USF1 Website Up and Running

The 2010 Formula One Season starts in March and is significant because it’ll be the official first race of the American Formula One team. There are rumors swirling that the USF1 team will not be ready by then but the USF1 team principals Peter Windsor and Ken Anderson insist that they will be ready. I sure hope they’ll be! Well at least their website is finally up and running. Click on the picture to check it out. Make sure you read Peter Windsor’s Blog. And for you gearheads out there, check out the Windshear Wind Tunnel website, the most advanced rolling-road wind tunnel in the world that was created by Ken Anderson of the USF1 Team.

Business Idea: Magazine Rack Store

I love magazines. Always have, always will. If I could, I would dedicate a whole room in my house to collect magazines. When I was in college at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, I used to love going to a place called Joe Muggs’ Newsstand, shown below.

All the store had was coffee and magazines. I’m not sure what happened, but this past year when I visited Atlanta it wasn’t there anymore. Joe Muggs itself is owned by Books A Million and their website says that they still own Joe Muggs Newsstands with an “exhaustive newsstand selection of magazines, newspapers and best sellers.” But on google maps it looks like nothing has taken its place yet. So although it seems that this place eventually went out of business (not sure how long it stayed in business, but it lasted at least the 4 years I was in college) I would’ve loved to have opened up a business exactly like it.

But now that time is past because the printed magazine will soon be dead. The future will be electronic media. Ebook readers like Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Nobles’ Nook are available now. And there are many rumors swirling around about Apple creating a tablet device in 2010 that could be used for consuming books and magazines. However, the best interpretation of an electronic magazine reader is the Mag+ by Berg. It looks pretty awesome to me. I hope they come out with it soon!

Check out the Mag+ Video from Bonnier on Vimeo.

So what do you think? A store that stocks a whole load of Mag+ for people to read and buy, coffee to sip on, and Macbooks or iMacs to use?

Random Snaps: Octane

Boat Fuel on Harkers Island by North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

Rage Against The Machine Acoustic

Oh yes and of course I will have to learn how to play all of the Rage Against The Machine songs in acoustic like so:

New Hobby: Learning Guitar

As you know from my previous posts, I just bought a new Macbook Pro. Well it comes pre-installed with the newest GarageBand software as part of iLife. With the new GarageBand, you can download for Free a set of 9 music lessons to learn how to play the guitar (and piano, but I know how to play the piano already). Well starting this Thanksgiving I decided to learn guitar. I’ll be using the GarageBand lessons to learn the basics of guitar. And I’ll be using my Mom’s vintage Yamaha acoustic guitar that I borrowed from my sister who was of course borrowing it from my Mom. I picked it up from my sister when I went with my family to NC to visit her and her husband at their new house for Thanksgiving. Here it is on their couch:

So in support of my new hobby, I’ve surrounded myself with things to inspire me. First of all, I’ve Tivo’d a bunch of MTV Unplugged performances. I’ve also bookmarked a couple of YouTube guitar lessons (Drive by Incubus, Lazy Eye by The Silversun Pickups). And I’ll need to buy a guitar stand so that the guitar will be easily accessible and I can play it for at least 15 mins a day.

So far I’ve gotten through GarageBand lessons 1 and 2 and followed along with some of the two song lessons on YouTube. This weekend I’ve practiced alot and discovered how much patience is needed to learn to play. And my fingers will need to develop some good muscle memory. But I’m up for the challenge. My goal is to be able to play the Incubus and Silversun Pickups songs by Christmas 2010. Just so you know, “Drive” by Incubus is a tough song! Here are the two lessons:

Design Analysis: Intro

I put design near the top of my list of features to look for in a product. In my opinion, a design should be aesthetically pleasing as well as functional. Of course good design is in the eye of the beholder and I have specific tastes, especially in the design of cars. My Corrado hits alot of what I like in car design (i.e. Fender flares, a low hunkered down look, sharp lines, etc). And yes I tend to like the cars that have similar features to my Corrado and not everyone will agree. But in future blog posts I will attempt to write some design analysis’ on the cars and products that I like.

My design analysis’ will be inpired by Automobile Mag’s “By Design” features. Click on the picture below for a sample analysis of the 2009 BMW Z4 by Automobile Magazine. I haven’t been able to find a dedicated page showing all of their By Design features on the website, but if you search “By Design” within their website you should find others on cars like the Mercedes GLK and the Nissan 370Z.