What is ...?

Here you can read my short evaluations concerning the different packages and institutes that are part of this site. Mind you, these are all opinions.

Technical University of Delft:
A university like any other. Proud of it's history (as it should be) and proud of it's current state (a bit chauvenistic). There are some very interesting people here though, and they alone make it worth my while.

Faculty of Architecture:
The faculty of Architecture in Delft distinguishes itself from other universities by providing education with a strong emphasis on design. This resulted in a lot of very interesting ideas, theories and philosophies being developed here, it also means that a lot of graduates from this faculty are incapable of practising real architecture. The Delft faculty of Architecture is considered to be the most artistical architecture faculty in Europe and this is generally a good thing. Still, many facets of the faculty are definitely out of date and the people in charge seem unwilling or even unable to keep up with current events. Computer classes are only now reaching a respectable level, which -in all honesty- is about ten years too late.

The Netherlands:
A country famous for it's liberal policies and social structure. Holland -as it is often but incorrectly called, since 'Holland' is only the west part of The Netherlands- has a long history of doing things differently from other countries, which has earned us a rebel reputation. This is not entirely correct and Jeremy Clarkson came very close with his remark "Holland ought to be called 'On-The-Other-Hand'..."
Especially in recent days, our society has moved slowly from a social to an economic entity. This has greatly affected the quality of our health-care and education up to the point where it's is no longer salvagable. In my opinion we are past the point of no return.

Rhinoceros 3D-nurbs modeling:
A great but also limited 3D software package that fills the gap between packages like AutoCAD and Maya. Rhino is accurate yet flexible. It can be used for both simple and complex problems. Although it is being continually improved and extended, the creators have managed to keep it simple. When it comes to intricate geometry code such as intersections and meshing Rhino is still somewhat more primitive than it's competitors, but since these are at least 4 times as expensive, this is to be expected. What isn't to be expected is the developers unwavering support.
During recent months the development has skyrocketed and the time ahead looks bright indeed.

Flamingo photoreal render engine:
An old yet robust render engine, which provides limited photoreal imaging through a simple interface. Flamingo is fast nor flexible compared to high end engines, but many people have managed to create stunning images with it. It's development has been picked up lately and new features have been added. However it seems that the core of the engine is outdated and will not be able to provide the high-quality people have come to expect from McNeel. Of course flamingo's absolute quality is constant and it will provide many users with all the tools they need, but for the more demanding people it's a good thing McNeel have ventured into the exiting world of Brazil r/s, one of the very best products available in the field.

XaraX vector illustration:
Xara Group Ltd. have demonstrated an amazing amount of seriousness and devotion to their work when Xara was first launched. Firmly rooted on the 'prequel' !ArtWorks which was developed as a 'test-platform' on a different operating system (Acorn Risc OS), Xara features about 99% of the tools one might need in day to day vector illustration. It has a lightning fast render-module (hand-coded, or so the legend goes) which outperformes pretty much every other package I've seen to date. That includes Macromedia Flash and Freehand and all Corel and Adobe products. XaraX is cheap, fast and easy to use. Unlike McNeel & Associates, the Xara-Group has adopted a rather careless attitude towards their software. Years went by without significant improvement of their flagship product and a recent re-release featured only minor (yet welcome) enhancements. Lately they have seemed to picked up development again. Although nothing tangible has yet emerged, there's a lot of talk about what the new version should be like...

Jasc Paint Shop Pro:
The common property of my software seems to be that they all adhere to the Kiss theorem. Paint Shop Pro is no exception to this. It's cheap, fast, versatile and has 25% of the features offered by competing packages, but 95% of the features you need (note that the competing packages also lack this remaining 5%).