SketchUp Pipes and Other Frustrations
Making pipes in SketchUp is not all that fun, but necessary if I want to be able to show all the mechanicals. I thought the creation of a bracket was difficult, how wrong I was. I know there is probably some pre-made things in the 3D Warehouse, but I have never really had much luck with fitting those models into my model, so I just make everything myself. Sometimes I want to just buy some of the extensions that do that sort of thing, they look so useful, but I have to have the Professional version of SketchUp first, and that is at least $700.00 out of my range at the moment. So I make it work, and it does, but it is definitely a process, and an exercise in frustration sometimes.
Yesterday I fought with the program for about an hour with no results, today, I was able to get it to do basically what I wanted in a few minutes. That happens a lot.
In a related issue, I am fighting with trying to livestream on Youtube using Hangouts on Air. I was able to do a few seconds of streaming, but my mic was turned off, so there was no audio. Then try asw I might, I could not get it done after that. I gave up and said "Hey I have OBS, we will try that". No deal, even trying to find a video on how to do that ended in me just giving in and ranting for about a half hour on how back when I used to use broadcast cameras and film cameras this was not a problem. That brings me to the point of my Nikon camera. While it is a nice camera I guess, or so I am told, it is much more akin to the Kodak Disk camera or the Box Brownie than any Nikon I ever used. Hell my Yashica had more control than this thing does. I have managed to make it make some alright snapshot type pictures, but certainly not any type of real photography. I have read that it is a good video camera, as long as it is hooked up to an external drive or PC as even with a big chip it will only make a few minutes of video in raw format. My question is how do you shut off the microphone, and there is no place for an external microphone so how do you do passable audio. Even a fairly cheap video camera has at least the ability to shut off the audio and or input external audio, so you can use a better quality microphone. For some people it would be fine, it is basically a point and shoot camera, and with its auto settings it will do a decent job of taking a snapshot. There are no real controls. I do not pretend to understand how digital photography works, it is still a new process to me, but as far as cameras are concerned they were working, why reinvent the wheel.
I never did like auto-focus lenses, but I did adjust to one or two on my Minolta, for certain situations. I preferred my Yashica, or my Contax or my Nikon, all of which were standard SLR cameras with standard lenses. Personally I preferred the Contax over all of them. I want to have control over the ASA speed of the film (or whatever is equivalent), I want to have control over the f-stop of the lens, I want to have control of the shutter speed. These three controls were all that was needed to make great photos. With control of these simple mechanisms you could do all sorts of things. Yes you still had to consider the lighting, but I could shoot in near darkness without night vision, all I needed was a small amount of light and a tripod. I could control the film speed, shutter speed and aperture setting, and with that make photos in near darkness. Once you mastered those settings, all else was just style.
I used to teach photography to little children that came to the Art Guild, and we started without cameras, just learning how to see light and shadow. Then we made our own pinhole cameras, and learned about how the light effected the paper. Once they had learned that we moved on to other things like cameras and their parts. Some of the parents were worried that I could not teach their children how to make good pictures in the short time we had over the summer. Every single one of them were able to make great photos after the four Saturdays of lessons, and the parents wanted me to teach them. I could not do the same today, I do not even begin to understand digital photography, and though I get progress, and I know film is dead, I just wonder why the hell they thought they needed to reinvent the camera. The camera worked, they did not fix it, they broke it. The digital camera is not a step forward, it is not progress, it is regression. We are back to Box Brownies, which were great for their time, but when moveable lenses came out, no one said hey we still want our single focal plane cameras. No one misses the Camera Obscura as cool as it was, Kodak and Polaroid were way cooler.
It is sort of like going back to quill and ink, it is cool for the historical aspect, but really the innovation of movable type made all the difference. Even though now days most people use a computer to write (I am composing this on the blog on my laptop), the basics are still the same. I am still typing on a keyboard, and the type is still being produced on the screen in letters that form words and in some cases ideas. This is thoughtful and organized progression. Touchscreens are not, touch screen swiping keyboards are not. These are aberrations, and lead to regression. Just like net-speak is not a language, and it should not be used by anyone of any amount of intellect. I am a writer, I use slang, colloquialisms, dialect, and localized speech patterns for character development, but when trying to get a point across, I try (although usually unsuccessful) to be concise, and get to the point in an organized manor using language that is at least mostly proper. This helps to facilitate communication of ideas without the need to figure out what the hell lol stands for. The first time I actually heard someone say "lol" after saying something to someone, I wanted to shoot either them or myself, I wasn't sure which one would solve the problem. Now I realize "New Speak" is on the rise, and soon we will either learn "New Speak" or we will be part of the 5 minutes. At this point in my life I would rather be outside than in the Party, thank you.
