MINIHERO - The Disappearing Bonnet

Played around with a technique last night where you can "see" through the bonnet, that would be hood for the non-MINI crowd, into the engine bay. You take an exposure with the bonnet closed, another with the bonnet open, and then do a bit of work in Photoshop to get this effect.

Easy to do as long as you know how to do masking. I just put the bonnet down version on top, created a mask, painted in black on the mask where I wanted to see through the bonnet. Best to use a soft edged brush with the opacity and flow set in the 30% - 40% range. I also used a mask to hide the surrounding garage area.

This was a quick test and I'm not 100% happy with the lighting or the environment. As a test it accomplished my goal. For lighting, I used a Nikon SB-600 shot through a 45" umbrella. Next time I'll probably do something similar but control the light a little better. It was a challenge keeping specular highlights from blowing out.

Later.

Gigging

We had a short gig last night at Smith's Olde Bar for a fund raising event for Morningside Elementary School. It is always a blast for us as performers and as audience members. The night is filled with a large number of bands playing 30 minute sets. It is cool to see how quickly some of these bands have come together as many of them were created from parents just for this event. It truly shows you how much talent is out there.

Great job to the organizers, great job by my band members, and a special call out to our drummer, Mack Brown, as he performed with grueling pain from a kidney stone.

Rock on!

The MINI Dirty Butt Problem

If you happen to own a MINI Cooper then you are certainly aware of what I call the "MINI dirty butt problem".

The aerodynamics of our favorite little car are such that it scoops everything it can find off the road and dumps it onto the back of the car. My goodness, how frustrating it is to get MINIHERO all shined up and on the way out of the neighborhood find that someone's grass clippings have been deposited onto the back of my car....

There is one particular component of the car that also acts as a shelf where road material just stacks up. That would be the rear window wiper. Many people find the rear window wiper to be of great value, I don't. That little wiper collects road trash like moths to a light. If you've ever pulled back a wiper on a MINI that is over 3 years old, you'll find that it, and the collected grit, act like sandpaper. There is probably a set of nice "scratches" on the glass underneath. That wiper also results in doom to the stickers I have on the back window. All of this leads me to the decision to remove the wiper.

Simple procedure, just remove the nut and soak the wiper connection in WD40, and soak, and soak, and soak. If the wiper has been on for any amount of time then it is almost fused and it will take a few days of soaking before you will be able to pull it off. Next step is to removed the wiper motor which requires removing the inside panel from the boot. To remove the panel, just remove the screws and forcefully pull off. There are clips that hold the panel on and you will certainly feel that you are pulling too hard - you are not.

The motor is held on with 3 bolts, just remove, unplug the wiring harness, washer supply line, and slide the motor out. Make sure to plug the washer supply line or you'll have a bit of dripping... You now have a small hole that needs to be plugged. You can order a special plug for this purpose but an article on NAMM noted that a bicycle headset cap can be used to plug the hole.

What's cool about a headset cap is how many different styles and colors exist. You are sure to find something to add that special "bling" to your MINI. You can get these at a local bicycle shop, though choices may be limited. Do a Google search and you will find many choices such as here.

I found one at a local shop that is of the carbon fiber line which looked very cool on MINIHERO as noted in the photo. So, there you go, another "mod" to MINIHERO. Though some would question the removal of the rear wiper, I find it much easier to keep the trash off the rear and I like the cleaner lines.

Social Media Changing Our World

See what you think.

Lightroom Love

Bless those Lightroom developers and product managers!!! Just discovered a behavior in Lightroom that surprised and delighted me. I use a collection for all of the images we put on my wife's art site. We've decided to create a "current work" page and an "archived work" page since the number of images had gotten to be so high. I made a copy of the collection of images which will represent current work and the original set for archived work.

We went through the current work and removed all of the images that should be archived. The next task was to go find and remove from the archive collection all of the images that are in the current collection. One would think you would flip back and forth between the sets until the deed was done and it would be a visual activity. Here's where the fun begins.

I'm in the current set. I click on an image. When I move to the archive set, the image I had selected in the current set is already highlighted in the archive set!!! All I have to do is delete the highlighted item from the archived list. Brilliant, what a time saver.

Lightroom's behavior is designed so that any image selected in a collection will be automatically selected in another collection if present. I did not expect this but it was most helpful for this particular task.

MINIHERO Flyer

I've noticed a lot of folks that participate in car shows create auto show signs for their car. Since I usually enter MINIHERO into show events I decided it was bad form for MINIHERO to not have a sign as well. So, firing up Photoshop and Lightroom, I dug through some of my shots of MINIHERO and put one together. I designed it for 11 x 17 and have not had a chance to print it out but here is a scaled down version. My plan is to print it when I have a chance and then see about having it laminated.

Upcoming Class Reunion

It has been 30 years since I graduated from high school. Seems a lifetime ago, well, I guess it has been. I'm pretty excited about seeing classmates and seeing the journeys our lives have taken.

My graduating class was very small with only 18 seniors. That should give you an indication of how small our private school was. The whole student body, from kindergarten to 12th grade, was somewhere around 200 people. When I note that to my colleagues and friends in Atlanta, they just shake their heads. Most of them had more students in their graduating class than we had in our whole school.

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone and catching up, though a quick reunion will never allow us to recapture the time that has passed.

Here's to you, classmates of 1979, see you in September!

