Telstar Logistics

Ridiculously Cool New Map Shows Live Location of San Francisco's Vintage Streetcar Fleet

This is geeky, but for San Franciscans or visiting tourists, it's also way cool. There is a new, live data feed available via San Francisco's NextBus and Market Street Railway that offers a realtime visualization of which vintage streetcars are operating on the F Line, and where exactly they are along the route. 

The map is even animated, so it's basically like having a dashboard for San Francisco's vintage streetcar fleet. In fact, here's a photo of the new map in actual use inside the Telstar Logistics Mission Control facility:

For normal civilians, the new map means if you want to go streetcar-spotting (it happens), you can efficiently collect the whole set. Even better, the map works like a charm on the iPhone. Bookmark!

Harried parents will love it when their precocious children say, "But, but... I want to ride on a GREEN ONE!!"  (Been there.) Railfans will know if they can hop on one of the rare super-bonus streetcars, and where they'll want to be when to make that happen.

Check out the map! (NextBus)

Check out the current in-service fleet! (Market Street Railway)

PHOTOS: Telstar Logistics

Evil, Embittered AMC Autos Menace the Innocent in Pixar's "Cars 2"

By the end of summer you will no doubt be sick of hearing about these two. Until then, however, we were amused to learn that the thugs in Pixar's upcoming "Cars 2" are both American Motors vehicles from the unfortunate 1970s. Ridiculed as failures, the duo are part of an evil Axis of Lemons.

Telstar Logistics Senior Automotive Analyst Phil Patton brings the details in the New York Times:

Early screenings of “Cars 2,” the sequel to the 2006 Pixar film, opening nationwide on June 24, suggest the truism holds for CGI-variety baddies, too. Upstaging the Owen Wildon-voiced hero car, Lightning McQueen, are the new miscreants, Professor Z and his flunkies — two American Motors-inspired sidekicks, a Pacer with bad attitude and a Gremlin who could hail from the Kremlin.

Grem is a beat-up orange AMC Gremlin, which Pixar said in a news release “has a big chip on his fender that has led him to the underworld of international espionage.” His partner Acer, an AMC Pacer, “joined forces with fellow ‘lemon’ cars as henchmen for the devious Professor Z.”

Funny coincidence: Telstar Logistics was oogling an AMC Gremlin survivor we spotted recently in San Francisco. In case you're wondering how a showroom-stock Gremlin looks after soldiering on for three decades, wonder no more. It ain't pretty:

Boeing KC-135: The Ultimate Caffeine Delivery Machine

What's not to love about this fanciful mix involving a BMW 5-Series, a Boeing KC-135 aerial refueler, and an empty cup of coffee?

Hat Tip: Flightblog

One Small House + 300 Weather Balloons = "Up" In Real Life

It's got a mailbox, a front door, a cute little front porch, and... an N-registration number. That last detail is important, apparently, if you want to create a real-life flying house inspired by the floating house in the Pixar film "Up."

My Modern Met explains that the lighter-than-air house was created for an upcoming National Geographic Channel series called How Hard Can it Be?, and that it flew like a champ:

Yesterday morning, March 5 at dawn, National Geographic Channel and a team of scientists, engineers, and two world-class balloon pilots successfully launched a 16' X 16' house 18' tall with 300 8' colored weather balloons from a private airfield east of Los Angeles, and set a new world record for the largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted. The entire experimental aircraft was more than 10 stories high, reached an altitude of over 10,000 feet, and flew for approximately one hour.

Lots more photos at My Modern Met. Wonderful.

Photos: National Geographic

Neko Case Is Selling Her Famous 1967 Mercury Cougar for Charity

Neko Case is fantastic. We love love love her music. And we loved her recent album, Middle Cyclone, not least becaue it featured a sweet illustration of Ms. Case riding on the hood of once very sweet 1967 Mercury Cougar.

Now Neko Case is putting the Cougar up for auction to benefit one of our favorite nonprofit organizations, 826 National, a writing and literacy tutoring program for kids.

