Another weekend err...Sunday of racing and picture/video taking. This time it was held out at the Idaho Center in Nampa. A nice sunny warm Sunday much better than the last event and it showed with I believe a much larger turn out of drivers. Since it was at the Idaho Center I was able to just hang out on the grass without the need of a spotter to film and take pictures. I also brought the umbrella setup along and thank goodness I did. I definitely think it did a lot to keep me out of the sun and a good couple of degrees cooler than just being out under the sun. It may look a little goofy but it rocks like nothing else.
What also rocks is the new camera car mount. I was a little worried to be honest as after attaching it to a car and letting it sit there for a while it seemed to lose just a bit of suction not a lot but enough to make me worry just a bit but all was good and it hung on for three outings on various cars. Oh course one of the videos got messed up some how so only got three on car videos. I did try hard to get at least one video of most of the cars that were out there some I just didn't care for but I'm trying to get every one's car more than just a lot of videos of a handful of cars.
I was also taking still pictures and trying to do the whole motion capture thing so the cars look like they are in motion and all that jazz. Still working on fine tuning that aspect of my photography. I also wasn't in the best place for pictures compared to videos. And speaking of places to be for being in a relatively safe place that black Dodge Neon with a major front end plow problem came damn close on one run.
It was a lot of fun as usual. I managed to hang around all day this time thanks to the umbrella and having the day off. Found out that a lot of people are watching the videos and really enjoy them, which is always a nice thing to hear. I still need to figure out a way to cut down on the wind noise from the on car videos and I think I'll be heading to a music store to look at mic covers. You can the pictures here and the videos are all here.
I missed a good number of spins but I also got a few good ones as well. Like this one from a Corvette engined Datsun 240Z. There was another great one from a Mercedes Benz as well where the driver was able to save it and keep going.
Showing posts with label umbrella. Show all posts
Weee. It's finally here the 2009 autocross season has finally started and it got off to a great start even if the weather tossed us all a curve ball on Saturday with a bit of rain which slowed some people down but didn't bother others. I did take project umbrella out there but since it was heavily overcast most of the day I decided I didn't need to use it until it started to rain. Of course even though it was overcast I STILL got a bit burnt. But the umbrella did keep my camera and video equipement nice and dry an allowed me to keep filming in the rain. Well until the battery died and I ran out of space on the camera while shooting raw which thanks to me setting the camera up wrong turned out nothing but crap.
I only attended the Saturday event but I have to say there was a rather large turn out for a cold first day event. There was a large crowd of novice and first time drivers and drivers who where in the new run group called IMS. Also out there was the black Corvette with the huge monster wing from last year. He started off the day run around in circles doing god knows what (breaking in new tires?) and he ended up almost wrecking his car as he had to have come inches away from hitting one of the light poles in the parking lot. He didn't last long as on his second (third?) run of the day his car started making some horrid grinding noises and he just let loose and whipped his car around the course madly and called it a day. It was at that time that the video camera battery died right after his first corner so I was upset that I didn't get any video of that last run.
I got all my videos uploaded to youtube of course so you can check them out and I also dumped my snapshots that did turn out on to flickr as well. Next race is April 18 and 19 but I'll most likely only go to the one on the 19th as the one on the 18th is a training day for younger drivers. Hopefully by then I'll have found an actual battery that will work for my video camera.
Here's Leo taking a little spin in his Mazda RX-7
I only attended the Saturday event but I have to say there was a rather large turn out for a cold first day event. There was a large crowd of novice and first time drivers and drivers who where in the new run group called IMS. Also out there was the black Corvette with the huge monster wing from last year. He started off the day run around in circles doing god knows what (breaking in new tires?) and he ended up almost wrecking his car as he had to have come inches away from hitting one of the light poles in the parking lot. He didn't last long as on his second (third?) run of the day his car started making some horrid grinding noises and he just let loose and whipped his car around the course madly and called it a day. It was at that time that the video camera battery died right after his first corner so I was upset that I didn't get any video of that last run.
