Another dead project

[Ross Macintosh]

The image here is a thumbnail link to a bigger version of the illustration.



I designed the condo housing project a few years ago and it has been held up by a zoning dispute ever since. I just learned yesterday that our provincial Supreme Court has overthrown my client's development agreement with the the elected town council who had approved the project. It is very discouraging
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img] but I did get to have fun rendering the project with xara - and I was paid.

Regards, Ross
PS. In the time the project was on hold, the structural engineer died

[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img]

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[This message was edited by Mike Bailey on August 24, 2000 at 04:03 AM.]

[Ross Macintosh]

The image here is a thumbnail link to a bigger version of the illustration.



I designed the condo housing project a few years ago and it has been held up by a zoning dispute ever since. I just learned yesterday that our provincial Supreme Court has overthrown my client's development agreement with the the elected town council who had approved the project. It is very discouraging
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img] but I did get to have fun rendering the project with xara - and I was paid.

Regards, Ross
PS. In the time the project was on hold, the structural engineer died

[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img]

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[This message was edited by Mike Bailey on August 24, 2000 at 04:03 AM.]

[arnold foss]

Ross

Pity about the project, (and the engineer); excellent image and I'm glad to hear you got paid for it. Earmarked your webpage after checking it out. Lot's of useful information and I hope you can find the time to continue.

Arnold

[caraman1]

The thumbnail looks great and wish I could see a larger version but when I clicked on it, I only got a white page, is it just me??

Dennis [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img]

Carillus Design


[This message was edited by Dennis Cox on August 11, 2000 at 11:27 PM.]

[gwpriester]

It worked for me, must be a slow server at i/us Dennis.

Ross, great rendering and striking design. Are you an architect as well as a renderer?

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Every So Humble...

[preid]

I cannot see the thumbnail (just an outline where it should be) and when I click on it I get a "file not found" message. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img]

Also, in the top left hand corner of the fourum an image (connecting to i-us.infopop.net) never loads. Paranoia sets in. Does anyone else have this happen to them??
Phil

[Ross Macintosh]

If you aren't seeing the thumbnail it would be because my server wasn't doing its job of serving the file.(So much for guaranteed 99.9% uptime!) So if you don't see it or the linked image it has nothing to do with i/us or its server.

I'm glad you guys like the image. In my work as an architectural designer I have found xara really useful for developing reasonably informative illustrations about my designs. Architects usually communicate with each other with pencil or pen sketches. Unfortunately even very good sketches often fail to adequately communicate the design ideas. Thankfully, I have found that with xara it is possible to bring enough realism to the ideas that others can "buy" into the ideas. I would love to be accomplished at 3d modeling for its ability to communicate but until I develope those skills I'll stick with xara.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[athena]

Phil,

I have the exact same problems.
<ul>
<LI>seeing the empty image box at the top of every forum --- I finally isolated that as being a problem with the page being written for IE visitors more than for Netscape vistors (not throwing any blame just observing a fact)
<ul>
<LI>since you posted that you had this problem, and since I was able to see one of Ross' other pages, I suddenly wondered how could Ross' server be selectively failing on that thumbnail and link but not on the other thumbnail and link??[/list]
<LI>I tried viewing this page in IE . . . aha! IE is more forgiving about interpreting HTML code.
<LI>Where my Netscape sees

http://www.designstop.com/misc/mahone bay.jpg

<LI>My IE sees the same link and compensates for the space and places a %20 in the URL. So I actually find the image at

http://www.designstop.com/misc/mahone%20bay.jpg

[/list]

OK so I wasn't losing sleep over this but I feel better having applied some HTML sleuthing skills and discovered why the thumbnail and image were missing.

Athena
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]

[Ross Macintosh]

Thanks for your investigation! I guess it's okay to post with the html but don't use file names containing spaces (that's always good html practice - but sometimes I'm sloppy). On my other post with a remotely served thumbnail I tried to have the html center the thumbnail. In my IE5 browser the i/us forum didn't render the <c></c> tag.

I understand that this forum software only allows editing of your posts for a limited time. I can't fix the problem with the space in the file name. If it's possible for our moderators to edit all posts without the time restriction - I ask that one of them edit my original post, taking out the spaces ( the "%20" ) in the two file names. In a moment I will upload new appropriately renamed files to my server.

Thanks, Ross


<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[This message was edited by Ross Macintosh on August 13, 2000 at 01:41 PM.]

[This message was edited by Ross Macintosh on August 13, 2000 at 01:42 PM.]

[athena]

It is a shame that one of the people with that vision didn't live to see your shared vision come to life.

I don't know how the canadian land developers are but since I live in a part of Texas that still has beautiful trees I found myself wondering if the untouched landscape wasn't just as beautiful. When I think of Canada, I always think of beautiful trees and natural landscape. (Yes, I'll go so far as to say, I think of Canada as pristine,pure, and beautiful. Probably this is a "greener on the other side" issue)

Down here some residents have gotten angry because the developers or the contractors (hard to pinpoint who is to blame) just plow away all the big beautiful trees to build strip centers (which we don't need)when some of the trees could have been saved if the developer had been more careful. Then they go back with a landscaper and plant these shrubs or spindly little trees that just don't compare to the beautiful old trees that used to live there.

I live in the Houston area near The Woodlands, which used to be owned by the Mitchell family (of Mitchell Energy fame). When they(the Mitchells) were the stewards of The Woodlands, they made rules for developers that emphasized the preservation of the many beautiful trees in that area. That is the kind of land development I prefer. You just have to see The Woodlands to appreciate it (where there is at least the illusion of nature and "progress" co-existing).

I'm not blaming land owners, mind you. Here in Texas, they tax the land so a person has to figure out the best way to make money off of their land so they can pay their taxes (and raising the rent on a bunch of trees is just plain hard [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] ). But if no one(not the land owners, or the developers, or the contractors,) is to blame, how do things like disappearing vegetation happen?

Then we hear the bigwigs (presidents and vice presidents) tell the US citizens (yep, I know Canada and Mexico are American countries just like the US) come on the TV and say we need to preserve our natural resources. But not one legislator really gives land owners incentive to protect the land. By taxing landowners, they actually penalize people for owning land (whether its only got trees, cacti, cattle, or condos).

I'm curious, is your Provincial Supreme Court, elected or appointed? One would hope that the Provincial Supreme Court had a larger picture in mind, not just larger dollar signs in their pockets. In Texas, we do elect our Texas Supreme Court Justices (a few at a time). But that leaves us with the problem of the voters (and I'm one of those guilty of this) not knowing who is the best judge for the job. It's hard for working people to keep track of who's ruled how on what.

Anyway, ramblings aside. That is a really nice picture. I'm really relieved you got paid for that fine work. To me, as a freelancer, not getting paid for work you did on good faith is pretty high up there on the tragedy scale. It would have been really horrible if the developer had said, "Sorry Ross, the deal didn't go through. . . we can't pay you."

Please keep posting these wonderful pictures. And thank you for the neat advice on how you got the raggedy edge in the bank picture.

Thanks,

Athena
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]


*******
August 28, 2000
Chris,

I just tested the eternal editability feature that you turned on, way back when. It seems to be working so it looks like you got this feature to be universal within I-US forums.

Athena
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[This message was edited by T. Athena Hatton on August 27, 2000 at 11:12 PM.]