close to $1 billion and although it is the biggest, AutoCAD is not the only Autodesk product that people would like to use on a Mac.

• Access to a huge community of technical clients
  Apple hardware and Mac OS would become an instant standard in a number of different engineering industries. They are already pretty strong (or even dominant) amongst professional photographers and graphic designers. There is also a decent number of architects using ArchiCAD on Macs but bringing Autodesk products to the table would introduce Mac OS platform to all sort of engineers and big corporate customers.
• Halo effect or platform synergy bringing new customers
  Huge number of people use Windows at home just because they use it at work. Either because they simply don’t know Mac OS or they don’t want to use two different environments. Bringing AutoCAD (Inventor, Revit, etc.) to Mac OS would introduce it to a lot of people that would simple prefer it over Windows or again use it at home just because they use it at work (or school). This way the number of new Mac OS licenses would probably be much bigger then the number of Autodesk product licenses.
• Media & Entertainment products
  Over the last couple of years Autodesk has acquired a few companies that that are widely used in TV and movie production. Disney and Pixar are probably amongst significant users of those systems. Can you smell the connection already? Huge render farms running on Mac OS on XServ must sound appealing.
• Leverage in product politics
  Apple never knows when Microsoft decides to kill off Office for Mac. If they decided to keep Autodesk products running on both platforms they would have something to keep Microsoft playing nice. Of course before iWork becomes a full blown Office replacement. It would also give a lot of ISVs a reason to treat Mac OS on the same conditions as Windows.

Why would it make sense for Autodesk?

Well, I don’t believe it would unless they make it run on both platforms, but that’s not really the point here. If Apple buys Autodesk it is supposed to be good for Apple, but looking at the graph below I know in whose boat I would like to sit. Apple is still worth half of Microsoft but its value is growing quickly and consistently. They have overtaken IBM already and probably have enough cash in the pocket to buy Autodesk as a Christmas gift to all the people patiently waiting for AutoCAD on a Mac all those years.

Click the image for 6 year value growth history.

Update (10:40 am, 20 Dec 2007):
We all know how impossible that story is, but if you have something that would back it up I would love you to see your comment. That could develop into a nice bogus gossip. :-)

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Of course there are better things to look at than your own neighborhood. Like for example those fascinating features of the terrain in Venezuela:

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I understand that Amazon and music labels treat that project as an experiment and after it proves to work it will be (hopefully) extended to other countries as well, but without a given time line when that could happen, it’s really hard to accept iTunes conditions. Beside it, it doesn’t really take a lot of special powers to predict that a globally accessible MP3 shop offering what Amazon currently does, would beat iTunes hands down and could easily become a standard in music distribution. Come on Apple, Amazon – you can’t overcharge like that or make clients jump through hoops when illegal sources are so easily reachable.

So, guess what?! Nobody got my money and I’ll leave it to you to guess to what I’m listening right now. Oh, and of course I’ll buy that album as soon as Amazon or any other shop offers me the same deal the US residents get.

On the leukemia-side-of-things – seems like currently I’m slightly below the norm but it also looks like my blood is stabilising and I hope that in coming weeks it will climb up a bit.

My progress with leukemia
Well, if you look at my results it seems like I haven’t got it any more. Of course it’s not that simple. The Philadelphia chromosome is still there and if I stop taking drugs it screw my blood picture back again. The only real way to get completely cured is getting a bone marrow transplant, but that is not really possible at the moment. But the drug works fine and hasn’t got any really sever side effects. From what I noticed so far I’m getting tired very quickly. Usually around 2 p.m. I am so sleepy that I have problems keeping my eyes open. Also, if I don’t eat enough before taking the drug I feel pretty sick, but that is easy to avoid. The problem is that a lot of food together with a constant feeling of being tired doesn’t really improve my fitness.

Immigration stuff
I have finally decided that I haven’t got much energy to spare and decided to get a lawyer and allow him (in this case her) to get it sorted for me. It’s going to cost a bit but at least it’s one monkey off my back. That should give me some peace of mind. I hope it’s worth it because if I get kicked out I’ll find myself in a real financial black hole – with no income and a lot of things to pay for.