Introduced in 1967 and named that year's Motortrend Car of the Year, this burgundy Mercury Cougar came standard with a hardtop 289 V8 and serious muscle. It's got an automatic transmission, 3-speed “Merc-o-matic,” red interior with aqua space lights, wood steering wheel, hideaway headlights, sequential tail lights, and a fully wired car stereo. Only sold in two-door. Neko named this car “Angie Dickinson,” and it’s only had two owners and has its original paint. There is enough room in the back of the car to move a small apartment, house your lending library, or to fit your band’s gear (or your kid’s band’s gear!). The beloved photo of Neko standing on the Cougar on the Middle Cyclone album cover has been nominated for the 2009 “Best Recording Package” Grammy.

Get in if you want the Cougar, but even if you can't swing the car, you can also get a lovely t-shirt with an illustration drawn by Neko Case. And enjoy the fun video she produced to help move some metal:

An Illustrated History of the Batmobile's Evolution

Via Roger Ebert comes this nifty illustrated history of the Batmobile, tracing its evolution over the years into the grotesque vehicle that we see today. The image above above is just a tiny sliver of a much larger whole, so click through to view the whole thing.

Muni Legacy: Public Transit as Tron-Style Graphic Tale

 

SFGate's Bad Reporter recently published "Muni Legacy," a graphic novella about San Francisco's public transit agency and the mutant mainframe that controls it. The strip doesn't take itself very seriously, but it's a terrific form of storytelling, with some savory subject matter. Enjoy.

Hat tip: Muni Diaries

An Encounter with Kerouac and a Bevvy of Classic Cars

While shuttling our Junior Executive to preschool today, Telstar Logistics encountered a motion picture shoot taking place in San Francisco's Potrero Hill neighborhood. Turns out, I'd stumbled onto the set of "On the Road," a new motion picture adaptation of the classic novel by Jack Kerouac.

Kirsten Dunst is in the film, and she may have been hanging out nearby, but we wouldn't have noticed -- we were too transfixed by the visual time-warp, thanks to the fantastic inventory of period-perfect cars on hand to create a scene set in 1949.

Says the San Francisco Examiner:

The production is shooting this week at 23rd and Carolina streets, the Bay Bridge, and Filbert and Leavenworth streets. Filming wraps up Friday.

Even though Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” is rich with San Francisco scenes, most of the film was actually shot in Canada, where many productions opt to film to the detriment of San Francisco’s film industry. In recent years, The City has attempted to try and revive the industry with incentives.

But just the few days of shooting is seen as a positive. And a driving-away scene being shot this week in San Francisco is said to likely end up as the final scene in the film, which is set for release in 2011.

Lots more photos, here:

Photos: Telstar Logistics

Gran Turismo 5 Intro Video Delivers Heavy Industrial Zen

If you compiled a montage of images designed to release a very large dose of serotonin into the Telstar Logistics central cortex, it would probably look a lot like this opening video for Kaz Yamauchi's new Gran Turismo 5 videogame, which went on sale last week.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....

(Tip of the crash helmet: Metacool)

Backstage at a Modern Japanese Monster Movie

At a time when most filmmakers rely on computer-generated animation to create their special effects, it's good to know that some contemporary Japanese monster movie directors still prefer to do it the old skool way -- with men in goofy rubber suits smashing flimsy models of Tokyo on a giant soundstage. National Geographic shows us how its done:

Via BoingBoing

Danger Zone: Tom Cruise Eyed for Possible "Top Gun" Sequel

We're not sure whether to be thrilled or horrified by this news from Hollywood.

BUT before you read on, we encourage you to put on your headphones and start listening to this.

Still with us? Feeling in the mood? Now...

David Ellison, the 27 year-old son of Oracle CEO (and avation geek) Larry Ellison, wants to produce a sequel to "Top Gun," the 1986 film that starred Tom Cruise in a (arguably homoerotic) Cold War period piece about F-14 Tomcat pilots serving aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.

