![]() ![]() When you see it on TV, it looks like it happens overnight. It’s bringing it to the attention of a lot of people that never paid attention to this, and they’re getting into it. How has the emergence of shows dedicated to hot rodding affected the industry?Ī. The biggest challenge now is finding the pieces that don’t exist. But if it’s broken plastic, we’re having to design and build something new or try to fix that. Where the older cars, if it was sheet metal, you could just bend it and straighten it out. The biggest challenge is if there’s a part that came on a car that was made out of plastic and maybe that part is no longer in good shape but it’s not reproduced, we’re trying to find it. ![]() The ’50s are still popular, but it’s the ’60s and into the ’70s that are becoming more popular.Ī. It’s muscle cars, the late ’60s and ’70s vehicles where it used to be that what we were building was mostly in the ’30s. The biggest change that we get is that people are looking for newer cars. Have you seen a lot of change in what people are looking for when they come to you?Ī. If you do good design and keep it very tasteful, 20, 30 years from now it’s still a beautiful car. The last thing I want to do is build something that three years from now looks like you need to update it. We’re trying to create things that are timeless- looking. If you want something that has all modern technology and you’re looking for just the latest in electronics and social media, you can buy a brand-new car to do that. Our focus is trying to create every one of these vehicles to be a rolling piece of drivable art. I’m not putting screens in with navigation systems all that’s in your phone. They’re older cars that we’re putting modern technology into for the drivability of the car. Are you seeing people wanting to improve these cars even more or mainly older cars?Ī. Cars today have a wide array of features. And the people I work with, not only do we build a car but we build a friendship. When I do a car in the aftermarket, in the hot rod world, I can go to events today and see cars that I built with my father 30 years ago. My name is not attached to it and I’m not a part of the unveiling. When I do the work for the manufacturers, it’s just a job. I’ve been lucky enough to do both types of work. There are two completely different worlds: automotive design for the manufacturers and the aftermarket hot rodding and custom car industry. Is knowing what you wanted to do from such a young age what made you so successful?Ī. Right now he’s focusing on school and homework so he’s not currently working the shop but during the summer he usually comes in and helps. He doesn’t like cars but he also loves the movie industry. Do you have family you are hoping to pass the business on to one day?Ī. So at the age of three years old, I had Hot Wheels of the cars that my dad had built and I had plastic model kits that I could build like my dad, so today I consider my career to be just an extension of my father’s. The cars that he was building, AMT is the plastic model kit, so plastic model kits would become available to them after they had built the cars and then Hot Wheels was built the little diecast toys of them. He was building a lot of cars for television. As a kid he worked for a company called AMT which was in Phoenix. How long was your dad in the industry for?Ī. So at 7, I knew I wanted to go to Art Center. ![]() Alex told me about Art Center College of Design. When I saw Alex’s drawings, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. At 7, I started going to the shop and I would like to say that I was helping him but I think I destroyed more than I actually helped.Īt the age of 7, I also met another designer, Alex Tremulis who was the head of the Ford Thunderbird studio through the 60s. When he was done he would leave it on the table and I would draw it over and over again because I wanted to be as good as my dad. When he would do a drawing I would sit next to him and copy it. So when I was a kid I started sitting next to my father at the age of three and I would draw. My father started his own shop when he was 14 years old. Is your dad the person that sparked your interest in hot rodding?Ī. When I first started with my father, if we needed a motor or pieces to put something together, we went to the wrecking yards and got pieces off of old cars and made them work. Now you can order pretty much any part you need over the phone. What have been the biggest changes in the industry in the last 30 years?Ī. His answers have been edited for length and clarity. “The greatest thing for me is that when I’m at a show, and I don’t know that one of my customers is going to be there, and I walk around the corner and see one of the cars that we built just sitting there.”įoose sat down with the Register to discuss hot rodding and how television shows have changed the industry. ![]()
