3DEXPERIENCE World 2023 - In-person and Virtual

February 11 - 18, 2023, we had a great return after the long night in Nashville, TN, with Heather Hasz, Michael Lord, Chin-loo Lama, Kendra Wardlow, Yoshihiro Dobashi, Joe Lance, Justin Kidder, Kristen Wilson Syrek, Santiago Laverde, Brenda Monahan, Salih Majid Al Ani, Michel Cloutier, Ian Hogg, Utpal Kumar, Avelino Rochino, Frank Ruepp, Alice Caspari, Sal Lama, Dan Ferrucci-Herzberg, Mark Burhop, Steve Calvert, Ryo Tanaka, Ian Pilkington, Barb Schmitz, Erin Kimbrell, Kirby Downey, Tara Hodgetts, Ditmars Veinbachs, Dan Riffell, John Matrishon, Josh Mayes, Robert Jost, Brad Williamson, Karen Daley, Mark Martel, Luke Daley, Matthieu Fourcade, Mike Buchli, Mike Sabocheck, Rachael Naoum, Brad Meador, Saurav Saha, Mark Rushton, Pruthvi Venketesh, Ian Baxter, Betty Baker, Shigeo Kimura, Shravan Jodalli, Jeff Niederman, Brian Zias and many others.  Places visited include L27, Nashville Music City Center, Pins Mechanical Co., Downtown Nashville, Bakersfield and Pancake Pantry.  (Original post/backup link)

Facebook seems to be broken as a record of past check-ins and other events

In the past, I fairly consistently made frequent check-ins as posts to Facebook for places I visited.  However, it seems Facebook is increasingly deprecating this functionality.  You can still check-in quite easily, but old check-in posts are breaking.  The issue seems to be getting worse over time.  

Facebook was very reliable at one point.  You could look back through your timeline to see what you did, where you did it, and when you did it.  There was even UI that made it easy to choose a time period to peruse.  This was useful for so many reasons, not the least of which is planning for further activities in places you already visited, or providing information to others who planned to visit those places.  Let's also no forget the value of being able to stroll down memory lane.  

Here's an example of one such broken check-in.  It's a post in 2012 that simply says "Surprisingly good and unusual".  The information about where this check-in took place, including the town and other general information has been completely removed.

The posting is useless, other than to verify I did something with Allie on that day.  Fortunately, I also maintain a blog (this blog).  For this particular event, I was able to go back to the day in question and see that Allie and I visited Salem, MA.  I'm not sure which place in Salem is represented by this check-in, however.

I am also finding posts on Facebook where uploaded photos no longer display.  No amount of troubleshooting has restored those photos.  This seems to be particularly problematic for Life Events, where posts which contain one more more photos no longer show those photos.  (These are my own photos that I uploaded to Facebook myself, so it's not an issue of someone else controlling privacy settings or removing their account from Facebook.)  When you edit the post to see what's going on, Facebook seems aware that photos were included in the post because Facebook shows a loading window, but yet that loading window never resolves. When you reupload the photos to the post, you will find that you cannot summit the changed post. Facebook just errors-out on you when you try.

Additionally, even more recently, when I've checked-in at movie theaters for specific movies I'm about to watch, those posts are losing information about the movie.  This is happening for posts that are only a few weeks old, if that.

As of this minute, Facebook is not currently adding post to the Life Events page for any posts dated in 2023.

Given all these issues, and Facebook's track record of similar buggy behavior for other deprecated tools in the past, it seems prudent to no longer rely on Facebook as a record of my past.  This means I have to fall back on my blog.  It's a bit more work to create blog posts than Facebook posts, but at this point, it seems worth the extra trouble.

I've already started replicating past Life Events posts from Facebook on this blog.  

I've been on many business trips, and many of these are interesting destinations. However, I add personal trips as Life Events, yet I don't typically create Life Events posts for common business travel. 

Toby has passed

With Alice and Joie. Toby loved playing fetch on the stairs, barking at critters on TV, running on grass, long walks and hikes in new places, smelling the flowers (literally), lounging on our laps, and so much more. You are and will always be missed. (Original post/backup link)

NASA's Mars rover Perseverance noticed something on the surface of Mars...oops!

New Patent issued

WYSIWYG editor for creating and editing a feature control frame for geometric dimensioning and tolerancing in computer-aided design system

US Patent number: 11,556,234

Issued: Jan 17, 2023

Inventors: Abhijeet Narvenkar and Matthew Lorono

Here's a newly issued patent by Abhijeet Narvenkar and myself for the WYSIWYG GTOL editor now found in SOLIDWORKS that allows for the intuitive and quick creation of geometric tolerance (GD&T/GPS) feature control frames based on a series of connected user choices.

Patent link

Korean BBQ with beef, spicy pork and lamb!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Matthew Lorono (@fcsuper)