On that note, I am leaving, not forever, but for a time, do not know how long, could be a day, or an hour, or maybe until I find something else to rant about.
Peace
JD
Yesterday I fought with the program for about an hour with no results, today, I was able to get it to do basically what I wanted in a few minutes. That happens a lot.
In a related issue, I am fighting with trying to livestream on Youtube using Hangouts on Air. I was able to do a few seconds of streaming, but my mic was turned off, so there was no audio. Then try asw I might, I could not get it done after that. I gave up and said "Hey I have OBS, we will try that". No deal, even trying to find a video on how to do that ended in me just giving in and ranting for about a half hour on how back when I used to use broadcast cameras and film cameras this was not a problem. That brings me to the point of my Nikon camera. While it is a nice camera I guess, or so I am told, it is much more akin to the Kodak Disk camera or the Box Brownie than any Nikon I ever used. Hell my Yashica had more control than this thing does. I have managed to make it make some alright snapshot type pictures, but certainly not any type of real photography. I have read that it is a good video camera, as long as it is hooked up to an external drive or PC as even with a big chip it will only make a few minutes of video in raw format. My question is how do you shut off the microphone, and there is no place for an external microphone so how do you do passable audio. Even a fairly cheap video camera has at least the ability to shut off the audio and or input external audio, so you can use a better quality microphone. For some people it would be fine, it is basically a point and shoot camera, and with its auto settings it will do a decent job of taking a snapshot. There are no real controls. I do not pretend to understand how digital photography works, it is still a new process to me, but as far as cameras are concerned they were working, why reinvent the wheel.
I never did like auto-focus lenses, but I did adjust to one or two on my Minolta, for certain situations. I preferred my Yashica, or my Contax or my Nikon, all of which were standard SLR cameras with standard lenses. Personally I preferred the Contax over all of them. I want to have control over the ASA speed of the film (or whatever is equivalent), I want to have control over the f-stop of the lens, I want to have control of the shutter speed. These three controls were all that was needed to make great photos. With control of these simple mechanisms you could do all sorts of things. Yes you still had to consider the lighting, but I could shoot in near darkness without night vision, all I needed was a small amount of light and a tripod. I could control the film speed, shutter speed and aperture setting, and with that make photos in near darkness. Once you mastered those settings, all else was just style.
I used to teach photography to little children that came to the Art Guild, and we started without cameras, just learning how to see light and shadow. Then we made our own pinhole cameras, and learned about how the light effected the paper. Once they had learned that we moved on to other things like cameras and their parts. Some of the parents were worried that I could not teach their children how to make good pictures in the short time we had over the summer. Every single one of them were able to make great photos after the four Saturdays of lessons, and the parents wanted me to teach them. I could not do the same today, I do not even begin to understand digital photography, and though I get progress, and I know film is dead, I just wonder why the hell they thought they needed to reinvent the camera. The camera worked, they did not fix it, they broke it. The digital camera is not a step forward, it is not progress, it is regression. We are back to Box Brownies, which were great for their time, but when moveable lenses came out, no one said hey we still want our single focal plane cameras. No one misses the Camera Obscura as cool as it was, Kodak and Polaroid were way cooler.
It is sort of like going back to quill and ink, it is cool for the historical aspect, but really the innovation of movable type made all the difference. Even though now days most people use a computer to write (I am composing this on the blog on my laptop), the basics are still the same. I am still typing on a keyboard, and the type is still being produced on the screen in letters that form words and in some cases ideas. This is thoughtful and organized progression. Touchscreens are not, touch screen swiping keyboards are not. These are aberrations, and lead to regression. Just like net-speak is not a language, and it should not be used by anyone of any amount of intellect. I am a writer, I use slang, colloquialisms, dialect, and localized speech patterns for character development, but when trying to get a point across, I try (although usually unsuccessful) to be concise, and get to the point in an organized manor using language that is at least mostly proper. This helps to facilitate communication of ideas without the need to figure out what the hell lol stands for. The first time I actually heard someone say "lol" after saying something to someone, I wanted to shoot either them or myself, I wasn't sure which one would solve the problem. Now I realize "New Speak" is on the rise, and soon we will either learn "New Speak" or we will be part of the 5 minutes. At this point in my life I would rather be outside than in the Party, thank you.
On that note, I am leaving, not forever, but for a time, do not know how long, could be a day, or an hour, or maybe until I find something else to rant about.
Peace
JD
Comments
Post a Comment