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![]() However, with the exception that commuting distance and time must be short enough to permit the driver to get sufficient rest to return to work the following day without being fatigued. ![]() Every trip a driver makes from their home terminal to their home, from trailer drop-off points to their home, and from work sites to their home is considered personal.Personal conveyance refers to time spent getting from the place of accommodation of the driver during a journey, such as a motel or truck stop, to dining establishments or entertainment venues.It carries hazardous materials determined by the Secretary of Transportation.įMCSA stipulates those drivers use personal conveyance if they are in one of the following circumstances.It boards and transports 16 persons, including the driver – without payment.It accommodates and transports at least eight passengers, including the driver – for a fee.Has a gross vehicle weight rating or a gross combination weight rating greater than 10,000 pounds.Total vehicle weight or gross combined weight exceeds 10,000 pounds.The FMCSA defines a CMV as a self-propelled or towed vehicle used in interstate commerce to convey individuals or cargo that falls into one of the following categories: Who is Subject to the FMCSA Personal Conveyance Rules?Īll fleets that operate CMVs are subject to personal conveyance rules. 10-Hours off duty- After completing 14 hours, the driver must be out of work for 10 hours.Drivers can plan their work by starting at the beginning of the week, recuperate and reset their work hours and repeat the cycle the subsequent week. 34-Hour restart-By accepting the 34-hour exemption status, all drivers can restart the 70- or 60-hour term.60/70-Hour time limits driving time to 60 hours in seven days and 70 hours in eight days.11-Hour time window, after ten consecutive duty hours, a driver is only allowed to drive for 11 hours maximum.14-Hour time window, to drive for a maximum of 11 hours and must take a 30-minute break after 8 hours.The restrictions on driving are as follows: The hours-of-service have stipulated the range of hours for driving per day. All CMV operators must comply with the FMCSA-HOS regulations found in 49 CFR 395. ![]() The HOS includes the driving time and defines the length and number of rest periods to help ensure that the drivers stay alert and awake. Hour of Service (HOS) refers to the maximum permitted duty time for drivers. Only after the motor carrier relieves the driver from all obligations to perform duties may the driver record the time operating the CMV for personal transportation as off-duty. A vehicle can be utilized for a private commute, whether it is laden or not. It means using the CMV for purposes that do not benefit the commercial fleet operator. Using off-duty commercial motor vehicles (CMV) for personal use is known as personal conveyance.
![]() ![]() You hear some kitschy music, some beeps and alarms, and, naturally, a loud explosion when you fail miserably at defusing the bomb. The audio is also serviceable, but again, I think a variety of environments would add immeasurably to a game that already has a great concept and engaging mechanics. The point is, it doesn’t need to be a drab room, and if it’s going to be a drab room, we’ve seen how good a ‘room’ can look in games like Red Matter. Maybe the crowds don’t know there’s a bomb, and perhaps you can’t allow them to know so that they don’t panic and set it off. I can only imagine what it would be like getting instructions from your friend(s) while hearing “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of fruit!” spoken on a stage nearby. How cool would it be to defuse a bomb in a museum, surrounded by schoolchildren out to see some art? Wouldn’t it be great to defuse a bomb surrounded by cars stuck on a drawbridge? Maybe in a theater during a production of Hamlet, or Death of a Salesman. I want to be defusing a bomb an airplane while being distracted by panicking passengers. On the other hand, I can’t help but imagine how much more engaging the game would be if the bombs existed in more exciting set-pieces. Now that’s not as big a problem as it might be in other games, because you’re focused on the bomb most of the time. There’s not much to see because, other than the bomb itself, you’re mostly in drab rooms. The graphics in Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes are relatively simple, and everything is in primary colors. Named Who’s on First, this module can get as confusing as the old Abbot and Costello skit because it’s full of words and phrases like “You’re,” “Your,” “UR,” “You Are,” etc. For example, one module has you reporting words that show up on a small display on the bomb, and your assistants have to tell you which buttons to press underneath. The game keeps piling on new modules that you have to understand, and some are designed to confuse communications between the bomb defuser and the assistants. Neither of you can see what the other person is seeing, but you have to cooperate concisely and quickly. That may sound easy, but the bomb modules keep increasing in complexity, making for frantic bouts of hilarious frustration as you both try to defuse the damn thing. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes tests two things your ability as a bomb specialist to communicate what you’re seeing to your assistant or assistants, and their ability to relate to you what you need to do without messing things up. How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb Quest: I think I’ve got this, I’ll put the weird Euro-looking one first! Quest: Okay…Done! The wire module’s gone green! There are several modules.Īssistants: Simple wires or the more complicated ones?!Īssistants: From the top! Second from the top! You can print the manual on paper if you choose to leaf through it that way, but if you want to save paper, we suggest using a tablet to view the PDF. ![]() ![]() That’s pretty much all there is to the game, although complications arise, and it’s brilliant.