Hacking on Psycho
Yes, I’m back to it. Again… Currently I’m working on a style manager and at the moment I’m writing it as a separate application. After I figure out how exactly I want it to work I’ll plug it into the rest of the project. I just wish I wasn’t so tired in the afternoon so I could focus a little better and do some more work.

CAD on Linux
This is something that, because of my job, interest and education, I really care about. That topic appears here and there (and even here – btw, some really stupid comments here) from time to time and then disappears without any constructive result. In my opinion this whole thing boils down to two separate issues. No proprietary CAx (CAD/CAM/CAE) system running on Linux (Solaris, BSD, whatever) being one of them and no free and open source CAx that could replace (not even remotely) proprietary applications on the other side. Big dry desert and no hope for rescue. On top of that there is one more battle to lose. DWG seems to be the standard format for CAD data. Everyone who wants to exist in CAD has to work with DWG. Now, rumor has it that Autodesk has DWGx file format in works. Basically CAD equivalent of Office Open XML. The problem is that there is no ODF in CAD, so if Autodesk decides to standardise it they will have a much easier job then MS with OOXML. OK, enough about that for today. I think that I have a long post about it coming pretty soon…

Update: 
Seems like Amazon has done something to restrict mp3 downloads to US only. I get a “geographic problem” message when I try to download anything.

Also, our application for residence in NZ is finally logged with the Immigration office. Now we have to wait and see what they say. There’s a good chance that we will have to put up a big fight to have a right to stay in NZ. It’s probably not what I need most at the moment so I hope it’s not going to be too bad. I’d rather spend my energy on other things right now.

News coming from Poland are moderately optimistic. Only 20% of people who could be treated with Glivec actually get it. I wonder if that’s true…

Every cell in the body has a nucleus that contains chromosomes. To be more specific, 23 pairs of chromosomes.

The most important cause of CML is a translocation of two of them: chromosome 9 (the ABL gene) and chromosome 22 (the BCR gene).

During the division of the cells, these two chromosomes criss-cross, break, and fuse to each other. In doing so, they create so called Philadelphia chromosome.

Philadelphia chromosome is made up of two parts and is also called BCR-ABL.

This new gene produces a specific new protein called tyrosine kinase.

Tyrosine kinase stimulates uncontrolled production of abnormal blood cells by the bone marrow.

Normally, white blood cells grow and divide in an orderly and controlled way, but in leukemia the process gets out of control and the cells divide too quickly, and do not mature. In CML, too many myeloid cells (one of the main types of white blood cells) are produced. The myeloid cells are released into the blood when they are immature and unable to work properly. These immature white blood cells are known as blasts. The immature cells fill up the bone marrow and prevent it from making blood cells properly. As the leukemia cells do not mature, they can’t do the work of normal white blood cells, which leads to an increased risk of infection. Because the bone marrow is overcrowded with immature white cells it also can’t make enough healthy red cells and platelets.

As you can imagine that causes all sorts of problems but that is a story for completely different post…

So, I’m trying to keep positive and focus on things that need to be resolved in order of immediacy. More news to come as the situation unfolds. Words of support are welcome. :-)

The picture below shows the wrong placement on the left and the correct one on the right (with the incorrect above on the bridge).

GPS data problem on Flickr
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

City on a misty morning
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.


Sun among masts
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

It would be nice if someone ported it to Linux/Gtkmm or maybe just created a plugin like that for F-spot. I can’t understand why Picasa doesn’t offer that functionality. It would make so much sens.

Mantis again
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

And some of the photos I’ve taken tonight:

First impressions on the N2 di-GPS mini?

• Very small and lightweight – why doesn’t Nikon put something like that inside the camera? Or at least inside the MB-200? It would be uber-cool and rather unique in the market. Come on Nikon! D300 with GPS built-in?
• Somewhat “cheap&plastic” feel.
• OFF/Auto/ON switch action is very resistant – good or bad, depends how you look at it.
• No cover for the 2.5mm remote jack – at least a theoretical weather seal would be nice.

So now I need a weekend with a bit of good weather for a photo trip to test it. That’s going to be a looong week of waiting.

And where do you think you’re going?
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.


