Building a real Finding Place was both fun and rewarding. Watching her face light up as she pulled something new out of the treasure chest every day was awesome. We had some frantic mornings just like when you forget to move the “Elf on the Shelf” because we occasionally we forgot to put something in there (read on for how to solve that problem).

Materials

• Cheap pre-made treasure box
• Wood stain marker (or a can of stain and a brush). #235 Cherry gave the look I was after
• Glue
• Wooden Dowel (3/8”)
• Thin, flat wood strip (1/4” x 1/8”)
• Paint (blue & gold)
• Fuzzballs (for the barnacles)
• Black sharpie
• Thin, braided rope/twine

Materials Reference Images
Treasure box (before)	Stain marker	Krazy Glue
Barnacles	Turquoise & gold paint	Thick string

Steps

1) Cut

• (A) Cut the wooden dowel into 1/4” pieces.
  • You’ll want enough pieces to place all over the treasure box so it looks like its bolted together
  • Sand the top edges around to give it a hand-made beveled look
  • You’ll need about 40 of them.
  • Make extras because they sometimes come loose and roll to unreachable areas under your couch
• (B) Cut the thin strips of wood into short pieces to look like reinforcements
  • If you use balsa it’s soft enough to just cut with scissors
  • Lay the strips out around the treasure chest to make sure the pieces fit together
  • The lid will need lots of small pieces
• (C) Drill two holes on either side of the treasure box to create “handles” from string

INSERT SANDING IMAGE

Step 1 Reference Images
My fine-toothed saw was MIA so I attacked it with this beast	Snip snip	I forgot to take a picture of the holes, but you can get the idea

2) Paint

• (A) Stain the inside of the treasure chest
  • The marker takes longer than a brush or rag would, but it creates a interesting wood-grain effect.
• (B) Paint the outside of the box
  • Be sure to take the metal latch off before painting
• (C) Paint the thin wood strips gold
• (D) Paint the dowel gold
  • You also need to paint the tops after we sand them

Step 2 Reference Images
Inside of the treasure chest before stain	Stain the inside of the treasure chest	Remove the lock	Paint the wood parts gold

3) Glue

• (A) Layout the strips around the box
  • You don’t have to use this pattern. I played around until I found one I liked.
• (B) Glue the painted wooded strips around the box
  • I used Krazy glue for everything because it dries fast & I was in a hurry. Clamping everything down and using wood glue would have required forethought
• (C) Glue the knobs around the box
  • Don’t forget the sides too!
• (D) Glue the top strips
  • It looked way cooler with the gold parts across the top too

Step 3 Reference Images
Gather all the wood parts ready to glue	Glue the strips to the box	Glue the knobs on

4) Finishing Touches

• (A) Thread some twine/string through the side holes to create handles.
  • Leave enough extra on the inside to tie knots so they don’t pop out

Step 4 Reference Images
Handles outside	Handles inside	Done!	Party with Stick and tasty barnacles

Printing the Train Set

While looking for more things to put into my daughter’s Finding Place (from Amazon's Tumble Leaf show) I found a model in Microsoft’s 3D Builder from the now defunct Remix 3D (which Microsoft mysteriously killed off).

I noted that the printed models fit perfectly into the wooden train track set we already had! Instead of buying nice hand-made wooden train track sets for $60, I could print cheapo, plastic ones for $0.06. For a 2-year-old, they’re perfect. The tradeoff was that it took a long, long, long time. I’ll post pictures around 2030 when all the parts are finished printing.

The tracks took a few hours per piece to print but they came out nicely. The files are available for download below.

3D Model Files
Bridge Arch	Bridge Ramp	Bridge Span
Caboose	Cargo	Passenger
Engine	Track Connector	Track Left Turn
Track Right Turn	Track Split	Track Straight

Update

After hunting around I found that a similar (same?) train model is accessible now via the new Paint 3D app. Paint 3D

The Mettle plugins either didn’t show up or displayed an error when I tried installing them. Here’s how to solve it.

Issue

After installing the Adobe Mettle Skybox 360/VR plugins for either Premiere Pro or After Effects, you get the message, “After Effects warning: The following plugins have failed to load. Please reinstall these plugins”. The installer looks like it works, but no plugins show up when you start the applications.

After you install the Skybox 360/VR plugins the Adobe installer does not show any errors.

But then you get an error when starting After Effects. The plugins show up under the effects list, but throw an error if you try to use them. Premiere Pro doesn’t show any error, and the plugins won’t show up at all.

