Lance Armstrong's Bike

In Janurary '09 the Tour Down Under bike race was held in Adelaide. The biggest drawcard of this event was the return of cycling legend Lance Armstrong to the sport. After surviving testicular cancer, Lance is using his comeback as a promotional tool to fight the battle against cancer and will be entering 8 major races, of which Adelaide was the first. For each race Lance is having a graphic designer develop a new paint scheme for his bike, and after each race the bikes (worth around $55,000 I'm told) will be auctioned off with the proceeds going toward cancer research. I was lucky enough to visit the tour villiage as the mechanics were servicing the bike and got a good closeup look. The numbers on the bike all represent different cancer statistics, and look great at the same time.

Vietnam, Cambodia & Singapore September '08

I was lucky enough to visit these countries in '08, and found the whole experiance to be an eye opener. That whole part of the world is just so different I dont know where to begin, but for now I'll just keep to a few of the automotive observations.

The biggest one is the lack of copyright laws in that part of the world. I walked into the Fiat dealership and in addition to the new Bravo and 500, they had 2 4WD's on the floor that looked suspiciously like a Toyota Prado and a Chevy Silverado. Something didnt seem right, and on closer inspection they were 'copies' of these cars. I also saw fake BMW X5's driving around but I was unable to snap a pic. It would be cool to import one to Australia for a bit of a laugh!

Vietnam is a hectic place, and its very rare that you see nice expensive cars. However, when you did they really stood out. I dont know why, but I found something very compelling in the apparent calmness these cars provided in a sea of chaos. It was hard to photograph them without getting run over by the thousands of scooters than zoom around, but I managed a few. Ive tried to capture this 'stilness' and I think the cars make for interesting subject matter.

Rally of South Australia 2008

This is the first time I tried to take some action shots, and by fluke some of them turned out half decent.

There were some very nice cars, from the manic revving of the highly tuned 2.0 Datsun 1600 to the modern cracking and popping of the Subaru and Mitsubishi 4WD Turbos. A few months prior I was lucky enough to do a few stages navigating in the white WRX as a course car, and I can personally say that its very quick indeed.

Well, welcome to the world of blogging. I am totally aware that the sheer number of hours that will no doubt be put into this blog will go totally unnoticed by the world, however I still think it has some merit.

Blogging seems to be the contemporary diary, a place where random things can be recorded. I have created this as a way of recording my various observations and experiances as it sometimes helps to collate these in one place. As an Industrial Design student, I was told that keeping a record of various design related observations, no matter how random, is a good way to improve both design thinking and methodology. Its a way of reviewing and organising your thoughts for later use, much as you would lecture notes or meeting mintues. I am hoping to start doing design work outside of University under the 'EightEleven Design' banner and this blog will be a good way to collate and archive my work. Depending on how successful this plan is it may stay as a small time 'freebie' venture or it may hopefully turn into something that will one day earn a proper wage. Either way, I dont want to ever work a 9-5 job and my theory is that if I keep doing what I enjoy and am enthused about hopefully I'll find a way to make it pay.

I'm also into cars, and this blog will also serve as a record of cool and interesting cars I find, a few photos from car shows, updates and pics from my own motor racing endeavours and maybe a pic or two of my own restoration project, a 1979 Fiat X19. I wont update this blog with the details of the restoration, but for any anoraks the full story is told at http://xwebforums.org/showthread.php?t=919

I'll start things off by adding a few photos and stories from the past year or so to kick things along. I may be the only person that ever reads this, but if I'm not I hope you, the visitor, finds something interesting.

High Five!

The first post... one small step for man one giant leap for IT nerds or something....