Painted Planes with Character

Mickey and Minnie Mouse Jet

These painted airplanes have what you might say a lot of  "character", that is cartoon characters all over them.  Some airline companies have decided to brighten the sky with airplanes completely covered with animated cartoon characters like Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Pokemon, Woody Woodpecker, Homer and Marge Simpson, I know I would love to fly in one of these. via Dark Roasted Blend

Mickey and Minnie Mouse Jet (image credit: Simon Brooke)

Pokemon Jet All Nippon Airways, photo by Michael F. McLaughlin

Pokemon Jet Another All Nippon Airways, photo by Kota Murahashi

Pokemon Jet (image credit: Shotaro Shimizu)

Woody Woodpecker Jet (image credit: Xu Zheng)

Simpsons Jet Simpsons livery, photo by AirNikon

Mule With Crazy Car Stereo System

This Mule has found its self strapped down with an entirely new type of load. A brand new crazy car stereo system.

Porsche 356 Art Car painted with M.C Escher Reptiles

This Porsche 356 was painted by Author and Graphic Designer Jasper Fforde with M.C Escher's famous reptiles. This art car was based on a car driven by a character in one of his books.

Western Digital Caviar Green (WD10EADS) Failure

On my desktop PC I have a 1 TB secondary drive which I use for storing photos, videos, music, and etc.  I was using a WD Caviar Green model WD10EADS, and it developed a strange behavior.  File access slowed to a crawl, with wait times of between 3 and 5 seconds to read from or write to a file.  Disk utilization (resource monitor) showd 100%, but the drive wasn't making much noise.  According to the SMART check, everything was still within spec.  Then I tried to do a sector test on it, using WD's Data Lifeguard tool, and it failed about 2/3 the way through, "Error 8: too many bad sectors".  

My theory about what is going on is that the drive controller, for some reason, is not able to "wake up" anymore, and so sometimes when you ask for a file it takes a long time to actually read it or write it, but my data did not appear to be damaged--I was able to copy everything off of the drive, it just took multiple tries for some files.

Thanks to a 3 year warranty, I am able to send the drive back for replacement to Western Digital.   I'm a little spooked by the failure though, and I am going to replace the drive with a non-Green model for now.  I liked how quiet the Caviar Green was, but it wasn't the fastest drive even when it was working.

3 Amazing Art Car Drawings by Eric Carlos Bertrand

Wow Bus
These Art Car drawings were created by artist Eric Carlos Bertrand who was inspired by real Art Cars. He currently resides in Montreal and has taken the art car as a source of inspiration for researching the possibilities for viable version of the "ship of fools", a old imagery related to the tradition of the carnavalesque. Read his web site detailed info. Three of the art cars I found were posted on Art Car Central a while back so I wanted to show the world how good his art work is. Eric has some really impressive drawing skills and a hole lot of patience, personally I would rather glue stuff on my art car.
Duke Art Car
Mobile DJ Art Car

Octapus Saab Art Car Reaching Out in Rhode Island

This Octapus 1987 Saab 900turbo art car has been seen reaching out in Rhode Island recently created by Aly of Killer Car Kustoms.

Wild Dodge Magnum

I saw this, uh, pimp-wagon on the road Friday.

X-Prize Realities

Now that the Progressive Automotive X-Prize competition is over, I expect that green car boosters (and Tesla, who didn't bother entering) will begin pointing at the winners as evidence that the mainstream auto industry can't compete.

But.

As impressive feats of small-team engineering, the X-Prize finalists are amazing.  But they are nothing like consumer products, just as NASCAR "stock cars" are nothing like consumer products.  The X-Prize competitors were given a set of design constraints, which to Progressive's credit did include basic performance and safety criteria, and optimized their designs to meet those criteria.  In other words, they built cars that were going to have very high efficiency and a bare minimum of performance.

If you were to take an X-Prize winner, and try to make a mass market product out of it, that would meet FMVSS standards for a passenger car, 150,000 mile reliabilty, NHTSA's crash standards, would be comfortable and convenient, easy to drive, and affordable to a middle class family, you would not wind up any where close to 100 MPGe.  

You would probably wind up with something like a Nissan Leaf or Chevrolet Volt.  But without the economies of scale in purchasing, design, and development that a major OEM has, your X-Prize car would cost thousands of dollars more.

The OEMs could have easily competed in the X-Prize competition, if they wanted to.  They were too busy making vehicles people would actually consider buying.

Ken Block: "obama can't gymkhana"

Check out the bumper sticker on the Segway wheel at 2:30.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TshFWSsrn8&feature=player_embedded#!

