Last week, I finally broke and decided I'd be able to take care of a dog. While I love the big breeds-- your Danes, Shepherds, Dobermans, etc, I can't bring myself to be a breed kind of guy. I grew up with mutts, and maintain that mutts are the best dogs, and adoption is the best way to find a dog.
The Austin Humane Society had a couple pictures of this puppy:

I had to go meet her; when I saw her I was like, she looks like my dog. She was a nervous wreck, but came around with me after a bit. Every dog with eyebrow spots is a good goddamn dog. They said she was about a year and a half old, so hopefully mostly past the puppy phases, and surrendered last Monday because the PO "didn't have enough time." Pretty sure she was a teen mom.
Well, I decided that we did have enough time. My daughter is over the moon. We're working through the adjustment phases, she had a pretty traumatic week last week, but she's sleeping, eating, and learning that inside the house and studio is absolutely not the place to poop (we're working pretty hard on that one).


Her prior name was Bella, but she wasn't responsive to that in any way, and it's a crap name. The only name that we could all agree on was Zoe, so she's been Zoe since Saturday morning.

It's been fucking exhausting. I brought her to a meeting with a couple engineers last week, and one was like, "why don't you just have another kid while you're at it," and that's what it's felt like. While I grew up on a farm in farmland, and know how great dogs are, the girls in my family don't have that experience, but I hope they'll come around. Everyone I know is like, it's about fucking time, dude.

She's a great companion at my studio, and there are other dogs to be instant best buds with.


To make this car-related, she's great at car rides, and now I gotta find a cargo mat for the i3. Any recs? I was thinking about a WeatherTech cut-to-fit, but I'd probably also like something that includes a seatback cover, too.

We REALLY have to work on separation anxiety; I can't leave her sight without her absolutely freaking out. I've been sleeping on the office floor next to her kennel since Thursday night.

But I mean, how could I have said no?

Forgive me if this is a repost, but I actually thought this was worth sharing.

So now that the site's live, and shit's off to the races, and I'm allowed to show a little bit of the awesome project I've been working my ass off to crush, these last few months, lemme share a little bit more about the electric wing-in-ground-effect craft now known as a seaglider.

This has been an absolute dream project for me, the type of thing I've been waiting years to be a part of. If you squint at it, you can probably see hints of stuff I was trying to do almost 20 years ago, with my thesis model at CCS:

Like the Porsche 977 Bergsteiger.

Stuff like composite, stressed-skin over a frame, electric propolusion, great visibility, access, aero everything, and functionality. Oh, and racing proto looks:

I don't have to explain ekranoplans here, y'all know what I'm talking about. But now that batteries and motors are starting to enable realistic packages, the time to take advantage of ground-effect flight looks to be here. Plus hyrdofoils like an AC75.

So, what the hell does this process look like? It starts with a bunch of meetings with aero engineers. They handed me their initial CAD swag, which looked appropriate for Rip Riley

I started with design research and sketching.

First trying to stick close to the engineering package, then, after receiving permission to push it more, about 300 more sketches.

Until finally hitting the key sketch, that combined all the meetings with aero and hydro engineers, and my own pushing on design attributes, we get to the key sketch, the one that gets buyoff. The right one.

Then comes CAD. In this case, it was all Solidworks, because that's what I pay for. It's not the right tool for the job, but like Rumsfeld said, you go to war with the army you have.

Along the way, you do a ton more meetings, tweak as much as possible as fast as possible, throw a bunch of shit out, lose a couple motors, and work until 4AM, get up at 7, and keep going. Rinse, repeat.

Once that's right enough, it's on to pretty renderings. When you've been working on making products look real in a studio environment for like 15 years, it's a REAL BIG switch to a 12-person craft in a real environment. FUCK! Lots of hair-tearing until there's ANYTHING you'd be ok with showing. And do it in the middle of the Texas Snowstorm Massacre.

Keep working at it...

Until you get to the point that you can show something that's starting to look real enough. Pull in all your photo experience, material experience, and flying experience, and just try really hard to make it look right.

And then, when you have a few minutes while making Sunday morning breakfast with your daughter, you try really quickly to make a Miami Blue GT3 paintjob just for funsies

Like I said, this project is kinda the culmination of everything I've wanted to do since I was a kid: make clean-powered things, things that fly, forward-swept wings, wings that move, biomimicry, and just good design. There's enough bad design out there, and I don't wanna be part of the problem. This is, finally, just the start.

Thanks for listening/reading, Oppo. I wish Davey G Johnson were here to see this. Y'all are just the best people. You're awesome.

@ibrad

So I'm very suddenly involved, to the point of directing, the design effort for a thing that may or may not fly.

It's too much real work to do in the time we've got, but it's the sort of project and thing I've been wanting to do/be a part of my whole life, so I'm throwing my effort at it.