Some of the errors:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\7.0\MediaCore\Mettle\VRPlayer.pm
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC 2017\Support Files\Plug-ins\Effects\Mettle\skybox-blur-ae.aex
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC 2017\Support Files\Plug-ins\Effects\Mettle\skybox-chromatic-aberrations-ae.aex
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC 2017\Support Files\Plug-ins\Effects\Mettle\skybox-color-gradient-ae.aex
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC 2017\Support Files\Plug-ins\Effects\Mettle\skybox-denoise-ae.aex
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC 2017\Support Files\Plug-ins\Effects\Mettle\skybox-digital-glitch-ae-aex
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC 2017\Support Files\Plug-ins\Effects\Mettle\skybox-fractal-noise-ae-aex
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC 2017\Support Files\Plug-ins\Effects\Mettle\skybox-glow-ae-aex
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC 2017\Support Files\Plug-ins\Effects\Mettle\skybox-project2d-ae-aex
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC 2017\Support Files\Plug-ins\Effects\Mettle\skybox-rotate.aex
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC 2017\Support Files\Plug-ins\Effects\Mettle\skybox-sharpen-ae-aex

Solution

1. Try restarting Adobe Premiere or After Effects while holding the shift key down. This clears the plugin cache. If that doesn’t work, proceed to step 2.

2. Reinstall your graphics card driver from your vendor’s site, not, the drivers your operating system, such as Microsoft Windows 10, automatically installs.

I have an NVidia GeForce GTX 950 and was using driver version 22.21.13.8205 from Microsoft.

I replaced my display drivers, version 385.28, directly from NVidia’s website and both After Effects CC 2017 and Premiere Pro CC 2017 started up without any further issues.

Conclusion

This is another great example of why you should keep your video drivers up-to-date. The convenience of letting MS install my video drivers eventually caused an issue.

What is Project Felix?

Project Felix is a 3D tool targeting graphic designers, who may not have 3D experience, allowing them to easily create photorealistic images using ready-made 3D objects. The workflow is essentially drag, drop, tweak and render. A fifth step, “grow old waiting for renders”, or “render your computer unusable while you wait”, could be added and I’ll address that shortly.

Getting Started with Project Felix

Project Felix is a beta product (not ready for production) as of January 2017. You can see from the image below that this program has not yet even reached version 1.0, so I’m keeping that in mind while writing this review.

After a quick download and install, you are presented with a short intro video that shows an overview of what the product can do.

Setting up the Scene

As soon as you start the application you are presented with a clean interface that launches you right into a multi-step, guided tutorial to help you get started. The first step is to drag a model onto the stage.

After dragging the model of the stage is automatically centered nicely at the 0 positions of the X, Y, Z axis.

The second step is to change the material of the object on the stage. They conveniently show us a pulsing circle over the materials button teaching us that we can filter the assets list by materials, lights, or models. For anyone reading this with 3D experience knows that the quality of your materials library
can make or break the illusion of a 3D scene.

The third step is to move, scale and rotate the object to our desired position and size. Something to note is that if you simply move a part of the object without selecting then entire object, part of the model stays where it is. For example, I grabbed the bottle but not the cap, so it broke the model into 2
pieces. The bottle looks just fine where it is so I’m going to move on to the next step.

On the fourth step, we are offered an opportunity to add a background image to the scene. Clicking the background icon changes the properties window on the right-hand side to allow us to select a background image from our personal library.

I imported a photo I took while in Seattle, WA of a scenic view overlooking the water at sunset. The scene’s horizon was immediately located and the 3D axis of the object aligned to the scene. Great!

On the fifth step we are offered an opportunity to change the scene perspective. The hot keys for the orbits pan and zoom are not the typical Q,W,E control keys used in many other 3D applications so that may bother some users. At least the controls of 1,2,3 for orbit, pan and zoom, are next to each other and not
splattered all over the keyboard like in Blender (my 3D program of choice though after using it for 10 years I still find some of the keyboard controls irritating).

The sixth step just lets us know the render preview is there, if you haven’t already noticed it. You can see a real-time preview in the lower right hand corner of the material and model. Hovering my mouse over the real-time preview of the rendered scene shows that you can either make the preview full screen or
hide it entirely. Clicking the full screen icon makes the render full screen, so be prepared to wait.

