Scott Grant is running the Edinburgh Marathon for Parkinson's UK

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Scott Grant of Excitech, LRUG, GRUG, ERUG, and anywhere else where there is a pub or beer is getting fit-ish and fundraising. He says... 

"After too many years of living the life of a couch potato, I have gotten myself fit (well fit-er) and decided to participate in the 2011 Edinburgh Marathon as part of the Parkinson’s UK team.

Aside from a long held desire to compete in a marathon, I wanted to do something worthwhile for a cause that was close to my heart.

The only choice I could make here was to support Parkinson’s UK, as this was the debilitating illness that robbed my Grandfather of any quality of life in the last 5 years he had with us before he passed away.  He was an inspiration to me and to this day, still one of the best natured people I have ever met.  His warmth was palpable, his wisdom extensive and I owe him an eternal debt for teaching me good manners and what it really means to be a gentleman.  He contributed so much to making me what I became, and it still pains me that he never really got to comprehend my success because of this condition; as I know it would have made him so proud."

Pop over to his Just Giving fund raising page, and see video of him him training. It's a great cause, my father ended up in a nursing home with Parkinsons because he needed 24/7 care that could not be provided at home, so I can understand why the cause is close to Scotts heart.

Scott, Last time I saw legs like that was Rod Hulls Emu! 

Politically Correct Christmas Wish II

Last year I wanted to send a seasonal greeting but with it being so difficult in today's world to know exactly what to say without offending someone, I came up with the Politically Correct Christmas Wish MkI.

Greeting Mk II is known to Alpha and Beta testers as Miserable Old Git or MOG for short.

Seasonal Greeting II also ticks another governmental objective as I have now recycled 95% of it from last year making minor modification and improvement to the design.

So without further ado here is Seasonal Greeting or Wish Mk II

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, nonaddictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practised with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2011, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great, not to imply that the United Kingdom (apologies to those of a republican persuasion) is necessarily greater than any other country, and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms:

This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher. Disclaimer:

No trees were harmed in the sending of this message; however, a significant number of electrons were slightly inconvenienced.

I am considering opening up the product Seasonal Wish on subscription which means that you will receive fixes to typing errors as they are found and a Subscription Advantage Pack half way through the term of your subscription that will create more bugs than it fixes and provide you with nothing of real advantage at all. Thus I apologise in advance for the term advantage being used at all in the service description.

Due to the current economic climate, next years Seasonal Wish III is likely to be a refurbishment project, as governmental expenditure is currently being geared more towards refurbishment and not new build. Unfortunately BIM and Revit is not really suitable for this task regardless of how many videos and seminars by Autodesk may be produced or held, and Microsoft Word will be used for the task.
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It looks like AUGI are getting their data and old forums back!

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GOOD NEWS - Normal service will be resumed shortly.

It's looking like AUGI is getting its data and the original Forums back....here is a post from David Harrington

1. AUGI’s previous web service provider (Illiac) has assured us that the historical forum data is not lost nor are its backups. The data exists in full and will be restored.

2. Illiac has prepared a temporary forum system with the “old” forum data to go online.

3. AUGI and Illiac are working to finalize an agreement to transfer the forum data to AUGI.

4. Illiac has the temporary site ready to go live and AUGI is prepared to go live once the agreement is in place.

5. Both parties expect an agreement to be reached within 24 hours.

6. Within a few days after the agreement is in place, the temporary forum system is expected to be online and AUGI will begin developing the permanent forum site.

7. Because of the functional limits within the EE forum software, coupled with having access to the old forum data and input from members, AUGI will be reverting back to vBulletin forum software which should be operational within one month after the agreement is in place.

8. Based on input from members and functional limits of EE forum setup, AUGI will be reverting back to the “familiar” forum topic structure.

9. Once the vBulletin software is configured and populated with the required forum structure, all old forum posts will be imported and merged with EE forum posts. Then the temporary site will be deactivated.
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Time to Harvest All Those AU2010 Classes!

. Click the Squirrel to go to AU Online

It’s time once again to go into squirrel mode, and harvest all those very useful Revit classes that are to be found on Autodesk University Online! Last year I reported that the main problem was with the actual screencasts and the extremely poor quality of the sound recordings. The later Virtual sessions and repeats were a much better quality (after they fixed the poor sound quality on a few of the early sessions) but you could get into classes and it did work.

I mused that if Autodesk learn anything from AU2009, I hope it’s was to find better sound engineers and to create far more virtual sessions, for later downloading by users who want save the planet, or just can’t afford to travel to Las Vegas.

This year for many AU2010 Virtual was just awful, but at last one can log in and harvest all that good stuff that should have been available during AU2010.

Never mind all the bells and whistles, come on Autodesk just give use during AU2010 what you supply us with weeks after it, full access to the material on demand too download. 