Morning depression
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.


Under the bridge
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

I’ve completed that migration using the SVK tool. SVNSYNC somhow didn’t want to work for me. The only issue with the final result is that it looks like all commits (all staggering 194 of them :-) ) have been done on the same day. Well, I can live with that. At least I have all the history. I’ll probably write a short HowTo for other people who want to get away from Novell Forge and land in Google Code repository.

Since MonoDevelop supports Visual Studio solutions I decided to check in the solution files as well. So now, if you check out the code you’ll get the full Visual Studio project that you can easily compile and run. No, I still didn’t get my head around an actual build system. I’ll worry about that when the application is ready for shipping.

I feel rather lonely this Christmas
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

We’ve also overheard an interesting discussion:

“Hey man! Haven’t you heard that this year the color of your arm band should match your lipstick and your eye shadow?” – says that posh show-off:


Birds on the beach in Tawharanui
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

“Well, I’m more of a “colors-of-the-earth” kind a person” – replies this humble fella:


Birds on the beach in Tawharanui
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

The whole experience of installing Feisty on VMware Fusion was nothing short of impressive. When you first start Fusion, it gives you a possibility to create a new virtual machine, for which you can obviously choose a installation CD image.
In my case it was Ubuntu Feisty Herd 1 DVD image. Not a problem. Just tell me how many processors and how much memory you want to use for that vm and Bob’s your uncle. The system boots up as the usual Ubuntu Live DVD and you can start the installation with the Install icon on the desktop. After finishing the installation it has to restart and then you can see the first sign that both of those products are not in their final, production versions.

Ubuntu Feisty running on Mac using VMWare Fusion
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

Second attempt turned out to be much more successful. After a few nervous moments of expecting the kernel panic you get what you waited for:

Ubuntu Feisty running on Mac using VMWare Fusion
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

With a hidden toolbar:

Ubuntu Feisty running on Mac using VMWare Fusion
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

VMware Fusion reminds you to install VMware Tools which is also no problem and accepting all default option in the process leads you to a successful end and a few moments later you can enjoy your freshly installed Feisty in native Mac resolution. The nice thing is that the performance of that solution feels sharper on the 2GHz Core 2 Duo with 512 MB of RAM than running in regular environment on 1.8 GHz Centrino with 1 GB of RAM.

Ubuntu Feisty running on Mac using VMWare Fusion
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

I can’t wait to try final Feisty on final VMWare Fusion, however it’s a great pity that only one of those products is free. I won’t probably spend my money on Fusion when it comes out. Although I maybe be wrong…

Update:

I have also tried the openSuse 10.2 virtual machine downloaded from Mono Downloads. Unfortunately no luck here. After powering the VM Fusion claims that the “openSUSE 10.2.vmdk” file cannot be found and that without it you can only go back to running Ubuntu in alfa version. Well done Ubuntu.

Anyway, Manuel is guilty of both. Thanks again.

As of yesterday I can finally produce a nice png drawing of my map. The next thing I will have to complete ASAP is Styles functionality and Property View that will allow modifying looks of each topic separately. I wish there wasn’t Christmas coming so that I had no distractions from working on Psycho. It gets more and more usable and I think that the first actual release is coming in around 6 months. I’ll try to produce a Road Map – of course as a mind map.

The next thing I’ll work on, in the immediate future will be distributing all topics around the central topic so that it finally is central. I already have a idea how to do that – just no time to dress it in few lines of code.

I also started looking at the possibility of integrating Psycho with Tomboy and it seems to be fairly easily doable. Even for me. The only thing I’ll need to complete before that is creating free topics (not connected with the central one) and some basic support for DnD in the map. My plan is to simply import all Tomboy notes as free topics and allow the user to define their relations graphically on the screen. It should be also possible to update the map once a previously imported note was edited in Tomboy. Maybe even some change notification… We’ll see.

Eng: Portuguese sounds weird.

Fra: Yeah. It sounds like Brazilian.

