Long time to update, so here is a pretty good one! This Saturday I dragged Cody out of the house to go to the 512project, a “stance centered” car show. It was held at the Austin Driveway track out off 183 east. Totally cool as the entire meet was on the track itself. No moving cars just fun to walk around the tiny Nürburgring nugget they have built out there.

Only downside to the whole event was that it was at 1pm which means it was 100 billion degrees outside:

There was a DJ set up playing music the whole time so it never got boring:

You had your staple car show cars: Nissan 350z’s, 240sx’s of various years, GTI’s and of course no car show is complete without an 86:

Some cars were heavily sponsored, but not too many:

Of course I would have paid 10 bucks and bought a shirt just to see this car all by itself and take pics of it for 3 hours alone:

I almost started to cry because the inside of it smelled like mine:

Some other cool cars were out there including this one that goes to a lot of local shows, the famous two tone koi painted subie:

Another cool hand drawn paint job ehhehe:

We wanted to stay to see who won stuff during the raffle giveaways but it was just too hot and I had gone through a lot of water and we needed to get back. We had a ton of fun taking pics and video of all the cars. The second I got home I jumped in the shower, washed the salt out of my face and put on my spankin new t-shirt:

Video here of me wandering about:

Isaac had his third birthday this weekend and all of his cousins and aunts and uncle and friends came!

Now, Isaac’s actual birthday was last weekend but we had to move the party to yesterday to make sure his papa could make it.  When I asked him if he wanted a Thomas the tank engine cake or Buzz Lightyear cake he promptly responded BUZZ!!!!! So thus the party suddenly had a Toy Story theme! I decorated the cake the night before and started icing the cupcakes. I really wanted to geek out and make an actual Buzz out of cake but I had some issues with the T-shirts I made for the party so cake making was delayed so a simple Andy’s Bed version was made:

Isaac had a great time at the party, lots of family and a few friends of ours came out to visit and have some lil burgers and hotdogs and chicken wings. Isaac’s favorite part of course was the cupcakes with sourworms in them. He LOVES sour candy. I was concerned earlier in the day because it was storming all night and still muggy and rainy out that morning. However by noon it had cleared up and warmed up to the point it was perfect outside!

He got all kinds of presents for his birthday including some sets of blocks, water toys, and an actual Buzz Lightyear toy. Cody and I got him this Toy Story bike with some of his birthday money! He is getting the hang of pedaling and should be able to ride it great by this summer. Just means I’ll have to fix up my bike so we can ride around.

So I ordered the shirts Monday from BlankApparel and they came in Tuesday. O_O I ran to Herwecks after work yesterday to pick up a quart of emulsion and an extra screen and headed home.

Today I brought the screens to work to expose them because I don’t have my own exposure unit yet. Well I mixed the emulsion before 8am, coated the screens at noon during lunch, and checked on them around 2. They LOOKED dry but I must have gotten this new stuff too thick because it wasn’t completely dry enough because as soon as I got it out of the exposure unit and hosed the screen off the emulsion began to pull away from the screen. So I’m letting the other two screens dry overnight and hopefully they will work as I only need two screens to do the shirts. I have one set of art for the adult (parents) sizes and one size for the kids shirts. To make the art fit the screens I had to omit my Austin Apparel sponsor on the back of the shirt, but it should look better in the end.

In other Isaac birthday news its totally going to rain on Saturday which is making pretty angry as we went to all this trouble to get the back yard in shape for a party. If it rains we’ll all just sit inside and do whatever, any kids that show can just attack the pinata in the living room like a zombie horde.

Now, I am no professional researcher or scientist by any means and I don’t claim to be.  So please take all of this information with the knowledge that this is just my opinion/speculation on the issues. Other than that, flame on!

Sounds like nothing! – Sure the biggest thing most folks who switch from a gas/desiel to electric car will be the “VAROOOM”  being replaced with “WOOOSH”. However, you find that out the instant you take it on a test drive. What I am more worried about is the lack of you being able to hear the car coming…at all. Folks on bikes, pedestrians, etc won’t be able to hear you coming which can be a horrible horrible thing. Not to mention the terrifying idea of a motorcycle you can’t hear changing lanes beside you in a car they can’t hear going down the road. I guess we’ll all have to get louder horns or yell “MOVE!” really loud like kids who ride bikes on busy sidewalks.

