SERIOUS RANT MODE… ENGAGE!

Over the past many years, going back at least as far as the past decade, I have been hearing and seeing the hurt and imminent death throes of the VFX (visual effects) industry and its many great artists that made it the industry that it has become over the past several decades.

Even thought I have not been an actual “artist” (if I ever was one, since I considered myself always more of a “crazy scientist developer annex artist”, which most of us were back in the founding days before there even WAS a VFX “industry” to speak of) in this field since the very late 80′s, or early 90′s at best, I have most certainly not failed to noticed the direction things have been heading in for a very long time. And I am sad to say that many of the things I saw coming have been coming to a pass in a very rapid pace the past 2 to 3 years. It does appear, however, things are in an even more hyper-accelerated way the past year.

The filing of chapter 11 bankruptcy of Rhythm & Hues in El Segundo, CA did not at all come as a surprise to me, as many other studios meeting the same fate has not come as a surprise to me, EITHER. And while I could have written this about many other 3D animation and visual effects studios in the same way, I have a personal fondness of Rhythm & Hues because they started their first steps in this industry (which wasn’t an industry at all, at the time) back in 1987, only 2 years before I founded Animagic. I have always held the former wizards of Robert Abel & Associates (who started R&H) in very high regard.

R&H filed for bankruptcy a few weeks ago (February 11th 2012) and not because of things one might expect in todays corrupt political and corporate “bail out” climate but because it is yet another casualty of where the entire VFX industry has been headed for the past many years. Having Bill Westernhofer’s Oscar speech for best VFX cut off after he brought up the current piss-poor state of the VFX industry as a whole is very indicative of how the deterioration and decomposition of the industry is being treated.

There was a protest of VFX artists to raise awareness for the visual effects profession that was held 1pm to 4:30pm at Hollywood & Vine. You can see some pictures of the protest on this flickr page. The protest was being held very near to where the Academy Awards ceremony was being held and has been picked up by some shards of ‘mainstream’ media like The Guardian, LA times, Yahoo, and NBC.

The VES (Visual Effects Society) has been putting out a call to action but will any of this make any difference?

In a perfect world you would say you want it to make a difference but I very much doubt it will. That is not to say my former peers in the business should shut up and take it up the rear. Not at all. But it does mean they have to look at the broader scope of what’s been going on for a very long time and how this is only “recently” being recognized as a “bad thing”. Many others have said bad things were going on that were very detrimental to the industry but those weren’t heard or listened to when it mattered. And now there’s a much wider crisis that is affecting many more people at an every day level.

The fact is, many of us “old timers” have had discussions about where things were headed many years ago and we had seen what’s been coming based on what’d been happening. Can anyone remember when fixed-bid contracts for VFX work became the norm? No? Can anyone remember when they first started to become common practice? No? Yes? Those were bad to begin with and really favored the cheapest of the cheap (many times with matching levels of qualitative results, mind you… and then the folks putting money into a movie wonder why nobody goes to see their crap, what a surprise!).

Shortly after the fixed-big contracts we saw the emergence of outsourcing to low wage (i.e. living wage there but otherwise known as “will work for peanuts and a drop of water” elsewhere) countries and various countries providing subsidies to attract film production (and post-production) efforts to the point where no company could even compete with it. Did anyone really think this was going to end any different than the way it’s being played out right f’ing now? Really? Anyone?

And now there’s a walk-out being planned for March 14th. Wow, great. That’s going to raise some awareness in the average 5 minutes of fame. But that’ll be all, I predict, it will accomplish. The real problem is that all of this has been a very lethal and deteriorating factor in the industry for a much longer time and the ‘rot’ has already progressed far enough that simple protests will not help fix it, at all. Asking Governor Brown of California to help fix it… well, let’s say I’m not going to even comment on that because I’d be sitting here until next week trying to explain why that’s more futile than trying to resist the borg.

I consider myself lucky to have shifted from the production side to the development side in the early 90′s and have no regrets doing so, especially as many of my friends and colleagues on the production side found themselves traveling from city to city, state to state and country to country in the years thereafter in pursuit of their art, their carriers and what they loved doing the most. Digital Nomads? While many said they loved being able to see more of the world the reality was more along the lines of trying to follow the jobs. Because let’s face it, anyone who is truly been part of this industry for a while knows the hours are long, the work is intensive and demanding, and there is usually very little time to enjoy time outside of work. Moving from one place to the next, living out of backpacks and suitcases, maybe considered fun and cool when you’re young but you’re not going to be young forever and at some point it just doesn’t work anymore and then what are you going to do with your skills and art? Of course, without naming names, there were countless colleagues and friends who told me they hardly got to see any of the places they had to travel to and stay for months at a time because of their work schedules. Gee what a surprise!

Then the fixed-bid contracts came around at roughly the same time. Then the outsourcing started to take place. Then countries like Canada started actively courting the business by granting insane levels of subsidies (and anyone who understands taxes and government should understand where those come from, if not, go be ashamed of yourself and come back when you’re more aware of how money really works). This was not supposed to be a problem for the large majority of California based studios, how?

Stagnation in the world of Visual Effects, 3D Animations, etc. has been growing at a very rapid pace for a very long time (in part thanks to one company that decided to monopolize on it and ensure no further innovation of any actual value would ever again take place on any of it). Between off the shelf software products and proprietary in-house tools that are the bread and butter of most artists and the logistics of the work involved, the practice, the fact that what started as something that never intended or hoped for to be an industry and yet turned into a very big one, and not in the least the fact that we’re not talking about a simple production process but a very complicated one, at best, with lots of fun problems to solve but without the budgets to solve them properly, all make up the complexities that make it much more harder to “fix” the problems than if it was a “simpler” industry.

What I’m saying here is that I support my former peers in all actions they are undertaking to try and fight the tide. But I’m also saying that I might be a little older and perhaps a cynic since I’ve seen industries come and go (or emerge and disintegrate, if you will) and believe that all the effort may not help create the ultimate desired outcome and result. Staging walk-outs and petitioning politicians… ah, yes, what year are we living in? People still do that? People still believe in that? It’s good people believe in something, I guess. But will it help? I doubt it. Perhaps it’s time to become less conventional and try some different things and perhaps see how your skills can be put to other uses that won’t require you to be dragged around from job to job and town to town while being overworked and underpaid. Except I’m sure most of those won’t work either. But it might be more fun!