Dumpster Driving - Keep your trash and drive it too.

Here is what happens when a dumpster diver takes his trash collections to the next level by making a "Dumpster Driver". A car for people who stock pile trash in the back seat, so they can keep the trash and drive it too. via

Travis Pastrana Does Mt. Washington, Quickly

This is a really neat video of a world class rally driver flying up a mountain road. Link to video

Convertible Mercedes Art Car in Under Two Hours

Do you have an art car event or parade this weekend and have nothing to drive? The experts over at Mercedes Source have boiled the entire art car making process down to a science in just under two hours. They managed to convert this 123 Mercedes into a convertible complete with flame job, custom rims, skull and cross bones and the all important message on the side. In his case it reads "Born 2 Drive" and all you need is a crew of about 5 people with skills in: Chopping, ripping, spray painting and a little design. So no more excuses, go out there and "git r done".

Understanding How GPS Tracking For Cars Works

Have you heard about some of the new technology that makes GPS tracking for cars accessible to normal people like you and me? GPS technology is becoming increasingly available to consumers, and one side effect of this is that GPS has become available for many different applications. Today, parents can have large amounts of information about the location and driving activity of their teens with ease.

The Basics of GPS Tracking :

Right now, as you sit and read this article, there are at least 24 satellites orbiting the earth 11 nautical miles above its surface. They are continuously broadcasting signals that specialized receivers are able to pick up. The data that is transmitted by the satellites is processed by the GPS unit to give the user some type of fix on their own location. The specific items that the receiver is going to need is the place in the sky that the satellite transmitted the data from and when exactly it sent it.

A GPS receiver then processes this data and calculates its distance away from the satellite in question. The device will begin by taking the speed of the signal and multiplying it by the amount of time it took the signal to reach the GPS device. The equation for this looks something like that:

Speed x Time = Distance Traveled

This will tell you just how far away you are from one satellite. However, since the tracker only knows how far away it is from one satellite it cannot tell where it is in the world. One satellite just isn't enough. You really need at least two, but more like three, satellites to be able to get a true picture of where you are on the earth's surface. You might know this principle by the name of trilateration and it is very much like triangulation, except that trilateration is about finding an objects position in three dimensional space while triangulation is about finding an objects location in two dimensional space.

Having calculated its own position, the tracker stores that information on its hard drive and then it does one of two things with that information - keeps it or sends it out. A data logger is what a GPS tracking device for cars is called when it commits the position information to its own internal memory system. This type of device is unable to provide real time GPS tracking. For real time updates you need a data pusher. This device will transmit the information that it processed from the satellites to a central location. Here the data will become available to anyone with access to it - it could be a boss seeking to find the location of a company car or a city employee monitoring worker productivity.

The justifications that some will come up with to use GPS tracking for cars are many and valid. Being a technical whiz is not a requirement if you are trying to use one of these devices. All you need is the money to buy the device and the service. The company that you go with will be able to do the rest. Getting a handle on the company you are going to use is crucial, check them out at the Better Business Bureau or talk to customers of the service. If this type of service is up your alley then you should certainly try GPS tracking for cars.

Ford Kuga Art Car Painting by Ian Cook - Painted with RC Cars and Tires

On Saturday 4th September - Artist Ian Cook aka Popbang Colour painted the Ford Kuga live on the Internet using radio controlled cars. The Ford Kuga team was there to capture all the action. Check out the video of how he did and for more photos go to flickr.

Magic Art Car From Osijek Croatia

Magic Art Car from Croatia
The Magic Art car project was submitted by Dinko Bukvic from Osijek Croatia as part of a kids event called "land without borders". They had 17 kids from 4 to 14 years of age participate in painting this art car that took 5 days to complete. It was an educational project meant to engage the kids imagination and creativity by designing, and painting it from start to finish. The parents did a great job and got involved as well and were very helpful in getting everyone cleaned up after. I think this is my first art car from that part of the world and I look forward to seeing more art cars submitted from Croatia, great job.
Kids working on Magic Art Car	Finished Magic Art Car

Fileteado Renault Art Car by Alfredo Genovese

This 1981 Renault Hatchback Art Car was painted by artist Alfredo Genovese in Fileteado art work and submitted by Martin. It was on sale for about $6,000 back in 2007 from Argentina, but I don't know now who owns it.via
Here is also a video by the same artis working on a Fiat 600.

