After a mysterious trail appeared in my garden, leading from a hole in the ground to the bird feeder, I found myself eager to get a trail cam to find out whatever beastie was making it. I had a search on Amazon and was overwhelmed by the choices available. In the end, I did what... Continue Reading →
[Academic Tech] The Windows nerd [begrudgingly] gets an iMac
…And almost immediately put Windows on it. Then decided to be a bit more open minded and give it a whirl to try out the hardware and software. TLDR: I’m a windows guy, MacOS is smooth and nice, but a few differences give me a learning curve that I simply can't prioritise over my myriad... Continue Reading →
[Academic Tech] Surface Go – A near perfect companion device
I bought myself a Surface Go (8Gb/128Gb) a few weeks ago, and I’ve had it long enough now to pass judgment. As I noted in my ‘hardware I use’ post, I was previously using a Surface Pro 3, until I sadly dropped it on the hard floor after a lecture. To be honest, I’d been... Continue Reading →
[Academic tech] Hardware I use – Simulations, photogrammetry, and dissection
In a similar vein to my ‘Software I use’ post, I want to run through what I’m using in terms of hardware in day-to-day use, both directly for research and for general lecturing/computer-y things. Most of what I do these days takes place on the computer, whether that’s simulating dinosaur footprints, or writing/giving lectures, so... Continue Reading →
My Small Object Photogrammetry setup
I thought I'd write a quick post about my photogrammetry set-up for small objects, because I've been doing a lot recently, and as a result I've spent some time optimizing my workflow. The long and the short of it is that it looks like this: I've got a small light box from Amazon, which includes... Continue Reading →
Getting good supports, printing with Dremel Idea Builder 3D20
**update 21/2/19: Not only has Dremel moved to a waaay better slicing software (based on Cura), but the latest firmware (v1.5, 20180611) has enabled standard *.gcode support for the 3D20 model. Finally...** Last year I got hold of a Dremel Idea Builder 3D printer. It’s been great, and I’ve been able to print a... Continue Reading →
The perils of a weak link in an ecosystem chain: How OneDrive’s changes are pushing me out of the windows ecosystem.
For a moment there, between 2012 and 2015, there was a glorious time where it all came together for me. I took to windows 8.1 immediately – it’s the first operating system I’ve ever bought outside of a new computer. I had it on my home computer, my work computer, and my phone. Settings and... Continue Reading →
Why Windows 8.1 and Onedrive are awesome (and Windows 10 is RUBBISH)
My extolling the wonders for productivity given by windows 8.1 and Onedrive, and my disappointment with Windows 10
(This guide was actually written 25/5/13, but should still be applicable. PDF here) This guide will hopefully provide a quick start to processing CT data and exporting models using 3D slicer (http://download.slicer.org/). The documentation available for Slicer is pretty fragmented and/or out of date (referring to considerably older versions), so this guide is based on... Continue Reading →
A rough guide to getting models out of CT scans using 3D Slicer (v4)
[Academic Tech] Free software I use (2014)
Being a computery type of palaeontologist, a lot of what I do requires pretty specialist software, and ideally pretty beefy hardware. Being from Yorkshire, I begrudge paying the exceedingly large amounts of money that a lot of the professional software packages demand. But there are better reasons for my thriftiness – using freely available software... Continue Reading →