Some people dream about racing a historic Formula One car flat out. A select, lucky few others do it. One such gent is American Chris Locke, a Lotusophile from Northern California.

Chris is a busy attorney trying to make the world right, but in his spare time he uses what his hard work affords him to enjoy his historic Lotus race cars. Most recently, Chris headed to the Goodwood Festival of Speed, a motorhead mecca in England, and followed his blasts up the hill with a trip to Silverstone to exercise his ex-Andretti Lotus 77 in a support race for the FIA Formula One World Championship British Grand Prix.

Check out Chris’ cars and exploits at CheckeredPastRacing.com, a site he had made up so his family and anyone else can follow along with his adventures.

Good on ya and well done racing, Chris!

Keep an eye out for another article in the coming weeks about Locke’s experience helping in the filming of Rush.

Celebrated artist Max Presneill brings his third exhibition to GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY beginning Friday, June 29th, 2012. With painting that is as beautifully colorful as it is elegantly thought provoking, Presneill’s work sum all that is great modern art.

Come see this fantastic body of work at GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY in Beverly Hills throughout July 2012.

It’s a penny Penny Auction live on the Internet.

Right now, there’s a few ways for Coin Collectors (Numismatists) to buy coins. They can go to a coin show and meet their favorite dealers live, they can go to the ever-disappearing local coin shop and pick up what they’re craving, or they can buy coins on-line, through dealer web sites or through on-line numismatic auctions.

The margins are tight for dealers and the market is well-saturated for collectors, so the chances of getting a coin for less than “book” value is slim or none.

Rusty Scropper, proprietor of CoinSniper.com, had the idea to apply the “Penny Auction format” to numismatics to a) make it more fun for collectors and b) allow them to potentially buy coins for less than their normal value with a mix of skill and luck.

Here’s how it works (and you can read about it on the CoinSniper.com site here or watch a video about it here):

Coin buyers buy packs of bids. The bids cost about $1.00 each. When they see a coin they want, they place a bid on it. This increases the cost of the coin $0.01 and adds 10 seconds to the clock to allow any other “CoinSnipers” an opportunity to out-bid. When time runs off the clock, the winner gets the coin shipped to their address for free.

Rusty explains how he came upon the idea: “When I got tired of waiting for the big show to come my way and found all the dealers I like closing up shop, I turned to the Internet, to eBay. I found I had a great time buying coins by ‘sniping’ the auction. I’d put a bid in at the last second and hope it was enough to get the coin I couldn’t live without. With the penny auction format, that whole experience is condensed and magnified.”

Unfortunately, there are some bad players in the penny auction business. “I have no interest in running anything but a completely legitimate, honest business.”

And if you read Scropper’s articles in the CoinSniper.com Numismatic Learning Center, you’ll see he has a lot of experience and great advice he’s willing to freely share with both the experienced and inexperienced numismatist alike.

“Theoretically, this whole thing should be cheap for buyers and over time, I should be able to eek out a small profit.”, says Scropper. “The trick for the buyers is to make sure they win once in a while using a bit of patience. If you watch your competition carefully, you can figure out when to put your bid in. The whole process is a lot more fun.”

The first auctions are set to end on July 4th, 2012, with four coins per day selling until demand requires more. On July 4th alone, there’s well over $100 up for grabs, and since all of the users are new, there’s a good chance that they could win the coins with their free first 25 bids.

We wish Rusty the best of luck with his new venture and the bidders the best of luck winning some great coins. Congrats on your new site, Rusty! It was a lot of work, but we’re all sure it’s going to pay off.

Farus, LLC (at FarusLLC.com) is a medical device innovation company that is focused on developing unique solutions to a variety of clinical problems.

Farus identifies new innovations through partnerships with small businesses and academic groups, and then uses non-dilutive funding to assess the innovations and to fund research & development.

Based in San Diego, Farus has developed a comprehensive and agile process to translate multiple innovations in parallel from the research stage through the development and clinical validation stages. Farus seeks partners for spin-off and commercialization of innovations once the technical, clinical, and commercial risk have been reduced. To learn more about Farus, LLC, check out their projects on FarusLLC.com.

Need a 200 Ton boat anchor? How about specs on crane blocks? Or chain links the size of a car?