I know, I know, you had hoped for a major update with pictures of the new final completed Home Office 7.0 and instead you’re getting something completely different!

Let’s start with a small update on the office. I have sorted out the insurance claim with the moving company about the two servers that arrived in a non-working state and replacements are going to be built in the next week or two. I’m also expanding the office with a set of other new systems. But not the kind you might expect. I’m adding two small Atom based systems and, depending on specs and details that I’m still working out, 3 small low-power Xeon based Mini-ITX systems (2 x 1TB HD, 40GB SSD, 16GB RAM, something along those lines). I’ve been pondering that idea for a while after having read Bryan’s excellent write-up about the case for thin Mini-ITX systems. More details will follow and, yes, yes, I will take great new pictures for the final-and-complete office once it’s actually final and complete. Which at this rate is several months behind schedule.

In the meantime, people often ask me what I do about security and protection at home, especially with the office being a possible target of ill-willed criminals and other likeminded varmint. I normally don’t go into details about that and answer in rather broad terms that we have an excellent alarm system that is being monitored 24-7 by a professional security company. However, recently we extended the “home office defense system” (ha ha) with a new firewall and a thing that can fire very nicely at any kind of wall. And not just walls. Meet the home office protection device! You might wonder what on earth I’d need a “tactical assault rifle” for, amongst other things. The answer to that might be a long story.

First of all, it makes for a funny picture on a blog that normally talks about other types of hardware. Second, because it’s fun to get some shock value out of people who may take my statement about “home office protection” too literal.

But in reality, the answer is much simpler. With gun rights and the 2nd amendment being a hot topic in the United States, and the fact that it is still (and likely will continue to be) completely legal to own firearms of different types, the fact of the matter is that all throughout the US there is a massive shortage on guns and ammunition. Why? Because everyone is expecting various forms of gun-grabbing and gun-banning legislation to pass which may make owning and using various firearms illegal or impossible and are buying EVERYTHING they can get their hands on because it would be extremely unlikely they would actively come to disarm the American public everyone who already owns firearms will have them exempt of any new laws as they are “grandfathered” in. You might say that the current government may actually be up for the award of best gun-sales-people. Either that or this is some really misunderstood attempt at a new form of “economic stimulus”.

I’ve been on the lookout for something like that, fully intending to buy what is available and as it so happened, our local gun & hunting store, Hook Line & Sinker just happened to have just received 4 of these things. So a day later we went in and got one. Of course, I “pimped it up” by adding some rail protectors, a forward collapsable grip, a red dot scope, a (very intense and bright) tactical flashlight, a laser beam (yes guys, just like that stuff you see in the movies ha ha), and a bipod at the front. And no, you’re right, this is most definitely not an “airsoft” gun.

Now, if you’re someone who’s a little familiar with firearm ownership and usage you will probably understand what this is and how it’s used. So I will not waste any time trying to state the obvious and educate people by preaching to the choir. However, there have also been a few people who think of these things as “weapons of war” and get this completely insane and totally false images in their heads of the kind of stuff they see in modern day movies (you know, the kind where they make it look as if a grenade thrown into a building will blow up the entire structure in a spectacular way, as if a Maverick missile has hit it?).

And in a way that’s both funny and sad. Funny that people who have absolutely no experience with any kind of firearms have completely misguided ideas about it. But sad that they don’t understand the difference between rifles that look like fully automatic assault rifles but are in fact not that at all. Of course, they’re semi-automatic because the automatic kind has been banned from sales to the people for a very long time already. In other words, if you put some cool colored LED lights into your computer case it doesn’t automatically make it the kind of super-computer you see in the movies. But the sad fact remains that people with no experience whatsoever who can’t even tell the difference between a tactical rifle, assault rifle, automatic, semi-automatic, nor have a clue about ammunition types and sizes, will always hang onto a false belief based on nothing but their own unfortunate fears.

It has also been interesting hearing my European friends wish for the same freedom as we have here instead of being jailed for many years for ownership of such a firearm. It’s very interesting to understand that while many countries have very nasty laws about firearm ownership, there is still a very large percentage of the population who are not, often never have been, in favor of such and instead would prefer to have the right to defend themselves by any and all means possible instead of waiting for the slow response time of the police and ending up being just another statistic; a victim of the varmint that will always have access to firearms, no matter how much they are “banned”.

Another question some of my friends in The Netherlands have asked me is whether it is strange to own (and practice with) such a rifle. Being from a country where I would never be allowed to own a rifle like that my answer might be surprising; I’ve always considered it strange that in other countries you are not allowed to own firearms. Of course, those then also happen to be the kind of countries where the punishment for defending yourself or your property is often much harsher than the criminal who nearly killed you or your family while trying to take what is yours. Or, like several years ago, when The Netherlands had a total idiot in the position of minister for justice who said that “yelling boo!” to burglars and robbers would be the best course of action. I was recently asked what I was afraid of that I’d buy a “thing like that”. It’s difficult not to joke about it, but really, with a “thing like that” there’s very little to be afraid of. But seriously, it’s almost as irrelevant a question as it would be if I asked someone who pays for fire insurance for their home whether they’re so afraid of fire. Or someone who buys health-care insurance about whether they are so terribly afraid of diseases and health problems.

Since the rifle has very low recoil it’ll be interesting to see how Sallie is going to be doing at the range. I think she’ll be pleasantly surprised about how accurate she might end up being with it.

This is one of those blog posts that may be a little different than what you may usually find here. It is, however, very much related to my home office and this website. I wish I had more time to blog about a lot of other things that have nothing to do with my work or my home office. Alas, I just don’t have a lot of time for that, in between regular activities and being a director at the Oakley Chamber of Commerce.

