How to enable DWG import in SketchUp 8 Free

As an architect living in Indonesia I (and many others) faced one same dreaded problem in my workflow: DWG dependency.
I've post list of applications that I use before, though I must share this info too (a bit too late actually).

So how to enable DWG Import in your Free SketchUp 8?

We all know Google stop supporting DWG Import feature starting from SketchUp 8 (free). The last one (7.1) have additional add-on http://dl.google.com/sketchup/gsu7/AllowDWGImportInSketchUp7.msi to enable it.

Then another way is: You can install SketchUp 8 Pro trial for 8 hours of usage if you want a temporary solution.

Or.. you can just stick with SketchUp 7.1 and ask your partners to downgrade save as sketchup 7 format for file exchange. Which is what I choose, after all there are not much important features in version 8.

Now.. do you know that actually there is no difference between both version?

How to make IBM Symphony 3 portable

OK not that portable actually... Let's do it quick

Download it first http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/ls/symphony/index.html
Don't forget the fixpack
Install...

- get yourself to %USERPROFILE% a.k.a C:\Documents and Settings\[username] or C:\Users\[username]
- copy folder "IBM" to your Symphony 3's installation directory (where symphony.exe reside)
- navigate to framework\rcp there you'll find rcplauncher.properties
- open it with notepad (your should be an admin)
- replace rcp.data's value with IBM/Lotus/Symphony/ -> rcp.data=IBM/Lotus/Symphony/
- save it
- now copy the whole Symphony folder to your removable drive and use symphony.exe to run it. Your settings and preferences should stored in IBM\Lotus\Symphony\

caveat: soffice.bin process will stay at background when you quit Symphony's tray icon so you can't eject your drive unless kill the process first
note: Lotus Symphony 3 is an intuitive but a bit slower version of OpenOffice 3

Offline M$ Security Essential Installer

With my 128Kbps connection it seems I would never ever able to complete initial update after installation of MSSE. Why? Well looks like the virus definition update took place faster than the time I need to complete the download so the file keep changed before I even finished one. That just plain sucks! that's why I hate git so much too!

Here is the link of relatively up-to-date definition installer that *do not* frequently changed.
http://mirror.ufs.ac.za/ms_Sec/mpam-fe.exe

2D CAD and Open Source, will it ever works?

ITC's intelliCAD or ODA's Teigha? They are open but to their alliance/members not to common public which left only OpenCASCADE. However OpenCASCADE is more suitable for 3D parametric modeling not general 2D drafting, in fact it looks like an attempt by "the big player" to promote their base foundation (against the mighty Autodesk of course). Why I said that? cause their development in recent version is really lacking of interest and motivation!

AutoCAD LT's clone invasion
To the blatant monopolistic attitude of Autodesk (almost as worst as old-day M$) competitors still not give up to give users "freeware" of 2D drafting package in a hope that they might ditch DWG or -more recently- AutoCAD LT. The release of DoubleCAD XT and DraftSight certainly an appealing offer to me who have separate 2D and 3D package for the workflow. DraftSight from Dassault Systemes, the less nagging (but has annoying yearly online activation) of the two is using QT as their GUI and both use ODA's Teigha for DWG compatibility. I see these kind of lure won't recede anytime soon even after Autodesk lawsuit to ODA in 2006 for DWG infringement. All I can say there is no real interest in open source community whatever the big player do.

Makedict xdxf to stardict converter

I'm looking for newest jargon dict for stardict, I'm sure have seen it sometime ago on the net but somehow I can't find it anymore. But there is jargon in xdxf format which Stardict should supported already? But stardict (3.0.3) can't loaded it strange...

Then I got this converter called makedict (0.4) from the maker of XDXF but without windows binary.. CMake and build.. so here is:
makedict-0.4.1 or
makedict.exe (static glib)
codecs (need python, extract to where makedict reside)
type "makedict --help" in your command prompt for options
to avoid name conflict please at least use: makedict -d [somewhere exists]
where [somewhere exists] is path to where converted dicts created

SeaMonkey 2.1 is MoFo next arsenal?

Mozilla Foundation need SeaMonkey to keep competitive, at least in the near future...

Long time ago when Netscape spawn Mozilla (the browser), Firefox spawned as optimized, streamlined and brand new (avoiding Navigator image) version of Mozilla. Add it's cool name, people have no hesitation to migrate and yet it was the first succesful open source browser to gain so much userbase. Later Mozilla renamed to SeaMonkey probably because it become more like a "stepchild" (in term of popularity) of MoFo thus confuse users if named after the maker. That time I tried SeaMonkey 1.x and still not impressed (lack important compatibility and feature from it's sibling) but appreciate the stability. With Firefox 3.0 I start annoyed by it's bloatness and lead me to use K-Meleon for a while only to found that XUL is one of the culprit in Firefox. Then I move to Opera 10 cause it's more faster, neater and slim, I also use Chrome on occasion though. Chrome browser really know how to treat a noob, too bad I'm not, afterall it getting bloated too quick for a 4 year old browser. After more than a year with Opera I personally doesn't like how it render ftp page or how it freeze too often (though not crashed). To summarize:

This year IndosatM2 decide to be pretentious

*censored*

GTK+ 3.0 Win32, not quite there

While GTK+ 3.0 has been around for almost 2 months it lacked many bugfixes from GTK+ 2.22. As a result it looked more like GTK+ 2.18 with new packed features. Below is the not so new feature  (GTK+ 2.21?) of tool palette, actually there is a lot more but most aren't available in demo yet.

flickering issue in GTK+ 3.0 Win32

First facial sketch

Friday MyPaint Sketch #3

My first attempt to sketch a random face. Not much to show, but I started learn many tricks. Maybe next time I should depict a model photograph?

Some Unicode Fonts for Windows XP

My reference here is displaying wikipedia in near perfect. http://www.wikipedia.org
Font preference is based on license: SIL OFL, LGPL, GPL with font exception, other free to use and distribute license and the last: plain GPL.

For Windows XP SP3
wangdi (Tibetan) made by Bhutan government under free to distribute and use like license
phetsarath (Laos) LGPL
utkal (Oriya, India) GPL
khmer busra (Cambodia) SIL OFL
padauk (Myanmar) SIL OFL
LKLUG (Sinhala, Srilanka-India) GPL
abyssinica (Ethiopia) SIL OFL
MPH 2B Damase (various languages) Public Domain
oskiwest, oskieast (native americans) GPL

download

notes:
- AFAIK Windows 7 users only need MPH 2B Damase and padauk
- plain GPL means: font embedding = GPL infection