While I was in Australia, I spent quite a bit of time hanging out with Ben Thomas. Ben is one of the big figures behind the traditional hot rod movement in Melbourne and an all around swell guy. He also has one hell of a shop that was covered a few months ago by FuelTV. If you are a hot rod guy, you’ve probably already seen the video above. However, if you aren’t this one might have slipped by you… I can honestly say that I’ve never been a shop with more soul or style. It’s a picture of simplicity that really inspires…

I admit that this isn’t really on topic to the Garage Journal, but I figured some of you fellas might dig it. The idea of  such a simple profession using such simple methods is really kind of dreamy to me. I like the idea that somewhere in the world, a man can get by sharpening knives on a bicycle. It’s really quite beautiful.

Here’s an interesting alternative to your trusty pencil. Essentially, Woodcraft is a 3d environment that you install on your iPad – allowing you to plan projects before you start them. I’ve tried it… It’s pretty easy to understand and use, but it does take a bit longer than just using a pencil and notepad. The payoff? Woodcraft returns you a full bill of materials.

More details here.

Wow… that was one hell of a week. As many of you have noted, the performance of garagejournal.com hadn’t gotten to the point where at times, the site was almost impossible to use. The main problem was that we’ve seen such a traffic increase over the past year, that our servers just weren’t able to process the number of requests. During peak times, out database server would just give up the ghost.

As a result, you guys had to suffer excruciatingly long page load times and I had to figure out how to fix it. As you guys also know, we recently launched the Garage Journal Alliance. Thanks to the success of that program and to our sponsors, I had enough capital to step up the game a bit and you fellas are now calling pages from a brand spanking new server and host.

Anyway, I’m posting today for three reasons:

1. I wanted to thank you all for the support. This new hardware change was a big step for me and I couldn’t have done it without you fellas having my back. Thank you.

2. Durring the hoopla of the change-over, I lost some private messages that I just got back. They will answered shortly… sorry for the delay!

3. Also due to the hoopla of it all as well as some travel, I haven’t shipped new Alliance tags in two weeks. They will ship tomorrow. And extra special thank you to you fellas… It means the world to me to have your support.

That’s it… Back to regularly scheduled programing. Enjoy the new and improved Garage Journal!