Īll you need to set up the game is a Quest, for the person playing the bomb defuser, and the manual for the person or people playing the bomb defusal assistants. As the timer counts down, he has to defuse the bomb before it goes off. The Quest player finds himself in a room, at a desk, and in front of a ticking time bomb. A bomb defusal manual, to be more precise – and you can see it here. Unlike multiplayer games that work through the internet, like Racket Fury or Racket: NX, and unlike the more recent Acron: Attack of the Squirrels that has one player using the Quest and others joining the game with mobile phones, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes has all non-Quest players going through a document. Yes, you can play this with other people, just not the way you’d typically expect. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes was one of the Quest’s launch titles, and to this day, it’s one of the few Quest games that you can enjoy with friends in local multiplayer. ![]() ![]() ![]() The numpy gradient will output the arrays of "discretized" partial derivatives in x and y. Lastly, if your input is a 2d array, then you are thinking of a function f of x, y defined on a grid. Suppose the discretized function f(x) is not defined on uniformly spaced intervals, for instance f(0) = 5, f(1) = 7, f(3) = 4, f(3.5) = 8, then there is a messier discretized differentiation function that the numpy gradient function uses and you will get the discretized derivatives by calling np.gradient(f, np.array()) The net effect is to replace h = 1 with h = 0.5 and all the results will be doubled.Įxample 3. If you specify a single spacing, the spacing is uniform but not 1.įor example, if you call np.gradient(f, 0.5) The gradient is computed using second order accurate central differences in the interior points and either first. If you don't specify any spacing, the interval is assumed to be 1. Return the gradient of an N-dimensional array. X = x_0,x_0+h(=x_1).,x_n=x_0+h*n, then numpy gradient will yield a "derivative" array using the first order estimate on the ends and the better estimates in the middle.Įxample 1. So, if we have a discretized function defined on equal distant partitions: Subtracting these (both the h^0 and h^2 terms drop out!) and solve for f'(x): If we assume C^3, then the Taylor expansion is The simplest comes from the first order Taylor series expansion for a C^2 function (two continuous derivatives).Ĭan we do better? Yes indeed. The Taylor series expansion guides us on how to approximate the derivative, given the value at close points. You could find the minima of all the absolute values in the resulting array to find the turning points of a curve, for example.ġThe array is actually called x in the example in the docs, I've changed it to y to avoid confusion. So, the gradient of y, above, is calculated thus: j = (y-y)/1 = (2-1)/1 = 1 This means that at each end of the array, the gradient given is simply, the difference between the end two values (divided by 1)Īway from the boundaries the gradient for a particular index is given by taking the difference between the the values either side and dividing by 2. X, here, is the list index, so the difference between adjacent values is 1.Īt the boundaries, the first difference is calculated. Gradient is defined as (change in y)/(change in x). ![]() ![]() Also in the documentation 1: > y = np.array(, dtype=np.float) ![]() ![]() ![]() Birmingham adds a couple of different industries, including Manufacturing, Pottery, and Breweries. I will admit that the games seem almost too similar to warrant the need for playing (certainly, owning) both Lancashire AND Birmingham.īut here’s the thing: they are surprisingly different, mainly for two distinct reasons: The Brass games have earned my approval on the tiebreaker front!! At the end of the game, whoever has the most points is the winner, with income being the first tiebreaker and leftover cash being the second. The Eras split each game into half, which allows for mid-game scoring based on the industries and canal/rail links placed on the board. At the end of the round, turn order is determined by who spent the least, then everyone collects income and does it all again. Hand management is a term we use often to describe mechanics in certain games, and I am struggling to think of a game where that is more important given the game’s reputation than the Brass games.Īfter taking 2 actions, players place the money they spent that round on their character tile then pass to the next player. The other actions, such as building rail lines, selling goods or the “Martin Wallace Special” (taking loans), are very simple but usually require an incredibly difficult choice: which valuable card do you discard to accommodate the action? And while these decisions are challenging, they are so much fun to make every round. The Build action in both games is also the only action that requires you to discard specific cards. (That player is usually me for some reason heavy games with complicated rules are fine, but determining where I can build sometimes really baffles me in the Brass games). It helps to have an expert on these rules in your midst, because one player will struggle throughout the game with these concepts. On a turn, you’ll have a meaty selection of choices to make with your actions (5 actions in Lancashire, or 6 in Birmingham), but you’ll have to have an incredible grasp of the terms “Your Network” and “Connected Locations” first.Īs simple as the general rules are for the Brass games, I’m still surprised how difficult it is to conceptualize where and how a player can legally build on a turn. In both games, players are given a massive array of buildings on their player board, some starting cash, and a hand of 8 cards depicting either specific cities on the board, or specific industries which can be built from the buildings on their player board. Over the course of two eras, the Canal Era and the Rail Era, players will fight to earn the most points by building various industries across the regions while managing their empire’s pool of cash and establishing the best interconnected network of ports, merchants, overseas markets, and trade routes. The basic rules for Brass, though? We’ll cover those here.