shiny things in messy little piles

Year: 2009 (Page 1 of 25)

Morning Linkage (Dec 18)

Transportation

Hen­rik Toth is weird. His hack is awe­some.

Shiny, blocky, inter­est­ing sur­face treat­ments. Yeah the Bat­man mention
is unavoid­able, but it’s bad ass none the less. Lam­borgh­i­ni Ankonian
con­cept car.

Chop­per wiring dia­gram. Because we all need a lit­tle help with
remem­ber­ing where the coil goes in the cir­cuit. (Page down — stupid
big header.)

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Tech

Maybe the can­dy bar (rec­tan­gu­lar) cell phone is not the best shape
for our portable data devices in the future. Sweet mock up of the UI
as well.

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Society

Before the fan­ny packs and Andrea Bocel­li con­certs, your par­ents (and
grand­par­ents) were once free-wheeling, fashion-forward, and super
awe­some.” Sweet tum­blr of old pho­tos. My Par­ents Were Awe­some. Video
inter­views and com­men­tary in the side bar.

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Art, Image, and Design

Anoth­er cream pitch­er that’s a nice visu­al chuck­le.

Boots!

Stephan Doitschi­nof­f’s take on reli­gious mot­tos and icons. I love this
St. Thomas. (there are more)

Ben Roberts pho­tographs peo­ple in places. I sug­gest you spend time
with Over Dark Waters (ice fish­ing in Ont) and Super­pit (min­ing in
Australia)

Morn­ing Link­age is going on win­ter break. See you all in 2010.

Morning Linkage (Dec 17) the delayed for hawk rescue edition

Transportation

My pur­chase of an iPhone is now ful­ly jus­ti­fied. Volk­swa­gen has
released an app for fol­low­ing the Dakar 2010 ral­ly. Link at the
bot­tom. Woot!

You’ve seen the sneak pre­view shots of the Chanel bike. Now here’s the
real deal. Bonus shot of the creepi­est guy in fashion.
http://thevintagent.blogspot.com/search/label/Chanel

Water Buf­fa­lo. Love it or hate.

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Society (and Policy)

Laugh at Bob Hope’s bad jokes and make a point about what ‘pub­lic
archive’ should mean.

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Science

A look behind the scenes of one of the seg­ments of BBC’s How the Earth
Made Us. (Rec­om­mend­ed) Paul Williams describes film­ing inside Cue­va de
los Cristales
of Mex­i­co. One of the nas­ti­est and most beau­ti­ful places
on earth.

———————————

Art, Image, and Design

Hel­lo Kit­ty and Balzac? I have no idea.

Tying threads. Nice work from a Port­land firm. (Cephalo­pod)

Xeni Jardin is in Guatemala and sends pic­tures of altars constructed
for Fies­ta de la Vir­gen de Guadalupe.

Play­ing with food is fun. And there’s an entire blog devot­ed to
pic­tures of cute food. Start with this trop­i­cal beach cabana canape.

A wish list item for Indus­tri­al Design­ers. A new series from Phaidon
that high lights the best in ID from the 20th Cen­tu­ry. A nice
selec­tion of images to whet your appetite.

I can’t find this par­tic­u­lar image in the pho­tog­ra­pher’s flickr
stream. It’s worth look­ing around.

Morning Linkage (Dec 16)

Transportation

It’s final­ly warm again today but you nev­er know what the rest of the
win­ter may bring. For those of you who insist on rid­ing not matter
what. The next best thing to a Zam­boni.

Phil Rudge, writes about rebuild­ing a 1931 Rudge Ulster. Did you know
that EMI once owned a motor­cy­cle man­u­fac­tur­er? I did­n’t. Excellent
Vin­ta­gent write up.

More machine video. This time instead of build­ing, it’s unbuilding.
Dis­as­sem­bling a Hyundai. Short and sweet. Light music.

Cars in camo look stu­pid. Except maybe this McLaren decked out for
win­ter test­ing in Swe­den. Or maybe I just lust after the car.

