all that's missing is the "pow!"

yes, i'm back with another custom vehicle icon for the garmin nüvi gps series, for the most famous batmobile of them all — quite possibly the most famous car in the world:

(doesn't that kid ever use the door?)

i have to thank the bat-fans at 1966batmobile.com for their veritable treasure trove of reference material.

(yes, that is the bat-extinguisher nestled between the seats.)

so you can choose from a growing list of bat-vehicles:

... to suit your mood on your next pulse-pounding mission to restock your bat-veggies!

NOTICE: these custom icons that i make freely available are not for resale!

actual size: (click to download)

close-up:

my previous custom vehicles icons, which include the tumbler batmobile, and models from the 40s and 50s, as well as speed racer's mach 5, can be downloaded from my previous post aarrgghhz carz.

aarrgghhz carz

my garmin nüvi gps device custom vehicle icons, which i introduced in the posts "chicks dig the car" and "more cars that chicks dig", are now available in one convenient download:

NOTICE: these custom icons that i make freely available are not for resale!

1940s batmobile:

1950s batmobile:

2005 "tumbler" batmobile:

1967 "speed racer" mach 5:

with great icons comes great responsibility, so remember, drive wisely.

more cars that chicks dig

yes, we're at it again with more garmin nüvi gps device vehicle icons — this time it's the 2005 "tumbler" batmobile from "batman begins".

this time, instead of photographing toys, i used computer-generated 3d models. in fact the tumbler model — one of many freely available at foundation3d — was so impressively detailed (360,000 polygons) that my machine suffered a big-time performance hit. my program of choice, lightwave 3d, crashed like a subprime lender.

NOTICE: these custom icons that i make freely available are not for resale!

actual size: (click to download)

close up:

all that's missing is the roar of a jet engine ...

and yes, as you can see in the snapshot of the selection screen, also new on the menu is the legendary mach 5 from the classic 60's cartoon tv series "speed racer":

unlike the tumbler, which i found online, i built this model myself using lightwave:

NOTICE: these custom icons that i make freely available are not for resale!

actual size: (click to download)

close up:

out on the town:

and all that's missing is the roar of the crowds ...

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update:

all my custom icons are now available in one convenient download.

giuliani campaign '08: r.i.p.

to all but the very last of his desperate disciples, the ruination of giuliani's ascension to washington was all but foretold in scripture. it is only fitting that the trajectory of his heavenly rise and meteoric fall be properly documented, if only in part, to the best of my mortal powers, in this humble shrine:

(i) the adoration of the magi mayor:

moses ... or rudy, america's mayor, has come down from the mountaintop with "the twelve committments" ...

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(ii) the gospel according to you-know-who:

bryan wiliams: ... these frequent — some would say constant — mentions of 9-11, you've trailed off a little bit lately ... rudy: y'know — y'know, bryan, i don't, i don't think that's correct.

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(iii) the crucifixtion and burial:

tom brokaw: ... that whole conventional wisdom that he made a mistake in not going into iowa and new hampshire — i think he might have been out earlier if he had gone to iowa or new hampshire, or even to south carolina. look, he had a lot of baggage that began to develop ...

bob wright and francis fukuyama:

francis fukuyama: ... and [giuliani] has built his entire candidacy out of a kind of morbid 9-11 nostalgia ... saying [chuckling] if you really liked, uh, if you like 9-11, y'know, and everything that's happened since then, you'll get more of it with me ...

gotta love bob's reaction ...

josh marshall:

... the funny thing about rudy is that while he ran on 'staying on offense' against islamic bad guys, his whole race was defined by running away from fights. we've talked a lot about his alleged 'strategy' of ignoring the early races and focusing all his energy on florida which would launch him to glory on super tuesday. and it's an open secret that this 'strategy' was really more a work-in-progress rationalization for his collapse of support in the early states. rudy, i believe, outspent everyone in new hampshire. and he campaigned there a lot. but it's more than that. if you look closely, every time it didn't look like it was going to be an easy victory in a state, rudy's campaign packed up and left. or not quite packed up, but basically backed out, made an occasional visit, said it'd be nice to win but that it wasn't really necessary. it was somewhat the case in iowa, totally the case in new hampshire and the same in south carolina too. i think it was the same basically in michigan, though i'm not as familiar with the particulars there. ... with rudy, he just finally ran out of places to run.

abc news:

[fellow former new york mayor] ed koch, who has feuded with giuliani for years, was delighted with giuliani's crushing defeat in florida. he crowed, before the final votes were even tallied, that he was certain the verdict by florida's voters "will drive a stake through his heart. the beast is dead."

