Stainless steel Ford Sedan

From this forum (second post).
"Here are a few shots of a 1936 Ford Tudor Sedan built for and owned by Allegheny Ludlum Steel. It was featured in a local parade with over 100 of our salaried, hourly and retired employees walking alongside. This is 1 of only 4 in existence and is the only one currently in running & in road worthy condition. The car is in exceptional condition, with the interior and even the frame looking great. All 4 cars each had over 200,000 miles on them before they removed them from service. These cars were built for Allegheny as promotional and marketing projects. The top salesmen each year were given the honor of being able to drive them for one year. The v-8 engine (max 85 hp) ran like a sewing machine and WA S surprisingly smooth and quite. I thought this was a much better looking automobile than the Ford Thunderbird that visited us last year. FYI, the car was insured (we were told) for the trip to Louisville via covered trailer for 1.5 million dollars. People were told that the dies were ruined by stamping the stainless car parts, making these the last of these cars ever produced. More information of the history on these automobiles can be found at Allegheny Ludlum's website."

I think it looks nice, much better than if it had been chrome or something super-glossy like that.


Given that rust is always such a problem with cars, I wonder why stainless steel has not been used more? Too expensive? Too hard? (The post above hints at the latter.) (Bert?)

Wedding dresses

I think this photo is about 25 years old.

Stones keep rolling

Rolling Stones docu from 2006. (Review.)
(Why Scorcese? Isn't he kind of over-qualified? Any half decent documentarist can do a band docu.)

Imagine showing this film to the twenty-year-old Mick and Keif. I find it hard to imagine any other reaction than sheer horror. :-)
I'm not sure that this means that it's necessarily wrong to be playing the same music forty year later. But it is interesting that rock and roll, which was intimately connected with youth and rebellion is now being played by sixty-year-old super-established men. I guess the question is, was youth and rebellion what rock was, or merely something we associated with it for little reason?

Parents

My father worked hard, putting a roof over our heads. I always said to him, "if you hired professionals, you wouldn't have to do it again and again".

But seriously, I think I could have appreciated my parents more while they were alive. We're all flawed, and very few people have a relationship to a parent which is free from any strain. But no matter what, raising a child is a huge outlay in time and money, and I think they deserve recognition for that. When we are young, it seems like those things happen just magically. In fact, even as adults, if somebody paid all our expenses every month all the time, we'd very soon take it for granted. But like the Chinese say, when drinking water, thank the river. Or words to that effect.

Human-dog connection

Tiles for desktop

Here are a couple of tiles that I made back in the nineties for my web site. I like to use them sometimes for background pattern on my desktop when I want something subtle, but a little more interesting than a plain color.
Please use them only on your own computer, not on a web site.



They are both made from photos I took, the lower one is from leaves from a house birch I had back then, I think.
... Nope, now I remember, it's from this photo.


It was my own photo, and the same type of plant, but not my own, it belonged to the lovely model, Marlene.

... I just discovered something disturbing: for the first time ever, I have lost file formats to time: I can no longer open my old PhotoCD files! At least not in decent size, in Graphic Converter they will open in "base", which is only 768x512 pixels. Probably PhotoCD is long gone, but I honestly did not expect to lose the files this soon. (If you feel like experimenting, here's a file.)

Liquid Gold

I was about to say that this picture was named for the band in the Iain Banks novel Espedair Street (an old favorite), but it turns out that band was called Frozen Gold. (That name a bit silly, since gold is frozen at room temperature. But of course the novel did not claim the band was the most profound one ever, only hugely successful.)

Raw Power

Iggy Pop and the Stooges in 1970 and about 35 years later.
I think Iggy always gained a lot from a little help in writing the songs, but nobody on the planet has him beat in the coiled-spring raw energy area, even now in his fifties.

"We are Illuminati"

Amazingly, the singer is actually a woman, a sweet and petite woman.
Like Nina Hagen, she has an amazing range, both in tone and style.

Saleen S7

The Saleen S7 (never heard of it before) is one of the cars in the Iron Man movie. I doubt I ever saw a car which made a clearer statement of "fast car, stand back!" Gorgeous.
Part of it is the color, it's fantastic. What the hell is that color? It's not red, it's not orange... and it has some added... not metallic?... I dunno.


Anyway, I now watching the DVD documentaries for the movie, and I'm impressed with the work which went into making the suits, both CGI and real suits. Astounding amounts of work, and a great result.
Also if you think you can spot when it is CGI and when it's real, give it up, not even those who worked on it can tell anymore.

One false note, right at the end: "Samu El Jackson" as Nick Fury? Oh noooooo. I'm so tired of that guy. He's not bad, but he has the range of a penny whistle.

Welsh error

When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed.
Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated".
Article

Commenters

A couple of people recently have hinted that they wondered if they were being too forward by commenting on this blog.

Nonsense, I love comments and commenters*. If there were none, it would be like going to the cafe in a town devoid of people. I might still do it, but it would be a far poorer experience.

I write to share things, and the comments I get is the proof that the sharing happened. Not to mention that all you commenters have something to share yourself. Fun, links, knowledge, different viewpoints.

* ("Commenter" may not be a word, but it is now. I feel "commentator" is something different.)