Distance Driving – Imagine for a second that your going on a cross country trip. Lets hypothetically make it a trip from Georgia to California.  If your using a fully electric car you would have to stop when your car runs low on power. Not a big problem because if everyone has electric cars they will have more recharge points at gas stations and hotels. What IS  a problem is when your driving along and suddenly realize your car is out of juice just like you do when you ignore your iphone all day until your ready to call someone and it’s red bar tells you your screwed. Your then stuck somewhere between Barstow and have to call a tow truck to come bring you a jump-generator or spare battery that will cost you the rest of your Disney vacation money.

Refueling – While I’m on the point of refueling, let’s say your on a schedule and have to be at the dry cleaners at 7:30, work at 8, lunch meeting at 11:30, pick up kids from after school program at 5pm, soccer at 6, dinner at 7, dance practice at 8. You get home and flat out forget to charge the car. With a recharge time of anywhere from 2-8 hours, your’re taking a sick day from work if you don’t live anywhere near a bus or train station (99% of Texas). Also, what happens if there is a natural disaster? Say a snow storm or hurricane hits and your car is dead, no power to recharge it and no time to get out. Not a good thing….

Battery Issues – They keep talking about how new lithium Ion batteries are going to save the world. They can make them cheaper and longer lasting and all that good stuff. Now take in mind what you use that has a lithium ion battery right now, your kids gameboy, your laptop, cameras, etc all use very small ones. Now look at the biggest battery, the one in the lap top. What happens when it is on for too long? It gets HOT. Not only hot but have a tendency to overheat and as the case with a “bad batch” can even EXPLODE. So yeah now lets take LOTS of those batteries and put them in a pickup truck on a nice 112 degree summer day in San Antonio idling on I-35.  You fill in the blanks there. I can’t wait till it becomes cool to have a 4ft wide Zalman coming out the top of your hood like some sort of space age intake. If yall thought the Pinto was bad just wait.

Big Brother - Not that they can’t do this NOW thanks to computers controlling most of the internals of the car your driving today but I just see it being pre-built in on every electric  car that comes out. OnStar can already stop the car if it’s stolen, now just imagine driving car thats fully electric. They could block you from starting the engine, opening the doors, using the panic button, etc. What would be the worst is that in an electric car they could monitor your acceleration, braking, turning to find out if your speeding or driving unsafely and ticket  you without the need of speed cameras or cops on the road. You car will be telling on you.  They could even go so far as to increase the rev limiter afterwards as a way to keep you from speeding again.

That and I saw a pretty schweet GTI 2.0 tarbo at Chuck Nash this weekend, anyone wanna buy a Subaru? XD

Sorry for the lack up updates recently as I have been frantically getting shirts printed and everything ready for Austin Apparel’s first show in the next few weeks. I’m beyond excited.

Anyway, the other day I received two t-shirts in the mail from Tilteed for review here on the site. Tilteed is one of the many community driven online t-shirt shops that accepts artwork from various artists and selects a winner via community voting. The winning design gets printed and available online via pre-order for 72 hours after which the price increases and it is added to their online shop. They also carry various limited edition designs that are only available during pre orders and not added to their shop afterwards. Having worked as a graphic designer I tend to be weary of “contest design” as its basically spec work. However, this is not the case for Tilteed as they do compensate the winning artist more than a considerable amount if their artwork is chosen. And of course, they aren’t being forced to submit anything but they do seem to understand that art is worth more than a 50 dollar gift card and your name in lights. Props to Tilteed.

Moving on, here is the first shirt I got in the pack: “EL PLAN” , totally reminds me of Heathcliff cartoons from when I was little so I am biased in my decision of liking it . The shirt is on American Apparel new sliver and is a very clean three color print.

The printing on these shirts are spectacular, compared to other 24-72 hour online shirt slingers these are not garbage. I was very surprised to see how well these came out considering their 12 dollar pre-order price tags! Good job Tilteed.

This is the second design, a much much larger and more detailed print. This one is called When Zombie Snails Attack! (thanks Bo!) I really like this design as I am partial to all over huge prints on small shirts. You may not be able to tell from the pic here but this is actually a three color print. The seaweed stuff in the background is a tan, the dark on the snails is black and there is a white underbase under the shells themselves which gives a subtle contrast to the cream/natural colored shirt.

Holy awesome printing batman! Just look at that registration and how thin all the ink is! Is this a 300 mesh print? Pretty sure its all plastisol but these guys know what their doing and make it look bad ass. Of all the community driven design sites this is the only one that will see my money. Great Job!

Tilteed
Packaging: Good (standard poly bag)
Labeling: Good, not any on the shirts (printed or sewn) and bag came with some cards.
Design quality: Awesome
Ink quality: Epic, best plastisol ive seen!
Price: Affordable @ 12-18 USD