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(iv) the resurrection:

i don't anticipate one. quite possibly the greatest story never to be told.

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update: from the l.a. times ... (h/t josh marshall)

the failed campaign of rudolph w. giuliani can claim one distinction: the worst bang for the buck 1 of any delegate winner in presidential politics history. the former new york mayor, who dropped his republican bid for the presidency this week, disclosed thursday in a filing with the federal election commission that he raised $58.5 million and spent $48.8 million in 2007. with his donors' money, giuliani captured a single national delegate, in nevada. at that rate, it would have taken close to $60 billion in spending to capture the 1,191 delegates needed to win the nomination.

1 to be fair to "america's mayor", anyone who spent money on the nomination who failed to get any delegates at all would have a worse bang for their buck.

chicks dig the car

robin: i want a car, chicks dig the car. batman: this is why superman works alone. — batman and robin, 1997

i've had my garmin nüvi 350 gps navigator for over a year now and the moment that i learned that i could craft my own custom vehicle icons for it i knew i had to have my very own ...

but which one? even with 60 years of different models to choose from, the choice was actually quite simple:

... if only because i just happen to have a die-cast replica that i bought for $6 on naked impulse at my local rite aid last summer:

the resource file that the nüvi uses for the vehicle icon is a specialized png file (a format popularized for its support of alpha transparency). the png consists of 36 80x80 pixel perspective and 36 70x70 pixel overhead views of the vehicle on a 2880x150 pixel sheet:

detail of smart car png file by mad mike

i cut a turntable from a cardboard box with a compass and marked lightly in pencil 10 degree intervals along its circumference. i then mounted the replica on the turntable with a twist tie around the front axle. the turntable itself was mounted on a box by a flathead nail thru its center:

and from there it was just a process of shoot ...

... turn, shoot ...

... turn, shoot ...

as you can see, the lack of anything other than 60w home lighting put an unappealing dull brown cast on everything, but dealing with icky raw material like this is one of the reasons photoshop was invented.

all the photos were imported as individual layers into a single file and their backgrounds painted out.

the background was widened 3700% (36x), then the layers moved rightward (using a macro to save wear and tear on my arrow keys and my index finger and my brain). the layers were then merged into one. the process was repeated in a second file for the overhead shots. the background of the first file is resized vertically to accomodate the overhead shots, which were pasted in. the two layers were again merged in order to color-correct all the images simultaneously. it would have been nice if all this had taken only as long to do as it does to say ...

time to shrink the combined file to its final size. a white halo was added to increase visibility. (red background added here to highlight halo.) a png copy is saved.

of course no project with this many steps is without its unforseen obstacles. for the present there is only one conversion utility — ezran's web-based png2srf at techmods.net — available for getting the png into the specialized garmin format. unfortunately it has an issue with photoshop-generated pngs, which presents problems with transparency:

at the suggestion of a member of gps enthusiast forum poifactory.com, i downloaded the apparently garmin-friendly ¹ open source image editor paint.net, which unfortunately first required installing tinyxp (a stripped-down version of windows xp pro), using virtual pc (i'm on a mac powerbook), then installing ms .net framework, and after sitting through progress bar after progress bar after progress bar, i finally got to drive around in one of those cars that chicks really dig:

NOTICE: these custom icons that i make freely available are not for resale!

actual size: (click to download)

close-up:

... afterthought:

oh, and did i mention that i also have corgi's 1940s-era batmobile ... ?

NOTICE: these custom icons that i make freely available are not for resale!

actual size: (click to download)

close-up:

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update:

all my custom icons are now available in one convenient download.

1 i've since heard (always after the fact) that the mac-native open source image editor seashore is also supposed to be garmin-friendly. UPDATE: forget about seashore — i've since learned that it's not garmin-friendly.