Curie on Easy Living

 

“Life is not easy for any of us.
But what of that?
We must have perseverance.”

- Marie Curie (1867–1934)
French physicist and chemist
two-time Nobel Prize winner

Remember… We are The Economy.

Recovery depends on the work we do today… regardless of difficulty, regardless of political belief, regardless of what the media says. It’s our work (your work) that will get us there.

The US Navy SEALS have a creed they live by in their work. A few of my favorite lines are…

  • The lives of my teammates and the success of the mission depend on me… (individual accountability)
  • If knocked down, I will get back up, every time.
  • In the worst of conditions, the legacy of my teammates steadies my resolve and silently guides my every deed. (purpose)
  • By wearing the Trident I accept the responsibility of my chosen profession and way of life. It is a privilege that I must earn every day.

What if we all had a Trident for our work – something that says we truly accept the responsibility for our chosen profession – and we did it?

You up for it?

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The SketchUp Halloween Challenge

With Halloween just a few weeks away, nerds here in the Google Boulder office are in a tizzy about their costumes. We take this particular holiday very seriously.

A haunted house I modeled years ago, with two pumpkins by IDW. He modeled them for SketchUp Island’s Pumpkin Patch collection on the 3D Warehouse.

 

This year, we thought it might be fun to host a SketchUp Halloween Challenge for folks who are looking for something to do in their spare time. The nitty gritty:

Categories

There are two: Use SketchUp to model either a jack-o’-lantern or a haunted house. Or both.

How to submit an entry

  1. Upload your model to the 3D Warehouse and make sure it’s publicly-downloadable.
  2. Upload between two and ten images of your model to a public photo sharing site like Picasaweb. You can use any photo sharing site you like, but make sure your images are grouped into an album by themselves. Images should be at least 1000 pixels wide or tall, depending on their orientation.
  3. Fill out the Challenge Submission Form, including links to both your model on the 3D Warehouse and your album of online images.

Judging

On Friday, October 28th, a group of us from the SketchUp team will get together to review the entries. We’ll be looking mostly at the images you submit; models will be examined when we’re picking the top three entries in each category. For an idea of what we’ll be looking for, consider these points:

  • Displays of SketchUp expertise are always impressive.
  • Anything that makes us say (out loud) “How’d he/she DO that?!!” is worth extra points.
  • We don’t want to see anything you wouldn’t show your grandma or your kids.
  • Beverages will almost certainly be involved in the judging process.

Multiple Entries

Submit as many models as you like, but fill out a separate entry form for each one. The more the ghastlier!

Rendering Rules

You can (if you like) include photo-rendered images of your model with the images you submit. You have to have at least one unrendered image, though; we’d like to see your work in its purest, SketchUp-only state.

Deadline

The deadline for submissions is 11:59 PM PST on Thursday, October 27th 2011.

Prizes

For fun little modeling challenges like this one, we prefer to keep things simple. Instead of prizes, we’ll publish our favorite entries right here on this blog, on October 31st. The best three models from each of the two categories (pumpkins and houses) will be featured in the November edition of the SketchUpdate newsletter, which goes to millions of people around the world.

Why no fancier prizes? When companies host big, international competitions, it takes months for their lawyers to figure everything out. On top of that, people from certain places (like Quebec and Brazil) end up being excluded because of specific laws that apply only to them. Ugh.

Other Stuff

If you’d like a blank pumpkin to start with, this collection contains a few. Other questions about the Challenge? Please ask ‘em in the Comments for this post.

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Flagstaff Challenge in 3D

Most office rivalries rise to a boil at conference tables and water coolers. At Google’s Boulder office, our grudge matches play out across topo lines. Last week, our third annual “Flagstaff Challenge” blasted off up Flagstaff Road, Boulder, Colorado’s signature hill-climb. Over 1,500 feet of elevation gain, the Flagstaff Challenge (mapped below) attempts to answer our office’s ultimate water cooler question – what’s really faster: two wheels or two feet?

Bloggers in the office fired up Google’s KML Embed Gadget to cook up an embedded Google Earth course map (if the map below is not in 3D, try installing the Google Earth plug-in, then start embedding KML’s on your own site!).

 

As our route map shows, Flagstaff’s paved switchbacks criss-cross its running trail all the way up to the finish point, making this slice of topography perfect for an office grudge match between cyclists and runners.

While there was a good bit of trash-talking over GMail and in the halls leading up to the Challenge, Googlers generally prefer to let data speak for itself. Minutes after our team returned to the office, folks were already using Google Earth’s GPS tools to visualize tracks and dissect elevation profiles recorded on their My Tracks app or fitness units.

And yes, a few folks from the Docs team even fired up spreadsheets to run statistical analyses on the finish times. After accounting for outliers (those un-named Geo folks who actually got lost!), it turns out that there was no statistically significant difference between the cyclists and the runners. That just means our office feud will have to simmer for another year; enough time to sharpen our fitness and also the Geo tools we use to share and analyze our weekday warrior exploits!

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Free data, maps – unique insights

I am launching today another service which is a part of a bigger development project I am currently implementing. It is called Thematic Reports Series – free PDF download module. There is so much interesting data floating around that can be converted, with a little bit of effort, to insightful information and knowledge! The tools to do that conversion and dissemination are not integrated into end-to-end solution so, I am taking on the challenge with aus-emaps.com site to bridge the gaps. The first module was the reference map service launched just a couple of weeks ago. PDF download is the second piece in the puzzle, and more are yet to come.

I have chosen personal taxation statistics as the topic for the first free report. “Canberra’s Investment Habits by Postcode” is not an easy read but I hope it will generate some interest in the local community. Information is published as a series of interactive maps and as a hardcopy report in PDF format. Users have to sign up with aus-emaps.com to download PDF version of the report but maps are fully shareable. More on the report content in the follow up post.

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Last Call for Google I/O

For those of you who were quick to register, we thank you for continuing to support our developer initiatives — this year’s I/O is slated to be one of our best yet. For the rest of our developers, we weren’t kidding when we told you we <3 our developers.

Starting Wednesday, March 16, we will be launching Last Call for Google I/O: A contest that spans 10 days, 10 developer challenges and 100 chances to win tickets to attend the now-sold-out Google I/O 2011.

Here’s how it works. We will announce a new challenge on the contest site on select dates at either 9am or 4pm PDT, that will last for 24 hours each. There will be 10 days of challenges with 10 winners on each day, spanning the following developer products:

  • March 16 – Android, 9:00 am
  • March 17 – Chrome, 9:00 am
  • March 18 – App Engine, 9:00 am
  • March 21 – YouTube APIs, 9:00 am
  • March 22 – Game Developers, 9:00 am
  • March 23 – Google Maps / Geo, 4:00 pm
  • March 24 – Commerce, 9:00 am
  • March 25 – Developer Tools / GWT, 9:00 am
  • March 28 – Accessibility, 4:00 pm
  • March 29 – Google Apps / Enterprise, 4:00 pm

Each of the challenges will focus on one of our developer products and has two rounds. Plan to be in front of your computers for the first half-hour that the challenge starts to complete a series of questions for Round I, which will qualify you for the main coding challenge in Round II. You will have a little over 20hrs to complete Round II.

We want to make sure that we provide the opportunity to attend Google I/O to as many developers as possible and hope you’re feeling up to the task. The contest is valid in the 50 United States and the District of Columbia with winners being announced on April 4. And don’t forget that we will be livestreaming the keynotes and taping sessions during Google I/O. Stay tuned!

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