FUNside

I’m not the most active member of the 3D community but as I was lazily visiting the Softimage website the other day I found out that it was acquire by Autodesk in November.

Now even I understand how big this acquisition is. One might compare it with Google merging with Yahoo - but in this case no one is concerned about monopoly.

AutoCAD, Maya, 3ds Max, MotionBuilder, Mudbox and now Softimage has entered the one big family of 3D suites. From now on, you can consider Autodesk the pinnacle in 3D graphics as Adobe is for rich media and graphic tools.

Of course the 3D community was shaken by the news and in a practical manner (as many 3D artists are technical in mind) some where simply wondering where they can seek tech support for the previous versions purchased…

I think this story is something to ponder on - is it even good from a business point of view for Autodesk? Isn’t competition helping the software become more rapidly improved? What’s the competitions now? Cinema 4D, TrueSpace and Blender?

I don’t know, this all seems to extravagant to me. I only hope that Autodesk will not fall into the slippery slope of creating inferior software and thus bursting its bubble into millions of vertices.

Remote connection software has been around since the console age and was for many years used by “busy” professionals that couldn’t stop working while at home. But now that computers have become a large part of everyone’s reality, remotely connecting to another computer is convenient and adds to our potato-couch lifestyles.

Here’s an introduction on the technology…

I always like giving examples of my own life so here it is… I have a Q1 UMPC which I remotely connect to my multimedia PC in the living room so I can use it as a controller instead of another wireless device. Playing puzzle games on the big screen has never been more enjoyable

But the real purpose of this post is to present some popular options you can choose from to instal remote connection software on your computer. Firstly, I should note that there may be such software already installed by your operating system. Most of the times though it is quite limited in features (no common clipboard etc.) and performance.

Let’s start with the open source solutions. Free is always appealing and there is some quality software in this field, that have proven their worth. My software of choice would be the always popular:

TightVNC

Website: http://www.tightvnc.com/

TightVNC is a free remote control software package derived from the popular VNC software. With TightVNC, you can see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would do it sitting in the front of that computer.

Other cool software you can find for free:

EchoVNC

Website: http://sourceforge.net/projects/echovnc

EchoVNC is a secure, “firewall-friendly” remote-desktop tool with support for VNC, Remote Desktop, and RAdmin servers and viewers. With it, a Windows PC or OSX Mac can be remotely accessed regardless of firewall, router or web-proxy configuration.

Chicken of the VNC

Website: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/

Chicken of the VNC is a VNC client for Mac OS X. A VNC client allows one to display and interact with a remote computer screen. In other words, you can use Chicken of the VNC to interact with a remote computer as though it’s right next to you.

If we are going to look into more commercial versions of the software, the most popular solution I guess is:

Remote Administrator

Website: http://www.radmin.com/

Radmin (Remote Administrator) is the world famous, award winning secure remote control software and remote access software which enables you to work on a remote computer in real time as if you were using its own keyboard and mouse.

RealVNC

Website: http://www.realvnc.com/

RealVNC provides remote control software which lets you see and interact with desktop applications across any network.

Just to connect to Windows computers from a Machintosh, Microsoft has provided the software with the less imaginative title….

Remote Desktop Connection Client

Website: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx

Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2 lets you connect from your Macintosh computer to a Windows-based computer or to multiple Windows-based computers at the same time. After you have connected, you can work with applications and files on the Windows-based computer.

And of course there’s the always simple…

CoRD

Website: http://cord.sourceforge.net/

CoRD is a Mac OS X remote desktop client for Microsoft Windows servers using the rdp protocol. It is easy to use, fast, and free for anyone to use or modify.

Read this chart which has for more programs for more platforms.

Whatever you choose be careful with your security, so you won’t be allowing unauthorized access to your computer. But apart from that the technology is mature enough to operate in a stable and responsive environment - you won’t even feel you’re on another computer

The other day I was looking into Processing (actually I was reading the blog of Felix Turner and stumbled on it)…

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions…

Hmm, that sounds interesting. Even more interesting are the examples I found from Robert Hodgin and Lennyjpg:

To top that Processing has supporter developers that have integrated OpenGL textures and GPU-accelerated effects (GLGraphics) as well as connect it with Sunflow, a ray tracer written in Java (P5Sunflow).

