Well, I did get my soapbox racer done for the derby on Nov. 1st. I met with success in that I actually built it in two days! It even had fully functioning steering and a brake! Unfortunately I didn’t really get a chance to use the latter since it was soooo DAMN SLOW! I blew it by going cheap on the wheels. I bought the $8 non-ball bearing wheels from my local hardware store Pagano’s. I think these wheels would be great on a lawn mower, but the plastic and brass bushings they roll on just caused too much friction to keep me moving at a decent pace (or any pace at all).
I did just order some better wheels from Ebay. I’ll get those on the soapbox as soon as possible and take it out for another run.
The cool part was that my friend Murilee Martin dropped by to see the soapbox project and did a write-up about it on Jalopnik. Check out the post:
http://jalopnik.com/5399652/mystery-seat-from-20r-sprite-hell-project-lives-on-in-illegal-soapbox-derby-racer
~ admin, December 9, 2009
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Not sure if I will be able to attain this build quality... but I'll have a better seat.
I’ve decided to build a soapbox racer for the 2009 soapbox derby in SF on Nov. 1st. I have no experience with this whatsoever, but how difficult can this be? The only rules, as I understand them are that the car can’t have a motor, but it must have a beer holder. Okay, no problems there.
So far I have a seat from an old Austin-Healey Sprite and four wheels from the hardware store. This weekend I start in on building the chassis. That means I needs so materials. Lumber yard and ALCO Metals, here I come!
~ Jesse, October 23, 2009
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Here’s one of my favorite things I’ve built while working at the Academy of Art. I refer to it as the Graphic Design Timeline, although it’s really a grid. Since time runs along the Y-axis, I guess “Time Stack” is more appropriate than “Time Line”. This project is a solution to display of student-sourced images that represent various eras of graphic design history. It’s built using Actionscript 2.0. The data resides in an external xml document, and all of the images load from external files.
~ Jesse, September 10, 2009
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I just thought I would share a couple of flash animation pieces I did for an online art class for the Academy of Art University. These were for a graphic design portfolio class, a way to add some life and interactivity to some potentially dry subject matter. Was flash necessary to convey this information? No, probably not, but a typical AAU online course includes about 150 web pages of text and still image content, so its nice to gives students something shiny to play with here and there.
Although… I’m not so into Flash anymore. I don’t care for the program interface, I think the plug-in isn’t as universal; as it used to be, it doesn’t work on mobile… Overall it’s not as easy to develop or deploy. It’s still agood platform for delivering video… except to mobile devices. Blah!
~ Jesse,
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John “Super Ugly” Williams was announced as the winner of the G4 Dark Horse contest yesterday on-air! I suppose my camera work and video editing skills help to put John at the lead. Although I will give him much credit for being not only very comfortable in front of the camera, but also possessing actual stage presence as well. In any case, we are damn stoked right now!
Watch the winner announcement on Attack of the Show.
Watch our audition video.
~ Jesse, July 3, 2009
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An official partnership with the people at Twin Oaks Creative is in the works. They say as soon as I build one site in particular (my own), we can talk more…
~ Jesse, July 1, 2009
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So the cable channel G4 is having a contest to find the perfect nerd who would be capable of being a special correspondent at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con. In one day we shot and edited a super awesome audition tape for my friend Super Ugly, an Oakland jack-of-all-trades artist-musician-white rapper-superstar waiter-pop culture database. I’d love to share the video, but I’m not sure if he would agree. It is heavy on showing his geek side, along with all 3,000 of his action figures encased in Ikea glass cases. If he gets the gig, I’m definitely sharing the video. In the meantime, here are some links to Super Ugly’s work. I call him John.
Unified School District Video
~ Jesse, June 14, 2009
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Brandon is a freaking sweet dude who is by all accounts a metal-working genius. He is the type who has a brain that works so hard it make you feel really lazy just looking at him standing still. In addition to his technical expertise, he also dabbles in nude modeling. We did a little trade of expertise, whereby he got his Mullins Chain Drive site rebuilt using Wordpress combined with a custom theme by yours truly. I, in return am getting some parts fabricated for my old ‘61 Mini. The fabrication should prove to be 1st class, since Brandon has some pretty impressive credentials. Meanwhile, his website is humming along nicely. I’m looking foreward to seeing my new seat brackets…
~ Jesse, June 1, 2009
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After setting up several Wordpress based sites for other people, I’m finally walking the walk and using WP for my own site. Changes are surely to come a I refine the layout theme.
~ Jesse, March 23, 2009
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