Rendering

The next step is to set our render preferences. There are only 2 tab in this program, Design and Render.

With no “Edit Model” tab, it keeps the program focused on the designing the scene. While experienced 3D artists may find this limiting, there are plenty of other 3D programs to choose from. I wouldn’t be surprised if Adobe chose to integrate Maxon Cinema 4D lite with Project Felix gave it a Dynamic Link as they did with After Affects. Maxon’s website states that if you have Adobe Creative Cloud, then you also have access to Cinema 4D Lite.

“Use Cineware to create new Cinema 4D scenes within After Effects CC and create all the 3D elements you need for your scene yourself. A unique advantage: If you don’t own a Cinema 4D license, you automatically have access to Cinema 4D Lite, which is included with After Effects CC and contains important basic features
that let you create your own 3D objects and scenes!”

Incorporating Adobe Dynamic Link would be a welcomed addition. Having the ability to edit my After Effects files and showing the results directly in Premiere Pro without an intermediate render is a huge time-saver.

There are minimal options under the render tab. Your choices for rendering in this version of the beta product (v 0.1.1) are PNG, and a layered PSD. I’m going to choose the PSD so we can manipulate the object as layers. You may also choose the quality of the output.

Render Speed

Choosing a high-quality output could take a long time to render out the scene depending on the power of your 3D video card. On clicking render it pegged my CPU to 100%. That was disappointing because it shows that Adobe is using CPU to render the scene instead of GPU.

I’m using an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950, have an Intel i7-2600 @ 3.6Ghz with 16Gb RAM. For an image of the bottle at 1024x768, using the broken glass material the comparison of render times are as follows:

• Low quality: 11 Minutes
• Medium quality: 40 Minutes
• High:
• Highest: 1 hour, 39 minutes

You may wonder why it takes so long to render out a scene even at low quality. Project Felix is using ray-tracing. More specifically it’s using V-Ray, a well-known, powerful, Academy Award winning (in Scientific & Technical category) 3D software. It will be interested to compare render times later when GPU rendering is available.

When you’re done the tutorial, you’re advised on how to restart it should you wish to go through the steps again.

The previous step offered to notify me when the render is done but I didn’t see anything pop up when it finished. It’s possible that because the Project Felix window was in focus, we didn’t get a popup. I tried rendering it out again, minimizing the window and watched to see what would happen. Unfortunately the
notification was in the actual render pane itself, and it goes away quickly. It would be nice to get a system notification so I could minimize the program and work on something else. It would be even better to set up batch renders using the Adobe Media Encoder. I’ll suggest it as a feature for a future version. It has been suggested that Adobe could be planning to offer rendering in the cloud.

Final Scene Render Comparison

Full quality render Low quality render

Usability

Changing Image Output Size

In the export window you are not able to change the size of the image your exporting. The text is grayed out.

You’ll need to change the image size in the Design Tab under “Camera”, not under export. A 3D artist may find this normal, but it may confuse a designer who is used to working in software like Photoshop and Illustrator.

Rendering multiple images bug

After my render had finished I changed the name of the file and the render quality, however, the render option was not available. The file had been exported but the Project Felix interface still reported that it was still rendering. Looks like a bug.

User Preferences

When you close the project it does not recall the last place you saved the output of a render. I had previously saved the output to another location. It’s a small, but annoying lack of convenience feature which will likely be addressed as the product matures.

Logging in Remotely, or using Terminal Services

This is not really an issue, or even a surprise, but I was curious how Project Felix would handle a remote session. I often need to remote into my desktop to use software not installed on my laptop. I was on my laptop and needed to continue testing the render times. Unfortunately, when I clicked ‘Render”,
nothing happened.

Conclusion

While Project Felix may be in beta, it certainly created some impressive results. It needs a great deal of performance tweaking, most notably moving rendering from CPU to GPU, but according to an Adobe employee, this is planned. Jeanette Mathews, Admin, Adobe Systems, Inc. commented on December 14, 2016:

An issue with 3D software is commonly that there is a tradeoff between ease-of-use and quality. Adobe is addressing that gap with Project Felix. If you have ever needed a shot of an object, you couldn’t find it in your stock image library, or the product angle or lighting was wrong, this could be the answer you have been looking for. I’d recommend giving it a try.