This morning I woke up and checked my e-mail and found a message from one of the big fans of my office and website, Steven Dray. Attached were two images that certainly surprised me, to make an understatement. Steven has posted the images to his Facebook page and on Twitter but considering the content of the images I’m also posting it here with a little bit more information.

Steven Dray Home Office Tattoo

It is, I suppose, flattering, but at the same time it brings up a few questions. I asked Steven Dray how he made the image because I couldn’t see any artifacts that are usually present when photoshopping or compositing an image. With my background in 3D computer graphics, rendering, and pixels in general, I would be able to tell and I couldn’t. So either this was a really amazing photoshop skill or not. I asked Steven about it and he told me it wasn’t a composite, it was real. I could tell from the cling film that tattoo artists use to cover up a fresh tattoo.

Steven Dray Home Office Tattoo

Before anyone says anything, please allow me to make the disclaimer that I did not suggest or encourage Steven to do this and that it was entirely his own decision that I had no knowledge of. I certainly wouldn’t suggest or encourage people start doing tattoos like this and Sallie asked Steven what his parents think of this. Part of me does need to acknowledge Steven Dray’s decision being one that, without a shadow of a doubt, puts him at the #1 position for being the biggest fan of my home office!

I honestly never thought I was either a celebrity of any kind nor in any kind of position to expect anyone getting my name tattooed on any of their body parts. I know it’s not entirely uncommon that people get a tattoo their favorite celebrity. But this is most definitely a first for me and one I am most definitely and seriously surprised about. Now, be nice folks, don’t start going off on Steven for doing this.

Update Feb 13, 2013

Steven Dray has sent a few additional pictures because there are some people out there who say it’s a hoax and not real.

I have a quick update on the current status of the new (7.0 final) home office for you all. Pictures are being delayed by several factors. One factor being that it’s real busy here. The other factor being that two machines arrived with some serious problems after transport. They’re being looked at now but this is going to be an insurance claim situation. I don’t consider the office quite complete at this point with two major systems missing from it so… no pictures to take just yet. Of course, if you are a fellow crazy home office aficionado, you get “first dibbs” on seeing the current new home office “live and in the flesh” or is that “live and in the metal?”

So for those few crazy people out there who blog about how Mitch Haile and myself are adversaries  in some kind of home office contest, we’re not. We get along just fine! And yes, Mitch is the first fellow tech guy who’s actually seen the office as it is right now.

Mitch Haile and Stefan Didak in the New Office

Mitch Haile and Stefan Didak in the New Office

If you want to see some “temporary in between stages” pictures of the office you can check them out on my Flickr pages under “almost done” and “the making of 7.0″.

As for anything else I’ve been up to. Too much to mention. I’m a fresh new director at the Oakley Chamber of Commerce while Sallie took on the role of President of the Oakley Chamber. We’re getting ready to drop a major tech bomb in this entire area in the next several weeks, also known as the new Oakley Chamber website. It’s not just any chamber site, though! But more on that in a later post, in a few weeks time when I can actually show it off to everyone. In the meantime we’re very busy with Chamber Mixer and other official Chamber functions.

It’s been a while since I’ve tended to my site but I have a feeling that I may be posting a bit more than usual. Of course, usual now being like almost a year or so, that doesn’t say much.

However, I have most of my camera gear here and the other half is being shipped along with the majority of Home Office 6.0, my books, and tons of boxes with other stuff that still needed to be shipped from Rotterdam to California. With a bit of luck everything should arrive in perfect order sometime near the end of the year.

This of course means that starting 2013 I’ll be (finally) constructing the final office 7.0, the combination of the current California office and the previous office. Also, with the cameras and lenses and flashes I’ll likely be taking more pictures, not just of the office. It’s too soon to tell when I’ll be done with all that since it does take quite a bit of planning and labor but I’m hoping to be done before February 2013.

New pictures (and possibly a new “making of” section with more shots as things come along) also take some time to set up and light and do a good job at it so, I suspect that may be sometime later in February before you get to see any. In the meantime I got myself a great 16-battery charger to deal with volume charging of Eneloop batteries for the Nikon speedlight flashes.

Now, speaking of offices and in particular multi-monitor setups. I was watching Person of Interest the other day and the script writers never cease to amaze me. Not only have they introduced a killer guard dog trained to only respond to Dutch commands which in the series are actually German (while in a later episode giving the dog a Danish to eat), it also appears that the people designing the set are weird. Yes, I said weird. Now, look at the screenshot I took and tell me what’s wrong with that picture. The monitors are all at different height for obviously no good reason.

One monitor is actually blocking another. And given how this is constructed on a round table, how on earth are you going to properly view the two side-most monitors? On top of that, on the desk sits a typical old fashioned camera control box that you would normally find in a monitoring or security room. So far the only thing they seem to have gotten right is the Herman Miller Aeron chair there! And no, I will not get into the cable management that is sorely lacking.

As for the other office, mine, I am about 99 percent complete with the planning. Just some more stuff to order and deal with and of course waiting for the rest of the stuff to arrive. But as you can see from the (albeit small) image here, I even planned the complete power distribution, which sockets and circuits will power what, which APC Backup UPS’es will hook onto what, etc. I’m starting this project loaded with new velcro and a dozen new high-intensity USB powered LED lights. Oh, you want pictures? Fine.

The following two layout images show the final office setup. One with just the top of the desk, the other with everything that will be housed underneath the desks. Let’s see how close this gets to being exactly what I’ll be doing. Usually there are some last minute changes but I think I’ve got it nailed this time. I’ll also be using a label writer to label cables along with all the velcro magic.

That’t it for now. I need to get ready to head over to the Oakley City Hall and tomorrow it’s the BACN end of year party. In case you’re not interested in hardware and cables and LED lights and prefer a more liquid approach, here’s what I’m bringing to the party. Yep, a bottle of Glenmorangie Artein 15 year old Scotch from the private reserve.

Our favorite habitual liar and serial copyright infringer, Andre Leite Alves, of Aware Bear Computers in Rochester, is at it again and proving himself to now also be a habitual perjurer. And no, I am not talking about his Rochester Perennial Exchange “website”, which is nothing more than his attempt to link-build to gain a tiny bit of SEO juice in the hopes that all the negative exposure of his business activities and habitual lies would no longer score as high as they have done.

