Blackhawk Vintage Classic 2014 Group 1 - Pre-War & Early Vintage.

Open wide your eye-holes, vintage racing fans! This week we begin the photo-spew of our trip to the 2014 Blackhawk Vintage Classic. Overall we saw lots of cars from last year's events. After all, there are only so many owners and drivers in the Midwest, and familiar faces are part of the reason to go, right?

So rather than just letting our cameras drip over the cars as we did last year, our photographic safari team resolved to level up their photo skills and have a go at getting some shots of the cars on the track. This is tricky, as it requires a pretty long zoom lens, making it difficult to follow the car while keeping it in focus. Secondly, to get a really decent race photo, you want the background to have a little motion blur, which calls for a slow shutter speed, but that makes it harder to keep the car sharp. Some attempts worked and some didn't. I'll explain when we get there.

The Vintage Sports Car Drivers Association, or VSCDA or "Vinspocadras", as nobody calls it, separates cars into groups based on era and car type. I can't reliably make some of the finer the fine distinctions between the groups, but today is Group 1 day - Pre-War & Early Vintage. These are the cars that Monty Burns would have raced ("Beep beep! Out of my way! I'm a motorist!"), and are pretty distinct from all the other groups. I'd be grateful if any owners/drivers would correct any mistakes I make, via the comments section.

I hope your eyes are thirsty, because the vintage racing juice is loose!

A pretty valuable Bugatti... as if there are any affordable ones.

A pretty successful picture of the Bugatti. Car is sharp and background is blurry. Could be better.

I immediately remembered this car from last year. But now it's more complete, with added sheet metal and stuff. Sure enough, it was here to race. I don't remember what make it is, but I think it's kind of a mixed breed.

A row of MGs. There may be something else in there too, but I can't be sure.

Starting to get the hang of panning shots. Slow down the shutter speed to get some blur. Turn off auto focus because it will probably isolate some weeds in the foreground and piss you off. Then set the focus where you plan to take the shot. Focus on something at the approximate distance of the subject, like the texture of the asphalt, which is what I used. Start following the car and hit the shutter button when the car is in the sweet spot. Maybe 30% of these worked out for me, but this will probably get better as I get better.

This is kind of a rich man's game, but not so much that they don't do their own work. The owner, driver, and mechanic are usually the same person, with a few exceptions. The guy in the red shirt is the owner of this car, seen above. Competition is super friendly and people tend to help each other out with mechanical issues.

This MG has it's headlights turned around the wrong way. Why not? All the races were held in the daytime and you don't want rocks chipping or breaking your headlight lenses unnecessarily, right? How hard can is be to find new lenses for an early 20th century MG? Really hard, probably. The lenses were also covered with red gaffer tape. I'll bet he did that first, and then had the idea to just flip them around for good measure.

Internet blackout this week. - Vintage Racing Tomorrow!

Sorry citizens. This week has been an internet no-fly zone up until this morning.

See, AT&T decided to stop supporting our MOdulator/DEModulator, a nice sturdy Transdata 307 analog model. Apparently our trusty Transdata 307 MOdulator/DEModulator unit is not worth AT&T's trouble any more. What a bunch of snobs.

Some kind of crazy contraption.

So, we are forced to upgrade to a US Robotics 14.4 Sportster. I personally don't trust weird tech like this. I mean, you can't even see the gears! How does it work? What if it throws a drive belt? How can I fix it? Bottom line is you can't. This thing better work flawlessly for decades or I will be turbo pissed.

Our Coleco Adam Personal Computer needed a software update to work with the new "mo-dem", and US Robotics doesn't distribute their software on data cassettes any more, which is the only media the Adam consumes. USR only deliver drivers on strange coaster-like "floppy diskettes". Great. So, until we found a virgin tech wizard with the ability to transcode 3.5" floppy gibberish to nice, normal cassetteish, we were dead in the water. The world was a dusty wasteland, totally free of old pictures and jokes.

