Cubist Miata #2

Another time waster from Moss Motors: Car Cutout Challenge. I’m in. Trouble is, on their contest page all they have links to papercraft Miatas for the 1st (NA) and 4th (ND) generation. I have a 2nd generation NB, so what’s a fellow to do? Why reach back into the past and find the copy of the instruction sheet for the second gen car from his papercraft archives. Back in 2006 the Mazda Museum in Japan produce some square-ish looking templates for all three of then current, generations of Miatas, NA, NB & NC.

Like I did 14 years ago, I spent a couple hours “coloring” it in to look like my current Miata. You can see 2020’s results above. Here were the results of 2006’s Cubist Niata #1.

Happy Star Wars Day

I guess I could have redone my Darth Vader CubeCraft one, but I wanted to try something new. This is a simple one sheet R2D2. I have a 4 page, much more detailed R2D2 papercraft template, but it would have taken a lot longer to complete than I had time for. Maybe if I start on it tomorrow I could have it finished by next May 4th.

It’s Super Bowl Sunday

Not only that, but every Sunday in May is going to be Super Bowl Sunday. So, not only has Major League Baseball opened up their archive of games to watch for free, but the National Football League has too. From now until May 31st you can get NFL Game Pass for free and watch any football game from 2009 to 2019. You want to watch preseason games? Sure, why not? Every regular season game? Check. Playoffs? Absolutely. The Super Bowls? You got ’em! You can even watch the Pro Bowl games, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why you would.

The nice thing about Game Pass’s football games, is unlike MLBTV, they have nicely edited out all the commercials1. They have even chopped out half time as well. Three and a half hour football games come in a little over 2 hours.

The bit of papercraft above is called Papercraft Propaganda and was created by someone who called themselves PaperTom and it is supposed to put you in mind of an old school Soviet statue. His web site doesn’t seem to exist anymore, so if you want to create your own, download the PDF here.

Track 08 – One

The last track I need to post that finishes up what I considered of or pertaining to the most perfect embodiment of a CD mix in December 2004. To see all 19 tracks in the numerical order I placed them on the disc, with any comments I made, here at Life of Brian, click here. To just listen to them in numerical order, check out my playlist of them on YouTube.

Thanks Mazda

A couple of weeks ago, Mazda decided to honor their 100th anniversary and to give us something to keep us indoors and busy during these interesting times, they let loose into the world some paper craft models of their current (and some past) models.

Because I already have, from back in 2006, the instructions to make the first 3 generations of Miatas and this new release included the 4th generation car, I felt compelled to download it. To color it a pleasing blue. And to make one.

This led to my rediscovering a folder full of papercraft stuff I collected back a decade or so ago. Well, I do still have a few sheets of card stock and time on my hands, so I decided to print out a couple of favorites and remake them.


First up is a Java Sparrow last seen here a little over 9 years ago in the post Here Birdie, Birdie. If you would like to make your own Java Sparrow out of paper got to this Livedoor blog page and scroll down a bit to the Marubun Java Sparrow Paper Models where you have several color choices to pick from.

Once More Into The Breech

Trees in Bloom

This is the eighth year that Moss Motors has been doing the Motoring Challenge and this is our 7th year doing it. It is also our last, not because we don’t want to do it anymore, but because they are going to stop running it.

Because of the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders we figured we would just wait to start the Challenge once Oregon started easing up on restrictions. But Monday we noticed one challenge that we would have missed out on if we waited any longer, Trees in Bloom. It has been spring here for a couple of weeks and a lot of the trees are already dropping their blossoms for leaves, fortunately whatever kind of trees are, they held out for us.

Well, doing the challenge is sort of like eating Lays Potato Chips, you just can’t eat one, so we went back out today and grabbed a couple more local ones. I hope the Governor understands that driving around with the top down on a nice spring day to do the Motoring Challenge is essential business…