I got all my videos uploaded to youtube of course so you can check them out and I also dumped my snapshots that did turn out on to flickr as well. Next race is April 18 and 19 but I'll most likely only go to the one on the 19th as the one on the 18th is a training day for younger drivers. Hopefully by then I'll have found an actual battery that will work for my video camera.
Here's Leo taking a little spin in his Mazda RX-7
The last piece finally fell into place this weekend when I stopped by Idaho Camera, a locally owned all things camera outfit here in town, and picked up my light stand for less than I could find them on the Internet for. So all total now I spent about $75 on an interesting (to me at least) way to give my pasty white ass some shade while out filming autocross events. Of course if I had known that they were only $20 here in town I would have picked one up a long damn time ago.
Anyways I put it all together superglued the base of the airfreshner Race Queen to the stand and tried it out for a little bit. It definitely so far works for what I want it to do and will give it the final test run this coming weekend when I take it out to the Expo Center for the first Autocross event of 2009.
I'm really looking forward to that because not only do I have shade I have an easy way of telling people that I'm out filming as all they'll have to look for is the Green and White Umbrella from Tein. While I don't have anything to do with Tein they had the best looking and least expensive and easily to get large umbrella. Plus they are a cool company I just can't use any of their merchandise on my lame cheapo Chevy Lumina.
I just might be able to use the exposure to get more umbrellas for next year. That's what I'm going to try for anyways as I'm not entirely sure if the umbrella will make it through the entire year. I hope it does but it is white in part after all.
A close up look of the itty bitty race queen.
Did you all have a great St. Paddy's Day this week? I had to work so I got to celebrate a we bit early with my new Nendoroid Yoko and a green beer. I'll have to do a full post on Yoko later the green beer was just beer though so nothing to report on there. Actually I'm lying, the beer is from this morning and I'm drinking it while typing this because I freaking passed out and slept the entire St. Paddy's day away and never got around to drinking my damn green beer until today.
As for what else I did this week I did finally finish project Umbrella when I decided to stop by the local camera place and look for the lamp stand there and they had one for the same price that I found on eBay so saved a bit there and helped the local community too. I'll also post more on that later. I also had to have the car smogged a yearly boring waste of money adventure which of course I passed so spent $15 to waste gas.
This week in TV land I watched the finale of Battlestar Gallactica and thought it was pretty good up until the end and we find out they land on our Earth at the time of early human development. So I don't know I was happy about most of it but meh I think they could have done just a bit more. Of course since I watched that I completely and utterly forgot about something else that I wanted to watch and that was Truth in 24 the freaking awesome documentary of of the 2008 Le Mans 24hr race from Audi's perspective. And you guessed it more on that later as I downloaded it the next day and watched it a bit later.
After that it was pretty much the same old same old. The weather is getting nicer thankfully and things are looking to get more exciting as next week is the first autox event of the year and I get to test out the umbrella for the first time. Oh well that's it for last week wonder how nest week will go.
Don't forget to vote every day for the Moko Top Girl by the way.
Spring is finally just right around the corner and so is another year of car shows and autocross. The first major car show here in the Treasure Valley is the Boise Roadster Show starting March 12 and going until the 15th. This year Scott's dad is entering his 65 Mustang so Scott and I can get passes for the entire event for $12 instead of $9 per day so it'll be nice to break the current dead spell of automotive posts by going to this years show. I've been to the show before twice and this is what I have to say about it. It's a resounding big fat MEH. I didn't even go to the last two events because my dad was right when he told me that once you go you don't really need to go again because it'll be the same stuff every year. It also doesn't help at all that I'm not all that interested in that type of vehicle class. I don't care about some guys $100,000.00 trailer queen. So I end up seeing maybe one or two cars that really interest me there and the rest I couldn't care about.