If you work in the Marine industry, you know the behemoth nature of everything in the marine industry. Well, if you need it, Waterman has it or at the very least, they know where to get it.

Waterman Supply just re-vamped their website, www.WatermanSupply.com so that it is more agile, as they are. They can now make updates to data on the site on the fly, and all of that data is searchable and easier for their customers to use and print.

Waterman Supply is a worldwide company with contacts in every port. Next time you are having trouble finding the marine equipment you need, look to www.WatermanSupply.com.

Emily Counts’ Past Present Future: Connect is a display of recent and innovative modern sculpture that reflects on our relationship with technology in our daily lives while recalling our expectations of it from our past. It is the latest exhibition on display at GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY.

Each piece seems to be an exploration of our love-hate relationship giving us a sense of what our expectations have yielded in reality and comparing our reality to our past expectations of the term ‘modern’ with relation to technology.

Past Present Future: Connect is on display from May 12th to June 16th at GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY in Beverly Wilshire.

There is great news for Formula Car racers and enthusiasts in Southern California. Allen Berg, ex-Formula One pilot, has brought advanced formula car training straight to Los Angeles at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.

Before, Los Angelenos had to go to Infineon Raceway or Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca to take part in an advanced racing course. Now Allen Berg offers an even higher quality of training through Allen Berg Racing Schools right here in LA, plus some perks.

To start, Allen’s cars are purpose built race cars, just as any other school’s. But far better yet, they’re all outfitted with full data telemetry and cameras. This means instead of depending on a students limited understanding, every issue of time lost can be seen objectively in black and white for immediate feedback. There is no greater tool for improvement. Couple the best technical data available for your driving with expert instruction from an ex-F1 driver, and you’ll be shaving chunks off your time.

This kind if experience can and does translate to any and every kind of competitive tarmac driving, from racing historic and semi-historic Grand Prix, Indy, and F5000 and Formula Vee cars to non-formula FIA, GTP, Can-Am, and even race-prepped street cars for autocross and rally.

Even better, Allen allows graduates of his programs to inexpensively rent time in his cars at the track to continue improving. It makes for a fantastic pre-season refresher, and you get the same data and analysis as you do during school.

We welcome Allen and his racing school to Los Angeles! What a fantastic addition to the racing regimen for competitive drivers and those seeking more safety through competence.

10 years ago, Eva and Helena Smith set out to make the world a better place. They started with a tiny office with one other employee, and by the end of the year, they had trained foster families and successfully placed nearly 60 foster children.

Fast-forward 10 years and Greater Hope now consists of 17 full-time employees (including employee #1, Jeannie) having placed nearly 2300 foster children. The friendly family atmosphere has yielded consistently positive results and the trend will definitely be continuing.

With the addition of AllClearLivescan.com last year and the June 1st opening of Greater Hope Preparatory School, the business will have doubled in size again by the end of the year. If you want to get in on something great, there will be a career fair for the new school on May 5th from 9am to noon.

A heartfelt congratulations comes from all of us here at WSmad to Eva, Helena, and everyone at Greater Hope Foundation for making it a fantastic and productive first ten years. And more importantly – for bettering the lives of the 2300 children and over 4000 foster parents that you have positively influenced.

Fowler & Moore Interiors and Fowler & Moore AT HOME retail are celebrating Spring 2012 in style!

Wednesday, April 11th, Chris, Suzy and Sara are presenting “An Evening of Design Inspiration” to carry savvy decorators, homekeepers, and hosts through the Spring Season. Space is limited, so if you want in, you’d better call them ASAP!

If you miss that, you could still make it to their Spring Warehouse Clearance Sale on Saturday, April 14th. They’re making space for the new stuff, but as you know F&M’s design tastes are timeless. So excellent pieces for your home at up to 75% off is a pretty hard deal to pass on!

We hope to see you there!

The Summer Pro League announced that presenting sponsor “and1 basketball company” has joined the team.

The Summer Pro League has had some very enticing sponsorship positions available, and as the league takes shape for July 2012, one of the best places has been taken.

There are still sponsorship positions available, but And1 has definitely capitalized on a great opportunity.

And1 is a phenomenal business that has recently gone through reinvention. It’s hard to imagine a better way for a company to display its products than to the up-and-coming basketball stars of next year through a partnership with Summer Pro League.

And1, welcome to the team!