Codarsnacht

Rauh Welt

Paul Whelan — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:00:18 +0000

Apart from RUF and TechArt, Rauh Welt are one of the most well known and prolific Porsche tuners on the face of this mostly liquidy planet. Famed for their aggressive stance and hardcore stripping (easy now-ed) off of weight, they have become internet (world?) famous through show casing the two cars featured above.
I would loved to have visited them when I was in Tokyo but I had very little time their as it was and that was mostly spent on the more touristy side of things. Hopefully when I’m back in Tokyo the next time i’ll have somebody with me that can speak more Japanese than I can, as it looks like a fairly difficult place to get to.

In slightly related news, I started my new job today : D
“Well how are you posting this now Paul? I hear you say in cynical and smug voices.
Well I actually wrote this yesterday…which at the moment is today, so that it will be up tomorrow or your today…hmm mildly confused myself there.
Anyway, the job is working in a garage which mostly works on Imprezas, Skylines and Nissan Silvias, but the majority of the work that i’ll be doing there will be on their Mitsubishi Evo in preparation for the Irish Time Attack series. I’ll also have the luxury of being to work on my own car if things are quiet, so as you can imagine, i’m really looking forward to it.

I’ll report back about how it went when I get home from work and football.

Limbo

Paul Whelan — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:38:35 +0000

“A boy wakes up in a forest. He is nothing but a silhouette and a pair of brightly glowing eyes. To the right is death, despair and, perhaps, a way out. So he goes there. This is Limbo.”

A game of contrast from the usual crass “point to die” shooters that we love so much, Limbo is a game for the Burton-esque amongst us like no other.
Whilst the premise is both vague and succinct “Uncertain of his sister’s fate, a boy enters Limbo”, the visual appeal and the feeling of suspense will keep you on edge the entire, admittedly terse, play through.

The story, like all good examples, reveals itself slowly; like an opera, the masks keep falling to the floor. Lacking nothing but a soundtrack, for reasons that will be understandable as soon as you play it, the game will have you revisiting old childhood fears of being lost, in the dark, with spiders, panic setting in and a growing fear for your own fain existence.
Priced at 1200 Microsoft points or however much that is on the DowJones index, Limbo is a bargain for the graphic novel, horror story platformer that it is; easily justifiable to yourself or whoever else would care.

“Oh, a phone call…NOBODY MOVE!!”

Paul Whelan — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:00:51 +0000

So Nokia, you’ve spent all this time in the shadows, knocking out phone after phone with the same styling cues as the iPhone 3g…

…AND THEN SUDDENLY!

“Don’t want to answer? Screen that call with a simple flick. The Kinect will then bounce down to the table. After that, thanks to an electromagnet in the base, it rights itself for the next caller. Functional and stress relieving, all in one.”

Oh, its an iPhone 4 with a tumor, an impossibly thin bezel and probably an annoyingly good antenna.

Whilst it may look nice in rendered land, the place where finger prints and dust don’t exist and even the pavement is shiny, meanwhile back in reality town, the sheer idea of rejecting calls by tripping an accelerometer is completely absurd, no matter which dialect of Finnish you’re speaking.

Honestly, are they trying to compete with the iPhone 4 for the stupidest reason to miss a call?
No longer will it be

“Hang on, I got a call….Shit! I touched it with my left hand”

No, the new game in town is

“Oh, a phone call…NOBODY MOVE!!”

Seriously Nokia, I know that Apple might hold the helm of the good ship progress, but that doesn’t mean we should all walk through the same tracks in the snow….or even a slightly more boat related analogy…
Learn from each others victories and mistakes. Examine properly why the iPhone has been so successful and don’t just assume that it is down to Apple fan-boyism or a superficial aesthetic appeal.
Apple themselves have admitted that they’re not perfect, it is no longer acceptable for you and other phone companies alike to produce “alternatives” to the iPhone, hoping to pray on the fish that choose to swim outside or are too slow to keep up with shoal.

Shinya Kimura

Paul Whelan — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:07:57 +0000

One of my all time heros, Shinya Kimura of Chabott Engineering has been at the forefront of the Japanese “Zero Cycle” style for many years now.
His hand crafted bikes are more rolling artwork than they are forms of transport and the humbleness with which he acts only ads to my admiration of him. Check out his latest video, it really is something to withhold.

Viral videos, a How-To.

Paul Whelan — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 01:03:52 +0000

Find a popular, soon to be released product.

Queue over night so that you can get your hands on it early.

Shoot-it, blend-it, strip-it…

Achieve massive amounts of kudos, hits and unpaid for advertising for the product.
You are now part of the media machine.

Teh End ^^,

Fluffy McCloud

Paul Whelan — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:39:15 +0000

I received an email the other day by a reader of the blog, all the way from illustrious Japan; how they ever found it i’ll never know, but I guess spamming the crap out of the design forum may have been a contributing factor.
I digress, they asked me if I would be returning to my blogging duties even though I had returned home from Hong Kong. Well, seeing as I made such a piss poor effort at blogging my Hong Kong exploits, I figure that I might as well give blogging another go, a Renaissance if you will.