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Science and Technology

The steel indus­try is alive and not so well. But not as bad as it was.

Twit­ter aids sci­ence. Local twit­ter reac­tions to earth­quakes leave
evi­dence for geologists.

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Society

The artists being ripped off by the record com­pa­nies (in Cana­da) may
find relief and the rest of us may find vin­di­ca­tion. There is talk of
the artists’ using the dam­age awards that RIAA has claimed in
copy­right infringe­ment cas­es as the basis for dam­ages to be claimed in
their fight for pay­ment. Ouch.

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Art, Image, and Design

Hol­i­day cheer — Mr. and Mrs. Cthul­hu Claus.

Scrap book­ing brought col­lage to the atten­tion of the mass­es. Here’s a
look at some of the his­to­ry of the form and some of the best
con­tem­po­rary work.

I don’t care for Roger Fed­er­er but look fur­ther into Hellovon’s
port­fo­lio for some fresh mono­chrome work.

More book art. This time a set of 3‑D adven­ture sto­ries carved out of pages.

Reg Mobass­sa’s work is prob­a­bly famil­iar to many of you. The
Aus­tralian painter has been putting out pop images for 30+ years. He
answers ques­tions for Plan­et Blog and they pro­vide a nice selec­tion of
his work. (Vague­ly NSFW — adam and eve)

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Animation

More fun with com­put­er ani­ma­tion soft­ware and Nin­jas. Brett sent me
this one and owes me a keyboard.

Hap­py Tues­day campers,

Morning Linkage (Dec 14)

Transportation

Indone­sia born Charles Bur­ki did illus­tra­tions in the 30’s and 40’s.
Vin­ta­gent brings us a cou­ple of Nor­ton’s done from mem­o­ry while he was
held in a Japan­ese prison camp.

There’s a flickr pho­to­stream for every inter­est includ­ing Citroens.
This old van is unla­beled but cool in a rusty old way.

A much nicer old (style) truck is this bike hauler. (Also from Vintagent.)

Total Moto pr0n video. How the MV Agus­ta Bru­tale chas­sis goes togeth­er. And
the engine video as well. Say good­bye to your cof­fee break.

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Science

Last week I told you about Google Earth­’s new tools for look­ing at
satel­lite pic­tures and track­ing eco­log­i­cal changes. The num­ber of
trees lost isn’t the only thing turn­ing up in the images. An entire
pre­vi­ous­ly unknown ancient civ­i­liza­tion has emerged.

Bar­bie famous­ly com­plained that “Math is hard” at least she didn’t
have an ele­phant in the class­room to dis­tract her. Giggle.

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Society

Anoth­er sal­vo in the war of con­tent own­ers on their customers.
Objec­tions are being raised to treaty terms that would help to
guar­an­tee access to books in alter­nate for­mats for the blind. Claiming
that it would “begin to dis­man­tle the exist­ing glob­al treaty structure
of copy­right law.” The exist­ing struc­ture serves nei­ther cre­ators nor
audi­ence so why would I wor­ry about it’s demise?

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Art, Image and Design

Bake­lite was (arguably) the first com­mer­cial plas­tic. Unlike most of
today’s plas­tics Bake­lite improves with age. These brooches from the
col­lec­tion of Susan Kel­ner Free­man are for sale at Bonhams.

Tim Biskup is open­ing anoth­er show in Spain. The poster alone is
wor­thy of wall space.

Sal­vage sculp­ture takes a new turn when Miguel Rivera guts dead hard
dri­ves for their com­po­nents and cre­ates new objects. The moto is
fea­tured in the sec­ond image.

I am mor­ti­fied at hav­ing to present you with some­thing lodged on a
site called “wed­ding bee pro” but the Moyle sis­ters have the nicest
round up of images from the mid-century team of Alice and Martin
Provensen
. (The sis­ters’ design work does­n’t suck either. I’m just a
lit­tle too expe­ri­enced to find wed­ding graph­ics charming.)

