This is really what I heard over the planes audio system when a Southwest airlines flight from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas was preparing for takeoff. Indeed there was a guy in the back wearing shorts with hairy legs and waving who then said “I am here to make the rest of the crew look good”. I have to hand it to Southwest Airlines for some of the happiest and funniest airline employees.

I see myself as that same role here at Autodesk as I am here to show off all the cool stuff they do and make them look good. I am fortunate enough to stand on the shoulders of many very smart and dedicated developers, QA testers, designers, product managers, and many more deskers behind the scenes. Hopefully I make them or what they create more visible.

AutoCAD Tip: Where do I find blocks and symbols?
It has been a hidden gem in AutoCAD for a few releases named AutoCAD DesignCenter,
AutoCAD Command :ADCENTER or use CTRL+2 keys

You can search through files for blocks, leaders, layers and more and drag and drop content from other drawings.

There is the option tab to search the DesignCenter online blocks “DC Online” which is essentially all of the blocks with the former Autodesk product Autodesk Symbols but free inside AutoCAD. I know there are well over 100,000 symbols/blocks in DC Online and perhaps many more as I did not spend the time to count them.

There is also the new Autodesk Seek online which is free and has tons of content in AutoCAD DWG, DWF, Revit formats, DGN, PDF and even SketchUp SKP files. Currently it is in beta and primarily architectural but watch Autodesk Seek grow as it partners with more and more companies and catalog vendors and aggregates the content for use by millions of designers around the world.

Now back to my Saturday night fun of photographing some scorpion specimens I received today all very dangerous or known as “hot” like an Egyptian fattail scorpion Androctonus crassicauda with almost the same lethal venom as a cobra LD50. I like to photograph them under ultraviolet light as they fluoresce and glow. I also got one large mean Kuwait Camel Spider and he was really hungry. I hope to see these invertebrates in the wild next month while in Turkey, Kuwait and Dubai.

Here is a photo of a past ultraviolet photo of a scorpion which makes a great desktop wallpaper. If you watch or subscribe by RSS to my Shaan's Flickr Photostream, you will see my photos when I post them.

Cheers,
Shaan (the hairy legged ugly guy in the rear of the plane)