Pfew, OR: The pferseverance triumpfs

If you were wondering whether I was able to fix the faucet until today, oh my faithful readers, then rest assured, no progress was made.

Despite the quite encouraging diagram find a couple of days ago, when I disassembled the faucet again last night, no set screw was to be found and the cartridge would not come out. I decided not to put it all back together again, but rather to take the parts to Ferguson and see what they would come up with.

And so this morning before work off to Ferguson's I went to ask for help and to surrender the borrowed tools if no useful ideas were provided.

Today there were a few people there, all quite knowledgeable about this sort of stuff, and upon some deliberation they all agreed that I just did not yank the cartridge hard enough. The theory went, after what could be easily more than twenty years spent in the pipe, the cartridge was set in there with sediment and I could try and break it loose by trying to wiggle it side to side gently.

What do you know, after a fair amount of prying with a screwdriver to scrape and break off the sediment, and some determined wiggling and yanking, the cartridge finally gave and came out!

It was the exact part that I hoped it would be, and so less than 15 minutes later the new part was installed and the whole shebang happily assembled. Tomorrow I will drop off the tools and hope this cartridge holds for another 20 years.

The story of stuff

Just finished watching this video: The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. Pretty cool, actually, although I need no convincing in this matter.

I have discovered that consumerism isn't for me because I felt claustrophobic in spaces filled with stuff and wanted to live in a space full of air and light.

One of my favourite quotes by Andy Warhol (my hero) is

To be really rich, I believe, is to have one space. One big empty space. I really believe in empty spaces, although, as an artist, I make a lot of junk. Empty space is never-wasted space.

That sounds ironic of course, coming from the same guy who was a compulsive shopper and left a whole mansion-full of stuff after himself. Some of it never even taken out of the bag it came from the store in.

But I digress.

Anyway, go watch the video if you care.

Here I go, getting on the soapbox again: Girls in sports

Okay, if you know me personally, my faithful readers, you will know that I am not a big fan of team sports. Don't play them, don't watch most of them, don't like the premise of subordination of individual self to a team. There.

However, I read something on the company mailing list for the location I work at. Let me quote:

I have been looking for a sport league to involve the teenage young ladies (14-18) at my church. If anybody knows of any sports league (volleyball, basketball, track, or kickball preferably) where a whole girls team can be sponsored versus signing up as individuals, please let me know. It was very easy to find leagues for the teenage boys, but it is very difficult to find one for the teenage girls. Please respond offline if you have any suggestions.

Now living in what seems to be an uninterrupted stretch of suburbia, I thought the lives of locals revolved around carting their kids around to activities, mostly athletic, using those giant-ass SUVs, purchase of which was justified by the kids' existence.

So I wrote back, trying to find out what the actual situation was. Here is the response I received, edited for privacy reasons:

I do think it is a national problem getting girls involved in sports though. I have seen a few organizations just geared towards promoting young ladies in sports. I think they credit it to the girls' lack of interest in sports overall for various reasons. I feel if there were more opportunities which are more fitting towards the young ladies' interests and in a more comfortable environment then they would participate more especially if they start them off at a younger age. They also need to do better marketing for their activities because they are very hard to find for the young ladies which are interested which is my situation now.

I have about 10 young ladies who want to be involved, but I can't find a league suitable. I am working with another church trying to get the equipment for a girls' volleyball team so we can at least start with that. I don't think it will happen this year since we need to gather all the equipment which is expensive when you add in the operation costs of referees and the facilities plus many of the girls involved at my church are not as financially fortunate as others.

Honestly, team sports is not even something I care about, but it strikes me as sad that those who want to be involved find their opportunities so limited.

Disclaimer: I have not done any research and am not an authority on this situation. Just reporting about my email exchange with a friend.

Price of Playing Pfadfinder

Well, after a dinner and a beer, I continued the research and plugged what I considered to be a part number found on the cartridge into google and found a discussion where "Mary" was in a similar situation. As a response, someone posted another exploded diagram of all the parts and now I see that I must have missed the 971-680 screw that holds the retainer and the cartridge inside the pipe.

The relevant part of the diagram is above.

Two good things about the diagram: One, it shows what I missed. Two, it seems to be the exact type of faucet I got. And three, the cartridge part number is what I got at Ferguson's today, so I should be able to fix the faucet using the part.

