RobiNZ CAD Blog

Phew, mobilised

According to the news today quite a few NZ sites have not yet met Google’s mobile-Friendly Test. Glad of the new responsive themes in TypePad! Read more →

11th Anniversary, blogging to the roof of the world

The end of March means it is blog’iversary time again. Eleven years since my first tentative post. If anyone is to blame, and thank, for all this it is Shaan Hurley. I read his Between the Lines AutoCAD blog before I really knew what a blog was. It prompted me to think about doing my own and he suggested trying TypePad. It made blog management & hosting simple. I’d looked at other alternatives at the time and found them too limiting or complex. I love not worrying about hosting, running servers, ‘web page coding’ or managing plug-ins and having support... Read more →

A new responsive look, so, how’s it responding?

I’ve updated my blogs to a new responsive layout using a beta TypePad Responsive Theme Builder. Responsive Design lets the site to resize and reflow to a variety of screen sizes (below right). The old template just cropped the view and added scroll bars (below left). Responsive TypePad TypePad has had pre-set responsive themes for a while. The beta Theme Builder, which allows customisation, still has a few wrinkles—sidebar items and emphasis tagged text formatting mainly—but I thought worth a try. The TypePad support team have been great with rapid answers/fixes for a few questions I had. I have... Read more →

A Day in the Life of a CAD Dork #CADdork #AutoCAD

This wasn’t my idea but I think it is a good one! AutoCAD Blogger Council member Melanie came up with the idea of tweeting the day in the life of a CAD Dork. You can find the others with the #CADdork tag on Twitter and Facebook. I was going to tweet during the day (within personal and commercial disclosure limitations!) but it turned out to be a rather unusual day. The tweets would have read: Got up, walked the dog #CADdork #AutoCAD Went to work #CADdork #AutoCAD Came home at midday to supervise a tree felling #CADdork #AutoCAD Dinner! #CADdork... Read more →

2014 Blogging Highlights

Another year has flown by and it is 2015. Time to look back at 2014 from a bloggy (not just CAD) perspective: Best Blog Event: It was great to meet fellow AutoCAD bloggers in March for an introduction to AutoCAD 2015 and a look behind the scenes of how it was created. Best Comment(s): I like it when people comment on a post that has helped them. To be honest I post these fixes to save me having to remember them! Even old posts on Outlook HTML formatting of URLs and Live Writer (how to change the local post location)... Read more →

10th Anniversary, a decade of blogging!

March 31st means it is blog’iversary time again. I find it hard to believe a decade has passed by since that first tentative post. It was rather special to spend a few days last week with the Shaan Hurley (on the left wearing a cap below), who inspired me to blog, and other CAD bloggers. Amazing that thanks to this hobby I have made, and in some cases met, many friends around the world. To everyone, everywhere, thanks for visiting, reading and subscribing! Some annual stats follow in the extended post Statistics: In spite of less than prolific posting from... Read more →

The joy of a hosted blog

TypePad was briefly off-line this week but was pretty much fixed by the time I saw this tweet: We really appreciate our bloggers - through this frustrating downtime you have been gracious, witty, and tenacious. Thank you very much! — Typepad (@typepad) March 5, 2014 They were subject to a distributed denial of service attack (and were not alone*): Update on Recent Typepad Downtime - Everything Typepad On Wednesday from approximately 1:15 to 3:45PM Pacific Time, we experienced downtime which prevented the Typepad application and blogs from loading, and we are truly sorry about that. The downtime was due to... Read more →

How Facebook Knows What You Looked at on Amazon

While not CAD related thought this post by Dare might be of interest. Have you noticed adverts showing up that relate to other sites and wondered how that happens? How Facebook Knows What You Looked at on Amazon - www.25hoursaday.com As part of my day job at Microsoft, I've begun to learn more about how advertising across the internet works on a technical level and it is quite interesting to learn how an image of a some head phones I looked at an e-commerce site ended up staring back at me from an ad on Facebook later that day… Read more →

Kiva and RobiNZ Blog team milestones

The video shows what Kiva microloans are about and some of the proceeds* from this blog are allocated to a Kiva Lending Team. 2013 was a big year for Kiva and closed with a significant milestone for the blog team. Thanks for your support 10,000 times over. Kiva Lending Team: RobiNZ Blog A team since Dec 10, 2008 This team shows loans funded from Supplier Donations, TypePad crediting hosting costs and additional Advert income. The 'Amount Loaned' is a total of donated funds + reinvested loan repayments. * The balance goes towards one off donations to other Charitable organizations. Read more →

2013 Blogging Highlights

Another year has flown by and it is 2014. Time to look back at 2013 from a bloggy (not just CAD) perspective: Best Blog Event: For me the event of the year, blog’wise, was the Revit Technology Conference. It was an inspiring mix of education, inspiration, meeting new folks (many Kiwis from out of town) and reunions. I didn’t get to Autodesk University this year but RTC meant some of the notable AU speakers came to me. Also notable that it was ‘at home’, Auckland, but also a new experience. The evening dinner was in an Auckland venue I’ve known... Read more →