So why am I going this year. Other than to break the automotive dry spell there's the need to test out the new lens. I still haven't done anything with the new 50mm prime lens that I picked up recently so I figure it'll be a good time to break it in so to speak and there might be a bikini contest (the show is called a "great family event" so I don't know if they got rid of that or not. Anyways I figured it would be a fun thing to shoot with the camcorder to post on YouTube to not only post something new (haven't posted anything since a LONG time) and hey it's girls in bikini's and that equals LOTS of hits (so long as they're cute) that will maybe translate into more people visiting here as well. At least I can hope right.
In any case I dug up some of my older pictures that I took at the earlier Roadster shows so that you could see what kind of cars I'm talking about. If they interest you great but for me I just took some pictures for my dad and long since forgot about them until now. This year will be a bit more interesting since Scott's dad is in it (I'll vote for him) and oh my yeah they are even going to have the original Batmobile (from the TV Batman show) there as well...I can't contain my excitement on that bit of news let me tell ya. Mostly I'll just be interested in the bikini contest for my own personal gain and your enjoyment as well.
Better news than the Roadster show though is that autocross will be back on March 28 so I best have my project Umbrella finished by then as well. All I need is a stupid photography light stand but I can only find them in pairs or short ones.
So why am I going this year. Other than to break the automotive dry spell there's the need to test out the new lens. I still haven't done anything with the new 50mm prime lens that I picked up recently so I figure it'll be a good time to break it in so to speak and there might be a bikini contest (the show is called a "great family event" so I don't know if they got rid of that or not. Anyways I figured it would be a fun thing to shoot with the camcorder to post on YouTube to not only post something new (haven't posted anything since a LONG time) and hey it's girls in bikini's and that equals LOTS of hits (so long as they're cute) that will maybe translate into more people visiting here as well. At least I can hope right.
In any case I dug up some of my older pictures that I took at the earlier Roadster shows so that you could see what kind of cars I'm talking about. If they interest you great but for me I just took some pictures for my dad and long since forgot about them until now. This year will be a bit more interesting since Scott's dad is in it (I'll vote for him) and oh my yeah they are even going to have the original Batmobile (from the TV Batman show) there as well...I can't contain my excitement on that bit of news let me tell ya. Mostly I'll just be interested in the bikini contest for my own personal gain and your enjoyment as well.
Better news than the Roadster show though is that autocross will be back on March 28 so I best have my project Umbrella finished by then as well. All I need is a stupid photography light stand but I can only find them in pairs or short ones.
An entirely uneventful week. I'm being totally serious one of the slowest none event weeks of the year. I did use that time to organize my image folders to find suitable HOTD content and will be doing an entire week on the lovely Hwang Mi Hee followed next week with an entire week of Aki Hoshinho another lovely lady. Oh I haven't actually talked about the ad down on the bottom right for Absinthe yet have I. Well apparently if you leave the companies ad banner on your webpage for a month you'll receive a free absinthe spoon (a $9 valueish) and then if you leave the ad there for an entire year they will send you a free bottle of their absinthe. For a free bottle of Absinthe (not cheap stuff) for no work at all, why the hell not. Honestly as it is I'll probably get the free bottle of Absinthe before I reach $100 on adsense and get a check from Google. But then I'm not really doing this for the money otherwise I'd really be doing this blogging thing differently. Anyways if you want to try out the absinthe ad banner your self you should check out their webpage here for more information. It hasn't even been close to a month so no spoon for me yet but once I get it (if I get it) I'll definitely post about it.
I did take advantage of the deepdiscount 25% discount sale this week as well since I had a bit extra cash handy and ordered 2 DVDs from them as I couldn't really find anything else in stock that I wanted. Those should be here week after next. I ordered a couple older anime tittles the original Blood: the last Vampire and Kite Liberator both great films and definitely looking forward to the Live Action Blood movie and the much wanted sequel to Kite Liberator when come out. Also since I had a discount on ebay I also ordered the original and uncut DVD of Kite and Mezzo Forte. I've never seen the uncut versions but I've heard plenty about them to know to get that version instead of the normal release version that you would find at Best Buy. And while I was on ebay I also ordered a set of Gurren Lagann magnets as well. So it will be an interest haul for me in the next week that's for sure.
