Fantasy Design Workday

Courtesy of Lunchbreath and Core77...

The Cavello Cup Roller Derby Championship

We finally saw our first roller derby match, which happened to be a quick walk over to Kezar Pavilion. Some great action, spills, fights, and speed. What I didn't get is the lack of decent protective gear; no real knee pads, hip or tailbone pads, and the helmets looked like filmsy party hats with single straps that didn't keep them on very well.

http://www.baycitybombers.com/

Celebrate the Dream, Reject the Nightmare

Nice infographic courtesy of David Neiwert on CrooksandLiars.com, on the anniversary of one of the most historic speeches in modern times...and also the day some shock jock used donations to pay for a publicity stunt in DC...

$38,000 iPhone at 36,000 feet

Not quite sure what Branson is thinking with the diamond studded and 22karat duty-free iPhones, but it's got my attention.

Glassing the Fins

So I have the fins fixed on, finally. I'll have to put another layer of glass on the joint to reinforce it, I don't think I was able to apply the glass rope quite right on the first pass.

Inception: WTF? Structural Chart

So we went downtown and saw Inception the other day, and aside from being very well done from a script and cinematic viewpoint, it was one of the most complex movies I've ever seen. A mix of Nolan's Momento and Batman Begins, with a dash of The Matrix and Mulholland Drive. Maybe even a little of DiCaprio's last movie, Shutter Island.

In order to try to make some sense of it after the first viewing, I pulled my own perceptions and some of others off the web to create a structural chart outlining the opening and final scenes, as well as one scene in the middle that was a bit cryptic.

Let me know if there's anything to be added, changed, or taken away. Enjoy...

PDF | JPEG (150 dpi)

Building a Surfboard

I'm finally starting the surfboard project, and I've just completed
the surfboard shaping stand out of 2x4's, pipe foam, and a steel
sawhorse. I'm using 2" XPS Dow blue foam, the same stuff I made models
from in design school, and I picked up fiberglass supplies today. I'll
do the shape design in CAD and print out a template on a plotter, and
I'm going to design the fins in Rhino and get rapid prototypes made
and glass them in.

Camelbak Test Team Cycling Kit

Awhile back I was asked to design a new cycling kit for the CamelBak office, which turned out to be a bigger investment in time than we had all originally thought due to some internal politics. Eventually, we settled on a design (notice the bottle in the back pocket) and had the digitally printed apparel made by Capo in Italy...

Inaugural ride...

One of the initial colorway ideas...

Here's the finished dining room table...

Side View of the table

Dining Table Progress

So I've been making our new dining room table over at the shop for a
few weeks now, and I'm getting pretty close. I had wanted to lay down
a base coat of varnish tonight, but a worm hole that I tried to fill
didn't take, so I'm filling it again. I won't be able to get back to
it until after my trip to Portland tomorrow. Overall it's looking
pretty good, and I've decided to use a water based coat I unstead of
an oil base to let more of the natural wood color show instead of
having a yellowish hue like our coffee table.

Bob Barker's BatBoat

So another one of Bob Barker's anti-whaling ships collided with another Japanese freighter recently, except this one was actually named the Bob Barker (I thought you always named ships after women?).

The previous Sea Shepherd boat funded by Bob Barker, which was wrecked awhile back after colliding with another whaling ship, seemed to take many of its design cues directly from Tim Burton's 1989 Batman...

Bat Boat:

Tim Burton's Batmobile:

iPad, iPad, iPad!

http://www.apple.com/ipad/

Santa Cruz Charger

I'm really enjoying the craftmanship in my new board, an 8' 10" Charger by Santa Cruz, shaped by Matt Yerxa and a slick cobra graphic logo. Makes me want to start shaping boards.

Flying Virgin America

Finally took a flight on Virgin America last week. Love the Marc Newsom-designed interior, purple mood lighting, stylish animated safety film, and you can't go wrong with a plane named "Go-Go Dancer" either. Aside from the slow user interface on the seat-mounted entertainment system, it's a pretty nice experience - and $114 to San Diego ain't too shabby.

CamelBak Stainless Steel Bottles

CamelBak's new stainless steel bottle line, with single wall and double wall insulated styles, are now available at REI!

Chinese Knock-Off Cars

So I thought some of the fake CamelBaks and JanSports I've come across were blatant forgeries, then I came across this story. The image above is a fake Rolls Royce that costs $60k, versus $500k. Below is a Mini Cooper copy (Mini Copier?).

 

SawStop!

So we have a Saw Stop table saw over at my shop, and judging by the two spent cartridges I found, someone had to use the safety feature a few times. It basically works by running a charge through the blade, and when it's interrupted by, say, someone's finger, it stops and retracts the blade in a fraction of a second by shoving an aluminum block into the blade. You end up destroying the blade and the aluminum stop cartridge (about $100 each) but it saves a digit!

 

Dreamliner 787

Still waiting to be trapped, er, travel to Asia on this plane, but this is why I can't for now.

CNC Plasma Cutter

Jason, another metal worker at the Joshua Tree Studios, has a CNC controlled plasma cutter, a very cool device he uses to make signage. I'm still thinking of something innovative to create with the thing. Originally used for routing wood, he removed the router attachment and replaced it with the plasma torch, then it's controlled via laptop pc running a program that translated DXF files.