I am too tired today (had an intense workout plus the plumbing work), and will finish the work tomorrow.

Wish me luck.

And yes, I expect to run out of bad puns with "pf" soon. But not too soon, mwahaha!

Pfinding Pfister: Adventure continues

Using the tools borrowed from the store, I successfully took apart the faucet down to the point you see in the pictures.

At which point I saw that the cartridge seems to be held in place by the winding that held the retaining nut, but could not for the life of me figure out how to remove it without damaging the hardware I was planning to reuse.

To make things more interesting, the cartridge seemed to be a different one from what I had bought, so damaging it seemed like a stupid idea also.

On positive side, now I know the part number "9297" -- the other two are patent numbers and hardly legible. Okay I hope that 9287 is the part number. Leave me my illusions, at least for tonight.

So I cleaned all the parts and assembled the faucet again.

Wednesday is the earliest I can get to Ferguson's and my hope is with the pictures the guys there will be able to help further.

Pfixing a Pfaucet: Learning curve continues

So after some research on the web I was able to find a possible answer to the first tough question: Which part number do I need? A helpful document states that there are only nine different types of faucets that Price Pfister made, and mine fits the description for the "09 series." That series uses a cartridge 974-292. Awesome.

Today during my lunch break I went to Ferguson Express and they had the cartridge in stock. Plus they let me borrow the tools for removing the said cartridge from the fixture.

Watch out for more updates as the events unravel.

Excuse me while I drool

Via Autoblog, who's got two more of these linked.

Playing handyman

Okay, I learned a lot today.

One, I learned that faucet parts are non-standard and vary by manufacturer.

Two, conversion between faucet types, as in single-handle twisty knob like in the picture that I am (un)fortunate enough to have in my bath, cannot be easily swapped out for anything other than a single-handle twisty knob.

Then I found out that two major hardware stores did not carry the valve cartridge (stem) for my particular faucet.

Lastly, there can be many different stem types available, and without knowing the correct type, I might as well not bother.

Why did I learn all these things? The faucet in my shower is kinda whacky and would not maintain a constant water mix resulting in cold or scalding water coming out of the shower sporadically and when you least expect it.

Continuing to play plumber, I cleaned out the partially plugged up aerator on the kitchen faucet.

Also installed the new battery I bought for the Roomba on eBay and set it to charge for a while.

Almost washed the car(s) but instead spent the evening watching series on hulu.

BarCamp Charlotte

Got home from BarCamp Charlotte a couple hours ago. That was a mixed experience.

It seems the organizers have not had much experience running barcamps, but they figured it out as they went along, and talks began on time.

I pitched a talk on how not to suck at volunteer organizing, and got a slot on the schedule. Six people showed up and we had a nice discussion about running volunteer projects. David Nalley and Greg DeK were there, and that's the shot from my talk you're seeing.

Also listened to the "How to make money online" talk and Greg's OLPC presentation.

It was awesome to meet David in person after having known him from the Fedora Ambassadors group for a number of years.

The three of us had a lunch together at Rock Bottom Brewery and headed back home shortly after that.

Greg rode with me. He now has an amazing new toy: a wireless broadband adapter for his laptop, which allowed him to be online while on the highway, making me extremely jealous.

Speaking of shared rides, here's a picture of the van North Carolina Fedora folks took all the way to the Boston FudCon earlier this month. You will certainly recognize the magnetic signs from their numerous appearances on Bonnie the racing Miata :)

Two new pictures added to amaier.net

Guess the autocross downtime is getting to me. Could not sleep last night and came up with these two drawings.
[Beautiful Suicide 1] [Beautiful Suicide 2]

My new desktop wallpaper

Found this on the intarwebs, and am suddenly enjoying my desktop at work much more. If the car in the picture were yellow, my happiness would be perfect. Likely even too much for my gearhead heart to take. :)

Yes. I am tagging this as "art."

Another fine mess: Another call for nationalization of banks from Econimist

I don't know enough about economics to have an opinion either way, but I know that the Economist is hardly a newspaper to take more government regulation easily. So it is fairly astonishing that they seem to advocate nationalization of the banking system. It's the second article this week. Maybe Hell will freeze over next.

Snowed in

It snowed through most of the night and all of the morning.

Yesterday they said our office will close if it snows.

