My friend Jeff lives in Japan. He’s one of my best friends and I miss him every day. That’s besides the point: His MINI lives in a cave - 2nd level to be exact:

Our MINI is on the 2nd of 3 underground levels. There is a Peugeot on top, but nothing underneath. Not yet, anyways.

I would so buy this if it was available in the US.

Long time new MINI followers will probably remember MINI UK’s Flip Colour options that debuted in 2004. They featured multiple layers of metallic paint that actually gave the finished car a different color depending on the angle viewed from. In photos they looked merely interesting. In person however the effect was almost jaw-dropping.

[via motoringfile]

• Dean’s back. A man, with witt and character to be reckoned.
• Joe has a nice set of Captioning Sucks! banners up on flickr.
• I can now create a google on top of google – if I wanted to. Related, “cloud computing” is really popping onto the radar.
• BMW 520d Beats a Prius in Efficiency:
  

  “…on a 545-mile London-Geneva run, when a diesel-powered BMW 5-series posted better MPG stats than a petrol-based Toyota Prius hybrid. The BMW 520d with a 2.0-liter diesel engine and regenerative braking posted an impressive 41.9 mpg - about 0.9 mpg better than a full hybrid Prius. The difference may not seem huge. But given that the Prius weighs about 500 lb less, BMW’s fuel economy lead was significant enough to raise new questions about which drivetrain technologies are more envir [via motoringfile]

• Japan sings Turkey’s national anthem: