Like a week ago, we started again to try to fix our buggy. We were in the process of looking for some parts to fix it when my grandfather told us that he had seen an other old buggy stuck in a swamp. So we drove on down to take a look, we seen it the second we got there, and noticed that it looked very similar to our other two. We asked the guy who owned it if we could have it and he said yes, The next day we towed it back home and within two days we already had it running… Well sort of at least It runs of an 8 horse power Briggs and Stratton engine, the same model we have in our first one. The engine seems to have trouble running under any load, it stutters and backfires when we go up hills, sometimes it even shoots fire muffler. The muffler itself is rusted out to the point that its just a jagged pipe sticking out from the engine, needless to say its very loud! All in all, except from a odd design the new buggy is quite good, and with a bit of work should work fine!

I used to be the cameraman for a trick and free-running  team called the Four Faces of the World. It was a small team that not many people knew about, but we had members from several different countries. The whole thing lasted for about a year, but then our more popular members left because of various reasons. That sort of started the decline of the team, to the point where there were just a hand full of members left. The administrator abandoned the site and forum, and the passwords were lost. It I forgot about it until a few days ago when I seen one of our top members walking on the street. That night I conferred with an other old member, and without notifying anyone else I built a new blog and forum for the team. There both finished now. I never told any one that i did this so it should be fun to see their reactions. I just thought that would be a cool little “off subject” story to tell so i hope you enjoyed it.

Here is the blog, the forum is linked to it.

I noticed the other day that I never posted any thing about our buggies. So I decided to write a bit of the story about them. As a kid me and my friends always found ourselves building stuff, treehouses, camps, the usual kid stuff. But we always had an absession about things that mooved, we were always messing arround with old bicycles, and putting wheels on things just to roll theme down the street. We had a dream that mabey someday we could make something that ran under its own power, but we didn’t have the resources to pull it off. My grandfather owned a garage accrost the street so we often went there to hang out, or plan our next creations. One day while looking at some old junk me and my friend spotted a old engine mounted on a frame with a 120 volt altinator. We asked our grandfather if we could have it, He said that he wanted the altinator but the engine was ours. We hauled the 8hp Briggs & Stratton back to our house where we taught ourselves how to change the oil. We gased it up, started it, and smoked up the whole yard, the thing was loud too. This is what sparked the idea of using it to power a buggy. We started building a frame with scrap metal, but with our engeneering skills we got stuck. Then a few weeks later we were all gathered in the living room of my grand parents house for some reason when my grandfather told me that he might have found a buggy that he build for my uncles 30 years ago. I told my friends, and a few days later, wheni came home from school, there was my grandfathers tow truck in the driveway, carrying a big old rusty heap of metal. After gutting all the broken and useless off the rig, we put the chain back on. I took us almost a year of work but then we finaly got it to run. we drove it for a few kilometers through the woods. We made it half way back untill the chain broke, and went through helll towing it back. That was the last ime we really drove it that much because every time we fixed one problem two more things broke. That was when my grandfather informed us that we didn’t really have the buggy that he built all those years ago. The real one was still somewheres in the feilds and woods of Pubnico. Almost no time after withought telling us my grand father appeared at the garage with the real buggy. It was equaly as rusty, but a bit smaller. We towed it home but continiued to work on the other one untill we abandonned it. We commenced working on the new one, and within a month or two we had it up and running. This was probably due to experience from the last one, and better connnnstruction of the machine itself. We drove it everywheres, and solved many problems like the engine blowing, and the buggy literaly breaking in half. Untill now that the rear axel broke in half right off from the transmission. Thats the story of my childhood but I guess it isin’t over yet. I would like to thank my grandfather for all the help he gave us. If any of you want to see the buggy in action just check out my videos section of this blog, or search for zazza on youtube. Have a nice day

We just got a new camera, because our old one broke. I wanted a digital SLR so we shopped around and bought a Sony a350. At just over $1000 its not too cheap but it’s a 14.2 mega pixel camera so the image quality is excellent. Just like all other DSLR cameras it comes loaded with features, like a tilting 2.7 inch LCD display for easy viewing no matter how high or low you hold the camera. There are different modes like portrait, landscape, sunset, night time, moving object, small object, automatic, and other manual ones. The camera comes with Super Steady Shot built in so theres no need to buy the expensive lenses with that feature. You can switch between the view finder, and the screen, both of them display all the necessary information to take expert photographs. The camera saves pictures on a Compact Flash card and uses a USB cable to transfer them to your computer. The camera comes with all the software you need to import pictures to your computer, but it isn’t necessary, because windows detects the camera automatically. All in all it’s a great camera, even tho it’s a bit expensive, but thats the price you pay for a professional camera.