Oh really? You don’t say! :-) 

Back to Linux

Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

Back to Linux

Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

Guy Fawkes Day

Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

Guy Fawkes Day

Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

… after scroling:

… and after re-exposing:

All suggestions highly appreciated…

Sunday was a dolphin day again. Bay of Islands is a very reliable spot.
Not only for dophins apparently…

Australian Gannet
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

On Saturday we went all the way up to Cape Reigna and on our way back we’ve taken the route down the Te Paki stream and then around 60 km down the 90-mile beach. Driving through the river bed is awsome but driving 120 km/h on a flat like table beach is even cooler…

Not everyone was as lucky as us.

That’s a 4×4 ride, idiot!
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

That said, to make things easier for some people: Canon is gay, and not in a good way…

Website visit statistics

Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

And that’s the way it should be!

Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

So, this weekend we headed north, to Bay of Islands. Going there, thereis one thing You have to do. Go for a dolphin watching/swimming cruise.This time we haven’t been so lucky during the swimming part (no underwater pictures) but the watching was just perfect. We’ve seen ahuge pod with some very young and very big individuals. Great fun for usand judging by their behavior for them as well.

Office on fire

Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

…and on Monday we have come to the office and there was no office any more. One of the appliances caught fire. The funny part is that it was not a cooker or a toaster. Not even a microwave… The dishwasher is the one to blame.

On the way back from Rotorua we have dropped by to Raglan to see the famous surfing spot in NZ. Well, as for surfing we didn’t find it that exciting as the sea was very calm, but we had a really nice breakfast at “Tonque&Groove”.

A nice trip to Rotorua again. The Sulfur-City name of that place is well deserved. Champagne Pool was producing so much steam that it was really hard to take a good shot.

IMG0122

Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

That is the first photo “blogged” straight from Flickr. Seems like getting a PRO account on Flickr is the only right way to use it.

Mt Ruapehu above Lake Taupo.

Wellington was a dead city on the Christmas Day evening.

Day 2 – Wellington-Picton-Nelson

The first view on the South Island

Day 3 – Abel Tasman National Park

Day 4 – Nelson-Punakaiki-Fox Glacier

Pancakes Rocks

Mt Tasman and Mt Cook seen from Fox Glacier village

Day 5 – Fox Glacier-Queenstown

Mt Tasman and Mt Cook reflection in Lake Matheson

Day 6 – Queenstown-Mt Cook-Fairlie

Day 6 – Fairlie-Christchurch-Kaikoura

Crouching cloud

Day 7 – Whale Watch

Sunrise above Kaikoura

Charlie’s tail. Charlie is a 18m long Sperm Whale

A bunch of Dusky Dolphins – some even showing off

Day 8- Kaikoura-Picton-Wellington-Aucklnad
That was a long drive…

Best letter to the editor ever: The October issue of Vanity Fair included a profile of Paris Hilton, including a chat with her younger sister Nicky, who asked the following question: “I’m 21 years old, I run two multimillion-dollar companies, I work my ass off. Like, what were you doing that was so fucking important at that age? I feel very accomplished for my age.” A reader responded: “When I was 21, I was busy working toward my PhD in organic chemistry at the University of Minnesota. I was the first to synthesize the compound okadaic acid, shown to be the leading cause of breast cancer. Steven F. Sabes, Minnesota.”

BTW, I decided to start learning programming. I have bought some books, downloaded a few others, intalled an IDE and… got stuck. It seems so easy from outside but when You have no real background it is so damn hard to start. On the other hand I am pretty determind to realize a few of my prefect software ideas.
We’ll see…

some highly desired visitors coming down here,
summer,
surfing course,
next ubuntu release.

24 hours in the car
Should be less but we have wasted a few hours in the traffic jam at Autobahn

2060 km in total
Katowice-Kreuztal-Hanau-Katowice

6 hours sleep
Just a bit of rest in the middle

190 km/h in the fog!
Thank You Jo! I mean: No, thank You. :-)

Die zwei Idioten!
Barbara’s reaction to a blind trust in car navigation system.

14 km Stau
Thousands of cars standing because of one idiot causing a collision.

It is the last because the camera is dead. Sunken actually… I’ve been looking for a perfect spot to take the photo of the cave and I got washed off the rock by a big wave. The funny part is that I have to buy exactly the same camera because a week before I bought the underwater housing for it.