īoth Brass: Lancashire and Brass: Birmingham-which will be referred to as simply Lancashire and Birmingham for the rest of this discussion-are economic simulations that take place in exactly the same time period, 1770-1870, in the titular geographical regions. Rather than turning this entire discussion into a rules overview which could span many pages, I’ll just assume you will navigate to the Roxley website to watch rules videos on both games if you are really interested in the nitty-gritty. Sweet, blessed beer Welcome to the Industrial Revolution! Spoiler alert: I like a good knife fight. I’ll try to guide players on the fence towards one game versus the other as well. But across my plays, I want to try to answer what I love about both games, and which one I prefer based on my personal preferences. ![]() Which one is better? Of course there isn’t a definitive answer. In other words, both games are modern classics even friends of mine who “hate” one or both games still grant how well designed they are, particularly given how straightforward the rules can be delivered. Co-designed by Wallace, Gavan Brown and Matt Tolman, Brass: Birmingham received a rule make-over as part of its release.īrass: Birmingham is now the #3-ranked game of all-time on BoardGameGeek (BGG), with Brass: Lancashire sitting in the top 20. At the same time, Roxley released an updated version of the original Brass titled Brass: Birmingham. His 2007 game Brass was republished in 2018 by Roxley Games as Brass: Lancashire. Martin Wallace is a heavyweight in board game design. ![]() Justin considers both Brass games, Lancashire and Birmingham. ![]() ![]() ![]() When the FBI's investigation stalls out, they call in Lucas Davenport. They're federal officers killed on the job, which means the case is the FBI's turf. None of it makes sense unless there's something hinky going on, and his hunch is proved right when all three Guardsmen who come out to investigate are shot and killed. a diver who was apparently alone, without his own boat, in the middle of the ocean. It's a snazzy craft, slick and outfitted with extra horsepower, and is zipping along until it slows to pick up a surfaced diver. Righteous Prey (A Prey Novel #32) (Large Print / Paperback):įan-favorite heroes Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers join forces on a deadly maritime case in the remarkable new novel from #1 New York Times-bestselling author John Sandford.Īn off-duty Coast Guardsman is fishing with his family when he calls in some suspicious behavior from a nearby boat. Masked Prey (A Prey Novel #30) (Paperback): Neon Prey (A Prey Novel #29) (Paperback): Twisted Prey (A Prey Novel #28) (Paperback): Golden Prey (A Prey Novel #27) (Paperback): Gathering Prey (A Prey Novel #25) (Paperback):Įxtreme Prey (A Prey Novel #26) (Paperback): ![]() Silken Prey: A Lucas Davenport Novel (A Prey Novel #23) (Paperback):įield of Prey (A Prey Novel #24) (Paperback): Stolen Prey (A Prey Novel #22) (Paperback): Storm Prey (A Prey Novel #20) (Paperback):īuried Prey (A Prey Novel #21) (Paperback): Wicked Prey (A Prey Novel #19) (Paperback): Phantom Prey (A Prey Novel #18) (Paperback): Invisible Prey (A Prey Novel #17) (Paperback): Hidden Prey (A Prey Novel #15) (Paperback):īroken Prey (A Prey Novel #16) (Paperback): Naked Prey (A Prey Novel #14) (Paperback): Mortal Prey (A Prey Novel #13) (Paperback): Secret Prey (A Prey Novel #9) (Paperback):Ĭertain Prey (A Prey Novel #10) (Paperback):Ĭhosen Prey (A Prey Novel #12) (Paperback): Sudden Prey (A Prey Novel #8) (Paperback): Night Prey (A Prey Novel #6) (Paperback): Winter Prey (A Prey Novel #5) (Paperback): Silent Prey (A Prey Novel #4) (Paperback): Shadow Prey (A Prey Novel #2) (Paperback):Įyes of Prey (A Prey Novel #3) (Paperback): Rules of Prey (A Prey Novel #1) (Paperback): This is book number 31 in the A Prey Novel series. ![]() ![]() ![]() Through our Lab and at-home consumer testing as well as continuous research, we've not only been able to recommend specific models that tested well for us but also to recognize brands for the details that stand out most. We also meet with brand representatives numerous times a year to learn about the latest and top-selling innovations. In fact, we started to weigh user-friendliness more heavily in the past couple of years, because there's nothing worse than a fussy appliance that you need to interact with multiple times a day. We test a fridge's performance by scoring its ability to regulate temperature as well as its ease of use. In the Good Housekeeping Institute, we've been testing large appliances like refrigerators, ranges and dishwashers for decades. What does it mean to have a Wi-Fi-enabled fridge, and is there a benefit to owning a smart refrigerator? In addition to the design, there are other factors to consider, like technology. There are also so many styles to choose from - with French-door fridges leading in popularity over the years - and you have to decide whether you want the freezer on the top, bottom or side. We updated this article in November 2022 to ensure all picks recommended by the Good Housekeeping Institute were in stock and reflected current pricing and add updated testing notes on new Lab-tested models.īuying a fridge can seem intimidating: It's a big purchase, and you want it to last you a long time. ![]() |
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