MY APARTMENT!!! or: Google SketchUp evaluation and review

N.B.: I don't normally post personal items on this blog, so this will be thinly disguised as a technology review article.

I'm moving into my own apartment soon, and I'm pretty excited about it. In preparation, I've been shopping for some furniture, as well as thinking about how I'm going to arrange the furniture in the limited space that I have. When I was at IKEA, I saw booths set up where people were using some custom software to design their furniture layouts, and I thought it would be a good idea to try to do some "interior design" of my apartment using some 3D software to better visualize the space.

I had heard good things about Google SketchUp, so I thought I would give that a shot. SketchUp is a pretty generic 3D modeling tool, but it seems like most people use it to create architectural designs. After watching some of the video tutorials on the site, and some experimentation with the interface, I was able to whip up something pretty quickly.

Voila:


This is the living room.




I'm considering maybe putting another shelf next to the TV for additional storage of books, DVDs, or whatever. On the other hand, it's good to have some empty space so that it's not too cluttered. There's also a pretty large storage closet in the apartment, so anything that doesn't need to always be conveniently available, I can just put in the closet.

Here's the bedroom.




The bedroom seemed small to me when I first looked at the floorplan and at the empty apartment, but now I've seen it in 3D with the furniture models, it's not so bad.

So in conclusion: Google SketchUp is pretty good. Pretty, pretty good. 9/10

Radiohead fanboy ambivalence

So Radiohead announced the release of a new album called "In Rainbows", coming out October 10th. I don't think I've ever seen an album announcement so close to its release date. Usually there's months of anticipation before a release, but this time they've decided to spring this on us on short notice. Like "Hey, new album next week!" Apparently, they're able to do this because they're no longer signed to a record contract; this is basically an "indie" release.

Because of their newly gained indie status, the band is also doing things a little differently in terms of distributing and pricing the release. The album is coming out as an online download at first. The price: "It's up to you." Kind of like selling it through an honour system. You can even download it for free, and they won't mind. (I'm going to give them a couple of bucks anyway. You know, for their trouble.) This is great and very forward-thinking of them, and gives fanboys like myself ammunition when discussing the greatness of Radiohead with fans of other, more inferior bands.

BUT

They're also selling the album as a boxset to be released later this year. The boxset will have CD and vinyl versions of the album, which makes for good collector's items to be sure. But the thing that's killing me is, there's a second CD with more songs, that's only available in the boxset. It's like they're selling a double album where you can download the first part for free, but you have to buy the special collector's edition for the second part. And how much is the boxset? £40. Or about $80 CAD. (Or $80 USD, ha!) That's a long way from "It's up to you."

I know I'll probably buy the boxset anyways, and the fanboy in me wants to forgive them, but this is really a rip-off. It's like they're trying to trick us into thinking they're really cool by giving away the free download, just so we'll be happy to spend the money on the boxset. I only hope they'll come to their senses and make the second CD available as a standalone purchase. Otherwise, I'm boycotting Radiohead forever. Oh, who am I kidding? I love you, Thom Yorke.