Anyway, to those all who have seen Vanilla Sky. Do You remember Julie Gianni asking stupid question just before the crash?
This is happiness to me:

Well, of course it is never as simple as that but that was close to a place where it doesn’t get any better.

Yes – I made those pictures myself. Thanks to my Coolpix 7900 and WP-CP4.
Yes – these are real free dolphins living in the ocean.
Yes – You can touch them if they want You to. I actually managed to do it just once.

Dolphins
It was a trip in the Bay of Islands. A big boat takes You to a place where the dolphins usually are spoted and if the conditions allow, You can go swimming with them. It lasts as long as You can keep them interested and since they see at least 4 groups of people almost every day it is rather hard. Nevertheless this is a few unforgetable minutes.

One lonely lighthouse

Hole in the Rock

Cape Reigna – the top of New Zealand
That is where Tasman See and Pacific Ocean meet and New Zealand starts.

This is the northmost building in Nea Zealand.

State Highway No 1 begins here… It is not a gravel road all the way…

After the sunset on th 90-mile beach

One undirect view…

and a very direct one…

The first view of Mt Ruapehu. It looks a little strange in the middle of totally flat area.

Something for Lord of the Rings maniacs – the view of Mt Ngauruhoe which appeared in the movie as Mt Doom.

All those mountains are actually volcanos (some extinct and some still active) and all the area around them are fields covered with rocks thrown during eruption.

The first chair lift. Not as nice as those 6-people, foam padded lifts in Austria or Italy but it just works…

Another view of Mt Ngauruhoe. Looks just amazing.

A view toward the top which is somewhere there in the clouds.

One last look down.

p.s. OK, now it’s official.
Stap bindings are the worst crap in the world! I wasn’t eligible to say that before it used it but that weekend just confirmed what I suspected. This is the third kind of snowboard bindings I have ever used. At first I have used Burton Step-in binding,s then a Flow System set. Both of them were more comfortable and gave much more control and reliability then those shitty ones I have used during this weekend. That may be the matter of quality, adjustment and so on but the time that You have to spend sittting on the snow, freezing your ass of is just ridiculous. Strap bindings do not offer anything that would justify that shortagte.

So, a lot of pictures to come…

So, just to summerize. Living in Auckland without a car is really hard and can cost You a lot of health. Kiwi public transport and route planners can’t be treated seriously. Just as fire alarms…

Anyway, if You feel like giving it a try look here.

The first interesting thing i saw was a crash on motorway. Now I know why accidents cause traffic jam. Because all passing idiots make pictures… :-)

Next stop Chile! Seriously… It is just c.a. 8500 km straight East from here.

The view along the Hot Water Beach…

During the low tide You can enjoy the hot sprigns in front of those rocks. I couldn’t take any photos of the steam rising from the sand but belive me, it is hot…

Finally in Goat Island Reserve. These are my first days with left side driving so the journey is still a little stressful. First view on the left…

Second view on the right… It is the Goat Island. Fabulous place for snorkeling and scuba diving. I hope to experience both during summer.

Ducks just like in Poland, but here every male has two wives… :-)

Some marketing. Nice, little waterfall. It would be beatifull if it wasn’t coming out of a pipe…

A nice look on a Great Barrier Island

I wish they have placed that sign at the beginning of the fence before I got shocked for the first time.

As You can see the Earth really isn’t flat.

At the end of the walk You reach Cape Rodney and a fabulous view opens in front of You.

A close-up to the rocks.

After a short rest at Cape Rodney, I headed further north to Pakiri Beach. On the way there, I have experienced something I didn’t expect in a civilized country. A gravel road. Again it was worth the effort…

Slightly dramatic image.

Really nice. It would be even better if it was summer and still as “crowded” as now.

A rainbow over Pakiri Beach. No, it wasn’t raining… There is just so much humidity.

That is me on my way back to the car.

Those flowers seem not to realize that it is the middle of winter.

And that is Puhai River falling into Hauraki Gulf.

One final look at the coast.

That trip was incredile. All that was within an hour drive from Auckland. I think I could really live here.

Auckland Harbour Bridge

A little later. Pictures taken from the other side of the bridge.

Westhaven Marina