MINI Tow Hook

I've purchased a number of products for my MINI from Outmotoring.com and have been very happy with their prices, speed of delivery and quality of products. One exception is the red anodized tow hook. Apparently there seems to be a wide variance in quality with anodized tow hooks. After about 60 days my red tow hook turned an interesting shade of pink. Now, I'm not scared of pink.... I just wanted red on MINIHERO.

I spoke with the owner of outmotoring.com at MOTD 2009 and though he was happy to swap out the tow hook he did indicate that there had been issues with the red, well, staying red.

At that point I decided to take the thing apart, sand it down, and paint it myself. Turned out great and as it gets nicks I'll just take it off and repeat the process. So, if any of you are having trouble with the color of your anodized tow hook then think about painting it.

There are a couple of steps to remove the part you would paint.

1. Take a hex wrench and unscrew the hex bolt from each end, the end that the hook swings on.
2. Take a very small hex wrench and loosen the hex nut that holds the center piece in.
3. Slide out the center piece and the two hook will then just fall off.
4. I used a coat hanger and built a "stand" from which to paint the hook.
5. Prior to painting I cleaned and then sanded the tow hook.
6. I put about 5 coats of caliper paint. Any red paint will do, I just happen to have a can of caliper paint on the shelf.
7. Once dried just reverse the process. Take the hook and put in place and slide the center piece back in.
8. Make sure the center piece is centered and then tighten the small hex nut.
9. Put the large hex nuts back into the ends and tighten.
10. Enjoy your new shiny tow hook!
    

Gene Pool Cleansing

I almost fell out of my car on my way to band practice tonight. While stopped at a light during rush hour at a major Atlanta intersection I saw a grown man turning onto North Druid Hills Rd. from the I-85 off-ramp on a pocket bike. This guy had to have a death wish. He was at the head of traffic and he started oscillating from side to side as he entered the road. He almost slammed into the curb and had to stop to regain control.

It was the most ridiculous thing I've seen in a long time and I wish I had thought to grab my camera phone and take a shot.

At least he was wearing a helment...

Ableton Live

Downloaded a demo version of Ableton's Live product. What a very cool product. Much more powerful than Sony's ACID Pro (at least to this untrained music wanna be). I went through the included demo and then tried my hand at creating a short song using the included samples.

That was fun!

Then I decided to record the acoustic guitar part of a song that T. Mack Brown and I wrote and use Live to add the other instruments. One of the cool features of this product is that when a new sound file is imported you set up the bpm for the original recording. Live does a fairly good job of doing this when a clip is first imported but I had to do some tweaking for the guitar parts I recorded. Also, since Live can loop a clip for the desired length of the piece on the timeline I did not have to record the full song. I just recorded each phrase that I'll need.

After getting my clips in and setting the default bpm I set my set's bmp (set is what Live calls a song or whatever you're building). This is where the fun part comes in. I first wanted to add drums so I looked for an existing drum beat that closely fit the rhythm of the song. Once I did that I dragged the clip to the timeline and the "painted" for the duration needed. Now the clip was orignally recorded at a bpm that is different than my song. This is where the bpm mapping becomes important. Live will remap the clip to match the bpm for the set. This means that once the drums where dropped into my set the beat was remapped to match my song. This was really cool!

Then I went about the business of adding a bass line. In addition to the bpm remapping you can change the "key" of a clip. I found a bass line that fit rhythmically and once I dropped it in I changed the note for the base line to match the phrase it was dropped into. For each chord change I just dropped in a copy of the bass line and changed the tuning to fit the chord at that point. Once I had a full phrase completed I just selected all of the blocks and copied the block of clips to each phrase in the song that needed that bass line.

I did the same thing for a synthesizer line that was violin like and a heavily distorted guitar droning guitar part in the chorus.

Since I recorded my own "clips" on acoustic guitar I learned that you may have to edit the clip's wav file to make sure you have a smooth transition from clip to clip or end to start of each clip. I had a clip that had a small thunk that did not fit well when it was being looped back to the front of the clip. I just cut the thunk down using a wav editor and bringing the db of the thunk down very, very low.

This is a great product and will be on my short list for purchase as soon as I can free up the greenbacks.

What A Washer

Our Kenmore bit the dust and after determining Sears service could not come out for 3 days I decided to roll up my sleeves and fix it myself. The good news is there are a lot of sites out there with detailed information on how to service/repair washers. A few of the best are:

http://www.cheapapplianceparts.com/washer_repair.htm
http://www.applianceaid.com/procedures.html
http://groups.msn.com/Appliantology/washers.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=529

Between these sites and the parts schematic I was able to determine that a coupler was broken. A $20 part found locally. After replacing this part and patting myself on the back.. the moment of truth -- turned washer on and it began working. Pow!!!! A very large and sickening sound and I immediately turned the washer off.

Not good, I now see dark black oil oozing from the transmission case (didn't know washers had transmissions...did you?). I was able to remove the transmission case, the one with the large fracture. After disassembling the transmission I found the gear used to drive the agitator had broken. This is what caused the coupler to break in the first place. I was still hopeful but the transmission case is cast iron and the price is around $150. I also still had to buy the agitator gear.

If I had just known there was something wrong in the transmission case I could have spent another $20 on the agitator gear and been home free. Well, I couldn't see investing more time and money into a 5 year old washer. Next step, research and purchase a new washer...