Since I have a Playstation 3, I obviously have to have Grand Theft Auto 4! I haven’t played it too much so far but it’s a dramatic improvement from the last one (obviously) with a more realistic look and feel on the city, and tons of new features to keep you busy for days, or even weeks! On the other hand the car controlling is much harder, and it always seems that you end up taking out a few pedestrians and mailboxes when you try that e-brake turn around the corner to loose the cops. But that’s the only bad point I could find. You play as Niko Bellic, a Serbian veteran of the Bosnian War, who comes to Liberty City in search on the American dream or so he thinks… One of your most useful features in the game is the ability to access your cell phone. This is where you can call your friends, access online play; enter cheats, and do much more things. An other cool new feature is your GPS, you can still add waypoints, but now it actually tells you what road to take. The police system is totally different, now you have to exit a round zone with ought being seen, and the police cars do appear on your radar screen. The game itself runs in 1080p so it looks great on a HDTV and sounds awesome on surround sound. All in all this is the greatest game you could get for Playstation 3 and defiantly a recommendation for everyone to buy it, so BUY IT NOW!!!

A friend recently told me to download Eudemons Online. Its a free 3D MMORPG (Massively Multilayer Online Role Playing Game) available here. The game itself it I find sort of like World of Warcraft you make a character and go around the map killing monsters and completing quests, except here you find eggs and hatch theme into Eudemons that you use to kill monsters. As your Eudemons level up they can evolve into different, more powerful forms, that lets you kill bigger more powerful monsters. You can also join and create legions (clans) and complete quests in groups of friends. The game is easy to play and to understand, even tho it might be a little confusing at first. The maps are quite big so there is lots of room to explore and fight. There are updates and addons released periodically that add new character classes, items, and Eudemons to the game. All in all its a great game, even for me who doesn’t usually play RPG games.

    We just got a 46 inch Panasonic HDTV. It runs at 1080p so the PS3 really looks great on it. And with surround sound, Rock Band and Warhawk never sounded better. We got a new HD satellite receiver, that runs two TVs so now we can record up to 30 hours of HD video and up to 200 hours of SD video. Now that our PS3 is on a HDTV I might try installing Linux, Because I got my mouse and keyboard working on it.

And an other quick fix for the Rock Band drum set. If your Drum Set Keeps on sliding across the floor, Two way tape mouse pads to the bottom, the rubber side has to face down. It will still slide a bit but not as much. Or if your like me, and don’t want it to slide at all, put a 50 pound lead weight in front of it.

I recently bought Patapon for PSP. Its a 2D side scrolling rhythm game. At first glance it doesn’t really look like much fun, but once you start playing and really get into the game its quite addictive. The gameplay is very different from any other game I’ve ever played. You start of as the great patapon (the patapon’s god). You control a primitive tribal army of eye ball shaped creatures (patapons) using drum beats. Using the Square, Circle, Triangle, and Cross buttons you hit the different drums in the right pattern to control your army. There are only a few simple commands like forward, attack, defend… The more you progress through the game the more types of patapons, and weapons you unlock. The player can customize his army by equipping amour and weapons found in the game, and choosing different squads of patapons to play with. Other than the actual game there are some mini games that you can play to receive items and ka-ching (money), like hunting where you guide your army through a level with no enemies and only animals witch you kill to receive meat to build more patapons. GameSpot gave this game a 9/10 and cited its excellent art and gameplay. I recommend this game to everyone who are looking for the rare few good games for PSP.

A few weeks ago we noticed that our rock band pedal had a crack in it. Soon after that it broke in half. We tried gluing it back together and it broke again. We tried fixing it again and this time we took a strip of aluminum and wrapped it around the hinge of the pedal and then we bolted it together.

The Rock Band drum set is great but its really loud, sometimes just the sound of the drum pads over power the real song. So here is a good cheap mod to silence the drum set. First you’ll need 4 rubber mouse pads, you can get them anywheres for cheap. The thicker the mouse pads are the quieter they will be, but the thicker that they are the harder you’ll have to hit the drum. Then you need to find something round thats close to the same size as the gray part of the drum pad, the drum pad is roughly  7 inches or 17.8 centimeters. Once you find or make a circle the right size trace it onto your mouse pads. Cut the circles out with a pair of scissors, and then two way tape or Velcro them to the drum pads. There you’re done and now you have a quieter drum set to rock out on!