Ryan Berkley, a set of prints of anthro­po­mor­phic vil­lage characters.
Very British, very wonderful.

Some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the usu­al Urban Sketch­ers style.
Sug­ges­tive line work and loose col­or­ing. Views from the bus.

Annie Wu’s the­sis mate­r­i­al, quirky posters for imag­i­nary movies and
prod­ucts. Spaghet­ti West­ern meets Tri­gun with a lit­tle David Lynch
thrown in. Sort of.

Fab­u­lous cut paper illus­tra­tions by Mau­r­izio Santucci.

Get Back to Work is a stream of unat­trib­uted eye can­dy. Tank G’s
ori­gin isn’t eas­i­ly found on the web, but I’m not giv­ing up. There’s
got to be more of this good stuff.

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Video/Game

Turn off the sound. Now go here and build a robot.  You might want to
turn the sound back on when you make your robot dance. The tracks are
cho­sen with a wink.

Get back to work…

Morning Linkage (Dec 10)

Transportation

Love the bike, love the pic­ture. Fol­low the link at the bot­tom for the full gallery — music warn­ing on the link.

For 2010, the Thrux­ton SE. I’m going to fig­ure out how to get the black cas­es on the one in the shop.

Trains and side­cars. Yay.

More trains. A Life gallery of box car logos. I grew up next to the tracks and remem­ber see­ing a lot of these, but not all of them.
http://www.life.com/image/50488757/in-gallery/37482/life-on-the-rails-boxcar-logos

What was Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics think­ing? Some of the more ridicu­lous trans­porta­tion ideas float­ed by Pop­Mech and Mod­ern Mechan­ics. What, you don’t read the woot blog?

That damned cat is every­where. Hel­lo Kit­ty flies. I just want an air­line meal that looks that close to edible.

I feel oblig­at­ed to report on this. Heels on Wheels. Sounds great — shoes and bikes. Dull.

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Science and Tech

Build­ing Blog has a fas­ci­nat­ing illus­trat­ed inter­view on under­ground stor­age of nuclear mate­ri­als. Non-political for the most part, full of geeky geol­o­gy, build­ing tech, and gen­er­al sci­en­tif­ic good­ness.

From under­ground to the upper reach­es. Alien ori­gins of cer­tain gas­es hint at out­er space being as impor­tant as inner space in form­ing earth­’s atmosphere .

Speak­ing of space, Google opens up a suite of tools to use with satel­lite imagery to track changes on earth.

Eric Schmidt thinks you can avoid pri­va­cy prob­lems by not doing things that you’d be embar­rassed to have made public.(Okay that’s a lit­tle shal­low as an analy­sis of his state­ments.)  Bruce Schneier points out that pri­va­cy mat­ters not because you might have to explain to your boss why you drew a mus­tache on the Mona Lisa but because pri­va­cy is the anti­dote to tyran­ny.

I’ve always won­dered exact­ly how bad­ly fubared the eco­nom­ic mod­el for cell phone sales in the US is. Here’s a set of data points for the iPhone. Inter­est­ing. The cel­lu­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tions busi­ness mod­el should implode in about 30 minutes.

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Art, Images, Animation

Aman­da Visel­l’s char­ac­ters make me smile. Check out the rab­bits. And there are pen­guins. Real pen­guins, fur­ther down the page.

Andy Kehoe is from Pitts­burgh and now lives in Port­land. This inter­view talks about his work for “The World Unseen and Those In Between” show­ing at Think­space, and his very cool stu­dio space.

Bran­don Gra­ham turns 33 and pro­vides us with a mas­sive, jum­bled post of his work. (NSFW for lan­guage and lingerie)

Today’s ani­ma­tion. Freak­ing beau­ti­ful images, adorable sto­ries. Click the Music Off link in the low­er left cor­ner. (Music/Christmas)

Stills from the ani­ma­tion with no music here.

Hap­py Friday,

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