If I ever get this bored...

If I ever get so bored to the point where I wanna do something like this and put it on YouTube, please slap me.

That being said, its pretty catchy!

Rigged up (Part 2)...

Well as per my last post, I was working on editing the rig shot I took with my camera.  And boy do I have a lot of Photoshop learning to do.  I working for hours, and I could not get it to look right at all.  Along comes Aubrey, and she sits at my desk for 10 minutes, and out comes something that I could never get near.

Here is her edit, thanks again Aubrey!

Rigged up...

Rig shots always intrigued me.  Such a cool effect to have the car look like its rolling fast, but I never really understood how it was done.  Wanting to learn more, I went out with Dave from Evolize photo a few nights ago for a quick learning session.  I learned quite a bit on how they work, and what makes the pictures work the way they do.  Looks like a lot of work, but I got the concept understood now.

Dave setting up his stuff while explaining to me how things work:

Live view for the win, wish I had it:

A 'not so final' look that I took with my camera attached to the rig setup.  Now I just gotta work on editing the rig out of the pic (which might take a while with my photoshop skills... or lack of):

A big thanks to Dave for taking the time to help a noob understand things!  Now I'm scared I'm gonna go buy a whole bunch of equipment.  Next thing to learn: working with lighting/flashes...

And now you know...

Racism in an Elevator- PSA '...And Now You Know' - - watch more funny videos

Subtle, yet effective...

That has always been one of my philosophies when it come to modding my cars.  A lot of times, its cheap little mods that contribute and make the biggest impact.  But what do I do when I've done all the little mods that I've wanted to do to my car?  Start on the parents car!

My parents drive a 2008 Audi Q7 3.6 in Quartz Grey.  Nice ride, a little too big for my parents in my opinion, but nice nonetheless.  And when I say drive, thats a bit of an exaggeration.  I think my brother and I have put more kilometres on it than my parents have.  My mom drives it to work and back, and it gets driven to church, but other than that, its a garage queen for the rest of its life.

This little mod visual mod came from a realization that we are going to be driving the beast to Las Vegas and back at the end of the month, and the thought of having stuff hit the perfect condition headlights, turnsignals, and foglights, I decided to get a film put on them to protect them.  But I didn't stop there.  Why not make the Q7 look more aggressive by darkening them up slightly, and why stop at the front when I can continue on the back?

A buddy of mine just started his own tinting business (Perfect Dark Tint, I remember the drunken night when it began), and just recently started doing headlight protection films.  Thanks to JC for being their part time booking specialist (inside joke), I was booked in to get the work done on Saturday.  On my truck previously, and on my Subaru, the lights are covered in a protection film with an 'iron' color to them.  Basically, they are very slightly smoked.  Enough to have a visual impact, but USUALLY (sorry JC), not enough darkness to attract attention from police.  The end result was awesome, a subtle aggression was added to the Q, and looks so much better.  Not to mention that all the lighting is now being protected from rocks and bugs.

So a big thank you to Steve Eng, and also to David Fung for doing such flawless work on my parents ride, and I will definitely be sending anyone I know that needs tint work to them.  I highly recommend them if you are looking for perfectionists, and very respectful tint specialists.  If you'd like to check them out, here is a link to their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Calgary-AB/Perfect-Dark/107492985955191

Now on to the pictures (sorry, some of them aren't the greatest as I forgot my camera at home, and took them with my phone):


Tailights and bumper lights before the film (the usual bright red taillight):

Shot of the rear after everything was done:

Front shot before the work (actually, the drivers side turn signal assembly lens was already done at this point):

Front end all done, I LOVE how the turn signals now hide/blend in with the vents:

Street Fighter!!!

Been sick with a nasty cold the last few days, so haven't been doing much except playing Super Street Fighter 4, and surfing the net.

Found these two fan-made short vids that I thought were both very well done, so I thought I'd put them up.  I remember dropping tons of money in the SFII machine that was at the laundromat by my jr high school, and still love the series to this day.

Swagger Wagon!!!

Saw this on another site, Toyota is really stepping it up!

(Part 2) The nerd in me...

Well, as per my previous post, I was pondering doing whole 'Android on iPhone' deal.  Well, I did it.  Picked up a used, but in very good condition iPhone 2G for stupid cheap on Friday, and proceeded to mess with it a bit when I got home from work.  By that night, I got the iPhone dual booting, and loading Android 1.6.  A few of the homies got so see it boot, but it would not run due to an error in the SMS subsystem.

Saturday morning, I got back to work on it, reloading everything, and now it is fairly functional.  I can make/receive calls with it, send/receive text messages, and browse the internet on WiFi.  The concept is there, and the work being done by others looks very promising.  I will continue to toy with it as things develop, it is still not ready for consumer use.  The developer teams still need to work on a few things such as cellular data, button mapping, battery drain, SD card emulation, and much more before the average user can use it.  That, and the pain in the butt process that is used to get it all on to the iPhone in the first place.

If you want more information on progress with this project, there is a ton of information here that I've been following: http://www.idroidproject.org/forum/

But since everyone likes proof with pictures, here is my Apple 'iDroid' sharing the spotlight with my daily phone (Google Nexus One):


Boot up screen:

Home screen:

System properties screen (with Nexus One on the same screen for comparison):