I was working for a company that was paying out thousands of dollars annually to Symantec for security certificates. It cost them hundreds of dollars in consulting fees to even renew & apply them to their servers. They equated paying more for being more secure. Other than the warranty guarantee behind the certificate, it doesn’t work that way. I put a stop to them being gouged for hours of labor that really only took a couple minutes, then began to search for cheaper alternatives and found plenty of solutions with equal levels of security.

For people running their own servers who just want a secure connection they can either create a self-signed certificate, which comes with its own set of problems, pay for a cheap certificate, or create free, signed certificates using Let’s Encrypt.

Let’s Encrypt is a free, certificate authority providing SSL/TLS X.509 certificates. If you have root access to your server, you can use it to automate the certificate signing process. If you are on shared hosting, it’s a bit trickier. I’ve outlined the steps to creating free, signed certificates when using a CPanel environment, but the generated certificates can be used on whatever hosting environment you have, provided you have access to upload your own certificates.

Issue

You want an encrypted connection on your shared hosting, but you don’t have a dedicated IP address. Web browsers that don’t support SNI will give false warnings. Don’t worry, it can be done.

To summarize the process, you’ll run letsencrypt on your local computer, create the files & folders on your remote computer

Solution

Creating the Certificates

1. After downloading and installing letsencrypt from github on your local computer, you’ll want to open up a terminal and create certificates for domain and sub domain (www), manually. The command to create the certificate manually for both “www” and “without www” is as follows:

   1	$> ./letsencrypt-auto certonly -a manual -d yourWebsite.com -d www.yourWebsite.com

   

2. After following some simple prompts, letsencrypt will request that you create some folders and files on your remote web server. If you accidentally hit ENTER the process will fail and you may need to start over because the certificate authority won’t be able to find those files & folders.

3. Next, create folders and secret file letsencryt requires on your remote server. You can use File Manager in CPanel, or just SSH to your server. After creating them hit ENTER. If you’ve done it correctly, you’ll get a message congratulating you.
   

4. If you’re creating multiple certificates you may wish to copy the pem files to another location. I created folders for each of my domains and put the certificates in there.

Installing the Certificates on Cpanel

1. Log into your CPanel
2. Go to Certificates and Paste in the pem file (cert.pem)
3. Install & Manage -> Update cpanel to use this certificate. “
4. Choose domain -> autofill by domain, Paste in your private key, click “Install certificate”

Your connection is now secured!

Each time I return to this store and sit in this room, my decorations, like while working in an office, are here to make me happy, I have a 70” main screen to work on (and a few others), my OneDrive has all of my sync’d documents, and I can get right to work.

Feel Free to Move About

It took me a few day of experimenting and playing around with this amazing new tool to really get it. Sure, it was fun putting holograms in ridiculous places around the house, the [few good] games are mind blowing, and it’s just plain cool to put a 100” movie screen where ever you want, but it’s really more than that. This is liberation from being stuck at a desk (OK, you could use a laptop), or having to use a fixed sized screen (hah! can’t change this on your laptop now can you). You are untethered from traditional working environments. I don’t mean unhitched from data, but rather that fixed environment where you have your screen, keyboard, tower/laptop+docking station.

Hands-free Video Entertainment

It hit me while I was cooking breakfast. I typically will put on a set of Bluetooth headphones, stream a podcast or some news like Tekthing on YouTube, and listen remotely while in the kitchen. I could bring my laptop in there but I’d rather not splatter egg batter on the screen. Also, anything that has been in close personal contact with airline tray tables and their world class collection of traveler sneezes is banned from my kitchen. Now, I’ll just hang a 50” screen somewhere while I cook and dismiss it when I’m done.

Rethink your Decorations

I see lots of people putting TV’s over their fireplace as their centerpiece. I personally don’t think the big, flat black boxes are that attractive and prefer works of art. Now I don’t have to choose. I can plop down on the couch and put huge TV over the fireplace, watch NetFlix or something, and don’t want to choose between decor and entertainment.

Take a Break From Your Desk

Tired of sitting at your desk but still need to get work done? Go sit on the couch and tile the walls with your apps. You could bring your laptop, they are sometimes heavy, get hot on your lap, or maybe you just prefer working with multiple screens. While in a meeting, you can leave pertinent information floating in your field of view for quick reference. Just like I noted my impulse to touch my desktop screen after working on a touch-screen laptop after a while, now I find myself just expecting to be able just ask Cortana for something while walking around. It has changed my thinking process.

