Friday Smackdown: Squeeze a Bit

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As a matter of fact, if you do tighten it like that the bleeding will stop, but the centrifugal force will make the cookies taste a bit salty. To remedy, just add a dab of these links.

12 Photoshop experiments - Where else could you learn a little about particle disintegration and geometric manipulation to make some wicked looking graphics.
20 Twitter Tips - Become a better Twitter user in about 5 minutes and 22 seconds with these handy tips.
Ubiquity - Only the coolest thing in User Interface interaction to come out since ribbon bars (boo). This will change things. so awesome.
Brain Light - You could create some pretty snazzy stuff with a 3D printer, but ya know, your own brain…as a light. brilliant.
Roller Skating Ninja Attack - You just can’t go into the weekend without knowing how to fend off a vicious band of roller skating ninjas with a tiny car.

Escape Slow, Painful Death. Renewable Water and Power Designed in SolidWorks

renewable water and power ersa There’s products that really add to the quality of life and then there’s products that can actually help you survive it.

Whether its months in the brambles of the desolate Australian interior or days spent escaping robot swarms the Ersa, renewable water and power generator is one item you’ll want in your pack.

It’s transportable, it’s made of ABS and it can save your pasty hide from dehydration.

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Serving Up Hot and Spicy SolidWorks Subscription Service

Update: As of noon on Thursday August 28th, SolidWorks has rescinded the penalties that were soon to take affect. You can read the email that went out to the resellers and customer here. Good move on the PR side. SolidWorks is listening to the customers, plus the resellers don’t look like bad guys to the customers.

Happy about SolidWorks subscription support fees?A bunch of us have been nibbling away like happy angry beavers about some new penalties that came out recently for not renewing you SolidWorks subscription support in a timely fashion.

You may not know, or even care, that there’s a $1295 cost, in addition to the $3995 price of the SolidWorks software, to receive support from your reseller, software updates, access to the Customer portal and more. The penalty is tacked on if you don’t pay the $1295 each year. So what?

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Wearable MotorCycle Video: Clean Your Face With Pavement

wearable motorcycleIf you keep an eye out for motorcycles you can wear, you may have seen this one zipping face down across the pavement of the internet.

I know it’s not as practical (less dangerous?) as the two wheel versions we see everyday weaving in and out of traffic, but if you want to go from 0-60 in 3 seconds laying prostrate 10 inches off the ground, this three-wheeled electric motorcycle and video are just for you.

Jake Loniak from the Art Centre Pasadena is the the inventor/designer of the Deus Ex Machina. The vehicular exoskeloton uses 36 pneumatic muscles connected to seven artificial vertebrae and an integrated helmet, powered by ultra-capacitors and nano-phoshpate batteries.

Sure, your head will stay with the bike in an accident, but man will you look slick that 5 seconds beforehand. Watch out for that bunny.

loniak motorcycle photos

Friday Smackdown: Cracker Pants

Well yeah, of course they look hot. But ya know, if you go wearing them into a public place, babies will cry, women will scream and everyone else will run smack dab into the links.

Design Trendz - It’s what all the websites are doing. Shadows, reflections, frames and video on how to do it.
Photosynth - It’s stitching photos together like you’ve never done. Really. and you can make your own now.
Face Your Manga - Make yourself look cartoony. I don’t like’em so much, but it’s fun to mess with.
50 Blog Topics for Company Marketers - Thinking of starting a blog for your company? Have one? Here’s a good list of ideas of to get your mind pumping out ingenious content.
Convert Train table to Construction Zone Table - Awesome. What kid wants trains when he can pour dirt all over the place. Four steps to your child’s love.
BenQ 24″ LCD - One of the best featured LCD’s coming out. 1920×1200 res 4,000:1 contrast, HDMI, coolness.

Explode Diagrams. The Next Cool Thing In 3D CAD

You all are gonna flip, or rather, explode, when you see this. I’ve been looking for 3D CAD news out of Siggraph08 that happened last week, but have not found much beyond some announcements about rendering models.

Fortunately, Mark Treadwell from Premier Rides came across some info and filled me in. A team from Berkeley has developed an automated system for viewing interactive 3D exploded views of models. Check out the video after the break.

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Salvador Dali Says Your 3D Product Design is INSANE

It’s both parametrically intense and oddly invigorating to look at. It’s like jumping in the air through a small hole and coming out on the other side with all the knowledge of perspective while marching rhythmically outside the confines of an inverted parallelogram.

What is it? Surrealism. An artistic expression of the early 1900’s that captured the fantasy of la-la-la reality and spread it like thick butter on minds across the world.

Defining it as an offshoot of Marxism and Freudian thought limits and ultimately destroys the passions many of the artist were trying to capture…

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I really want to show you is some of the coolest examples and the paintings that inspire me. They magnify the field of 3D CAD we’re in, in a way that even some artists could not imagine in their art.

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Prototype This! These Guys Will Show You How

Gather all of your calendars together, open them all to October 2008 and repeatedly circle October 15th till someone asks, “What are you doing?”

Here’s where you jump up into their face and tell them very quickly with no breaths, “Prototype This!, a new show on the Discovery Channel starts October fifteenth with 13 episodes and 4 guys that show you how products are conceptualized, created, tested, redesigned, tested and used in real life.”

It’s ok if they balk. They now know to look out for the new TV show coming up in October on the Discovery Channel and will probably thank you later on.
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The Mystery of the Disappearing SolidWorks Drawing View

Getting just the right detailed drawing view of a model can take immense amounts of time. More than they really should for products designed in 3D. When you open a drawing and nothing is there but the dimensions, that can really make you throw blunt objects.

So, you stare real close at the computer screen. It doesn’t show up. You hit rebuild, nothing. Forced rebuild (Ctrl-Q), nothin’. Pushing on the screen, making loud grunting noise… Your hand slowly reaches for the stapler….

Wait, there’s one very simple trick you can use to get a vacant drawing view to return to your brilliant masterpiece of drafting delight.
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It’s Shiny: SolidWorks 2009 Launch Site… Launches

Well hello and good morning. Nice to see ya. How are the kids? Oh, that box graphic over to the left? That’s the fresh new look of SolidWorks 2009. A new version or something. A lot of hub bub going on about it these days.

I think if you click on it, yeah, right there, it goes to the “SolidWorks 2009 launch site” that is full of information and dangerous, highspeed driving while watching videos of what’s the newest in new for the next version of SolidWorks.

My favorite part is not all the information, but the exploding chopsaw in the Behind the scenes section. Check out the new features and even leave a comment telling what ya think. See ya.

SolidWorks 2009 Launch Site