One last thing I did find an umbrella holder that I can use to attach my Tein Umbrella to a light stand to use as a portable shade device while out filming things under the sun next year. Now all I have to do is pick up some light stands and I'm ready to rock next year. That's it for this week next week is Thanksgiving and Black Friday so that will be an interesting time for family followed by that one crazy day of shopping hell, so it will be interesting to see what happens. I'll be heading off to my aunt and uncle's for Thanksgiving lunch/dinner and family time but I'm going to be missing Black Friday which is just fine by me.
I did take advantage of the deepdiscount 25% discount sale this week as well since I had a bit extra cash handy and ordered 2 DVDs from them as I couldn't really find anything else in stock that I wanted. Those should be here week after next. I ordered a couple older anime tittles the original Blood: the last Vampire and Kite Liberator both great films and definitely looking forward to the Live Action Blood movie and the much wanted sequel to Kite Liberator when come out. Also since I had a discount on ebay I also ordered the original and uncut DVD of Kite and Mezzo Forte. I've never seen the uncut versions but I've heard plenty about them to know to get that version instead of the normal release version that you would find at Best Buy. And while I was on ebay I also ordered a set of Gurren Lagann magnets as well. So it will be an interest haul for me in the next week that's for sure.
One last thing I did find an umbrella holder that I can use to attach my Tein Umbrella to a light stand to use as a portable shade device while out filming things under the sun next year. Now all I have to do is pick up some light stands and I'm ready to rock next year. That's it for this week next week is Thanksgiving and Black Friday so that will be an interesting time for family followed by that one crazy day of shopping hell, so it will be interesting to see what happens. I'll be heading off to my aunt and uncle's for Thanksgiving lunch/dinner and family time but I'm going to be missing Black Friday which is just fine by me.
Since I can't find a suitable image for posting with this blog have an extra image of Hwan Mi hee.
Well holy freaking crap. Remember that dashboard lil' itty bitty race queen figure that I found out at one of the autocross events way back in the beginning of the summer and how I was looking for her but never found her? Anyways I was cruising eBay looking for something cool and decided to do a search for race queen stuff and low and behold what should be one of the many many links but that lil' race queen. Then I figured out why I couldn't find her earlier. I was searching for figures but she's actually a freaking air freshener. Yeah that's what I thought as well. Turns out she's an INGS (Nissan race parts) Race Queen Air Freshener made for GALSParadise (the same people who put out the Race Queen guides and other Japanese girly mags) and can be found at just about any Import tunershop webpage for an unsightly price of $15 (or more) + shipping. I did find that if you bought INGS products from one place that they would include the lil' race queen for free but then you are spending some serious dough for car parts to get her.
So now that I've found her, and have been looking around to find the best deal, am I going to order one to have a lil' race queen sitting on my dash to freshen up my car? Probably not, I mean it's $20 for a freaking air freshener and she's not nearly as cute now that I've seen an up close image of her. There are a lot more interesting and much better quality race queen figures out there to be had but they are more than 3x the money as well. It would be funny to get her and hog tie her to the Tein umbrella so that I can say that I have a RQ holding my umbrella but then I think I'd be the only one to find that funny. Maybe I'll ask Santa for one, it is getting close to Christmas after all (they already have Christmas stuff up already at Walmart).
So now that I've found her, and have been looking around to find the best deal, am I going to order one to have a lil' race queen sitting on my dash to freshen up my car? Probably not, I mean it's $20 for a freaking air freshener and she's not nearly as cute now that I've seen an up close image of her. There are a lot more interesting and much better quality race queen figures out there to be had but they are more than 3x the money as well. It would be funny to get her and hog tie her to the Tein umbrella so that I can say that I have a RQ holding my umbrella but then I think I'd be the only one to find that funny. Maybe I'll ask Santa for one, it is getting close to Christmas after all (they already have Christmas stuff up already at Walmart).