I leave info where it need it. There is a Twitter feed off to the side of my work environment so I’m not distracted by the toaster popups every time someone tweets something. I have a Duolingo window floating across from my armchair so when I plop down to relax it reminds me that I should be brushing up on Spanish. Muy Bien!

Think Beyond the Screen

I can see a wave of applications hitting in the next few months as more developers get their hand of this new tool. It will dawn on them too, that we have to think beyond being stuck behind a screen. Being able to augment your environment, and having those digital assets recognize physical objects, will open great new possibilities.

I searched the forums and Answer section but found nothing useful. I was using version Unity 5.4.0b17 on my laptop, and opened it using version 5.4.0b22-HTP (for HoloLens development) on my desktop. The scene opened up without any details, just a yellow screen.

I was going through the Tanks tutorial and luckily the instructor had mentioned “Auto Build”, which led me to the solution.

Issue

Upon opening Unity you get the message, “Lighting data asset ‘LightingData’ was built with a different version of Enlighten. Realtime GI will not be used. Please rebuild lighting for this scene.”

Solution

1. Click “Main Camera”
2. Look under “Other Settings”
3. Click “Build” (if you have “Auto” unchecked)
   

You’ll see the progress bar start to crank away as Light Transport, etc. updates. I had unchecked “Auto” after saving between scenes it took forever to rebuild the lighting in the scene.

Lighting is back!

So my Microsoft HoloLens arrived this week and I haven’t been this excited since I got my first Nintendo!

I placed the order on Thursday, and it was at my door, straight from China, by Tuesday. I was a part of the 3rd wave (developers are receiving the device in waves as they become available) and was scheduled to get mine around September/October. This was an awesome surprise!

My house now looks like something out of a video game with holograms hanging around everywhere and after using it for a few days it’s starting to dawn on me just how revolutionary this is.

The packaging was sleek and well-designed. It was obvious they put some effort into it (my wife was a packaging designer so I look for these things now). The rounded case it came with snugly fits the device with a space saved in the middle for a charger and pointing device (aka, the clicker).

I put it on and in a few seconds I was going through the initial tutorial. In a few minutes I had gotten the hang of it and was putting holograms around my workbench.

First Things I noticed

It’s surprisingly comfortable to wear

After figuring out how to balance it on my head, I forgot it was there. I had to play around with it a bit. At first I had it resting on the bridge of my nose, like glasses, but then realized I could move the unit forwards and backwards along the support tracks. The space is there to accommodate people who wear glasses. Due to the supports, you don’t feel like there’s a weight on the front of your face.

It’s very responsive

Once of my biggest fears was that clicking would be a painful, laggy or slow. It’s not. When I draw on my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 with the included pen, there is a noticeable lag from when the pen touches the screen to actually making a line. That irritates me to the point of not using it often. When I click with my finger in menu’s with HoloLens, it’s immediate and accurate.

Holograms are mobile

When you walk room to room, you can bring your hologram, or whatever you’re doing with you. I placed apps on the walls around my house, over the picture frames, in corner, etc. I’m still experimenting with how accurate the scans are.

Forget Dual Monitors

While I was in a meeting, I put my OneNote items on one wall, then a few more notes on another wall. I had all the info I needed at a glance. At that point it really clicked about how flexible working could be.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I see the disk space available?

Yes, you can see how much storage space is left. Cortana is useless for this (and most other things).

1. Open the main main menu
2. Settings
3. Storage

Is it useful?

Yes. Absolutely yes. Every hour I’ve spent with HoloLens has my mind racing with new applications. I can see a flood of apps coming out as developers wrap their heads around this new tool. When I got my first wearable, a Samsung Gear Neo 2, I noticed how much less frequently I needed to pull out my phone for various things. I’ve noted that when I’m not wearing the HoloLens I’m starting to feel I need to take extra steps to go to a computer and performs simple tasks that would be done if I was wearing it.

Can a casual user (non-technical/IT person) figure out how to use it?

Yes. I handed it to my wife, and after doing the tutorial, she was soon placing puppies and rainbows around the house.

Can I handle if you have a lot of clutter around your room?

Yes, with exceptions. It will map general mounds of stuff OK, just don’t expect pinpoint precision. If something seems off, just click the area/wall/items with nothing selected and HoloLens will remap it. I’m going to try an experiment of setting up books and see how precise it is later.

How does it handle black, glossy, glass or mirrored surfaces?

