It has been quite an eventful week here in North Alabama.  For me it all started with an early morning wake up call last Wednesday of intense lightning and thunder.  Those storms were just the beginning of what turned out to be one of the worst severe weather disasters in US history. We spent much of the afternoon and evening hours taking cover under the desks in our office.  Mid afternoon we lost power and didn’t get it back for 4 days.

All of our family made it through safe and sound and we were VERY fortunate to not have any damage from the storms, but there are MANY here in North Alabama who weren’t so lucky.  Many homes across the region were flattened by EF4 and EF5 tornados.  The community is pulling together and is doing an amazing job in disaster relief.  Since I’m BY FAR not the best writer in my family, I’m going to send  you over to my wife’s site to learn more about what has happened and how you can help if you feel so inclined.

Tornadoes – Your Help is Needed  – Southern Plate

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Have you ever wished that you could turn back time and look at what previous versions of SolidWorks looked like?  Perhaps you have a customer who is a few versions back and you can’t quite remember if they have access to one of the newer features.  Perhaps you are just plain curious and would like to see how far the software has come.  Nevertheless, until today, I have been unable to find a single website where you can download legacy documentation for ALL versions of SolidWorks.  I’m happy to announce that I’ve added a new page to the site which allows you to take as step back in time.  The What’s New Guides page contains ALL of the available SolidWorks What’s New Guides!   This is something that I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time and thanks to some help from SolidWorks Corp. and my good buddy Rich Hall, this idea is now a reality.  I turns out that the What’s New Guides only date back to SolidWorks 98Plus (in electronic form).  To cover the first couple of versions of SolidWorks, I have provided the User Guides.  (Some of which were not available in electronic form, so the data was taken directly from the Help files.)

Now, is this page going to increase your productivity at work?  No..probably not.  That is unless you are on a REALLY old version of SolidWorks and you catch a whiff of some of the new features in some of the latest What’s New Guides.  The main intention of this is to provide a little history for ALL SolidWorks users (new and old).  If you are a CAD History Buff…you are really gonna love this.  Check it out and let me know what you think!

Stay tuned….more to come!

Related posts:

1. What’s New in SolidWorks 2010 Guide Posted
2. I’m BAAACCKK!

There has been quite a bit going on lately which has resulted in a lack of posts here on the site.  I’m still here…just working on some “new” things.

The biggest news for me personally is that I am in the process of moving to a new home.  I don’t have to tell many of you how big of a job that can be.  This weekend will be filled with packing and sorting.  I’m moving to a house that has almost twice the square footage of our current home, so this will be a BIG move for my family.  With the move, I will finally have the Home Office I have dreamed of for quite some time!

Another “change” of sorts started late last week when my Dell M90 laptop ceased to function due to a failed video card.  It has been a good laptop overall in the 2+ years that I have had it.  The unusual thing about this hardware failure is that due to a shortage of replacement cards, Dell is replacing the ENTIRE system.  Not having my laptop which is my primary machine has no doubt thrown quite a kink into my work schedule and resulted in a few missed deadlines.  Thanks to our IT department, I have been able to keep working by getting a workstation on loan from another department.

I should receive a brand new M6400 system next week to replace my M90.  I didn’t lose any hard drive data (which is VERY GOOD).  So overall I should come out just fine aside from the missed deadlines.  I’ll be sure to post some reviews on the M6400 once I receive it and get some time with it. (Probably after I finish moving!)

If you read the SolidWorks Forums, there have been a few users who have had some issues with M6400 laptops.  Most of these laptops have had the Quadro M3700 video card which has a whopping 1 GB of on-board memory.  The common failures so far have been centered around overheating of the video card which has resulted in failed boards & motherboards.  My M6400, since it is an “equivalent” replacement, will have the Quadro M2700 video card which contains 512 Mb of on-board memory.  I must admit that I feel a little more at ease with this card at this point.  Time will tell.  One of the things I’m looking forward to the most with the M6400 is that the keyboard has dedicated number pad!

I’m also working on a new page for the site which hopefully will be ready next week.  It will offer some content that I think SolidWorks users (both new and old) will REALLY enjoy.  I can safely say that I haven’t seen any other site on the web that has offered this content.

That’s all for now… I’ve got some packing to do.  Stay tuned…MORE to come!

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7:37pm – I’m a little behind…thank goodness for DVR!