So today at 6:30 am, I looked out the window with one eye, saw the snow on the branches, and turned off the alarm.

Got up shortly before 9, did some work, watched the Obama inauguration on CNN.com during lunch.

Went outside for a few minutes to take pictures of my snowed in cars.

Admire the brake dust and snow on the wheels.

Thoughts on Obama's inauguration

Very carefully orchestrated, and probably the first one that paid such close attention to underscoring diversity.

A few random observations I wanted to write down while still under immediate impression.

1. During the opening, everybody's full name was spelled out, as in "George Walker Bush" but Obama only got a middle initial "H" instead of full "Hussein"--not sure what to think of this and whose idea it was anyway, but odd.
2. Mr Obama used his full name "Barack Hussein Obama" during his oath of office, though. Maybe not everybody in DC is afraid of Muslim-sounding names.
3. Loved the passage where Obama pretty much directly pointed a finger at the outgoing administration, and reaped applause: "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."
4. Refreshingly low "hope and change index" with three "hopes" and two "changes."

Read full transcript on Washington Post site.

Nine Inch Nails: The Slip

As part of my budget re-allocation (all freely disposable income gets poured into autocross), I have canceled my eMusic subscription. I took inventory of the tracks I downloaded and the ones I saved for later, and discovered that I ran out of the music I wanted badly months ago. So I decided to take a few months break.

Also, there are now more and more sources for absolutely legal free music downloads, and I never explored these while I was on the virtual IV drip from my subscription.

Today I went to check out the Nine Inch Nails site, because I remembered they gave away Ghosts for a while, and Lo, they are giving away another album! Called The Slip. I have yet to listen to it, but knowing NIN, my hopes are high.

Cruel and unusual: Someone call the Humane Society!

Via Autoblog

Wow. Economist blog opines for nationalization of banking industry

You know the world economy is in trouble when you read passages as this one on the Economist blog:

But it seems to me, based on an ongoing blogospheric discussion, that nationalisation is the only good option left.

I mean, it's a blog and all, so no reason to buy down parkas for inferno dwellers yet, but still. Wow.

Beefing up my garage

Yesterday was a slow day. I slept till noon, recovering after the party. Then I cleaned (or rather had Roomba clean) until four. Drove out to buy a car cover for the S. Watched videos online.

Around eight last night I ran out of videos to watch online and blogs to read, and against better judgment fired up GT.

I thought I would have had enough of racing from the night before, but apparently not. I won a few races in a-spec mode, enough to be able to buy a tuned all-wheel drive turboed VW and some dirt tires for it.

With it, I entered a rally and discovered very quickly that I need to learn to control the 540 or so horsies on dirt. In pursuit of instant gratification, I switched to b-spec mode and went to win a bunch of events with this car.

With that money, I bought a C5 Z06, and won the Vettes series with it, collecting a bunch of credits and winning a mean C3 Corvette race car.

Then it was almost midnight and I went to bed. The quest continues tomorrow.

WSJ reports on RIAA change of tactics

Wall Street Journal caught up to the month-old news that RIAA will no longer sue individual file sharers, and will work with ISPs instead.

An interesting quote that makes no sense to me:

Meanwhile, music sales continue to fall. In 2003, the industry sold 656 million albums. In 2007, the number fell to 500 million CDs and digital albums, plus 844 million paid individual song downloads -- hardly enough to make up the decline in album sales.

Let's do the math. Say there are 12 songs to an album. Then the 844 million tracks make for 70.3 million albums, amounting to a total of 570.3 million sold in 2007 v. 656 million in 2003.

Considering that individual song downloads sell for an average of USD 0.99--more than if they sold for the proportionate fraction of total album cost--and no inventory cost and a lot of the rest of overhead is associated with online music sales, this should have more than made up for the 13 per cent decline in album sales.

All of that of course is not really relevant in the way that the existing music distribution model has outlived itself and any attempt to extend its life amounts to delaying the inevitable.

No, I don't have a very clear idea of what the new model will be, but the old one, the same that effectively criminalizes the majority of population, has failed, and the sooner the industry will get over it, the better.

Hope that the hype will calm down

Disclaimer: If I was a citizen of the U.S. I would have voted for Obama, and I was as happy as most of the world to see him elected.