Race Queen sold separately. Ok all joking aside I did finally get an umbrella to shade my self while filming autocross events and other outdoor events. I originally wanted to get a Japanese Super GT company umbrella but after several months looking and not finding one that I really liked and also discovering that the ones that I could get were seriously expensive after shipping and everything I found and purchased one from Tein here in the states.
As you can see in the picture I picked up an umbrella and T-shirt from Tein a Japanese company that sells various suspension parts for cars. As I drive a POS Chevy Lumina none of their parts are usable on my car (They only make parts for Japanese manufactured cars) but they seem to from what I've read and seen offer some pretty sweet products at reasonable prices. So if you're interested in tuning your Japaneses car you might want to check out Tein they're especially great if you like green.
Now that I have the umbrella I still have to figure out a way to rig it up so that I can have a free standing system for the umbrella (seeing as how I don't have a Race Queen) so that I don't have to hold onto it myself and so that it doesn't interfere with the filming process. I already have an idea in mind but I have to find a good way of holding the umbrella and being able to move it around easily when the sun moves. Anyways it's a good project for the winter.
As you can see in the picture I picked up an umbrella and T-shirt from Tein a Japanese company that sells various suspension parts for cars. As I drive a POS Chevy Lumina none of their parts are usable on my car (They only make parts for Japanese manufactured cars) but they seem to from what I've read and seen offer some pretty sweet products at reasonable prices. So if you're interested in tuning your Japaneses car you might want to check out Tein they're especially great if you like green.
Now that I have the umbrella I still have to figure out a way to rig it up so that I can have a free standing system for the umbrella (seeing as how I don't have a Race Queen) so that I don't have to hold onto it myself and so that it doesn't interfere with the filming process. I already have an idea in mind but I have to find a good way of holding the umbrella and being able to move it around easily when the sun moves. Anyways it's a good project for the winter.
Next time you see me out filming autocross you just might find me under the Tein umbrella.
Another week has come and gone and a bunch of stuff has been going on this last week. Thankfully all good stuff this week. Have had a lot of condolences for my mother's passing which is nice yet I haven't heard anything from my sister about the memorial services maybe we'll hold off on that until we receive the ashes back. Anyways on to better things. I did finally purchase a new digital video camcorder this weekend and will go out this morning and give it a test drive at the autocross assuming of course it doesn't get rained out. Yeah you see we got a ton of rain on Friday and Saturday and we are supposed to get more this morning as well. I love the rain...well when I'm not driving in it anyways.
The camcorder that I picked up was a Samsung SCMX20 which so far looks like a great camera but we'll see when I get the first videos uploaded. Also since I'm just messing around with it at the moment I only picked up a 2gb card (for $10) as I'm waiting for the prices to drop on the larger gb cards. Since I'll be uploading new videos I also did a bit of fall cleaning of my youtube videos and went from 248 videos down to 65 to make room for new stuff.
Not only did I get the camcorder this week but I also picked up a magazine release from Tactical Solutions for my Ruger 10/22. Installing it was easy but hmmm I don't think it fits as good as it should so I'm thinking I might have to take it in to get adjusted. Other firearms related purchases were a speedloader and snapcaps for the Model 15-3 Combat Master, a new flashlight for the shotgun and of course more reloading material. You can find a few more pictures on flickr. Of the other stuff that I ordered last week only the Apple Vol 1 book showed up and it is definitely an awesome art book. If you like Robot you'll love Apple. I just don't know when a second volume will be out. So I'm still awaiting my Tein Umbrella/shirt and the Megami magazine (that'll take the longest though so meh it'll get here when it does). Not entirely a bad haul for the week that's for sure.
If you do take a look at flickr you'll also notice that I also uploaded pictures of the recently aquired Haruhi Suzumiya Gothloli figure and a bunch more images of Lamborghinis. I'll talk about the Lamborghinis in their own post later but I have to say that Haruhi was much bigger than I thought she was going to be (she's my first real anime figure actually) but she is way awesome. Makes me wish I also pre-ordered her gothic punk sidekick Asahina Mikuru too.