7:39pm – Into the second episode of Time Warp now – Watching the “Will it Blend guy”

7:40pm – They just blended an iPhone….that was painful to watch….but the marbles are cool!

7:41pm – About to blend lighters! ….Oh yea….BIG Flame!!!  But the Blender didn’t melt!!

7:45pm – Talk about hazardous occupations – Juggling Chainsaws??  What??????

7:46pm – Juggling looks sooooo easy in slow motion!

7:47pm – The guy NEVER moves his eyes while juggling….interesting!

7:48pm – The DVR has caught up…and I’m finally live now!

7:49pm – Juggling 10 pound chainsaws….they “Say don’t try this at home”.  Umm….YEA

7:53pm – I’m not really being persuaded by all the Max Payne commercials.  Not sure why…just don’t really want to see the movie…at least not at the theatre.

7:56pm – Exploding beer bottles….I’m getting thristy!

7:59pm – REALLY like Time Warp.  Great series!  Mental note:  Start checking e-bay for high speed cameras!

8:00pm – MythBusters has begun!!!

8:01pm – More Ninja myths….could be interesting!

8:04pm – Jaimie missed!! (Bow & Arrow practice)

8:05pm – Arrow traveling at 179 mph!  That’s all for arrows!  The fans claimed the speed of the arrow was different further away.  The speed difference was minimal.

8:06pm – Whoa…  A British Ninja?  Anthony Kelly

8:07pm – WOW!  The dude just caught 22 consecutive tennis balls travelling at 85 mph!  I new world record!

8:11pm – Just saw a commercial for the new season of Stormchasers.  The premiere is this Sunday!!  You don’t want to miss it!

8:12pm – LOL! Adam is going to try and catch the 85mph tennis ball..  LOL!!!!  Props to him for trying it!

8:13pm – Tory, Grant, and Kari are up now…going to test underwater blow darts!

8:15pm – LOL!  Tory rubbing animal fat on…then putting on wetsuit…then into a tank of cold water.  The animal fat is supposed to protect against hypothermia…tank is 66 degrees

8:16pm – Tory has been in for 45 minutes…..now he is out!  Props to him for staying in that long!

8:21pm – The British Ninja is going to try to catch and arrow fired 26 feet away traveling 120mph

8:22pm – He missed the first several – then caught one!  WOW!

8:24pm – Tory, Grant, and Kari – building bamboo blow guns!  Except Kari who slipped in a metal sleeve inside hers without the guys knowing! 

8:27pm – I wonder if Adam got his Segway for FREE in exchange for riding it all the time on the show?

8:32pm – Still thirsty…will have to wait till next commercial break! 

8:37pm – Now the Ninja is trying to catch and arrow in full battle situation.  Missed several…only caught one!

8:46pm – Jaimie is punching Adam (in protective gear) 300 plus pounds of force from Jaimie at full swing…the ninja from 3 inches away reached 210 pounds of force!  WOW!

8:55pm – Blow darts from under water had some success…myth is plausible!

8:57pm – Ninja’s revenge – Ninja runs at Adam…can he fire and reload before Ninja gets there…. (20 paces away)

8:58pm – Nope…Ninja got there before Adam can reload…he’s done! LOL!

9:00pm – Prototype This! is ON!

9:01pm – Road Rage…That never happens does it?

9:02pm – Car that will slow down when you get mad??  Coooool!

9:04pm – Mind controlling a video game…is it for real??

9:07pm – Interesting….destroying a car to find a weak spot.  Will use a demolition derby to test driver emotions to help detect road rage.  Car to be remote controlled and drivers will be in virtual cockpit driving them….how are they gonna pull this off in 10 days?

9:11pm – Testing car control software/hardware using and R/C car.  Driving the R/C car using a video game steering wheel set.  Interesting….as a former professional R/C racer it seems to me it would be harder to drive an R/C car that way…

9:19pm – Measuring heart rate, breath rate, and the amount you sweat to get bio feedback to determine road rage.

9:21pm – Having a “Chill Zone” on the side of the road for road rage drivers to get mandantorily parked sounds good to me!

9:24pm – Servos on the steering, brakes, accelerator, and a kill switch integrated into the demolition derby cars!  It worked!  That’s a mighty big R/C car!

9:33pm – Hooked into the mind control software so that when an object moved in the software….power is applied to an actuator that bent a spoon!  It worked….Zoz had to concentrate though!

9:38pm – They are having to write some serious software for this to work.  Did they really do all this in 10 days?

