One of the big things that the Japan Earthquake brought home to me was my absolute unpreparedness for any sort of disaster or emergency evacuation situation. I spent a bunch of time online looking for pre-made emergency “bug-out” kits and while there are several decent ones out there I felt that they were all missing various things and decided in the end to make my own. I figure I will share the contents of my kit for other folks who might be interested in making one of if they have comments on things I should or shouldn’t have. Many items will have two links because I have explicitly bought two different brands in order to increase redundancy and reduce the impact of a bad product batch.… Read the rest
Category: personal
Cross-posting the interviews I conducted for the GGLC at the LA Auto Show and originally posted on the GGLC blog:
GGLC attended the North America launch of the new Lotus range at the LA Auto Show and got a chance to speak to senior management about their plans for Lotus and the challenges in launching 5 new cars in a short span of time. Short descriptions of the interviews and their major points are below but we recommend you watch the actual videos to get a sense about the future direction of Lotus
First up we spoke to Dany Bahar, the CEO of Group Lotus about his vision for the future of the company and why they were launching so many cars in such a short timeframe.… Read the rest
As some of you may already know, I have recently launched a new website named FamousFood.us that allows you to quickly find restaurants featured on TV shows such as Best Thing I Ever Ate, Diners Drive-Ins and Dives, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, etc.. as well as Michellin guide rated restaurants. I figure it finally time for me to write a blog post explaining the site and what I hope to do with it.
The idea for the site came from my summer road trip to Seattle. Since Nithya and I were driving up there with no specific plans we decided that we wanted to try out as many of the Best Thing I Ever Ate restaurants as we could using my existing map as a guide.… Read the rest
Categories
Picked up some Lotus History
The mailman just brought me this amazing piece of Lotus F1 history: a piston from the Cosworth DFV engine #339 used in the Lotus 81 Formula 1 car.
In the 70s and 80s, Team Lotus was in the habit of keeping the pistons from rebuilds to use as VIP gifts. Each engines pistons were labeled and stored but not all were presented. With reference to the teams archives, Classic Team Lotus is able to identify the detailed competition history for the engines in which the pistons ran. A great deal of polishing, then mounting on a wooden plinth, complete with presentation plaque, makes a rather special item of memorabilia.… Read the rest
As many of you know I purchased a Lotus Seven replica called the WCM Ultralite S2K late last year to make it a street legal track toy. While the Ultralite may maintain the spirit of the original Seven, as you can see below, it has a distinctly different shape and has generally larger dimensions to accommodate drivers of all sizes. In order to move this extra bulk (relatively speaking) around it comes with the incredible F20C engine out of the Honda S2000. The end product has some astonishing performance figures:
Weight: 1300 lbs
Horsepower: 240 bhp
Redline: 9000 rpm
Power to weight ratio: 400+ hp/ton
0-60 mph: 3.5 seconds
My particular car was the first prototype built by World Class Motorsports and is the actual car used in most of the magazine tests.… Read the rest