Electric Car in-wheel motor Siemens eCorner

Solar Powered Cars

were the elements of nature to man alone created. Each individual must be purchased and it is all in the nature around us. One need only travel and explore the hidden treasures of nature and use it to fulfill his basic needs of life. Something that does not need any searching shines up into the sky. The sun is the basic source of life on Earth. If there is no sun no life would have been possible.

Sun emits light, which is known as the solar energy and you may have heard and studied about solar energy will be used for thousands of purposes. This energy must have been used for heating and thermal power stations, run by solar energy and so on. If you read or hear about these things you simply pass on because this is all too common.

When it comes to solar powered cars it is very likely that you stop and think for a while. It is a promising future prospect and you wish you live long enough to see only solar-powered race car through the streets, no pay no more running out of gas, no waiting in line at the gas station for gasoline. Imagine how quickly you could improve your standard of living.

are solar-powered cars since the mid-19th Century have been. They have risen in number from year to organizations and tend to hold solar powered car race, and every year thousands of people to invest their money and bets on solar-powered cars. The mechanism of these cars is very simple. The batteries installed in these light bodied cars charge themselves from the sun. Then this energy, which they converted into electrical energy so that it helps the engine running.

Now this view is very simple, or rather, it sounds very simple and straightforward. The sun shines every day and it seems not such a problem with these cars. But the fact is that the amount of energy saved makes of these cars at a time them to go in a very slow pace. The road will be leveled and not steep because that requires even more energy. There are even more powerful batteries and more memory.

Have you ever noticed that this is the reason why solar powered cars are small, light weighted, and a person can wear at once? There are many technical facts that make the concept of these cars as vague.

Mini Cars

It was back in the late 1950s when the car is the first Mini rolled off the first assembly line in England. Fuel rationing has started in England, which was the catalyst for creating unique and this at the time, one of a kind car is quickly becoming a symbol of the British.

Mini was produced from 1959 until as recently as 2000, when production ceased BMC) British cars cars) because of lagging sales. It seems that most of the buyers cars years have developed a taste for less economic and more a more dynamic design models of foreign competition.

However, it was subsequently sold to BMW in 2001 and production was resumed once again under the name of the new BMW Mini. The recent rise in fuel prices, which sent the price of gasoline soared as much as 5 dollars a gallon in the United States that has brought a new generation of car buyers once again to re-discover this jewel in the crown of the car.

He pointed out that the Mini apart from other small cars such as Volkswagen Beatles that had preceded it, was that the Mini, while being small and economical fuel consumption and in spite of that, and far more extensive than the inside of the car. This was achieved by placing the engine side and extend beyond the wheel base to the edge of the cars.

While the measured dimensions of the mini 10'X4'X4 just 'The objective of the three man design team that created it is that a full 80% of the total area of the cars is the mandate of passengers and their luggage. They actually did not achieve this objective, and therefore the reasons which led to the unique shape clothes nest box.

As designs go, the clothes were quite original background with those being the Mini Cooper and Mini Cooper S models. However, over the years of the new design modifications and changes to allow a prostitute is not looking to become Mini mathematical formulas so much. However, it was three victories clothes in the Monte Carlo Rally in the 60s that really caught the eye in the world, with regard to sporting potential.

Although the Mini has landed roles in a number of movies over the years, it was roles in the recent popular comic spy Austin states that perhaps most famous for. Although Austin Powers led the Jaguar, Mini and clear in the number of impressions in many cameo fill the streets in the background.

In recent years, sales of the Mini has chosen to once again even with the help of changes in the new design a few and being equipped with the safety airbag to make it compatible with the standards of British car. Has also been introduced four new models to the public in recent years, as well as slightly modified by the name of the Mini from Mini.

Another factor for the resurgence of the popularity of car buying public is tired of the so-called fuel efficient cars to turn Tom be narrow and lacking in style. Mini but can always be counted on to carry four passengers in all parts of comfort and elegance, while providing excellent fuel consumption and it also sells for a reasonable price.

Pimped Cars

Smart Financing Tips For Credit and Cars

Know many people today when you buy a car it is very important to find the best conditions to obtain credit cars. Large solution to credit car financing is a loan that offers the best conditions and the lowest in mice. And the length of the period have a significant impact on pay and will determine definitely if the loan is subject to investigation. Today, even a bad credit record have the options of financing. The key is to take the time to find the financing that is available.