Andre Leite Alves of Aware Bear Computers, the moonlighting photographer, perjured himself AGAIN!

This week, Andre Leite Alves, Mr. AwareBear, has once again perjured himself, in an attempt to file a DMCA against this site and three of the images used (in good faith used under 17 USC Section 107 which allows for such considering the context of this site). This is not the first time Andre Alves has attempted to do so. Remember many years ago when he filed a false DMCA (against my domain registrar) claiming the images of my office were actually his and that I was the one infringing on them? Perjury might be something Andre Alves was born with but since I am not a doctor I don’t know that for sure. Lying and displaying deceit, however, that I think has long since been proven.

Scroll down to read the actual DMCA takedown notice that was filed.

Andre Alves is not the brightest bulb as most of you have already noticed. I can only imagine how much time and money Andre Leite Alves has spent (possibly from the Aware Bear business account) on the many feeble attempts at influencing search results. But the consistent and persistent failure of his efforts to accomplish anything is truly mindboggling. I also believe that Andre Leite Alves must think that my office is actually a time travel machine because he very seriously botched his DMCA attempt, like he botches a lot of things, just ask any displeased customer of Aware Bear Computers in Rochester.

It seems Andre Leite Alves really can’t do anything right!

Prior to filling out the DMCA, Andre Alves uploaded 3 images from this site. Images which at one point in the past (2009 and 2011 to be exact) were on the Aware Bear Rochester website. Then proceeded to create a blog post in WordPress and backdated it to December 7, 2007. Then labeled the images as (C) 2001-2012 to create the impression for the DMCA Agent that this site had taken them off of his site, and proceeded to state such, under penalty of perjury. Except what our clueless clown Andre Alves failed to pay attention to, because he is not really a detail oriented guy, is that images from 2009 and 2011 appear in his post that is dated several years prior to those.

I honestly do not have a time travel machine but I think Andre Alves believes I do. And for those of you paying attention, he botched one of the images even worse by having it in the 2012/03 upload folder. Anyone using WordPress will understand where I’m going with this. Images uploaded March 2012, in preparation for his false and incorrect DMCA filing, made to appear as if they were actually there in 2007. And he also needs people to believe there was no activity on his link-heavy blog between 2008 and 2011? Nice one, Andre! You must think other people are equally as dumb as you are.

Andre Alves, who appears to also moonlight as a “full time” wedding photographer (a full-time wedding photographer and full-time computer-repair guy, eh), must not understand digital images all that well because he clearly also forgot about things like date stamping and additional digital data embedded in those very image files. What that exactly means I will not explain because there is no reason to try and educate Andre Leite Alves. Instead I will just save this really good information for any situation where I may need them to pull the rug out of under any attempt at legal harassment. There are two other indicative issues with his DMCA attempt but those too, I will save for later.

What Andre Leite Alves (or should I refer to him as the Aware Bear that is unaware most of the time) also failed to think about is the fact that two of the images are cropped from the site they were originally on and are not the actual crop size of the images as they were at the time. It is nothing short of amazing that the exact crop is actually dated 2007 on his “blog” because they are clearly the exact crop I took. The old Aware Bear site(s) and content are probably not in Andre Leite Alves’ possession anymore so he didn’t notice it. Luckily, I always cache and copy everything just in case such is needed to provide proof and evidence.

Why did AwareBear Computers’ Andre Leite Alves spend $99 on a false filing?

So what’s up with these images and why would Andre Leite Alves spend $99 on trying to have them removed through the DMCA process? Nothing in particular, really. It is clear he attempted this as a “test” to see if it would work and if it did he could then proceed and start filing more false DMCA’s as long as he had a few dollars to spend on it. But the reason the habitual liar and serial infringer wanted the images gone is clear; they expose his habitual lies in a no uncertain manner.

The image that is a screenshot of one of his web pages, with the so-called testimonials on it for example. As already shown previously, testimonials from allegedly happy customers have been used throughout the years and attributed to different names at different stages during the changes of the Aware Bear Computers website(s). Also, the exact same text of the supposed testimonials has been found posted elsewhere and passed off as real testimonials, yet also attributed to different people in different places. Under 17 USC Section 107 I of course am showing exactly that.

The other two images have a bit more history to them. The first was taken from the Aware Bear website (in the state it was in at the time) to show that it was not just my office that Andre Leite Alves pretended was his. Also, a friendly and smart person e-mailed me with the links to the actual website designs in the image, as they belong to Template Monster and are not designs ever made by Aware Bear Computers. Ditto for the small image pasted into the monitor in that arrangement.

After I pointed that out and used the image to show this, Andre Leite Alves immediately modified the image on his website to contain an email address instead of the office and also took out the small design pasted in the monitor. He left the Monster Template images on there. Perhaps he bought those templates or decided he would take his chances. During that year the Aware Bear website underwent a lot of changes as Andre Leite Alves tried to wipe out all the obvious lies like claiming to be an official Apple Repair Center (yeah, right, ask Apple about that one).

Speaking of Apple. Did anyone notice the banner image at the top of Andre Leite Alves’ “link farm” blog? Do you feel you have seen that image before? That’s because you probably have. On Apple’s website! So clueless Andre can’t even build a “link-farm” blog without yet again using content he’s not authorized to use!

The full DMCA takedown notice as it had been received by my web host.

Please note that I have taken out the name and details of the copyright agent. As it turns out the actual filing was done through a 3^rd party website and the chain of action on the DMCA is a little complicated to explain, nor really of any interest here. The copyright agent is someone I know and respect and it became increasingly clear what exactly transpired and what Andre Leite Alves attempted to accomplish.

Notice of Copyright Infringement
Received: 2012-03-26 21:42:02 from [name removed] to DreamHost Abuse

Please see attached notice of copyright infringement, which has also been pasted below. Thank you very much for your time and attention to this matter. Please note that, in addition to the below infringement, the site itself appears to be nothing more than a spam redirect and an attempt to capitalize on my clients domain name.

