One Last Bit

I design in OpenSCAD (a programmer’s CAD tool where you write code and “run” it to make your model as opposed to interactively building). When it comes time for mass production you need an industry-standard “.STEP” file format, which OpenSCAD doesn’t support, but another tool called FreeCAD does. The FreeCAD’s importer works on OpenSCAD models, but it was written in 2013 so programming features added to OpenSCAD after that aren’t supported.

In particular this includes polyhedrons with faces, which was added in March 2015. This post will hopefully help out anyone who was as lost as I was in trying to understand why the FreeCAD importer isn’t behaving as expected. I will expand as I find more issues.

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So Facebook has bought Oculus for 2 billion and like so many others I’ve got mixed feelings about it. As a Kickstarter backer I feel the typical disillusionment as a cool upstart company matures and sells out. From a VR enthusiast perspective I’m more optimistic than most of the FB trolls posting out there today. But beyond the gut reaction is the underlying question: why buy Oculus? Continue reading →

Making Bitcoins is simple enough. Run a special program on your computer, and it will try to solve a hard math problem. If your computer gets lucky and guesses a valid answer first, it will let the Internet know you have an answer,  and your computer will be rewarded with 25 Bitcoins. This challenge is repeated roughly every 10 minutes.

So if you want to get more Bitcoins just use bigger and faster computers, right? Except everyone thinks this way. When more horsepower joins in, the math problem automatically becomes harder, maintaining that 10-minute-per-problem benchmark.

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Windows XP extended support is scheduled to end April 8th 2014. Microsoft has many reasons to stick to the plan – older systems are a pain to patch, they are supporting too many legacy systems, and they make more money when people are in an upgrading cycle. Although this will drive many businesses to move and kick some individuals into gear, millions will stick with their familiar and stable XP, either due to the cost, the inability of old software to run, fear of change, or simply the lack of motivation. Continue reading →

Last year I came up with a reasonable solution for my local entertainment environment using a Roku and a Synology NAS for my files. Since then the world has moved to the cloud, which is something I continue to resist. There are now tons of devices, apps and services for my TV, but few handle local content well. Here is my rundown of what works and not, and I’ll skip my tirade about cloud storage for the moment. Continue reading →

When I want to go to the movies I head over to rottentomates.com to get a sense of the choices. It isn’t nearly as accurate at netflix.com since the tomatometer is a general population of reviews as opposed to matching other users to my reviews and tastes. I find that even though I pay for so many TV stations (Verizon FIOS mid-tier plan with HBO, including all HBO movies and shows free on demand) I still gravitate to streaming Netflix because of the quality rating structure even if their selection is modest these days. I just don’t know if that HBO movie is going to be my taste, and I don’t want to waste time finding out. How can my reliance on review data be leveraged to totally control my viewing habits?

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