No idea whether it'll come to anything, but I'm doing my damndest to make it what it needs to be in order to succeed. In the meantime, here's some scribbles from the holidays, farting around with kids and talking about design and drawing.
(SAAB)

(Honda)

(Alfa)

(Someone on Oppo)

And here's an old sketch or three, for reminders:

Editing to add a couple of SAABMiatas that I sketched up one day, when I asked Oppo for sketch suggestions and I did what I could:

Aaaaanyway, I'm gonna be overwhelmed for a while, but I hope that 2 months from now I'm able to show a little bit of a thing I'm now building and directing, and hopefully soon there will be parts in hand. It's weird to share stuff that isn't like crisis-of-the-moment, or whatever, but I've been with y'all since before the Kinja switch, and maybe I can dig up some of those old things at some point, too. Points are: Thank you, Oppo. All of you.

So I went and dropped three grand on a software package today (Power Surfacing Reverse Engineering, for the curious; it's an add-on for Solidworks), because I need to either convert scanned geometry into usable Solidworks geometry, or rebuild some super-compound-curvy shit by hand.
Which, if you know Solidworks, doing curvy stuff is very much not what it's good at. So PSRE should be able to import the scan data, generate subD surfaces, and import as usable data that I can then springboard off of.
So what's the problem? Every time I go to enter the license key and password, either automatically or manually, it comes back with an error that the "web service is not responding." So... no license verification, no software worky.
Am I wrong in asking for a refund after 8 hours without a response from support, sales, or customer service, after spending three grand? In the time I've been waiting, I've figured out another (much less expensive) solution that will get the job done before my deadline, but, come on. It's software. Fucking expensive software, at that. It should work immediately.

Between this, and the stress of the deadline, I've been very Angry Panda for the last 2 days.

Thanks for listening, Oppo.

Update: Talked to them today, they understood, and are refunding. I told them no harm, no foul, and when I need it again, I'll make sure to purchase it on a weekday, just to be sure.

I don't really have anything of import to say. Just gonna throw out a couple old-Oppo-related sketches and say, once again, that I am thankful for all of you.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for making this place. Thank you for being you.

/sappiness

@essextee

Yep, Ford and Ghia made a Tuareg back in 1978/9. Obviously not spelled quite the same way that VW did it, nor the same kind of vehicle-- this one's a Fiesta.

Ford got it into their heads to have Ghia work up a regular Fiesta for Dakar-style desert running, jacking up the suspension, fitting 26" tires, and doing the kind of add-ons that are all the rage with safari-ed up Porsche crowd.

I've had this tab open on my laptop for like 2 months, and I guess now's the time for a random old-car photodump. I fuckin love this thing, and figured some of you might, too.

Looks great in b&w:

There's your random old concept car dose of the day.

I'll be able to do a longer writeup on this project on Monday, but since the site went live yesterday, I'm finally allowed to show y'all one of the things I've been working on recently!

Working on this has been like, the project I've been waiting my whole life to do-- electric ekranoplan!

I've been busting my ass for the last couple months, as the sole ID-- from sketch to CAD to renderings, and now I'm allowed to show it, so-- there it is.
This is the 10-passenger version, which has had a lot more put into it than the 50-passenger, but I'll be working on that one, too.
Here's the website, which also features a little animation done by a small team based in Houston, and more of my renderings.

@WBizarre I'd buy that inbetweener in a heartbeat. Definitely has some Accord hatchback vibes.

@MM54 That'll suffice.

@Boxer_4 Oh wow, that's a very cool observation. I can think of plenty that bite into the pillar, but none that completely contain it like this.

@Snakesm13 Let's go $22,450.

@MybirdIStheword Guh. That's honestly the first time I've ever heard of yee yee trucks.

@GrindIntoSecond @MybirdIStheword And then there are madmen like @sony1492 building his absolutely rad Locost.

@benjrblant @SAAB_9-3_SportCombi Oh shit, I shoulda looked at that instead of recent sales...

@Snakesm13 How about 365,499.
Edit, because I'm an idiot? I'll claim dyslexia-- 635,499.

@MybirdIStheword A year and a week ago, I did the same thing. It took a couple months to get the balance right, but I no longer have to share the room with someone who's trying to kill me.
It's hard to describe the feeling of the weight that's been lifted. I honestly did not have any memory of life without depression, whether manageable, or, sometimes, to the point of serious suicidal ideation. And through all of it, I just kept fighting through, until I couldn't anymore. And I asked for help. Coming to terms with the fact that it's not a failure of character, or a failure of anything, really, on my part, was hard. I've always been the first to blame myself for anything.
Now, it's not like I'm happier with my life, or anything, but I don't spend 90% of my mental energy every day trying to convince myself that I'm not all the terrible things I accused myself of being.
I'm a different person, now-- one that doesn't have to contend with fighting myself.
I'm glad you made the choice. Sometimes I wish I'd done it sooner. Like 20 years ago. But asking for help, I've come to learn, doesn't mean that you've failed. It's the best thing you can do for yourself and for those who care about you the way you care about them.

@spacekraken Man, glad you’re healing up. Brain injuries are terrifying.
Preaching to the choir here, but @Stef-Schrader’s account of her wreck and concussion was a great record of the experience.