Bryce Thundercat

 Enter Bryce Thundercat. It is possible that this is not his real name. However, when one wields the powers of a thirtieth level Cybermancer like Bryce does, you can have people address you as you wish.

Bryce it was who fixed us up with the transcoded Maxxell XLII-S data cassette (chrome oxide no less!) that would install the drivers for our US Robotics futuremodem (I still don't trust it) on our Adam. After going through so much to get that cassette (a bag of Zesty Ranch Bugles and two cases of Oronamin C Drink Ramune - he really is an exotic machine that requires imported fuel), we popped the tabs out and triple-wrapped it in foil to protect the data for all time. Now, Phil Are GO! can never be thrown off the internet again. Thanks, Bryce Thundercat! How can we ever repay yo- Oh yeah. We did.

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! This weekend is the Blackhawk Vintage Classic and Phil Are GO! is your eyes in the sky on the ground at the cars! Our Photographic Assault Batallion will be out in the field tomorrow at Blackhawk Farms, making sure our readers don't miss a pixel of super hot lens-on-car perversion. WTF am I on about? Here are our posts from last year's BVC. The P.A.G! P.A.B. will be armed with the new-to-us Olympus OMD EM-5, and a kooky grab bag of lenses, including our 1972 Canon FD 1.4 and a massively donglike 300mm zoom, which on our camera, works out to a Hubble telescopic 600mm tele. Also, some new lenses that can auto focus, so not everything will be a blurry mess.

Stay tuned!

The Orb

Joke #1 - Unidentified Flying Object baffles military base, before to getting stuck in tree.

Joke #2 - With the expansion of the astronomy budget, the department head could now observe objects as far away as thirty feet.

Joke #3 - Comet P/1931 Dwipton, on it's closest approach, devastated the bird feeder, destroyed several laundry lines and created havoc and terror lasting for minutes.

Joke #4 - On the most ambitious journey yet attempting to visit the newly discovered dwarf planet, three more men were lost. It was resolved that the space program needed to invest in "a way better ladder, and maybe a mattress or something".

Joke #5 - Cox you-fly-it Venus model kit. None assembly required. Parental supervision required. Or not. Who cares.

Any municipal comedian will tell you there's nothing like a good surveying joke, and Mr.FancyHotGaseousBallsOfInterplanetaryStarStuff_2 will tell you the same. Properly zoned and clearly demarked thanks to MFHGBOISS2 for joke #6! 

Joke #6 - " It wasn't funny" said Earl Sagan-Degrasse, when his co-workers painted his glasses black after he tried to look at the Sun through his surveyor's transit. It was actually a large yellow helium balloon they had tricked him into viewing. " I coulda almost went blind!" " But it wasn't REALLY the sun either. Those guys are jerks". "Earl isn't too bright" added one of his co-workers, who had participated in the tom-foolery. ( Earl shown here looking at the balloon, after the photographer assured him he really wouldn't go blind).

Joke #7 is a good old-fashioned prom joke from Jim D. Thanks Jim! On first glance, letting the Science Club decorate for Prom looked like a total disaster - - until we saw they had spent 90% of the budget by lining the dance floor with canisters of nitrous oxide.

[Commenter jokes will be added to the post.    -Mgmt.]

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Phone wallpaper graphic giftstorm! Part two of two.

More smartphone screenpapers today! We finish our two-part visual carpet-bombing campaign against the soft target of your smartyphone's main screen with these ten pictures stolen from The Real World via my camera.  Please enjoy these homewalls in your iDroidberry of choice. We think you'll find that they provide a sybaritic loungespace for all your icons and widgets.

Textured glass in a hospital.

Translucent Legos, dumped into a glass ashtray and held over a lamp.

Same, just closer.

A wall in the Museum of Science and Industry.

Seating and padded wall in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency O'Hare.

B&W toys.

Same toys, shot with a plastic Diana lens.

Roof of a Chicago office building.

Wall in a lobby of a Minneapolis hotel.

The side of a really old ice bin I found in a freezer in the basement of my house.

Phone wallpaper graphic giftstorm! Part one of two.