Now, having said that, I am getting fed up with Obama worship by the media. I do not watch TV, and I only subscribe to one print magazine, and yet, even I have got more than my fill of glamorous presidential-looking shots of Mr Obama.

So with the inauguration coming up tomorrow, my hope is that the hype will give way to actual working mood. There's a lot to be done.

On a side note, if you care to read in just how many ways Mr Bush has failed, the Economist has a good writeup.

Gran Turismo & Singstar party

Had the GT4/Singstar party last night. I think it went great. Had more than 20 people there at the height of the party, and the majority, even non-car people ended up racing.

As usual, ended up with twice the amount of beer and wine I started out with in the fridge. Might have another party later to amend that situation.

At about 8:30 I had the eight entries for the first shootout, and the fun started. After the fist couple of races, pretty much everybody was watching and cheering the competitors on.

I was mostly busy running the competition.

After the first GT shootout, we had a brief karaoke intermission, but only three people wanted to sing.

The second GT shootout entries were all filled during the three songs. This time, we had more of the non-car people participate and it was a blast.

I have kicked out the last couple guests around 1:30 am, cleaned up a little and was in bed before 3.

Thank you everybody who came!

Freakonomics interviews Alex Rigopulos of Guitar Hero fame

An interesting read. Excerpt:
Listening to the original studio multi-tracks is often full of fun surprises, many of which relate to the human elements of the recording process being exposed. For example, you’ll sometimes hear back-up singers chatting with each other between their sections, or you’ll hear one of the players screw something up (but the screw-up gets left in, because it’s sufficiently hidden in the final mix), or you’ll hear laughter or banter among the musicians before or after the take. There’s something very cool about hearing these people being actual people.

Via Freakonomics blog

Autocross goal for 2009

Guess while I'm at it, might state my autocross goal for this year as well: To continue improving my driving skill and finish the season in top 30 percent in raw times.

Plans for 2009

I got two main financial goals for this year:

1. Pay off Honda (and sell the Miata)
2. Cut my spending on meals out, primarily through limiting my lunches out to two a week

Why the sudden concern for spending? Well, the money to pay off the S has to come from somewhere. Plus, this year, I will take autocrossing to the next level, and that means at least two, maybe three sets of new performance (street) tires at $800 each, and at least one driving school at $400 or so. That in addition to the estimated $3000 autocross has cost me in 2008.

A slightly related goal: In a few years, I would love to live in a loft over a three-car garage with a lift. Oh yeah, and have at least two of the three slots filled with exciting cars at all times!

New Volvo S60 Concept is yummy

Saw this while catching up on Autoblog. A beautiful clean design that somehow still says "speed" and "power"--no mean feat for a four-door sedan.

Pretty bleak for a bright palace

Had lunch with a bunch of co-workers at the Bright Palace last week, and even after several days' worth of cool-down can't help but share the bleak experience we had there.

When we arrived, they were out of all specialty drinks, including the bubble teas, which was quite a disappointment to a few bubble-tea addicts among us, particularly the non-vegetarians for whom this would have been the highlight of the meal.

Then they were out of miso soup, so Casey had to have the corn soup. The soup was not bad, but how on earth do you run out of miso soup? If I can whip up some miso soup in 3 minutes, a restaurant should be able to do so as well, right?

Then the food took like 45 minutes to arrive. And because we were using the alphanumeric codes and not proper names to order food (like LC6 and LB3), my order came our one letter off, and a whole world away from what I wanted.

I said that I'll have it anyway, because I did not want to wait another 45 minutes to get the right dish, but I must have not been very convincing, and the server carried the curry potatoes away.

My food arrived when most people were more than half done with their lunches, and I had to hurry up to finish so they did not have to wait.

To reward me for all this, my carnivorous stomach did not like the spicy veggie food, and retaliated with a mild heartburn.

I will not be returning to the Bright Palace willingly.

LOL DEPOT

Somebody was funny at Home Depot. I saw this sign as I was looking for a replacement for my halogen light torchiere. Did not find the lamp, but this sign was a nice find!

Domo-kun will ride Honda today

Casey gave me a stuffed Domo today when we went out for lunch together. I took Domo with us to the restaurant and sat him next to me at the table. All wait staff were looking at him, and two actually came up and said something.

On the way home, Domo will ride in the passenger seat, strapped in with a seat belt like a big boy.