To Whom It May Concern,

I am writing to you to avail myself of my rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and/or the European Directive on Electronic Commerce (EDEC). This letter is a Notice of Infringement as authorized in § 512 of the U.S. Copyright Law and EU Directive 2000/31/EC. I wish to report an instance of what I feel in good faith is an instance or Copyright Infringement. The infringing material appears on the Service for which you are the designated agent.

You are either registered with the U.S. Copyright Office as the designated service provider agent to receive notifications of alleged copyright infringement with respect to users of the service or have listed this information as the appropriate account to file such complaints on your site.

1. The material which I contend belongs to myself or my client, and appears illegally on the Service is the following:

Various AwareBear Images

2. The material appears at the website addresses:

http://www.andreleitealves.net/images/gibberish-large.jpg
http://www.andreleitealves.net/images/awarebearfakewebdesign1.jpg
http://www.andreleitealves.net/images/awarebearfakewebdesign2.jpg

3. The material appears on my or my client’s Web site at these addresses:

http://www.andreleitealves.[other]/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/abc1.jpg

http://www.andreleitealves.[other]/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/abc-design.jpg

http://www.andreleitealves.[other]/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/abc-design-2.jpg

4. My contact information is as follows:

[name and company details of the DMCA agent removed]

Filed on Behalf of:

Aware Bear
Andre Alves
5 Monroe Ave
Pittsford, New York 14534
Phone: 585-473-7035
Email: solutions@awarebear.com

5. I have a good faith belief that the use of the material that appears on the service is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or by operation of law.

6. The information in this notice is accurate, and I am either the copyright owner or I am authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.

I declare under the perjury laws of the United States of America that this notification is true and correct.

Signed:

[name removed]

Note: [company name removed] is acting as an authorized DMCA agent and is solely responsible for the preparation and submission of the DMCA notice.

Don’t you just love the lies Andre Leite Alves manages to concoct?

As the DMCA takedown notice reads, “Please note that, in addition to the below infringement, the site itself appears to be nothing more than a spam redirect and an attempt to capitalize on my clients domain name.”

So this site is a spam redirect now? Amazing! I challenge anyone reading this to google the name of the habitual liar and discover the countless attempts he’s made to influence search engine results to combat the negative exposure that his actions have received here and in other places over the many years. It is unfortunate for Andre Leite Alves and Aware Bear being presented in a satirical manner here but there is a limit to how many times this clown should get away with his lies.

I think poor Andre was projecting a little too much when he came up with the “spam redirect” idea considering that he has produced tons of content and posted it all over the internet for just one single purpose. And yet, even after spending so much time over those many years, he accomplished nothing with it (nor will he, but he hasn’t figured that out yet, as I said, he is not the brightest bulb).

It’s also funny how all of Andre Leite Alves’ link-farm experiment sites use basic WordPress themes. I wonder if he will be starting to claim those are his designs just like he seems to do with anything that his eyes see.

The images will be back up shortly as I entertain the full counter notice of the DMCA process. In order not to expose the current web-host as this process resolves itself, you can view the images here, here, and here if you want.

Unfortunately, no, I am not presenting you with a free version of Windows Layout Manager (WiLMa) for Mac/OSX here. But I will provide you with something that has worked for me along similar lines and was hacked up in a few hours of using AppleScript. I hope it works for you as well as it works for me, if not, blame it on my total inexperience with AppleScript. In fact, I have never touched AppleScript until the other day when I hacked together my first few lines of code and then did the “google programmer” thing by basically solving every little step along the way by looking it up online in a quick and dirty way. But heck, who cares, it worked and I really have no ambition to learn AppleScript. I very much dislike its syntax. As a real software developer it makes my toes curl.

While I got your attention I want to divert your attention for a short moment to the BetterSnapTool by Andreas Hegenberg. If you are looking for something WiLMa-like (but not quite) I can highly recommend this utility. Get it through the AppStore for a price you just can’t beat. Now, if Andreas would be so kind as to take all the WiLMa features and implement those in BetterSnapTool I would be happy to pay a lot more for it, and so should you!

Now, back to the AppleScript thingie I hacked up to provide myself the much missing WiLMa basic functionality that I have sorely missed on Snow Leopard and Lion, and every other Apple Mac OSX incarnation. You can DOWNLOAD THE SCRIPT RIGHT HERE FROM THIS LINK. Let me talk you through a few details of the script.

There are two basic functions to reposition and size a window; RepositionWindow and RepositionWindowWithName. The reason there are two functions is because the RepositionWindow function takes the window index (or window “number” if you will) as a paramter while the RepositionWindowWithName will take a title string as its parameter. In most cases a window index of 1 will work for most applications and their windows. Sometimes, it does not, and in some other cases (like say, Skype) it is possible the window index will not be consistent. In that case (like the Skype Online Contacts tool window) the WithName function will work just fine.

The bulk of the script defines a few functions, then goes into a series of repositioning/sizing instructions and at the tail end you will find some commented helper functions that are called. These are to help you (through the Events in the AppleScript editor) to show a window name, position, size. The functions are documented in the script so there’s not much more to waste time on.

Note that the script uses an offsetX and offsetY that is used in the actual repositioning process. The reason for that is because I’m lazy and I want to re-use the coordinates for position and size and be able to offset an entire series of function calls to another monitor. The sample script provided here uses the 3 x 30″ screens (at 2560×160 each) so you can probably imagine how those offset values are supposed to work. If you don’t like them, don’t need them, or are worried about performance (ha!) you can take them out.

Generally what I now do is create the scripts for my layouts (which is a bit of a tedious process) and save them in a compiled form and hook them through a folder on my dock for easy and quick access. Whatever you like to do, go right ahead and do it.

I think it’s time for something completely unrelated to the Home Office! A recent poll done by VentureBeat shows that Metallica is the #1 most popular artist to listen to while writing code. The poll also shows that as far as the type of music goes, Rock/Pop makes up 42% of the total. Not that I am surprised about that. However, putting rock and pop in the same category is a bit of a stretch for me since I prefer my rock on the rocks!