Thankfully that was it for crazy purchases this week (un fun bills took up the rest) and the rest of the week was pretty much taken up by work and playing Star Wars The Force Unleashed. I finished the game but was going back and finding all the holocrons and finishing up the bonus missions. It's an all right game but I have issues with some of the game play and OMFG that Deathstar part was a major pain in the fucking ass. Which is why the roommate finished that part actually.
Not only did I get the camcorder this week but I also picked up a magazine release from Tactical Solutions for my Ruger 10/22. Installing it was easy but hmmm I don't think it fits as good as it should so I'm thinking I might have to take it in to get adjusted. Other firearms related purchases were a speedloader and snapcaps for the Model 15-3 Combat Master, a new flashlight for the shotgun and of course more reloading material. You can find a few more pictures on flickr. Of the other stuff that I ordered last week only the Apple Vol 1 book showed up and it is definitely an awesome art book. If you like Robot you'll love Apple. I just don't know when a second volume will be out. So I'm still awaiting my Tein Umbrella/shirt and the Megami magazine (that'll take the longest though so meh it'll get here when it does). Not entirely a bad haul for the week that's for sure.
If you do take a look at flickr you'll also notice that I also uploaded pictures of the recently aquired Haruhi Suzumiya Gothloli figure and a bunch more images of Lamborghinis. I'll talk about the Lamborghinis in their own post later but I have to say that Haruhi was much bigger than I thought she was going to be (she's my first real anime figure actually) but she is way awesome. Makes me wish I also pre-ordered her gothic punk sidekick Asahina Mikuru too.
Thankfully that was it for crazy purchases this week (un fun bills took up the rest) and the rest of the week was pretty much taken up by work and playing Star Wars The Force Unleashed. I finished the game but was going back and finding all the holocrons and finishing up the bonus missions. It's an all right game but I have issues with some of the game play and OMFG that Deathstar part was a major pain in the fucking ass. Which is why the roommate finished that part actually.
With that it's the end of the week and I'm off to the autocross for testing out the new camcorder.
One of the interesting things about anime DVDs sometimes are the little extras that you can get with the limited releases and just with the regular releases as well. The first Limited edition DVD of Koihime Musou came with a Oppai Mouse pad of Aisha which looks well rather nice but actually one of the better things that come with some DVDs are the extra episodes. Not only do we get a good uncensoring occasionally but we some times get extra episodes as well. In this case it was a DVD extra episode of Shigofumi and while it was just another run of the mill morality tale, I thought it was a great addition to the show and came close to making up for the lame ending that we got in the first place. Of course there are more interesting and way more ecchi additions to other DVD's not only do some do away with the stupid magical mist/steam that is used to cover the naughty bits but some DVDs have entire ecchi extra mini episodes. One example of that are the DVD extras from Kanokon...OMG ecchi madness with those DVD extra episodes. It's a good reason to pick up the DVDs for sure but I was wondering do they see their way to the American release DVDs as well? All I've ever seen are the same five trailers and creditless openings and endings. Another great ecchi filled DVD extra to look for are ones that you get with Ikki Tousen. Also watched the first Great Gaurdian ova and wow it has oppai greatness as well.
In other anime news I've found out that Baccano has been licensed by Funimation and will be released soon so will definitely have to check that out again from Netflix when it's available. I'm also still boycotting [Adult Swim] because of their trashing anime and to be honest I don't miss it at all. I'll be finishing up another couple anime shows from Spring/Summer this week so will be blogging more about them as well.
As for the rest of the news I've been spending my hard earned photography job money like there's no tomorrow. I'm currently bidding on a new video camera for autocross and I've finally ended the great umbrella search of 08 and purchased a Tein Parasol (and shirt) so I'll be able to keep in the shade while filming even better videos for friends. I've also had a few impulse purchases as well including two new diecasts cars, the Oct (Yoko) issue of Megami Magazine and the first Vol of Apple (like Robot but from Korea) so I'll be looking forward to a ton of stuff showing up in the mail. I've also purchased all the reloading items that I need to start reloading rounds.
