Thursday, March 27, 2014

Wrap your car

So I met this nice gent - who works as a graphics designer. The man told me that a lot of his customers wanted their cars wrapped. Sure, I can get behind that idea. Wrapping your car can, of course range from the utterly banal advertise your massage parlour on the side of your Oldsmobile to the eye-gouge inducing colours that some donks sport. What is a donk, you ask? Oh, you gentle sheltered one. Here, let me ruin your afternoon. Anyway, so back to the convo - my new friend tells me further that a lot of people want their cars wrapped in carbon fibre(or fiber, as you might spell it). Which makes no sense to me. Bare-naked carbon fibre (which would be an awesome name for an alt-rock band, and I have just laid claim to it) is not much to look at. It has this weave to it - and that is about it. So what gives? The man tells me that people frequently replace the bonnet of their cars (he called it the `hood', of course) with with a carbob fibre bonnet. To reduce weight, he sez. I can totally get behind that. Of course that comes with a few caveats - dented metal can be beaten back into shape. CFRP - well good luck with that. Also, the weight reductions involved only make sense on a track. In a track capable car. Like a 911. For a regular joe, you would have the same effect by leaving yo mama on the kerb. (see what I did there?)
So in essence, a gaggle of boy racers are showing off their fake carbon fibre panels to other boy racers and presumably claiming faster laptimes which will not happen.


But probing slightly deeper, there is a certain aesthetic inertia involved. Was a time when lacquered wood was the last word in automotive design. In fact, bring back the days of the de Havilland Mosquito, I say - oh wait, the Morgan Motor Company already exists. Then the designers of the world had a glorious fling with polished chrome. Nothing against it - I like seeing a bumper (that is a fender to you) I can straighten my hair in. The current trend is to use acres and acres of depressing-as-fuccall black plastic for the proles and brushed aluminium for the 1%. Except that people who decide such things have apparently decided that a uniform gunship grey is the must-have colour for your Jerry uber-sedan. The interior must remind one of the heady days of the early Industrial Revolution. Hence the naked carbon fibre trim (seriously, does anyone even like looking at that?). Whatevs. I am ranting and it is time to stop.

In conclusion, the word is that using tree products as structural material is making a leetil bit of a comeback. I would love to own a ride where the dash has bamboo accents.

Monday, March 03, 2014

Clickbaiting and lazy journalism

Read this article. Look carefully at the accompanying picture of the aircraft mentioned. Do you see propellers? Yes, you do. So why then, does the author of said article call it a "jet fighter"? Lazy journalism like this ticks me off - particularly when gaffes like this are made by a so called 'technology reporter'. 

Also, grinding my personal axe - the real victor of the Battle of Britain was the Hawker Hurricane - less flashy than the Spitfire, but responsible for 60% of the kills made by the RAF.