Tuesday, November 28, 2006

The Subtle Joys of Extreme Overcommitment

Future history books will refer to this exquisite jewel as the Greene Bellytank

Granted, I knew that I hadn't been posting much to Hooptyrides, but I didn't realize just how infrequent it was until my father called out of concern for my well being.

Most of the following is true. Fixed the Clayton Water Brake Dynamometer (sorta), wrote a profile of my buddy Bobby 'Bellytank' Greene for Garage Magazine, attended the inaugural drylakes showing for the aforementioned race car, built a low rent Japanese garden for Make:Craft, attended dorkbot, founded the Frogtown Gin Rummy Club, built a rocket powered camera, raided a cold war era meteorology laboratory, did my part to ransack a venerable aerospace surplus warehouse, bought a horizontal bandsaw the size of a motorcycle, built out a new retail store, repaired multiple high pressure leaks on a reverse osmosis system, wrote a letter to the Los Angeles Chief of Police, (accidentally) bought a jet boat, attended the Topanga Nordstrom closing auction, tested the Bellytank on my dynamometer, wrote an article for Make:Craft on converting Chinatown pagoda Christmas lights to battery power, visited the profoundly impressive Jay Leno garage, resolved multiple issues on 1987 Mercedes 300TD including a hair raisingly high speed stuck throttle linkage, (accidentally) purchased Coop's 1927 Tall T hot rod, wrote a couple installments of my Make magazine column, read the sobering Omnivore's Dilemma, attended Coop's wildly successful art show, had my Hobart TIG welder repaired, bought three pallets of freight damaged bleach and laundry soap, replaced the shocks on the Chevy truck, built out my new Louis Depalma-style office, refurbished a tanker desk, installed yards and yards of real cork/linseed/burlap roll linoleum, repaired countless gumball machines, met with a production company about a potential television segment, welded together a bandsaw dolly from two Made in China engine stands, repaired an Apple power adapter with safety wire and epoxy putty, attended approximately 300 garage sales and got sick twice. Though not recommended, it turns out you can power sickness through with cold medicine, adrenaline of finding an exceptional value and steel grit. Rest. Pshaw.

In topical news, I will be speaking. Public speaking, as they say in high school. Hooptyriders, join me at Machine Project/Dorkbot/Make Magazine this Saturday.

From Machine Project:

Make Magazine Issue #8 Launch Party

Please join us Saturday Dec 2nd at 5:30pm for a very special meeting of Dorkbot SoCal to launch the new issue of MAKE magazine.

Simon Penny (Director of UCI’s Arts Computation Engineering program) will speak on integrating interaction design, space design, structure design, mechanical design, electronic design and software engineering using his 3D machine-vision driven interactive digital-video project Fugitive 2 as a case study. Attention will then turn to the pragmatic design and fabrication issues involved in building a custom motion control rig for the video projector in the project. Simon is bringing in a prototype of the motion control rig as tangible example.

Mr Jalopy (Contributing Editor to MAKE and automotive mad scientist) will be giving an epic (yet fast paced) talk on “Deep Sea Suburbs: Custom Vans, Internal Combustion Engines, Backyard Anthropology and the California Dream”.

Make magazine issue #8 will be available for perusal and purchase

There is a high probability of free beer and pretzels

Event
Also, topical. On December 8th, the cool kids will be at the House Industries Show at the Reserve Gallery (420 N Fairfax.) House artwork? Real live? That I would not miss!