Last but not least I have some more ideas on things to add to my lil' blog like adding a weekly animation for fun and profit. I'm not to sure about this idea really but hey I'll try it out anyways. I want to add some more color to the blog but it looks like it'll also add more space to the page as well. So I might get rid of some things as well. Since my mother passed away I'll probably get rid of the donation button (after all no one donated anything anyways so it's just a waste of space really) so I don't need it anymore.
In other anime news I've found out that Baccano has been licensed by Funimation and will be released soon so will definitely have to check that out again from Netflix when it's available. I'm also still boycotting [Adult Swim] because of their trashing anime and to be honest I don't miss it at all. I'll be finishing up another couple anime shows from Spring/Summer this week so will be blogging more about them as well.
As for the rest of the news I've been spending my hard earned photography job money like there's no tomorrow. I'm currently bidding on a new video camera for autocross and I've finally ended the great umbrella search of 08 and purchased a Tein Parasol (and shirt) so I'll be able to keep in the shade while filming even better videos for friends. I've also had a few impulse purchases as well including two new diecasts cars, the Oct (Yoko) issue of Megami Magazine and the first Vol of Apple (like Robot but from Korea) so I'll be looking forward to a ton of stuff showing up in the mail. I've also purchased all the reloading items that I need to start reloading rounds.
Last but not least I have some more ideas on things to add to my lil' blog like adding a weekly animation for fun and profit. I'm not to sure about this idea really but hey I'll try it out anyways. I want to add some more color to the blog but it looks like it'll also add more space to the page as well. So I might get rid of some things as well. Since my mother passed away I'll probably get rid of the donation button (after all no one donated anything anyways so it's just a waste of space really) so I don't need it anymore.
Now for something a bit different. I FINALLY found Vol 5 of ROBOT from Udon Press. If you don't know what ROBOT is then you should check out this page for the latest news: http://www.udonentertainment.com/robot/ You can pickup ROBOT at just about any major bookstore. I would suggest joining Borders Membership thingy and getting your hands on a 30% off coupon to save yourself some good money if you want to pick it up.
Anyways one of the main reasons why I started getting the English version of Robot, oh so long ago, was because I was interested in Range Murata's art work and thought hey why not check it out. Well ever since that first volume about three years ago I found that I really liked MOST of what I found in the book and have been picking it up ever since. I loved the large city expanses done by Imperial Boy. I almost ended up with only three volumes however and I was very sad to find out that the original distributor for the book dropped it like a hot potato after only three volumes. Thankfully Udon Press came along and picked it up so that I can still enjoy ROBOT.
Anyways one of the main reasons why I started getting the English version of Robot, oh so long ago, was because I was interested in Range Murata's art work and thought hey why not check it out. Well ever since that first volume about three years ago I found that I really liked MOST of what I found in the book and have been picking it up ever since. I loved the large city expanses done by Imperial Boy. I almost ended up with only three volumes however and I was very sad to find out that the original distributor for the book dropped it like a hot potato after only three volumes. Thankfully Udon Press came along and picked it up so that I can still enjoy ROBOT.
It's just fraken annoying right now that it takes FOREVER for new additions to come out. This was supposed to be a quarterly release per year but has turned into a bi-annual release instead. Hopefully they work out the kinks and start releasing it in a more timely manner. I also found out that starting this month there will be another full color manga anthology released along side ROBOT called APPLE and focuses more on Korean artists which is good because it will have great art work from another artist I like Hyung-Tae Kim. I haven't been able to find that just yet though but I'm looking.