Got a brand new smartyphone? No? Me neither. Want to make it look fresh again and hush that little idiot voice in your head that tells you to upgrade, even though you have a year to go on your contract? Swap in a new wallpaper.

Android calls it a home screen. IOS calls it a wallpaper. Dropping a new picture on the tennis court of your mobile doohickey is a fine way to open a window and let the stink out of your phone. Some people keep a picture of their kids or other significant creature as their homepaper. Trouble is, snapshots like that often make it super hard to see your icons. If only some industrious blogpostmaster general would post a bunch of original can't-get-them-anywhere-else super-mod screenwalls for you to right-click onto your hard drive with your rude finger. Then you could get in on the maybe-this-old-phone's-not-so-bad action. We're holding out for a hero.

Hey! I'M a hero! get ready to be carpet bombed with interesting homepapers for your pocket vibrator of choice. Combined with one of the many "super customizable clock" apps, you can make something that looks positively intentional... if that's what you're into.

Multiple Graphic Gifts incoming in three, two, one, GRAPHICGIFTSINCOMINGNOW!

Serving suggestion, using the photo below. The clock widget is Zooper Widget, and supports the use of standard TTF fonts. There are other clock widgets that can make use of TTFs in this way.

Intentionally blurred Christmas lights form "bokeh" (Japanese for "blur"). The characteristics of the camera lens cause points of light to form bubbles. The shape of the bokeh indicate the number of blades in the lens's aperture mechanism. Lenses are often evaluated and chosen for the quality of their bokeh.

View from a glass elevator in the Art Institute, Chicago.

Downtown Minneapolis.

Serving suggestion, using the image below.

Minneapolis bokeh.

Ibuprofen tablets, now available in a variety of tantalizing colors. I can't wait for my next headache!

The side of a vintage Ludwig drum, with a blue bass boat sparkle finish.

The same image, with hue altered in Photoshop.

[More tomorrow.   -Mgmt.]

Flameless Electric Heat - Carefree & colorfree.

It's June, citizens! Time to think about how you heat your home, and the Edison Electric Institute had strong opinions about that. They wanted you to use electricity. Lots and lots and lots of electricity.

Apparently, in 1970, coal and oil were still common heat sources for residential homes. So much so, that a total lack of soot was a selling point for anything that wasn't coal or oil. I didn't know this until now, but I guess coal- or oil-burning furnaces put a lot of soot into the air in your house, which eventually found a home on your walls, furniture, clothing, and pulmonary alveoli. So, if you're an electric company - or better still, if you're an association that represents LOTS of electric companies, a good way to sell your product is by pushing the "no soot" feature. With electric heat, you could decorate your pad in a pure white Space 1999 Clorox motif, and just use throw pillows to coordinate with your pants suit... just like you always dreamed of.

Fair enough, but what the Edison Electric Institute would like you to forget is that electricity is just about the most expensive an inefficient way to generate heat. Your blow dryer may use as much as 1500 watts of juice. Now imagine 1500 watts of noise coming out of your stereo's amplifier. That's enough sound to destroy your hearing and attract the police. 1500 watts of heat will dry your hair, but 1500 watts of sound will make you permanently deaf. Electric heat is very power-hungry.

For a few years, I lived in a one-bedroom apartment with electric heat. In the winter, my electric bills would get up around $160, and this was in 1997 dollars. I don't want to think what it would cost to heat an entire house with electricity.

Know what, though? For those lucky enough to have electrically-powered everything in their house, the EEI had a special award for you: the Total Electric Award. See?

The Total Electric Award meant that your total income went directly into the coffers of your local electric company, in exchange for which you got a perfectly soot-free, cash-free life, and a gold medallion of some kind - probably a sticker - to put in your picture window. This served two purposes. 1) It showed your neighbors that, if by chance you happened to look like a family of chimney sweeps, it was because you were a family of chimney sweeps, NOT because you lived in a coal-heated house. And 2) it discouraged burglars, because they would know that you had zero cash and valuables in the house.

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