Lately I’ve been listening (and coding by) Pearl Aday’s latest album, The Swing House Session, Live & Acoustic. I’ve written about Pearl before, back in 2007, and more recently in 2010, and she never ceases to amaze me with the passion and soul for her music which is a very honest and classic rock style with modern influences and, of course, great vocals! For me, that’s my personal #1 choice to write code by.

The Swing House Session album is a great addition to the original Broken Thorny Crown and the debut album, Little Immaculate White Fox, the latter of which has been recorded into a full acoustic set during an afternoon at the Swing House Studios in Hollywood. The acoustic versions of the songs have an interesting twist to them and while completely recognizable to anyone who’s heard them before, add a new level of depth to the sound that is otherwise hard to catch when performed “fully plugged”.

The Swing House Session also includes “Angel from Montgomery”, the original John Prine song. I first saw Pearl perform that song in May 2010 in San Francisco and you know, it was great then and it’s still great now. A timeless piece that is guaranteed to never bore you.

You can see some of the video shot at the Swing House here and listen to some of the songs being performed. If you like what you’re hearing I suggest you buy the album (iTunes link provided for convenience!) and support this great artist that is true to her music and deserves our rocking support for it.

Yes, it’s a milestone. Office 7.0 (beta 3, by now) is officially done, functional, installed, running, and ready for action.

I’m not going to make any final “beauty” shots of the current state because there’s not much point in doing that until the other half of the office completes the current ensemble and that won’t be for quite a number of months yet. I’ll just have to make do with this setup in the meantime. And yes, you can imagine it’s painful and under-powered and under-monitored, and boy am I missing the extra pixels… not.

I’m quite happy with the 3 x 2560 x 1600, actually. But of course, the office won’t be complete until it’s complete. And besides, my camera gear is all in The Netherlands anyway, so there’s no point in trying to create perfect RAW shots and then editing them for a final “beauty” pass.

I didn’t take shots of other parts of the office since nothing has changed there but if you want to see then anyway I refer you to the other Office 7.0 beta blog posts and images.

There’s a server, a workstation, a second workstation, a Mac Pro, the MacBook Air, and the Clevo laptop. That should be enough for the intermediate stages of getting up and running. The three Lian-Li cases look nice together and all have watercooling for the CPU’s. ATI 6970 Eyefinity cards take care of the two workstations, each of them hooked to the 3 x 30 inch Dell U3011 monitors using StarTech DisplayPort switches to allow for an extra set of DisplayPort ports on each monitor. The server is hooked up via DVI connection (and also capable of doing 2560×1200) while the Mac Pro is using 3 x DVI where one of those is run from a mini DisplayPort port via an Apple converter that turns it into full dual-link DVI.

All the PC hardware has been built, tested, and tuned by Computers USA in case you have failed to notice my previous blog post about my new dealer here.

Things are going well here in Oakley. I got my work authorization a few weeks ago. Which was a huge surprise because it came 10 weeks before the government said it would. Also, the last of my “burdens of development life” is now luckily no longer an issue, leaving me free to get involved in new fun projects. In fact, I am talking to some interested parties about some real interesting top secret “stealth projects”.

Oh, I was going to post some pictures, right? Right! Here they are…

The new Home Office is starting to take a little more shape every day but there’s still much to do and a lot of things to complete before I can consider having properly settled in. This post, however, is not about the office itself but the people who have built the new systems that are in it.

The company is called Computers USA and are the home where BTO Diablo computers and BTO AngelFire servers are built to spec. They are local to me with both stores (a short drive to Brentwood or a slightly longer drive to Clayton) and I think people should support local business more. Instead of telling people that I hope to lead by example here.

Don’t be fooled by the website that needs some work. These guys know what they’re talking about and really have tons of clues about what they’re doing. That’s a rare thing to find these days when it comes to computer stores that claim they can build machines with amazing specs. In my experiene most don’t but these guys certainly do! If you’re around the area here and are in need of great quality and support, definitely check out Computers USA.

There’s also a very funny story to tell here. As you may know there have been a number of people and businesses that have taken images of my Home Office over the past years and either passed it off as their own or pretended they had some kind of association with it. So a few months ago I walk into the Clayton office of Computers USA because they came recommended to me by Shel Holtz. I strike up a chat with Chris about me looking for a new place to have my systems built and in the process I hand over one of my business cards that has a picture of the office at the back.

As it turns out, Chris had seen my website and the office pictures before and knew about the images being used by others all over the place and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it and wondered if I was one of those. He googled me after I left and discovered, oh, yes, this actually IS Stefan Didak.

The other reason for me writing this post is to pre-empt any potential negative flak that might arise from the new office pictures. If you see these guys using any images of my office or talking about it, then really, they are allowed to do so and yes these are the people building my systems. Don’t go accusing them of ripping off my images or anything of the sort. Since I very rarely give people permission it seems prudent to me to make this statement here just in case there’s any trouble in the future that causes any doubts about who has been instrumental in getting my new office together. As further proof, just to be completely and utterly clear on things, here are some images of Andrew and Chris of Computers USA at work in the new Home Office.

Andrew of Computers USA working on the ESXi Server

Andrew of Computers USA swapping out an SSD in the ESXi Server

Andrew of Computers USA swapping out an SSD in the ESXi Server

Chris of Computers USA bringing by a new workstation and checking if everything
is functioning the way it should.

It’s time for a little announcement and yes, you heard it here first… I’m officially Autodesk-free! And what a great feeling that is to not have to deal with an entity “where software goes to die” (can’t remember who first came up with that one but don’t mind me quoting you). Not having to deal with lacking and/or online only docs and the poor state of the Civil 3D API is not unlike wearing shoes that are too small and being able to them off… a feeling of relief, that is.

Development has not been as fun and exciting as it was prior to Autodesk acquiring Dynamite VSP (and rebranding it as Civil View, integrated with 3ds max Design) and because of my 6000 mile relocation and in particular other plans I have for my business and the directions it should be heading into it seems about the right time to leave the Dynamite development arena so I can reclaim the time I normally spent on it and put it towards cool and new things. You can learn about the cool new things on ignyter.com and ignytion.com once I am (legally) able to unveil those. Which, granted, may be a while yet before I can, and will.