9:43pm – Wow!  They just used mind control to put the car in drive!  Once the driver gets aggravated the sensors in the the mind control headset trigger and the car is put back into neutral!

9:55pm – Let the demolition derby begin.  3 out of the 4 cars are working.

9:59pm – The roadrage car worked!  When the drivers got aggrivated…their cars stopped!  They had to hold concentration or they were dead in the water.  The interesting thing about the mind control software is that it is tough to actually prove that it is working as advertised.  This isn’t the first time I have heard of this technology so I’ll buy in!  Pretty cool.  I’m not sure if we will see something like this or not….but it sure was an interesting prototype!  Looking forwrd to next week!

10:00pm….I’m out!  Have a great night folks!

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Stay tuned….more to come! (When I get back!  )

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I have switched the Comment system for this Blog over to DISQUS.  If you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed that I have been pondering this for a few weeks.  After having to moderate 37 “undesirable” comments today (I’m not going to say the word) I decided to go ahead and make the move.  It looks like most if not all of my Legacy Comments have been imported, so I would say so far it is a success!

DISQUS has some really cool features.  I would highly encourage you to register a profile at the DISQUS site.  If your register, you can create an avatar that is viewable on this site and most other Blogs using DISQUS.  One of the REALLY cool features is that you can go to the DISQUS site and view comments you left on any of the Disqus Community Blogs all in one place!  You can also see if there have been any replies to your Comments since DISQUS is commonly setup with a threaded theme.  SolidSmack, The SW Geek, & SolidWorks Heard! are also running Disqus.  Thanks to all of those guys for answering some of my questions!

Other Happenings

I’m in the final leg of a project that is taking up most of my time outside of work.  If you follow me on Twitter….you probably know already what it is.  I’ll post more about it in the coming weeks.  Later in the Fall I plan to finish up the Mach 4 Racer that is shown in my Blog Header image and then make it available to anyone who wants it!

Stay tuned….more to come!

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1. Ricky Jordan’s Blog has moved!

So now you must be asking yourself, “If it is so wonderful, then why are you leaving it?”.  I have some big plans for this site.  Some of which I probably won’t complete for another couple of months.  Some of those plans call for a Blog format that is much more flexible than what Typepad has to offer.  WordPress is by far the most flexible & popular opensource Blogging platform around.  Simply put, it fits in best with some of the things I want to do to this site.  The WordPress software itself is free so all I had to do was select a Host.  I ended up going with Bluehost.com.  The experience has been wonderful thus far.  I have UNLIMITED bandwidth & UNLIMITED data storage!  (Yes you read that correctly.)  Now to be fair I’m sure that one wishing to take advantage of this could exploit it and get a call from the guys at Bluehost.  I’m not going to load up servers with massive amounts of data anytime soon and it provides extra piece of mind for me not to have to worry about bandwidth or space.  Not to be lost in this is the fact that they have 24/7 tech support and a feature packed control panel.  It’s nice to have options!

Anyway, here are a few specifics I want to make sure my readers know.  If all goes according to plan, the Feedburner Feed WILL REMAIN THE SAME.  The feed still has Typepad in the address but I left it there so folks hopefully won’t have to update their RSS readers.  The jury is still out on this…keep your fingers crossed for me!  Also I have gone to painstaking trouble to make sure that almost ALL my URLs from existing posts remain the same.  This took some tedious work in both the WordPress admin panel as well as direct edits to the database.  Only 5 of my 150+ posts have new URLs in the changeover.  I will try to get those URLs forwarded as soon as I can.  I’ve still got a few little things I’ll be updating on the pages but everything for the most part should be pretty complete.  Something new with the new site is a search tool!  (FINALLY!)  In my testing thus far it seems to be really quick!  Try it out for yourself!

Thanks to some of my fellow Bloggers for giving me some greatly needed feedback on WordPress and site design concepts.  Also thanks to Patrick Cook at SolidWorks for helping me transition this site with relative ease.

As I always say, STAY TUNED…there is MUCH MORE TO COME!!

UPDATED 8/1/08: I just updated the site with a new custom header.  A special thanks goes out to Josh Mings of SolidSmack who is the Photoshop master behind the new header.  Great Work Josh!  You’ll have to give me some lessons sometime!

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1. All NEW Content Rich Site Design!!

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Related posts:

1. Welcome to Ricky Jordan’s Blog!
2. Ricky Jordan’s Blog has moved!
3. All NEW Content Rich Site Design!!