Category Archives: Cars

Kustom King George Barris

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Tribute to Kustom King George Barris (Nov 20, 1925 – Nov 5, 2015) Designer of the 1966 Batmobile (which I watched on TV as a kid!). #respectyourelders

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Monday Funday with Tendy

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Grumpy Baker Pie. Nom!

Lunch by the beach with 10D today. Him and I both spent thousands of hours in the same game last year but didn’t speak to each other on the mic much. Both of us were in a shit place but both of us seem to have resurfaced at the same time. Really great catch up, a bit rushed if anything as Tendy had to pick up the kids! I’m really enjoying hanging out with friends who have gone further than I have with some aspects of life. 44 this year and back to learning something new every day. I’m on track!

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#MANDATE with Nick Turner

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Mad hangs with slick mofo Nick Turner today; white FD, car talk, music talk, camera talk, design talk, food, life talk, what’s not to like?! Helps the guy is calm (ZEN as fuck, really), and has a calming effect on me, which is a good thing as it doesn’t take much for me to get manic these days!

PS: Nick has gone freelance, check out his awesome work on his instagram. Follow: @therealnickturner

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Hangs with Dom Wangan

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SOLID hangs with Dom today. I’ve know him for what, 10 years? I’ve never once had a quality D&M with the guy, but I suppose I’ve never needed to as Dom ALWAYS come across as a big softy to me; always smiling ear to ear, always a cheeky monkey and a ladies man. When I was a kid I wished for a girlfriend, this guy wished for strength and honour or some bullshit, and no wonder he’s still single! I’m pretty sure we all know a mate like Dom, who just wants SO bad to be in love, but things have never really quite clicked into place for the guy in that department. Over the past 10 years I’ve seen Dom post about his quite obvious hunt for a soul mate over social media. His posts may come across as semi-desperate at times, but they’re always done with good humour, heart and above all I consider his posts as positive manifestations in any case.

Cheers for the hang Dom, and getting me out of the house! Thanks for letting me know that some mates out there think I’ve lost the plot a little with the frequency of my manic posts, even more thanks for realising that’s just me right now and that I just gotta do what I gotta do!

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Sharing is caring

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MDT Free

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#WTF

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#DED

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#HyundaiExcelfromHell

So now that I can drive again without fear of MDT I was thinking of buying a beater like a Hyundai Excel, something I would never modify… but then I saw this. #ohiforgotmodderforlife

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Make Up Co., Ltd. @ Raijin Fujin

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Posted in Cars, Toys | 3 Comments

ZEN PODCAST #015 – Stephen Wassef


SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/c/ZenGarage

Stephen Wassef is a founding member of Acquired Taste, a tight knit Sydney based car crew who now have plans to create a brand. We discuss VW Golfs, Electric Cars, Bitcoin, Acquired Taste, Tokyo, the morals of being a tobacconist, vape, bodybuilding and old school values.

PS: Audio goes out of synch on this one. I’m making moves to get rid of the webcam as they can only record in variable frame rate and that’s the sync issue right there.

PPS: Chief had NO plans to be on the podcast at all and in the end both of us are glad he decided to change his mind. He’s a shy and quiet guy in real life but I promised I’d do more of the talking. Listening back it’s obvious Chief had more to say but couldn’t as I just kept cutting him off (more so than previous podcasts I think!). I’ve had a few people suggest I let my guests talk more. I 100% agree!

SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/zengarage/sets/zen-podcasts
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/zen-podcast-001/id1336686598?mt=2

Posted in Cars, Podcast | 2 Comments

Hangs with the Midnight Garage Crew

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BEFORE (raw unedited).

after
AFTER.

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BEFORE.

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AFTER.

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Their logo design is way out of whack as you can see now that I’ve put a grid over it.

I hung out with the young guys from Midnight Garage yesterday. They’re good dudes who have always supported ZEN and EOMM. A little while back they started their own brand “Midnight Garage” and so far the guys have come up with a logo and have started to shoot at automotive events.

We had a good catch up, and ended up talking about all sorts of stuff (I might get these guys on the podcast at some point!), but I thought I’d take the time to show them how I frame in hopes it would rub off on them. Will gave me his memory card of shots from a meet the night before and I picked out both shots above to re-frame.

The top image is pretty straight forward, but just a note that it’s always better to shoot a few steps back at car meets rather than being so close you end up cropping parts of the car you’re shooting (which he had done in a fair few shots).

The second image was one of his worse images on the SD Card but hey my slight rotation and crop shows how you could sometimes even save a bad image with a little dynamic framing.

Now the logo file; I knew it wasn’t tight just looking at it, but I thought I’d explain why to the guys by putting it into photoshop then layering a grid over it. As you can see nothing lines up at all. The CREW is off centre, the left little octagon is too. The crew banner edges have different angles both the left and the right and the 3 lower case g’s look super repetitive and make this hand written style font obviously look like a font (a capital G would have been better for Garage). The way the triangle crops around the letters isn’t working either as it’s almost dynamic on the left side, but cut horizontally straight on the right side.

I made sure the guys realised that I was in no way at all having a go at their designer, he’s a junior/young and I’ve got way more experience, but it was awesome to be able to show the guys exactly why the logo didn’t look right to me. Once they saw all the things I saw they were taken aback (I mean these guys already have printed out stickers and T-Shirts of their logo too and they didn’t see all the faults that I saw).

Whilst I’m damn tempted to refine their existing logo (as it only needs a few tweaks here and there to make it a lot tighter) I’m thinking that I’ve got to stop being so generous in order to avoid those nasty resentment issues of mine!!! The guys are totally onto it in any case. I’m sure they’ll sort the logo out and I’m also sure their shots will be framed nicer going forwards too.

Like: https://www.facebook.com/midnight.garage.aus/

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Looking to buy my 4th Honda Jazz…

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I’ve not driven in over a year now. Crazy I know (MDT’s made me rage quit), but I’m starting to want a car again. I’m thinking a $5k beater Honda Jazz (my 4th one!) would be perfect, anyone got any leads or suggestions?

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