6/16/2005: Office Chair World Championship

Another xoB/WaPo image. Here was have a guy racing in the 200-meter course in the first Office Chair World Championships. No word on who won or what the winning times were.

What about a body count?

I can forsee those casters breaking off on landing, causing the chair to pivot forward, and grinding his fingers down to little stumps.

Where's that picture??

Quote:

Originally Posted by lawman I can forsee those casters breaking off on landing, causing the chair to pivot forward, and grinding his fingers down to little stumps. Where's that picture??

Oh on, these are specialy constructed highspeed racing chair high tech in everyway. Their casters and wheels are constructed from some to the most high-tech high-impact plastic around, able to withstand speed in excess to 5 MPH!!! And they are much more safer than the typical pressed plastic cafeteria chair you find in most modern office buildings. Each chair is insured it's safety requirements by being examined by inpector No. 39 (or inspector No. 42 depending on if inspector No. 39 has a doctors appointment that day). And finally, each chairs powered by an alcohol buring engine (acutally 24 ounces of alchohol - riders choice of brand and type).

I thought I donated that chair to Goodwill..........
Hope the "Jackass" guys don't see this.
If they haven't already.

WTH-- the background is motion blurred and the guy on the chair is in focus. Another chair was flying down the street, right next to him, this one holding a guy with a camera. . .

focus

The cameraman may just be pivoting as the rider (driver?) goes by.

Technically, those chairs swivel, not pivot.

.....at any rate it takes a lot of skill to get a shot like that, the subject almost totally in focus. I wonder what the yellow blur behind him is.
hehehe........
Dude looks like he's about to have an organism......

hay bale

I'll buy that. Odd placement, tho.

Technically it's straw, not hay.

Noted. I will return to my chair in the corner now, sir.

Aw there there now. Don't take it so hard. Hey, you were right about the swivel.

When the computers would go down at my old office - we would sometimes have chair races. But nothing like this. Frankly - working in an office - this looks like a lot of fun. But knowing my clutz-ish behavior - I would end up amputating some body part trying to get to the finish line.

My office does not have room for chair races.

We get some good spins going, though.

Couldn't find anything that on this particular event, however I did run into this web site

http://www.officeolympics.net/

Caption from this temporary link:

Funny picture. I like it. The guy looks so intense.

I don't think the technical skill of the photographer is really anything too special. If there were 64 participants, then the photographer could set up shop at this one jump and have 64 tries to get a good shot. It's a bright, sunny day, so the aperature of the camera can be closed down pretty small, creating a large depth of field. The photographer can pre-focus on the center of the ramp, and still have much of the foreground and background still in focus to allow for the different paths the racers will follow. The participants are not going all that fast compared to a car race, so the shutter speed can be a little longer to create a sense of motion blur. Maybe a 60th of a second or a 30th of a second or so. The previously mentioned small aperature will allow such a relatively long exposure. As each racer goes over the jump, the photographer can hand hold the camera and pan with the motion. That keeps the racer relatively crisp, and blurs the background. Panning isn't so hard. You can't get a good shot every time when you pan the action, but with 64 tries, you will have several that will come out well.

I don't mean to say that the photographer has no talent. It's easy for me to sit here and figure out how the picture was taken. Quite another thing to set up the shot in the first place.

That's all part of the fun.

Haven't you ever cheered for the inevitable wheelchair pileup at the turn at the downhill at the start of the Boston Marathon?

No...

But I do have to admit that I only watch NASCAR for the crashes ... I mean, come on ... does anybody really want to watch 33 rednecks drive real fast in a circle?

3.3 million other rednecks?

The only reason I watch any sport is to see someone bust their ass.
Well almost.
I like to see them bust each others asses too.

Panning is always much harder than you think. You're right, it's damn sunny so the apature was probably (thinking sunny F/8 and drop two stops for the shutter speed) 11 or 16 to get a slow enough shutter speed for the background blur but it's still a bitch to pull off right. Not a straight pan either, he just went over a jump.

When I worked in a integrated circuit fab, I raced a coworker through the clean room on chairs. The floor was real clean, so it was pretty speedy. Of course, when she clipped the side of a shelf and almost tipped it over, we had to quit. Only because there was $1.5 million worth of silicon wafers on it. I swear I heard her rectum slam shut from across the room. She was pretty scared