It’s been an interesting 10 years developing on Dynamite VSP and it’s been great to see all the hard core Dynamite VSP/Civil View users pull off some stunning and amazing state of the art civil engineering visualizations. My last development activities were mid this past year so any future bugs, don’t hold me responsible for any, ok?

Of course, many of you reading this are thinking “yeah, yeah, so what, show me more new office pictures, what’s happening with THAT?”. Trust me, I’m working on it along with some words of what is taking so long and how great my new dealer has been in providing support for a few (very strange) hardware issues that I have run into. I’m waiting for the office to be a little more complete before I start posting pictures again and doing a slightly better write-up. Sitting down to write posts and stuff has not been easy with a lot of driving and traveling and not being at home but once I get more settled expect me to catch up properly.

It’s time for another installment of pictures and updates in the ongoing Office 7.0 Beta Buildup.

There is good news and bad news. The good news is that I have completed the cabling of the new office (and that I got married while the cables were still shipping out to me). The bad news is that I am waiting for the new workstation and server systems to be completed by my new (local) dealer. I will not be making any major pages with photos until the full office is complete (and that, yes, will take some more months actually) and when I have my full camera gear with me, which I do not at this time.

But just to give everyone who’s been asking an update of how things are looking, here you go, a whole page with pictures. Made with Sallie’s Nikon P100. I swear, large heavy cameras just seem to work better for me than the ones with a ton of cool features and are light enough to swing from your pinkie. Some of the images might look a bit familiar to all of you who follow me on Twitter.

Let’s start with a general overview of the space and the current situation.

The chair is a Herman Miller Embody, the successor of the Aeron. I loved the Aeron. But I like the Embody better. However, as always, check out a chair before dropping serious cash for one because it may not fit you as well as it fits me. It also requires a bit of actual use before you can really tell if a chair works or not. I prefer the air-ness of the Aeron but I often banged my elbows into the hard edges. Of course, once my other stuff gets here I’ll probably switch between chairs quite a bit.

The Best in the corner of the picture below is a APC SMT2200, a 2200VA 2000 Watt UPS. And yes, it’s on a 20 amp circuit. Heck, after all the trouble we had to go through, I now have more 20 amp circuits and outlets that I can possibly use in the next few years. That is, until the first round of huge expansion, I bet. The fan is always on but it whispers and doesn’t bother me at all.

It was a biatch to get that thing into the office, though. The poor lady from UPS had a hard time getting the thing out of her truck, and even harder time (though that might have been because I helped) getting it on the dolly to get it in through the door. Then it was up to me to get the thing out of the box. Not easy since the thing is like 140 pounds. After opening it up and getting the two huge batteries out it was still heavy but I could carry it upstairs and re-assemble it. However, because of the high-pyle carpet it is impossible to move it around if needed so I took a shelf and some casters and created a solution. I’ll need to turn the shelf black at some point because the white doesn’t look too good. But for now, that’ll do.

Yes, you are seeing an air-conditioning unit there. In addition to the 6000 watt central AC in the home I have added a portable unit for some extra cooling that helps with more local cooling. It’s loud. Very loud. Time to fire up iTunes and put on the headphone when using that thing. But it does help with boosting the cooling down to 75F in the home office.

One of the other work “islands” that will remain empty until I get the rest of the office (the 6.0 office) here. It’ll have three systems below the desk along with 4 of the 24″ monitors. And a few other things, of course.

The other great thing about the new office space is that I have quite a bit of storage space with four large sliding doors. A good place to store all those handy cables and office supplies without having them scattered all over the office and cluttering the desks. I still wonder what fun thing I am going to do with that nook up there at the ceiling. It is just screaming to me that something fun needs to be done with that area.

A view from the back and side. Just in case you wanted one!

 The new rack…

The top half of the rack with the audio equipment and its power switches.

The bottom half of the rack with the (UPS powered, by an APC 1500VA) network equipment.

Someone commented a while ago that the cables would destroy the nice looks of the rack. But that’s what the cable routing blank is for in the lower 1U slot. The cables hardly stick out at all and things are very easy to manage. And of course, at the back of the rack everything is very nicely done with velcro and bundles that don’t turn things back there into a total spider web. Except it’s more difficult to get you a picture of that without contorting myself into a bad position under the desk.

The thing currently powering the 3 x 30″ Dell U3011 monitors, a Mac Pro, yes! As I said, I am still waiting for the other systems to be built and delivered. But the cables for all those systems are pretty much ready to rock. There’s a 12TB Mercury Elite Pro QX2 there for the backups and RAID5 storage. I originally wanted to do an Areca SAS controller but decided I’ll skip boosting the Mac Pro until the new Mac Pro’s are available, you know, the Sandy Bridge 12 (or more) core systems with ThunderBolt. Until that time I’m not going to spend too much more dough on the Mac stuff. I just had to bite the bullet on this one because it was starting to be clear that the new models would not arrive soon enough for my needs.

Cables.. Let’s talk cable management for a bit here, ok… I know you’ve been dying to hear about it. Better yet, I just made some pictures to illustrate what it is I do to keep the cables from dangling everywhere and getting caught into the typical web that you see almost everywhere a computer is involved.

Isn’t that just nice, no?

The trick I am using is real simple. Velcro, for starters. But I’ve explained that before. But to get things going with the Ikea Galant desks I just went to Amazon and ordered a bunch of plastic towel racks. Modified them with the Dremel to get some screw holes going and then just screwed them into the desks at the back end. In addition to that I went to Lowe’s and picked up two dozen little handles that you can screw on drawers. Well, I screwed them near the back of the desks as guides to hang and tie the velcro rings on. As for Velcro, just get a bunch of rolls from Monoprice. You can never have enough Velcro. Ever. Really.

Also useful, some extra heavy duty 3-prong PDU’s. Again, just mount them under the desk.