Sad news: Honda cancels S2000 successor development

Via Autoblog

According to Autocar, HoMoCo is right-sizing its plans for the next two years, and that includes rethinking the development of a range of rear-wheel-drive Acuras, a new V8, a convertible based on the CR-Z and the S2000's successor.

A sad day indeed. Hope this turns out to be a rumour.

/me discovers b-spec mode

So, as you would know, O my faithful reader, my Logitech racing wheel pedals failed. A friend let me borrow his while I wait for the replacements to arrive. He hasn't used them in a while, and once plugged in, they turned out to suffer from the same condition. So either they all fail like that (meaning I will eventually have to ask for a refund and go try other products), or the actual wheel unit into which the pedals plug in is defective. Either way, I will have a new set soon.

In absence of usable driving controls, I decided to try the b-spec mode, where you play the role of a race team manager. You can tell your driver to go anywhere from slow to push as hard as she can, and command her to pass other cars. It took me a couple runs to figure out a few simple strategies that worked out, and with my mediocre driving skill well out of the way, the only thing holding me back was the car.

The S2000 was barely competitive in its stock shape. A shame actually, as I wanted to practice for real-life events with it. I took the Miata, which for the second time turned out to be a true bread-winner. It won the Mazda Roadster cup twice, bringing in a lot of credits and two useless cars that are both front-wheel driven and ugly: a 2005 Mazda Crossover for each win. To compound the ridicule, the cars have no sell value.

The money however turned out to be quite useful. I used it to buy a couple solid upgrades for the Honda and put it into its own races.

With a few tweaks, the S began to win, and soon it won enough money to get every thinkable upgrade in the Honda tuner shop.

So before going to bed, I decided to try it out in driver mode, on a simple track that I know very well, broken brake pedal be damned.

I have only one word for it: Wow.

I did not recognize the car. Since I was looking closely at tire temperatures over the course of many b-spec races and adjusted the suspension to ensure close-to-perfect balance, the car seemed to stick to pavement like a piece of chewing gum on a hot day. The dragging brake slowed me down some, distracted me quite a bit, and totally messed up my input modulation, but I still managed to come in second.

All in all, I can't wait for the replacement wheel and pedals so I can enjoy the newly spiffed-up car.

You know you maxed out your car mods...

1. when the only two mods left are a Stage 3 engine build and tons of racing tires.
2. when the races that used to be 50+ a-spec points are now 2.
3. when you have to evade other cars when starting from the back as to not rear-end them.
4. when the sounds your car makes in-game are nothing like anything you ever heard in real life.
5. when in b-spec mode, the car wins virtually every race it's fit to enter.
6. when in-game the car seems to have developed supernatural traction.

Told ya!

God, it feels so good to be confirmed in your biased resentments!

Thank you AAA Go! Magazine!

In its current issue it has an article about the perceived "trade-off" between vehicle size and its safety. In case any of you doubted that SUVs are not any safer than cars (or even worse), here's from the horse's mouth:

When you consider "combined risk"—not only to SUV occupants but also to occupants of other vehicles involved in SUV crashes with — researchers found most cars are in fact safer than the average SUV.

And further:

As predicted by physics, increased weight increases the risk of death and fuel consumption.

Now if only all the people who buy SUVs for "protection" went and got an actual car! I'd consider the world a much better place immediately.

If you want to read the full article, the AAA site will ask you for a Carolinas' postal code. No registration is required.

Two great fact-based films

Watched two great movies based on historic events over the past two weeks: Frost/Nixon and Milk.

I would recommend both of these, for different reasons.

Frost/Nixon is basically a political suspense drama written around the creation of the well-known series of interviews with Richard Nixon after his resignation over Watergate, led by David Frost.

Despite knowing before even entering the movie theater that the interviews will happen and will be a success, the film manages to grip and never let go of you until the closing titles.

A major part of the magic is the magnificent acting by the two lead performers: Michael Sheen and Frank Langella. I suspect that a lot of this is due to the fact that both these actors were part of the original stage cast and so could explore and refine their characters to perfection.

Even for non-history-majors (unlike yours truly) it is a movie well worth seeing.

Milk I just watched today, in a well-filled matinee screening at a local program theater. It is about eight final years of life of Harvey Milk, gay rights activist and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California.