The best terms and cheaper credit for cars and are usually issued by sub prime lenders, car credit. Most of these bad credit car dealers are familiar with the lenders that the version of the best conditions. The question is when you use the deal to get a private loan without you really do not know what conditions it really is. Let me give you an example:
And can be obtained on the rate of 6%. And then will quote an interest rate of the new car buyers from 7.5%. Many ((push the limits on how far they can push new-car buyers on the basis of information gathered about the motives of buyers. In addition, the lender some of the policies on the amount of increase dealer can charge as well, but the car dealer is the client so that they will not do what they need to stay for competitive reasons.
The best way to deal with this scenario B for the credit act like you do not have the motivation and arranged the loan in another place. He also requested a copy of the paper, provided that shows the actual rate. Tell them in advance that you will only accept a nominal rate on the loan, which gets that way they are not double dipping on the sale of the car. There are 1-2%, in addition to credit auto loan can be a large commission to return to the car dealer.

Tried to ask the dealer to increase the quantity and less well paid. If the car dealer usually makes 500 dollars for the sale of the vehicle typically carry trader earns 400 dollars on cars, but can make it in the Commission on the loans, what a difference. Simply get a response back to auto repair or a good excuse than ever that they can justify, or get a car to lower prices and wages and the high rate. There is no doubt that a simple formula to understand some of the financial return for trade apples and apples. This may be more useful for you depending on the particular scenario by getting creative with financing.

So when shopping around for a car and your credit is not very good, and now you know you can negotiate with a number of ways to finance as a tool. The increase in loans to get cash on the back is a favorite among many car dealers, so be aware of them.

Ultimate Shoe and Hand Bag Accessory Car - Excessories Odd-Yssey Art Van by Kelly Lyles

Kelly Lyles in her Excessories Odd-Yssey Art Car - Photo by John Lok
Well known flamboyant artist Kelly Lyles who is known for "Leopard Bernstein" and "For the Birds" art cars,  has now created another amazing art van called the "Excessories Odd-Yssey" using a Honda Odyssey minivan. This van is a reflection of her love of fashion and having fun with her wardrobe, especially in grey Seattle where she desperately wants to see more colour. Kelly's art van is covered with women's accessories: shoes, purses, belts, jewelry. The hood is a giant paper-doll with magnetic outfits of her own clothes. The dashboard is tiny doll clothes with all the matching accessories. Prada eat your heart out.
Kelly Lyles Excessories Odd-Yssey Art Car with Magnetic Hood Ornaments
Excessories Odd-Yssey Art Car photo by John Lok	Excessories Odd-Yssey Art Car Side
Auto Pilot photo John Cornicello	Excessories Odd-Yssey Dashboard
Shoe Rack - Photo by Phil Scroggs	Excessories Odd-Yssey with Pearls

Vintage Vehicle Display Newly Restored Cars

They are also events that occur several times a year in many countries throughout the world, it is not difficult to discover a person familiar with the concept car displays. Can put these events by car manufacturers and automobile clubs individual alike. Many individuals also enjoy vintage car show simply because it allows them to see a lot of old cars.

Is usually understood that automakers hold car shows to demonstrate the superiority of the brand new cars. It is not new cars usually take front and center in these offers, however, that many times that there are a few classic cars or vintage on the screen as well. The reason for the presentation of these old cars, and now newly restored, and that is that the audience full of people who love them can enjoy. Can track the assets of the car show back to what was the basis for the automotive market for people to buy. And sold many cars in this way. Out of these types of car shows the development of competition can be seen today.

Content that is not to be just a place to display their cars, the smallest car shows also include the competition. For vintage car show, which focuses much attention on the restoration and this is often one of the main aspects of the competition in most places. For many, the real joy in the presence of these events can not be achieved through wisdom they gained in discussion with other owners.

Methods used to determine the winner in these events are extreme precision. For each car, checking the search for the following: Clean, free from rust, and all the actors, the original engine parts, to be driven by the properties of the "" origin, and ability. Thinking about joining vintage car club if you really appreciate the wonderful old cars so that you can be updated when new programs to occur. Other aspects of access to members as well as updated tables showing of vintage vehicles include obtaining the necessary knowledge to help you restore and maintain an obsolete yourself.

Cheap Tickets to some extent, you will need to buy any for a vintage car shows. Many individuals wonder why people love vintage car shows? To understand the answer, simply look to the general blah boring and production of the mass-produced car today, and compare to the sophisticated appeal of the cars produced in the past. For those that love these cars, and vision to restore the greatness of their past is a real treat.

Corporate Hippie Oxymoron Art Bus - By Radio 96.3

This Radio 96.3 Cool Bus was sent in by Wallie an art school bus from Seymour Indiana created as a promo bus for their radio station. I think this falls under the "corporate hippie bus" category which I believe may be a total oxymoron.