Word on the street that Ellison wants to put the whole band squadron back together, with overtures made to Tom Cruise, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and director Tony Scott to participate in the project.

New York Magazine's Vulture blog tells us:

But why the move to make a sequel now, all of a sudden? We’re told that a big part of the reason is the influence of David Ellison, the 27-year-old son of Oracle Corp. founder — and world’s sixth-richest man — Larry Ellison. Despite being only 3 years old when Top Gun first strafed theaters, Ellison clearly became a big fan of the film on VHS, and went on to become both an aerobatic pilot and instrument-rated commercial pilot before attending USC's film school and then launching his own production company, Skydance. His first production was the 2006 World War I drama Flyboys, in which he also starred. It bombed, but Ellison didn’t lose his taste for the movie business: Just this August, Ellison the Younger left his Skydance offices (located at Santa Monica Municipal Airport, where Ellison still keeps several small aircraft), swung by JPMorganChase, and raised $350 million to co-finance much of Paramount’s slate of films — the first of which will be … wait for it … Mission: Impossible 4, starring Tom Cruise.

Roll film:

Train Set or Tilt-Shift? Model Railroad Photography and the Art of Making Reality Look Artificial

Tilt-shift photography is a technique that manipulates a photo's focus and depth-of-field to make an image of a place or street scene look like a lavishly a detailed scale model.

When done well, the look is so convincing that the resulting photos are sometimes compared to model railroad layouts -- and all the more so when the subject matter happens to include an actual railcar:

Yet as is often the case with simulacra -- think marble laminate, tofurkey, and most of Las Vegas --  prolonged exposure to tilt-shift photography can have the effect of nurturing a craving for the real thing.

This may explain why we have avoided the temptation to dabble in tilt-shift photography ourselves. Tilt-shift is about manipulating pictures to make real things look fake... but we prefer to take photographs of real model railroads that look like fake versions of things that are supposed to be real.

Or something like that.

Anyhow, in that spirit, here's a tilt-fake photo of an intermodal shipping container yard:

And here's a photo of an intermodal yard we took at the Golden State Model Railroad Museum in Richmond, California:

Here's a HO Scale cyclist biking past a plastic model greenhouse that bears an uncanny resemblance to a tilt-shift photo of a cyclist biking past a greenhouse:

And here's an N Scale lumberyard with fake logs that look a lot like real logs intended to look fake:

We've posted several more fake tilt-shift fakes at our new Model Railways photoset. It's a work in progress, so check back from time to time to see what's new.

 

Images: Model railroads by Telstar Logistics. Streetcar tilt-shift by Raymond Moreno. Intermodal tilt-shft by Hipolito Gonzales.

Historic NASA Photos for DIY Fun

NASA has joined Flickr to create NASA on the Commons, a collection of historic photos from the space agency's website that are gorgoeus, inspiring, and -- perhaps best of all -- free of copyright restrictions.

(via Laughing Squid)

California Is A Place (That You Really Should See)

California Is a Place is a new(ish) website serving up gorgoeus and truly brilliant video/photo documentaries that tell "stories about the Golden State." The pieces are short, but they're also rich, beautiful, and oh-so memorable.

All the work is outstanding, but our stand-out favorites so far are Big Vinnie (about a struggling used car dealer in Alameda, Calif.) and Scrapertown (about an astute inner-city bicycle club in Oakland, Calif.). But really, you can't go wrong. Take a few minutes and prepare to have your mind expanded.

Scrapertown from California is a place. on Vimeo.

Stormtrooper or Boeing 747?

Is the picture above a closeup of a Star Wars Stormtropper, or a Qantas Airlines Boeing 747?

Sorry, no extra credit for getting this one right -- it's a 747, of course. But after snapping the photograph above during an overcast day at SFO, we couldn't help but notice some resemblance.

See for yourself:

 

Images: Quantas 747 by Telstar Logistics; Stormtrooper helmet via Superrune