One of the first things I did to help keep me interested in blogging, was to sign up for Vimeo; A site that I spend a good deal of time on, yet have never signed up for an account. One of the first videos that I stumbled upon after signing up was “Fluffy McCloud”…So I thought I would post it up for you all to enjoy.
Thanks to everyone for the love (especially Taka), I’ll promise to put more effort into blogging this time ’round.

‘Til next time ^^,

Mil-Spec Cinematography

Paul Whelan — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:06:36 +0000

CLICK ME PLX

I’ve watched this over three or four times and I still can’t get over how good the shots are.
Can’t wait to go snowboarding again…but lets get the summer out of the way first ^^,

EDIT: The video refuses to embed, so i’m going to try pass it off as a deliberate effort to get you to visit Brain Farm’s site….that’ll work

Back Soon…

Paul Whelan — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:09:53 +0000

I came back from Japan last friday, safe in the knowledge that it was every bit as good as I expected it to be. There were many things about Japan that I loved, but I cant quite put my finger which of them made me like the place so much; Maybe it was a combination of a number of things. I loved the people, who were always polite and helpful, the streets which were always clean and full of interesting machinery and respect for detail and quality that was apparent in most things. It is now a case of ‘when’ will I move to Japan, as opposed to “if”.

The time away from college work, personal design projects and keeping the blog updated has been good.
One thing that has come to my attention as of late, is how unbelievably messy my computer is. I have untitled folders inside untitled folders, a downloads folder thats bursting at the seems and 40 gigabyte photo collection spread across three libraries. So I think its high time that I get things in order, consolidate my files and delete the things that i’ll never use again (I had three copies of War Inc!……one is too much)

In other news, Im moving home to Ireland on the 9th and i’m really looking forward to seeing my friends and family again, despite how much i’ll miss Hong Kong.
So for the next foreseeable week or so, there aren’t going to be any worthwhile posts, but when the Blog comes back i’ll be bringing along much more worthwhile and organized content.
Until then, enjoy some music by Mayer Hawthorne and thanks for stopping by.

Shanghai Today, Tokyo Tomorrow

Paul Whelan — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:26:03 +0000

Arrived in Shanghai yesterday after a more or less eventless flight, took the amazing MagLev train out to Longyang road and then a cramped metro from there to nearer our hotel….and this is where things went slightly tits up.
We, Myself and Tav (Barry and Ciaran are in ‘Nam), in our infinite wisdom decided that it would be a good idea to get the metro as close to our hotel as possible. However, what we hadn’t taken into account, was that no taxi wanted to take two westerners on what is effectively a 5 minute journey by car…and alas, none of them did.

The next two and half hours were spent wandering around the streets looking for our hotel, which is handily located on a street that recently changed it’s name.
After asking directions in broken mandarin phrases and not understanding the responses, we were starting to run out of options, so headed across a small river to see if we could narrow down where the hotel was…

TIP: If lost in a foreign country and you cant understand the directions that are being given to you, ask them to point in the approximate direction. Eventually, through triangulation you’ll be able to figure out a rough idea of where your destination is….kinda!

After confirming with the local post office that the address actually existed (Yes, we were getting desperate), we headed back across the river, new directions in hand, and with great excitement…ended up exactly where we had started : (
By this stage we were close to quitting and heading for a different hotel that we had seen along the way
(I should point out that we had already paid for our hotel), but a passing biker took pity on us and stopped to give us a hand. After showing him the address, he smiled and pointed to the box on the back of the bike…
His bike wasn’t so much a Tuc-Tuc ( A Tuc Tuc would be considered luxury) but a Honda 50 scooter with a box on the back!
The next five death defying minutes included; the smell of tortured clutch, several wheelies (due the weight of us and our bags levering over the back), a wrong way trip up a busy one way street, almost getting T-boned by a tour bus and eventually, two people very happy to still be alive. We had finally made it to our hotel.

Today was spent wandering around a little bit combined with finishing up some project work for back home. Later on we’ll be going to the famous pearl building and then the IFC.
Tomorrow, after going to the world expo, we’ll be boarding a flight for Tokyo Narita….cant wait XD

I’ll try keep this updated if and when I have internet access.

Sony Cybershot inside Leica II body

Paul Whelan — Fri, 14 May 2010 18:13:17 +0000

My apologies for the lack of content over the past while;
Projects from home, exams in Hong Kong and a death close to the family have kept my mind other places, but with the exams finished, the project nearing completion and slowly coming to terms with the death, the blog will be returning to it’s usual slow pace shortly.

One thing that really caught my eye during the week was this video of a Sony Cybershot stuffed inside an old Leica II body. I really like the juxtaposition of the old and the new, but I sincerely hope that the Leica internals were beyond repair before being gutted.
The practicality of the modern combined with the appeal of the retro is very interesting, it will certainly be a project that I will be looking further into when I get home.
It might also make a nice pairing to my new photography obsession, because as of late, i’ve become more and more interested in lomography, analog film, experimental cameras and most importantly, just having fun playing with my camera and trying new things, here are a few examples…

This reminds me, I must sign up for a FlickR account soon, as currently the widget on the right ->
Is set to select random FlickR photos…we can’t be having that now : )

KTHXBAI!