Pretty well, depending on just how dark the material is. It mapped my leather couches fine (Conker liked to bounce on the couches). If your desk is a dark black, reflective color (shiny) your mesh will probably have some issues and game characters will run through your desk.

Can I go jogging with it, or work out wearing HoloLens?

HoloLens is designed for indoor use so unless you have a massive track in your house it probably won’t work so well (plus it’ll fly off your face). Could you put it on and hop on an exercise bike? Sure! The headband would get sweaty and gross though so putting a liner over the forehead band would be a good idea.

Can you only put Holograms around the room or is there more to it?

There’s more to it. You CAN create total immersion experiences. After I fired up HoloTour for the first time I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. You can look around in 360 degrees watching live video footage and interact with the tour. If I’d had this in grade school I would have paid attention in history classes. The Parthenon in all its glory in front of me would have been way more interesting than the tiny picture in a book with some obscure date to memorize.

Is the Field of View (FOV) a problem?

It’s certainly a limitation of the development edition and it can take you out of the experience if you let it. The apps launch perfectly within your FOV, and if you scale something to appear larger, just take step back. The version is clearly aimed at developers who can overlook flaws (“don’t worry, we’ll fix it in production!”) for the sake of envisioning the final product.

Can I use it while looking at my physical computer monitor so I have 2 screens?

I wouldn’t recommend it. The physical computer monitor looks like you’re seeing through a pair of glasses not prescribed for you. It’s be better to just push the HoloLens up on top of your head, like sunglasses, while looking at a monitor.

Can I use Remote Desktop (RDP)?

Yes! I often have a remote session open to some server, and this worked quite well. The Microsoft Remote Desktop Preview allows you to save your credentials and shortcuts to servers.

Can I use my own keyboard and mouse?

Yes, you can use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. For 2D application it’s much, much easier to use a mouse. I hope development improves the experience in to a mix of touch & physical because I’m pretty hooked on my touchscreen laptop.

Does what you see look like the holo recordings & screenshots we see online?

No. When you take a video or screenshot, it looks like anti-aliasing is turned off. When you’re using it, the images are vivid, bright and detailed. The best pictures I took were under fluorescent lighting. If you’ve found a better way to capture images, leave me a note in the comments.

Does it get hot on your head?

Nope. It’s passively cooled and the only warm part I’ve felt was on the top so it vented upwards so you don’t feel it.

Can you stream video, like YouTube?

Yes. I downloaded HoloTube, an unofficial client, and streamed full episodes of Tekthing while cooking breakfast. I’m not sure if HoloLens or HoloTube goes to sleep after not detecting any activity for a while, or if it got confused by me standing too close to the front of the cabinets for too long, but the app did pause twice.

Can you comfortably wear glasses while using it?

Yes. I’m not a morning person so my eyeballs don’t really want to accept contact lenses before having at least 2 cups of coffee, so I wear glasses without issue. I had to get used to the best way to put on the device, but no I just slip it over my head without fiddling around.

Can you drink coffee while wearing HoloLens?

Yes, though you’ll have to tilt your head up more and it usually fogs the interior lens for a moment. If I couldn’t drink coffee while using a computer I’d have to change change careers.

Final Thoughts

As I tried various apps, it kept hitting me of just how different the experience was from using a desktop computer. My brain quickly began to expect the holographic images to be where I left them. It was really liberating to be able to freely move around the house, hands full of stuff, or working in different rooms, and be able to call up whatever tool I needed.

I’m a fan of wearable device to start. My hands are usually full with a laptop in one, and a coffee cup in the other as I dash between meetings. Being able to just say “answer” is great instead of having to dig through my pockets while driving. Adding a full blown Windows 10 computer that I can control with my voice is amazing.

Would I recommend this device to any early adopters? Absolutely, yes, no doubt about it. Does it work perfectly? Nope, but we’re just entering the holographic computing era. It’ll be interesting to see what creative uses people come up with for this new tech. I certainly have some ideas… ;)

Issue:

You are getting an annoying popup that VMware can’t find some non-existent disk and you have to click “Continue” until it goes away every time you launch VMware Workstation.