So go too it my little Revit-Heads, and grab those:-

Handouts & Presentation material in Word, PowerPoint and adobe pdf format
Example files and Datasets
Screencasts and Podcasts and
AU Virtual sessions

If the AUGI forum experience has taught us users anything, it is don't bank on the material being there when you want it later. Harvest them now! 

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Survey reveals industry split over BIM

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Extract from bdonline article  Article by Anna Winston

A new survey launched by standards and specifications expert NBS has revealed an ‘alarming lack of awareness’ of BIM across the construction industry.

The survey of 386 construction professionals, including 155 architects,showed that 43% were either unaware of or hadn’t used Building Information Modelling (BIM).

The results come just a month after chief government construction advisor Paul Morrell revealed plans to introduce BIM into the public procurement process.

Of the respondents to the NBS survey who were aware of BIM, only 10% were currently using it for the majority of projects. However, more than 70% believed that BIM was the future of project information management and two thirds expected to use it for the majority of projects within the next five years. 

More than half of those already using BIM said it had improved profitability and 81% said it had improved productivity.

NBS said that the largest barrier to widespread adoption of BIM was the perception that introducing the process would mean expensive and drastic changes to their existing systems. Only 18% of respondents believed that BIM was a synonym for Cad drawing - a misconception often cited as a barrier to widespread adoption.

“The main risk is that the industry splits in two,” said Stephen Hamil, head of BIM at NBS. “Half the industry is clearly making steps to adopt BIM and these practices will win competitions and will have better people wanting to work for them. You’ll end up potentially with a two tier system.”

Hamil said that the survey had also revealed a surprising variety of software packages being used across the industry.
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How Cold Was It In The UK Last Week?

I was asked how cold it was here in the UK last week



That's How Cold it Was!

AUGI Phoenix Rising from the Ashes?

For those that don’t know who or what AUGI is, it stands for the Autodesk User Group International, and is officially recognized by Autodesk as representing the Autodesk user community.

AUGI assists its members by presenting programs and information that will enhance their use of Autodesk products.

AUGI delivers the voice of the user community to Autodesk, thus assisting Autodesk in product development and giving users a say in the process.

AUGI is primarily run by dedicated volunteers and funded by sponsorship investments from corporate supporters, and has recently celebrated it’s 20^th Birthday.

AUGI provides an environment for users to help users. This environment has been a well established and thought out structure of Forums that have existed for many years, where users of specific software can gain peer to peer support.




UPDATE 9:09 GMT~ Part of the original posting has been removed because I've just visited AUGI and a forum structure has been added to the Built to Last area on the new web site.

A BIG Thank You to whom ever has listened and finally provided the new forums in a similar fashion to the original.
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David Baldacchino who is the AUGI Revit Community Chair gives his views over on his blog Do you Revit …. I do and links to the history behind whats happened.

There is a lot of internal political history that I really don’t want to get into here, and quite frankly it is that, its History.

Let’s not wait to see if or when we might get the historical data and posts back. Stuff the guy holding onto the data, for gods sake don’t pay him anymore money, just arrange to have his knee caps broken.( joking! ;0)

Lots of the problems solved historically and posted about have been fixed in later versions of the software. Now AUGI have re-create the original forum structures for the products, we (AUGI Members) can re-populate it with good information as new users post their problems.

Think of the loss of post as a spring clean, or extreme computer housekeeping and let’s move forward and let the AUGI Phoenix arise from the ashes and rebuild what is after all a fantastic peer to peer resource.  

Here is to another 20 Years!

Autodesk University On-Demand is Demanding!

  >>>>>  So why do I give Autodesk a hard time?   <<<<<

I Wonder Why?

 1) I log in

 2) I find the On Demand

3) I try and download the material

 4) It tells me to log in

I log in Again back to step 1)

After a number or tries, re-tries, shutting down my computer

starting again, etc etc etc......

ARHHHHHHHHHH just make the bloody thing work Autodesk will you!.

Autodesk Unviversity 2010 ~ Virtual Washout Day 2

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OK it’s been snowing here in the UK, we have about four inches out on the footpath and I’m up bright and early 6:00, so I think I will have a look at AU 2010 Virtual to see if I can try a few On-Demand classes that I could not get into yesterday.

They all say “This session is currently not available”

What is the Autodesk definition of ON-DEMAND?

In my book it’s when you want it! And Wikipedia agrees saying “ On Demand - a telecommunication service made available when the customer requests it

Looks like another crap day in the Autodesk University Virtual world, and why are all the delegates you can see all from the far east?

Have they not heard of equal opportunities and racial equality, where are the token White, Asian and Black person in the environment?

Let’s have a politically correct virtual world !

Currently attending AU Virtual is like being in a 3^rd rate Kung Fu movie, I keep waiting them to start knocking ten bells of something (four letter starting with S and ending in T and kind of sums up the AU Virtual Experience so far) out of each other.

OK I give up, I will wait a couple of weeks then harvest all the good stuff
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