People with an interest in architecture, crafts, glue and a little spare time may want to head over to this website buildyourownchicago.com. They sell postcards of Chicago’s architecture and historic landmarks that are meant to be cut up, folded and glued. Now you can finally build your own tiny paper Chicago and stomp around Wrigley Field just like godzilla would.

The site has postcards to order, instructions and tips for the best finished models and even hints on how to add extra details like N-scale wheels to the paper elevated train cars. Fun stuff.

Isn’t this the sweetest teapot you have ever seen? (and yes it is real, no CG here)

If you have ever used an appliction that does 3D renderings like 3ds Max then this teapot is pretty familiar to you. It is known as the Utah Teapot or Newell Teapot and was originally created as a benchmark to test out different rendering engines.

If you are not familiar with it, you still might have seen it if you were looking for it. The 3D version has made cameo appearances in Toy Story and Monsters, Inc.

The actual teapot used to create the original 3d model now resides in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. I got mine off ebay, w00t!

And here is an example of the standard object built in to 3ds Max:

I threw this together yesterday to help out my sister-in-law with her ongoing quest to be the most popular girl in high-school on flickr. Flickr is a photo sharing website, and so much more. I like to think of flickr as a double headed dragon. On one head, it is a normal photo-sharing site. People can upload photos, share them with friends and family and print them extremely easily. On the other head is this weird competitive/narcissistic communist marching comment squad, where people are subscribed to hundreds of group photo pools to show other complete strangers that they are creative too, have thousands of contacts who they don’t know, yet are compelled to leave suspicious non-comments about other people photos. Comments like ‘interesting idea’ or ‘nice angle’.

I originally signed up for the ease of use and sharing and I admit I do sometimes submit my photos to groups to show my stuff, but I’m not really sure why. What I do know is that jumping from the first head of the dragon to the second is all to easy, and a slippery slope at that. It only takes one comment from some anonymous person on one of your photos, and all of a sudden, you think you need deserve more comments from strangers. Next thing you know you submit every photo to a group, then you stop posting photos as regularly, thinking what if some anonymous person sees that not all of my photos are fabulous (sharing with family & friends goes right down the drain).

Next the thought creeps into your head that maybe you aren’t posting enough, and people you don’t even know, who thought you were creative, might forget about you if you don’t prove on a regular basis that you do belong and are part of the group.

It is at this point that you join the 365 pool, where you force yourself to post a photo everyday and submit it to the group for review and comments. Don’t get me wrong, I think chronicling your life is a great and fascinating idea, it can be extremely introspective, especially upon review. What I don’t always get is the need to showcase your life.

Then again maybe I’m just jealous of the attention that other people get…I mean, I do have a blog for god sakes (though i’m pretty sure no one reads it).

To see the interactive image follow the link below the image, quicktime is required to view.

I say I use Architectural Desktop, but I really only use the Autocad functions. I really need to learn the modeling and design functions of Desktop, I’m sure it would save time. Also, put Revit on my list of programs to learn.

Location: Edwards, Colorado