Looking through the structure I can’t say it’s anything groundbreaking. The coding part is pretty standard. I’d even go as far as saying that Flash 3D is probably more promising (although it is meant to be on the same level as C++, with which there is no comparison really…)

Hopefully I’ve given you enough insight to check it out yourselves. If you want to experiment with graphics in Java (and I can’t stretch the word “experiment” enough), this is a good environment for you to start playing

As a web designer I often get into installing new fonts to work on a company’s particular typeface. But passing font files between developers is not such a straight-forward procedure as you might expect - the last time I got the fonts in two versions with .pfm and .pfb extensions…

.pfb (Printer Font Binary) files contain a binary compressed outline font for use on a user’s Windows system.
.pfm (Printer Font Metrics) files contain font metric information used by applications for laying out lines of text in a document. They also specify the Windows font menu name, kerning pair data, and a variety of other font-level information.

Basically, PFB is an encrypted Type 1 font, and PFM is Windows Type 1 font metrics. These two files need to be together for the Type 1 font to work.

According to the info on Microsoft’s site, you cannot load Type 1’s the way you can TTF’s - instead you’ve gotta use Adobe Type Manager. Adobe has discontinued the deluxe version of this software but is still giving away it’s light version as a free download over here:

http://www.adobe.com/products/atmlight/index.html

As for the Mac, the short answer is that you won’t be able to use those fonts. PFB and PFM files combine to make Postscript fonts on the PC. That format isn’t supported by Mac OSX. PostScript font support is built directly into Mac OS X.

Having more than one computer in the house is common these days, hence the need for a network-attached storage devices arises (shortly named NAS) - a storage space to be able to access your files from anywhere any time. It’s either that or having to look through a bunch of CDs to find what you want each time. In most cases a NAS system works independently, having most hardware parts of a proper PC, but it usually has a very basic GUI, tends to be more power efficient and has a more discreet operation cycle.

I had recently bought the Thecus N5200PRO, portrayed here:

It’s a rather average solution, well reviewed here. Not to say that I’m not absolutely pleased with it. My only problem is the separation it has between the shared folders and the other data stored in the file system - you can view the shared folders you create in any computer but they have an absolutely distinct operation with the iSCSI or USB partitions you create. But it does have a serious feature set and it’s firmware is a work in progress so I won’t keep against it a few mishaps it may have.

Interestingly though, recently I’ve been stumbling on a number of alternate solutions I could’ve (would’ve?) chosen. The one that’s making me drool is the HP Mediasmart server
with Windows Home Server pre-installed and optimized for media center connectivity (read review).

Maybe a more affordable solution (at this time) is to use an actual PC as a NAS - especially if you have an old computer laying around in the house. If I was going to do that now I would probably go for something like the Drobo.

It requires a geek to become operational (meaning it may not be as plug-n-play as other storage devices) but it also required the mind of a geek to be appreciated. Simple and precise, it’s set to do one thing and it excels on it - to give you heaps of extra storage at high transfer rates. No bells and whistles here, just pure efficiency.

For whoever wants a “How to” guide there is a walkthrough for setting up a 2.5 TB hot-swap array on any PC.

Remaining on the subject, you can find some peculiar solutions (that said in a good way) by Addonics. It makes you wonder “How come no one else thought of that before?”. For example, have a look at the “2.5″ Disk Array 4SA“:

An excerpt from their website: “Designed to fit inside the space of a standard 5.25″ drive bay, the new Addonics 2.5″ Disk Array 4SA is a unique drive cage solution that can accommodate up to 4 2.5″ SAS or SATA hard drives . Thus the 2.5″ Disk Array 4SA can be easily deployed in many computing equipment and as many as 16 2.5″ SATA or SAS hard drive”.

I for one would like to buy one of their other products that seems practical and kinda fancy - the Jupiter Hard Drive kit. Other accessories that might be handy (just to mention a few) are: the Max4 3.5” SATA HDD Rack, a Portable Add-Ons Rack for 2.5-in Internal Hard Drive in 3.5-in Bay, or the Memphis USB 2.0 2.5″ External Hard Drive with Cradle.