Solution

1. Edit the ‘favorites.vmls’ in your roaming directory:

   1	C:\Users\[your_user_name]\AppData\Roaming\VMware\

2. Find the bad entry and delete all of the references to the missing image, then save it.The file contents look like this:

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

   vmlist1.config = "D:\vm\W7\Windows 7 Professional.vmx" vmlist1.DisplayName = " Windows 7 Professional " vmlist1.ParentID = "0" vmlist1.ItemID = "1" vmlist1.SeqID = "0" vmlist1.VmPath = "/vm/|75u5633deg3tt8f797r/" vmlist1.IsClone = "false" vmlist1.CfgVersion = "8" vmlist1.Dest = ""

What used to be limited to the Linux & OSX crowd, is [finally] available on good ‘ole Windows. We only had to wait 20 years for it. Yes, I know there were alternative Explorer shells, but most were pretty buggy, and I prefer native features. After you get used to having virtual desktops, it becomes hard to work without them. Here’s are the steps to take to get started.

Issue

You have need several windows open when working on certain types of programs. Minimizing & maximizing them is a hassle. Enter the beauty of virtual desktops.

Instructions For How to Create a New Virtual Desktop

1. Click the icon next to the Cortana icon
   
2. Click the “New Desktop” icon at the bottom right side of your screen
   

That’s all there is to it! Now how do we actually use them? Read on.

Instructions on How to Switch Between Virtual Desktops in Windows 10

After creating a new desktop, how do you actually switch between them? See below for the solution.

Using the Mouse to Switch Between Virtual Desktops

1. Click the icon next to the Cortana icon
   
2. Choose your desktop
   

Using a Keyboard to Switch between Virtual Desktops

1. Press Ctrl + Win + Right/Left arrow keys

We can all appreciate the benefits of security updates in Windows, but for system administrators, it means routinely checking what the update breaks. If you’ve carefully read through the release notes and checked them against your custom configurations, upgrades can be a minor annoyance, but manageable. The fun is when upgrades break stuff and instead of working on your projects you need to search blogs like mine for a solution.

Issue

After Windows 10 updates itself, you may find that VMWare Workstation, or VMware Player, networking stops working. Here’s one way you can fix this.

Solution

1. Open the Control Panel -> Networking - > Adapter
2. Click your Adapter and choose Properties.
3. Install -> Service -> VMware - > VMware Bridge Protocol
4. Re-connect your adapter in VMware

I fired up a Virtual Machine that I’d created months ago to update a Let’s Encrypt certificate and noticed that the date showed as January, but it was actually April. This particular VM didn’t have VMWare Tools installed [yet] so it wasn’t picking up on the host’s time. It’s no problem to fix, just update the time using NTP.

Issue

Updating your system’s with NTPDate throws the error, bind() fails: Permission denied, or “The NTP socket is in use, exiting”.

Solution

1. Install NTPDdate

1
2

sudo apt-get install ntp
sudo apt-get install ntpdate

2. Stop the NTP service

1

sudo service ntp stop

3. Update the date and time

1

sudo ntpdate time.nist.gov

Common Errors

Error: bind() fails: Permission denied

You need to execute the command using sudo.

Error: The NTP socket is in use, exiting

The reason you get the socket error is because NTP is already using that socket. You need to stop the process, force an update, then restart the daemon.

Heading to NY

In 2015 there were demos across the US but I couldn’t make any of the dates or locations with my long working hours and crazy schedule. I even called the Microsoft flagship store in NY and tried to sneak my way in via the store’s tech support but the guy told me in his New Yorker accent, “nice try, but ya ain’t getting in”. I called other Microsoft stores but most their sales reps hadn’t even heard of HoloLens.

When I saw the Tweet that more demos opened up in May of 2016 I jumped at the chance and scheduled a mid-week appointment. By the time I got my wife scheduled too so she could see what the heck I’d been talking about non-stop (and make the $3,000 purchase conversation sound less crazy) the slots had been filled up.

We drove from PA to NJ and took a train from Secaucus to NY. By the time we arrived we had about 20 minutes to run from Penn Station to their 5^th Ave location. Traffic was at a stand-still so Uber was out of the question. We ran the 1.9 miles through heavy pedestrian traffic, while calling the store to give them our ETA, and arrived out of breath, very sweaty and 5 minutes late.

The guy working the demo scheduling told us, “you’ve missed your time so the people waiting on stand-by got your slot. You’ll have to wait and see if something opens up in another time-slot”. At that point I told him that we had just travelled 100 miles, only had 1 purpose for this day, and weren’t going anywhere until we got in. I guess we looked crazy enough that he went inside and shortly came back out to tell us they’d work us in. Score!

The Experience

We got in the elevator and were taken up to a floor where it looked like they’d erected constructed a hallway and some temporary rooms for this. Then we each were led into separate rooms to get started.

