Category Archives: Fun Stuff

Cars/Racing, Fun Stuff

China GP – Another Wet–Weather Classic!

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Jensen Button Winning 2010 Australian GP

Jensen Button Wins China GP (Image courtesy GPUpdate.net)

Add a little (or a lot of) rain and Formula 1 shines. This race had many lead changes, pit strategies, crashes, and drama. It was a treat to watch. Again, Jenson Button stole the show in the wet, with his team mate Lewis Hamilton storming up to second place with some dodgy pit lane tactics and trademark super–aggressive passes. Fernando Alonso also stormed back from 17th place after a penalty from a jumped start. He’s a brilliant driver, but showed his true colors when he cut off team mate Felipe Massa while pitting. He takes the “winning at all costs” mentality to new heights!

Fun Stuff, Good Reads

Frederik Pohl Blogs too!

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Frederick Pohl Biography

The Way the Future Was
by Frederick Pohl

In memoriam: Frederik Pohl, Nov. 26, 1919–Sept. 2, 2013

If you’re interested in reading SciFi at all, take a look at SciFi great Frederick Pohl’s great blog The Way the Future Blogs. Lots of interesting stuff there such as anecdotes about his interesting life and other great writers he has known, book and story recommendations, etc. Extremely interesting and, of course, well–written!

Cars/Racing, Fun Stuff

Australian GP–What a Race!!

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Jensen Button Winning 2010 Australian GP

Jensen Button Wins Aussie GP (Image courtesy GPUpdate.net)

Wow! What a change this weekend proved to be in Formula 1 racing! Some wet weather at the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne really opened up the race…there were passing and lead changes galore for once. Man, if they could bottle this recipe, Formula 1 would again become the most exciting racing to watch, instead of the shadow of its former greatness it has become.

Cars/Racing, Fun Stuff, Graphic Design

12 Hours of Sebring 2010

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Sebring 2010 Logo

Sebring 2010

Sebring 2010 Spotter Guide

Sebring 2010 Spotters Guide

We’ve got some racin’ goin’ on this weekend… Saturday in fact. It’s the 12 Hours of Sebring, guys! This is probably the toughest race, physically, on the sports cars themselves. The Sebring circuit is notorious for its bumpiness and it is a severe test for the cars just to hold together for the entire 12 hours. And with a great grid lineup, (Aston Martin, Peugeot, Dyson, and Patron LMPs, Corvette, Ferrari, Porsche, Jaguar, and BMW GT2s) this is a must–watch race!

To help with your car spotting/viewing enjoyment, the fine folks at SpotterGuides.com and andyblackmoredesign.com have come up with this great, printable, full–color car guide detailing the cars, liveries, and even the helmet designs of the drivers of each of the cars. And it can be printed BIG due to its 2500 x 1618 pixel resolution. The detail is great when printed at 11 x 17. I printed out one for my (almost) 4 year old son Mikey, and he loved it! (One is on my office wall at work, too. 😉 )

Tune in the 12 Hours of Sebring on the Speed channel (HD of course!) beginning 7:00 am Pacific Time, Saturday, March 20.

Now that the race has been run, congrats to Risi Competizione for winning the GT2 class at Sebring for the 3rd time in the last four years! And it did so against an extremely tough field, including the very fast Rahal/Letterman BMWs.

Fun Stuff, Graphic Design

Skunk Works Projects Illustration

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Lockheed Skunk Works Projects

Famous Lockheed “Skunk Works” Projects

I like planes and aviation in general, and have a particular fondness for some of the famous Lockheed planes such as the WWII P-38 Lightning and that mach 3 wonder jet the SR-71 Blackbird. This illustration of Lockheed “Skunk Works” projects, in typical Popular Mechanics style, is very cool. This comes from an excellent article on Retro Thing about the famous “Skunk Works”. Read the full article here.

Fun Stuff, The Web

John Whitney Motion Graphics

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Remarkable and mesmerizing Flash motion graphics by Jim Bumgardner of coverpop.com. These animations are a digital realization and homage to the early work of John Whitney, famed motion graphics pioneer of the 1940’s through the 1990’s. Amazing!

And while we’re at it, take a look at coverpop.com…What an amazing interface! You can spend some serious time browsing through just a few of these great magazine and book covers! This guy really knows his Flash actionscript!

Fun Stuff, The Web

Krazy Dad

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Jim Bumgardner is an amazing guy. His website, krazydad.com, is filled with a bunch of Flash–based games and “software toys”(his term)…my kind of guy! His mazes (in his Fun and Games area) and “springy titles” are awesome! He is also the author of my favorite screensaver ever…MetaScope! It is a virtual kaleidoscope on your pc that searches the internet for images of your choosing, automatically creating a kaleidoscope on your desktop. If you thought those fishtank screensavers were cool, what until you see this…totally mesmerizing!

Comics, Fun Stuff

More Marvel Maniac Info

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Amazing Spider–Man #14

Amazing Spider–Man #14
The Green Goblin!

In addition to the Marvel Masterworks website I mentioned in a previous post, here are a couple more must–see websites for Marvel Maniacs.

Sadly, the “Silver Age Marvel Comics Cover Index” link is no longer valid. I do hope that the author brings this site back as it was a tremendous resource for Marvel fans. If anyone has an update for this, let me know and I will gladly update the link. Great news! The link to the Silver Age marvel Comics Cover index is back. Thanks a lot, Rand.

The first is the Silver Age Marvel Comics Cover Index, which is a great resource giving you examples of every Silver Age Marvel cover in a great month–by–month format. So, for example, if you wanted to see every cover for the month that Spider–Man #14 (July 1964, 1st appearance of the Green Goblin, by the way) was produced, you can. Very cool! Incidentally, this was the first Marvel book I remember owning and reading as a 5–year–old kid. I read this baby until it was in tatters. Nice one to start with, huh? I’ve been of fan of artist Steve Ditko, Spidey, and the Green Goblin ever since!

The second is a companion website that lists all of the great Marvel Bullpen Bulletins that were such a huge part of Marvel comics and their fans. Inspired and mostly written by Stan Lee, they are written in his cool, breezy style that made all of us feel as if he were writing directly to us. Awesome, “didja know!”