Some more images"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44902111@N00/2653548345/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44902111@N00/2654373666/
Another interesting book that I picked up recently was the Super GT Race Queen Guide of 2008. I ended up ordering this straight out of Japan after finding it while I was looking for a Super GT Umbrella to use while out filming the autocross events. I figured hey why the heck not it wasn't that expensive to begin with (shipping was almost more than the book) and well who can pass up a bunch of hot Race Queens in skimpy cloths parading about. Plus it was helping me look for that super cool Super GT race team umbrella. It took about three weeks total to get the book in my grubby lil' hands though but once I did it was well worth it. Now if I could just find one that was for the cars as well. That would be great, it's hard for me to identify some of the cars that are racing around this year.
Some more images"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44902111@N00/2653548345/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44902111@N00/2654373666/
Another interesting book that I picked up recently was the Super GT Race Queen Guide of 2008. I ended up ordering this straight out of Japan after finding it while I was looking for a Super GT Umbrella to use while out filming the autocross events. I figured hey why the heck not it wasn't that expensive to begin with (shipping was almost more than the book) and well who can pass up a bunch of hot Race Queens in skimpy cloths parading about. Plus it was helping me look for that super cool Super GT race team umbrella. It took about three weeks total to get the book in my grubby lil' hands though but once I did it was well worth it. Now if I could just find one that was for the cars as well. That would be great, it's hard for me to identify some of the cars that are racing around this year.While this is written entirely in Japanese you really don't need much to translate just how cute these ladies are so check out some more images:
So that's the latest interesting reading material that I've picked up lately I have my eyes open for that First Vol of APPLE along with the Full Colored Witchblade Manga that was just released last month as well. so until next time
As many of you readers might remember I like to complain about the huge lack of shade out at the autocross events and have been thinking of a way to get some shade for myself to save me from the sun and the heat. One of the few ways that I thought I could do this was to find one of those huge umbrellas that you see the ever lovely Race Queens holding up at many racing events in Asia (not so much here in America) to protect the drivers from the heat.
This has lead me on a quest to find one of those cool motorsports umbrellas for myself (I'd take the RQ too but that is well outside my budget) and how to figure out a way to rig up a system that would allow me to control the umbrella's shade with minimal fuss and muss. Finding these umbrellas is not easy and most of the time I run up against some issues like my inability to read kanji on Japanese web pages. Google translate also doesn't like to work all that well on many order pages either so I have no idea what I'm supposed to do there to order them either. I have found a few import tuner umbrellas and some European car manufacture umbrellas but they are not exactly what I'm looking for as they are just simply regular umbrellas and tend to be smaller than what I'm looking for.
The biggest problem is that due to the wedding that I'm attending at the end of June all my funding is tied up in doing that and even if I did find one that I wanted and could find out how to order it I'd still have to wait for a while to pick it up. In the mean time though I did find and order the 2008 Official Super GT Race Queen guide. So while I'm waiting to find my elusive umbrella I can drool over those hotties from Super GT.
Here are some of the ones that I found so far that are interesting. You have to scroll down a bit for some of them as they don't have individual pages for the umbrellas.
ZENT
Endless
Tein
This has lead me on a quest to find one of those cool motorsports umbrellas for myself (I'd take the RQ too but that is well outside my budget) and how to figure out a way to rig up a system that would allow me to control the umbrella's shade with minimal fuss and muss. Finding these umbrellas is not easy and most of the time I run up against some issues like my inability to read kanji on Japanese web pages. Google translate also doesn't like to work all that well on many order pages either so I have no idea what I'm supposed to do there to order them either. I have found a few import tuner umbrellas and some European car manufacture umbrellas but they are not exactly what I'm looking for as they are just simply regular umbrellas and tend to be smaller than what I'm looking for.
The biggest problem is that due to the wedding that I'm attending at the end of June all my funding is tied up in doing that and even if I did find one that I wanted and could find out how to order it I'd still have to wait for a while to pick it up. In the mean time though I did find and order the 2008 Official Super GT Race Queen guide. So while I'm waiting to find my elusive umbrella I can drool over those hotties from Super GT.
Here are some of the ones that I found so far that are interesting. You have to scroll down a bit for some of them as they don't have individual pages for the umbrellas.
ZENT
Endless
Tein