Room #1 - RoboRaid

The guy working the room told me I’d be playing something called RoboRaid. If you haven’t seen RoboRaid video, it’s pretty mind-blowing. It’s a game where robots burst through the walls around you and you have to duck, dodge, and shoot at the robots in the real-space around you. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. On a side note, they told me I got the highest score they’d ever had! Maybe from getting two robots at once with my shots? Anyway, I left the room with a smile a mile wide.

Room #2 – Product Demo

The second room was empty except for a table with nothing on it. After putting on the device the guide turned on the demo and a humungous watch appeared in 3D, slowly rotating. When I looked at the information points, or hotspots, on the watch more information would come up. Then he showed me how that could be applied. He showed me a heat map on the model that revealed where users were looking the most, and where they expected to see more information, or what they were just curious about. Neat.

Room #3 – Holo Studio

The third room had some bookshelves with colorful figures on the walls. The guide had me start a 3D painting program called Holo Studio where I could create scenes in middle of the room, paint them, and use gestures or my voice to manipulate them. She then explained that the objects on the shelves had actually been created in Holo Studio and printed from Windows 10 using a 3D printer. Cool!

Conclusion

My wife commented to me afterwards, that she was glad she went with me, because she totally understood now why I had been so enthusiastic about HoloLens. I tweeted earlier that I’d quit my job if this had enough potential and I was impressed enough. Well I was blown away and am definitely purchasing HoloLens to explore the potential opportunities.

Issue

When you click “Play” in Unity, you receive an error like, “Assets/Holograms/Support/Fitbox/Fitbox.cs(2,2): error CS0234: The type or namespace name ‘WSA’ does not exist in the namespace ‘UnityEngine.VR’. Are you missing an assembly reference?” Your first warning was when you opened the tutorial files and you received this message that you ignored:

There are actually a couple things you may need to fix.

Solution

First, you need the special technical preview of the Unity editor, not your regular editor. Secondly, you’ll need to head to GitHub and download the updated version of the Unity project. Microsoft created the tutorial with an old version of Unity. The original files on the Microsoft Developer Hololens Tutorial are old. You’ll need the latest version of the Unity editor and project files. The special version won’t overwrite your current editor. You can have both installed at the same time.

Steps

1. Download and install the Unity editor for Hololens.
2. Install the UWP Runtime.
3. Download https://github.com/Microsoft/HolographicAcademy/tree/Holograms-101
4. Unzip the file
5. Copy the Assets & ProjectSetting folder into your Origami folder. It should overwrite the existing Assets & ProjectSettings folders.

After upgrading dozens of Yoga Pro 2’s to Windows 8.1 Pro and Windows 10 I noted some problems. They can easily be easily fixed, but you have to know what you’re looking for. During the upgrade process, the Lenovo’s gave me less issues than my Dell XPS, which completely froze during the process. Two of the more irritating upgrade problems were 1) the screen flickering at random times. 2) the laptop being sluggish and unusable after waking up from sleep mode. Here’s how I fixed the first issue.

Issue

Screen flickers randomly after upgrading to Windows 10.

Solution

1. Go into Intel HD Graphics options.
2. Click battery, then disable panel self-refresh.

Resources

• Drivers for Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro
• Guide to upgrading Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro to Windows 10
• Lenovo Windows 10 model compatibility list
   

Uploading documents individually to SharePoint is OK for a one or two documents. But what if you have dozens or hundreds? While there are a few choices, only one of them is a good use of your time.

Issue

Uploading documents to SharePoint can be slow and tedious, but it doesn’t have to be.

Possible Solutions

Hire a temp to do the grunt work

Paying someone $20/hr until you found this blog earns you a life lesson that you should always assume there’s a better way, then Google for it until you prove yourself right.

Upload documents one at a time

Proves that your clicking skills are superb and that you have no respect for your time.

Batch upload documents as shown below

Save yourself lots of time and from hiring an intern who may drink all your coffee.

Steps

1. In your document library, click “Documents”.
2. Click “Upload Document” -> “Upload Multiple Documents”.
3. Select multiple documents then click “OK”.

Issue

When you try to run a 32 bit application on a 64 bit computer you get errors.

Solution

1. Open a terminal and type:

   $ sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

2. Now You can install your application

   $ sudo dpkg -i - -force-architecture yourpackage.deb

   This should work in most cases.