As you can see, the results are pretty good. Still some work to be done but so far I’m pleased with the results. Lots of cable loops to bundle the professional audio cables and all the CAT6 network cables that run under that portion of those desks. I am using blue Velcro to group cables into bundles and then some red Velcro to bundle larger bundles together. This identifies the path of the cables and means you don’t have to always use the rails or handles to create Velcro loops but rather use a cable bundle as a guide for more bundling.

OK, that’s all folks. More later.

This is starting to be my fourth blog post in the series “The New Place”, it seems. You can read part 1 (regarding some serious delays in getting things set up) and part 2 (about finding the actual new location of the new office) and part 3 (the early results of setting things up) at their respective links. Or just follow the Office 7.0 Beta tag.

Let’s start by the good news. The quotes for some new systems are starting to reach me and the new cables have arrived. Another poor iPhone camera shot, but that’ll have to do because I’m not about to waste too much time trying to get really nice shots of the office. I’m saving that for when everything gets together and I can do a proper job at a new “making of” with all the details.

It doesn’t look like a lot of cables because of the lousy angle I shot it from but those were two big and heavy boxes that reached me overnight from Monoprice. A total order of $544 worth of network (all cat6 of course), audio, DVI, HDMI, DP, and power cables of various types and lengths. Anyone familiar with Monoprice knows what $544 worth of cables buys you.

Once I’ve received some other stuff (like some small and a big APC and some computers, of course) I will be posting some pictures of the new way of how I decided to do cable management. It’s much like what I have been doing with Velcro but in a slightly different way. I’d have to either show you or draw it for you to understand what I mean when I say “hanging loops at multiple depths, segmented and divided, under the desk”. In short, it involves a lot of little drawer handles and a few big ones (also known as towel rods) that are mounted under the desk (to the back of it) on which different size loops of Velcro will be guiding bundles of cables under the desk, out of sight (mostly) and leaving the floor (mostly) empty enough to still be able to have the vacuum cleaning done. But more on that in a later post.

I’ve been asked a few times now whether the pictures I showed in my previous post are part of me trying to do different configurations with the desks. No, they’re not. It’s just a larger office than the previous one so there’s more desk space and, likewise, more desks, involved. Just to clear up any confusion, though, here is the original layout I planned for the space and it has come out pretty much exactly like this. The yellow block is a 27″ monitor (the iMac), the green ones are the 24″ monitors, and the blue ones are the three new Dell U3011 30″ ones.

The old Aeron and the new Embody (once it arrives sometime in the next days) will complete the seating arrangement. Since it’s impossible to use that much screen realestate and that many pixels as a single overview and the 3 x 30″ provide a very nice area by itself, I have decided to split the monitors into islands of their own where, along with the computers that’ll hook onto them, are more task-based and defined as to their use and purpose. The 3 x 30″ area will be the new “main” area.

Oh, and to answer another question that I’ve been asked a few times now. The desks are IKEA Galant desks. In particular, two corner desks, two regular 120x80cm desks, two 80x60cm extensions, two 60cm half-round extensions, one 80cm quarter-round extension, and five desktop shelves to complete it all.

It’s true, I haven’t been posting much. Then again, I have been rather busy with that thing called “life” and in particular the move to the new place. But things are starting to slowly shape up. The emphasis here is on the word SLOWLY. Things are not going as fast as I had hoped for. So, no, no new office pictures, won’t be any for a while, it’s going to take some more time. But, in the meantime, I can show you some of the current progress. Pictures taken with the shaky camera of the iPhone.

Those are pictures of the same office. If you see something that looks like it had been modified, it wasn’t, it’s just that the office is really big and has more than one work area. So, definitely, lots and lots of desk space for… lots and lots of workstations, servers, monitors, and a few Mac’s thrown in for good measure. Oh, yeah, about them Mac’s. Going to the Apple Store in Emeryville was a major disappointment. They didn’t have anything I wanted, didn’t have anything I needed, and the result was “best to just order it online from us”. Yeah, that could’ve saved me an hour’s drive from Oakley (not Oakland!) to Emeryville. Why those stores even exist, I have no idea. It was very busy, but people there were clueless. And with people I mean the staff, not the potential customers in the store. I bet those had more of a clue.

The big battery backup stuff still has to arrive and I am still waiting for a quote on some systems from my potentially new hardware builder out here in this area. Until that time I will allow the wires and the office to be a mess. I might allow it to be a mess until the new office and the old office get reunited in the same place. Depends on how things go. We’ll see. The 30″ Dell U3011 monitors arrived, though. Wow, real nice. Zero dead or bright pixels. Lots of screen realestate to use. Now if only I had some machines that would make use of all those pixels!!

It’s official. The new location of the Home Office 7.0 will be in Oakley California. That’s OAKLEY, not OAKLAND. Not even nearly the same. Oakland is a dump IMHO and Oakley is a nice low-crime no-grime area towards the east of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Don’t mind the odd copyright notice on the image. That’s the image of the real-estate company that had it advertised. I’ll be posting better and nicer images once I get around to it and once I get to actually have some decent content to show.

Now the real fun starts; getting the electricians over to see what we will do about getting tremendous power routed to the new office space, furnishing, getting hardware and systems installed, all that good stuff. Or if  you will, all that frustrating stuff.

In the meantime, however, we are packing, stacking, moving, driving up and down (because our new location is 40 miles from our current one) and expecting the movers in the next few days. So, if you I haven’t gotten back to any of your e-mails, don’t despair, I’ll get to it when I can but right now is a really bad time to deal with e-mail and being online.

I will be writing about the reason of our relocation in the next weeks and it will be juicy and interesting, I can tell you that. Especially since the city of El Cerrito is going to get their building inspection asses kicked to high heavens. I will probably also be writing about all the other fun stuff one finds in Oakley, like, rattlesnakes and black widow spiders. Yeah, those, the deadly ones. And yes, we have already spotted one in a small crack around our garage and the damn thing wouldn’t die after we tried to kill it with some RAID spray. Maybe I should add a Black Widow Antidote Farm to the list of business activities I’ll be deploying?