While it runs in eight theaters in DC metro area, ranging from smallish ones to mainstream multiplexes like AMC and Regal, here in the Triangle, it only shows in one "alternative" theater in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill each.

Regardless, a 30-minute drive out to see the film was well worth my while.

Good acting by the cast mostly unknown to me, barring the brilliant Mr Penn, of course. Solid screenplay. A captivating story.

While Frost/Nixon approaches history from a political thriller angle, Milk focuses on the human aspect of the fight for gay rights in 1970s.

Art lovers might appreciate the fact that Jeff Koons plays a supporting role in the movie.

If I had to pick one of the two over the other, I would pick Frost, just because I tend to favor thrillers over other types of drama. Both films are equally great and nuanced and all the good things you'd expect in a good movie.

Now off to the box office!

Is this the beginning of the end of heel-and-toe?

Maybe I am misinterpreting what the ad for the new Nissan Z implies when it says "world's first synchro-rev match manual transmission." Maybe not.

Even if I am right, I guess there's no point in falsely romanticizing manual transmission and looking down on paddle shifters and fancy stuff like traction control and semi-automatic transmission.

On a positive note, I actually have been practicing heel-and-toe downshifts and am getting a bit better. Not anywhere close to good yet, but hey, maybe I should just start saving up for a Z.

I feel in such good hands now

Catching up on Consumerist after not reading my feeds for almost two weeks, I found this delightful article. Makes me feel so good and warm inside to know the same Cigna is in charge of approving or (mostly) denying my health care expenses.

Is that your password?

BoingBoing published top 500 passwords. Did yours make the list?

Via Consumerist

Epic pedal phale

Today was supposed to be a quiet day, but it may turn out to be quieter still.

I got up "early" to get to the Triangle Miata Roadsters monthly club meet at 9:30 at a local Mazda dealership. After the meeting, they headed to a lunch taking some scenic backroads. Since yesterday noon, I was having a cold though, so I thought better of it and went home, planning on a solitary day playing GT.

I ran a few beginner races to get back in shape, did some qualifying laps in a Miata championship, and was not able to qualify for any decent position. The last one in the series is the "Trial Mountain" track, the one I know inside and out from running it in the Roadster and Spider challenge. I fully expected to place better in this one, when I started noticing that my car would not accelerate past 4th gear on a straightaway.

At first I thought this was some sort of an in-game thing made to force you to do maintenance work on the car. I got an oil change, got back on the track and when it was time to launch, the car would not move. At all.

Again, I did not notice the little bar of red showing on the brake indicator, and decided to try my other car, the Sunfire. That too, was sluggish, so I went back to the Miata, and took it to the easiest race I could find, and there again, the car would not accelerate past 90. This is when I noticed the brake was dragging.

I tried driving like that, wiggling the pedal to get it unstuck after every braking maneuver, but the car was uncontrollable and I ended up crashing it into the walls several times.

So I called Amazon and asked for a replacement. Tried racing using the standard controller, but with it, I could not drive anywhere close to the limit.

So I am watching the Matrix now instead.

I can haz moar ponies?

The souped-up Miata in GT4 is paying for itself, and I am well on the way to be able to buy a faster car in-game. True to real life, I have an eye on a Honda S2000.

With a bit of a disappointment I have to admit though, that I have lost some of the skill over the holidays when I did not play GT at all. I played for a few hours and have yet to win a Roadster and Spider challenge again.

Tweaked the suspension a bit, and got the Miata more manageable at high speed, but not much. Racing tires would probably make a lot of difference, but I would rather use the credits to buy a faster car.

In real life, I took the Miata to a self-service car wash today and got her cleaned up a bit inside and out. I think I will put up a few ads again in a week or so, when people will hopefully start preparing for the new season.

AdWords bizarre

Here is one of the more bizarre AdWords ads I have seen recently.

Because I have seen it on my blog, and I promised to Google to never click on the ads in my own blog, I don't even know who sponsored this ad. Certainly not an English major.

30 Ways to Shock Yourself

30 Ways to Shock Yourself
Originally uploaded by bre pettis

Found this on the Art 21 blog. They only posted 10 of the 30. Enjoy the set.

These are illustrations from Elektroschutz in 132 Bildern, published in 1930s. I find the style of the illustrations really striking.