This is the Spud model based upon the concept of chopping pieces of a bike to make it lighter and thus faster. The Spud is available in both red and black however from the looks of it you could respray it any colour you liked as these designs appear to be made as customisable as possible by the typical bike enthusiast.

The Ruby model shown above honestly (at least to me) looks like just a slight modification of the Spud design with a smaller exhaust and slight changes on the front and rear metal bits as well as a more flowing body design but with that said it is arguably its own design all-be-it similar to the aforementioned. The manufacturers description of the Ruby design is that its much like the girl-next-door the first love with its flowing design and likeable accessories. The Ruby model comes in two shades black and blue, the blue is really nice.

The above bike design is called the Pea Shooter and comes in the above Silver as well as black, in addition to my previous comments on the Ruby design there does seem to be very little difference between the Pea Shooter and the previous two bikes however all three do contain discrete design modifications which keep them apart. The Pea Shooter for one has a different tank design and a distinct exhaust, from their scrap book you can see the design influences of each design which come across in each really well. With that taken into context I believe these new bikes from a brand new British manufacturer are well worth supporting and while a British motorbike licence is required due to the bikes being powered by the Buell® single cylinder, air-cooled, 2-valve, push rod, 492cc, 5-speed ‘Blast’ engine as they have a bit more oomph than your typical 125cc. I would really love to have a go on one of these, but a I would need to actually take a bike test and pass before going out on the road and b starting bike riding on such a machine might be a bit of a death-wish, still I bet they sound awesome!

There is no pricing up on the manufacturers website however you can get in touch if you are interested, or just wish to give the chaps at mac motorcycles your support.

Source: filthyluker

There is too much emphasis put on New Year celebrations however from watching the fireworks live on BBC News 24 all I can say is what an anti-climax. This years celebrations where half-arsed to put it plainly there did not appear to be much in the way of celebration and those who where seen on the cameras being interviewed just weren’t all that cheerfull. Even the presenter found it difficult to come up with anything to say while the fireworks went off making the effort too say how long it took for the scene to be set up on the London Eye. I don’t know why I expected any different maybe becase the 2007 celebrations where quite a bit more entertaining than five minutes of bangs and a half interested reporters mutterings.

Then again we are facing a huge economic crash people saw it coming a mile off like a giant super-tanker about to crash on a paradise island – something could have been done but people where too happy to over-indulge and further screw up what little was left of the financial system to do anything about it. The problem there was ignorance and greed by a few and unfortunately we all have to pay the price for it, Woolworths have died a tragic death and now many other high-street brands are disappearing leaving a lot of smaller towns and city’s without valuable sources of children’s toys and clothes (in the case of Woolworths disappearing from Sittingbourne) or other commodities which people in such situations are having to more and more source from the internet – if they first have access to it and second knowledge to use it within that context. The economic crash isn’t just worrying because of the loss of big high street brands from rural high streets there is the loss of jobs which come as a result of it and the social unrest as a result of that. On top of all this there are the students to worry about, as with the banks tightening their belts students are less likely to be given credit thus student accounts and large interest free overdrafts dissapearing the scene leaving many British students with the conundrum of finding a job, keeping that job and working full-time/part-time to just keep afloat.

With a huge economic crash comes the recent problems in the Middle East with Israel attacking the Gaza Strip and causing world wide outrage not to mention the huge humanitarian crisis in the Strip which is worsening by the hour. It is hard to ignore that while both sides are attempting to utilize the worlds media to gain positive propaganda – both sides are in the wrong and have undertaken in unethical practices which need to be addressed.

So it most definitely is not a “happy” new year, it is a 2009 for what that is worth and it has for the most part not started well. All I can hope for is that the banking crisis gets sorted out and politicians stop pretending to be economists, students get recognised for the valuable resource that they are, Obama does some amazing things within his first 100 days as Americas first leader in a long time and that Israel begins to understand the serious implications its actions have and to that point all I have to say is I hope you had a nice new year; mine was.

As reported on the bbc website, Brent crude oil has dropped in price to below $50 (£33.60 apx) not that we should all be getting too excited about that because it would require oil prices to remain below that price for a length of time before the savings where passed on to consumers. Last night I bought a tanks worth of petrol from the cheapest petrol station in Coventry for 90.1pence per litre the cheapest I have seen it sold anywhere in at least a year. However considering back in June and July when the price of oil was at its highest, petrol was just over £1.20 a litre, there hasn’t been all that much a difference at the pumps – barely 30pence actually. If I see petrol prices drop below 89pence a litre then I may become a little less pessimistic.

This is quite amazing and as its the run up to Christmas I thought I would share it with my visitors (you) even though I hate the fact that shops are getting ready, hypocritical I know. This short post isn’t about Christmas instead I have discovered browsershots.org an amazing online tool which allows you view any website under a selection of browsers, browser versions and operating systems. The following three screen shots have been generated by browser shots and are a good example of how useful it is because you can clearly see they have several computers set up which automatically set up the browser and settings before sending to the website, this means that the screenshot will be an accurate representation as it is a complete screenshot rather than a rendering of just the web page itself. Going back to the snow man its quite interesting to see how three different operating systems show up the font differently, the font being Arial Unicode MS. Of course the browser running under windows is most likely to show it correctly while Camino under osx has the most abstract looking more like a fez than a snow man. While a bit of a silly example of browsershots.org I have shown an interesting new tool and to some extent it’s ability at showing how a website appears differently on different platforms.

I am sure I wouldn’t be the first to comment on the obvious adult connotations behind this new toy from Bandai so instead of poking fun I shall just give the facts. The Tuttuki Bako is quite likely the most strange games you will see today, the only way you interact with it is through inserting your finger in its hole to find it augmented on the low resolution screen, interaction occurs by wiggling your finger, or moving it in and out of the machines hole to interact with items shown on the screen within the virtual realm. This concept of augmenting your body and “entering” a virtual realm is incredibly interesting and although not something entirely new the mode in which the Tuttuki Bako augments its user is unique if not a little erotic. There is a lot more information on the official website and some official videos shown on pixelsumo which may be of interest to you. I for one am interested in seeing one of these in person and possibly how they work, it kind of reminds me of those cube worlds where you could annoy the resident by turning the cube.

Source: psych.upenn.edu

It is a sure sign of the times when a company that has been in buisness for 94 years, survived two world wars and at least one severe economic depresssion goes bust overnight. I agree with Live Jamie when he says he wants his tax dollars to bail out Mothers Cookies rather than AIG, its all fair and well our governments securing the worlds financial markets but how about keeping the small local buisnesses in buisness so people still have a job to wake up to instead of having to beg and steal to feed their families.