Month: May 2009 (Page 1 of 2)

And we were all snick­er­ing at the park­ing cops on segways…
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/any-cop-is-robocop-with-an-electric-police-trike/

A gallery of the cov­ers of the jour­nal Advanced Mate­ri­als. Click to
embiggen. Read the issue sum­maries to dis­cov­er that you know
absolute­ly nothing.
http://www.wiley-vch.de/publish/en/journals/alphabeticIndex/2089/?jURL=http://www.wiley-vch.de:80/vch/journals/2089/cover/index2009.html

Some­times the answer to nasty mate­ri­als is not to dis­pose of them but
to reuse them. I say it’s more than sort of sustainable.
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/sortof_sustainable_flooring_vinyl_yes_vinyl_composition_tile_13468.asp

A good sum­ma­ry of the chaos in Guatemala caused by the death of lawyer
Rodri­go Rosen­berg. Social medi­a’s role in this cri­sis is big. (I hate
the term social media.)
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/12/guatemala-slain-lawy.html

If you’re post­ing video to one of the video shar­ing sites you might
want to have a look at Markus Wei­land’s review of their
ownership/copyright/privacy poli­cies. (Do they own your video?) Anyone
know of a sim­i­lar overview of the terms of use for the pho­to sharing
sites?
http://advancingusability.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/owned-legal-terms-of-video-hosting-services-compared/

For Word­Press users a col­lec­tion of hacks tak­ing advan­tage of custom
fields. I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the first one — post expi­ra­tion dates. (I
have not had time nor incli­na­tion to look care­ful­ly at all the code.
Use at your own risk.)
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/13/10-custom-fields-hacks-for-wordpress/

Dis­trib­uted trans­la­tion efforts for TED talks. There’s also supposed
to be a new trick in the tran­scripts. Select a bit of text and go
direct­ly to that por­tion of the video. Haven’t found it yet. Will
advise.
http://blog.ted.com/2009/05/ted_open_trans.php

Neil Gia­man reminds us that we do not own the right to an author’s
future out­put just because we bought the first book in a series. Some
days he just makes me nod my head and smile.
http://blog.ted.com/2009/05/ted_open_trans.php

Unin­tend­ed coin­ci­dence. Tomor­row I leave to cross the coun­try. May
14th also marks the 205th anniver­sary of the begin­ning of Lewis and
Clark’s cross coun­try trek.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/14940

Zen image of the day.
http://sleepmachine.tumblr.com/post/106996448/plasticdreams-tumbleg-kiri2-muibrog

This is like­ly to be the last Morn­ing Link­age until I return from the road.
Occa­sion­al trip reports to WL or fol­low along dai­ly with words and pic­tures on:
http://shoes.blackdogandmagpie.net

A sil­ly to start. 69 Love Song Illus­trat­ed. Just what it says. All by
dif­fer­ent artists. They haven’t got the full 69 yet and a the quality
varies but this one is hap­py sil­ly. (Mild­ly NSFW due to hazy nakedness
and furries)
http://howfuckingromantic.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/lets-pretend-were-bunny-rabbits/

Dou­glas Bow­man’s depar­ture from his post as head design­er for Google
has freed him to say a lot about how Google works. In this NYT article
he again dis­cuss­es the data vs. design divide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/business/10ping.html?_r=1

How the smart guys at UCSB hijacked a bot­net. This is the best I’ve
been able to find on it. Details of how the bot­net worked are light.
(I real­ly don’t care about the user data they found. There’s nothing
new.) I’ll keep look­ing for some­thing more in depth.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/252353/hijacked-botnet-exposes-startling-online-habits.html

Charm­ing­ly British head-to-head test between a net­book (Asus) and an
iPhone. Which is eas­i­er to type on? In a Ral­ly car? At full goose bozo
speeds?
http://news.cnet.com/8301–17938_105-10230160–1.html

Cory Doc­torow’s review of Daniel Pinkwa­ter’s new chil­dren’s book.
Pinkwa­ter like Gaiman writes chil­dren’s books that make grown-ups
hap­py too.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/11/pinkwaters-neddiad‑a.html

Pret­ty. Shiny. Nos­tal­gic (for some of you) and pos­si­bly the coolest
bike name *ever*.
http://www.bikeexif.com/hodaka-combat-wombat

I still hate monday.
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2009/05/11/funny-pictures-the-monday/

more tomor­row,

The Design Edition

Start­ing with a cou­ple of fur­ni­ture designs.

With a welder and some scrap from out behind the barn we could make up
a cou­ple of these lawn chairs. Not sure I want to sit on one. Humor in
design is good.
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/sitting_on_the_fence_13389.asp

And anoth­er report­ed by Core77. Prov­ing that lack of humor in design
think­ing is what makes the rest of think design­ers are pretentious
idiots. From the pull quote: “…struc­tur­al nar­ra­tive of planned
imper­fec­tions…”  WTF?
http://www.core77.com/blog/ny_design_week_09/ny_design_week_09_preview_divis_table_from_mike_and_maaike_13414.asp

Two on the design process.

Flikr set of pho­tos and sketch­es show­ing high­lights of Andy Logan
design­ing the Tur­boChef DWO oven. (Do Want)
http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_set.asp?individual_id=243760&set_id=269978

NTY on-line about Steven M. John­son. Char­ac­ter­ized as R. Crumb meets
Buck­mis­ter Fuller. You can just look at the pix (tons) but the article
is well worth the 15 min. read. (Dis­cuss)
http://arieff.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/searching-for-value-in-ludicrous-ideas/

A quick report on a sweet lit­tle ad cam­paign to stop trash­ing the ocean.
http://www.sundancechannel.com/sunfiltered/2009/05/the-most-dangerous-species-in-the-mediterranean/

Infor­ma­tion Archi­tect and Design­er want­ed by the State of Ore­gon to
work on the unholy mess that is the elec­tion process. Not the voting
machines/techniques but all the sur­round­ing media. Vot­ers pamphlets,
polling place sig­nage, PSAs etc.  Good t see some recog­ni­tion of the
role of IA and design in pub­lic dis­course. (See also the book Nudge -
Jim H read­ing first.)
http://www.coroflot.com/public/job_details.asp?job_id=22721

Ob Moto Content:

Nice mod of a stan­dard. (Don’t like Suck­er Punch Sal­ly’s oth­er work
much but this is rockin’) <begin rant> And for gawks sake this is 00s
do not build URLs with spe­cial char­ac­ters in them <end rant>
http://www.bikeexif.com/sucker-punch-sally%E2%80%99s-fender-triumph

Anoth­er nice port­fo­lio of bike draw­ings and mockups.
http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_set.asp?individual_id=75848&set_id=20281

more Mon­day
have a great week­end folks

The arts and crafts edition.

Oh, and one toy. Now you nev­er have to be with­out a train set.
http://www.paulsmith.co.uk/new-online-255/blumenau-model-train-set-r8sr-gama-88100–1/product.html?LproductId=16155

Art from books. I don’t always hold the line with the “nev­er destroy a
book” crowd. Here are two exam­ples of why.

The flickr set of Nicholas Galan­in’s What Have We Become .
http://www.flickr.com/photos/galanin/sets/72157594357065714/

Thomas Allen’s pho­tographed dio­ra­mas made by cut­ting and fold­ing pulp covers
http://paintalicious.org/2008/11/20/thomas-allens-book-art-photography

Baje­ma’s newest book. Sold out of course. Link to the Coil­house review
because it has more pic­tures. Go ahead and explore Coil­house as well.
http://coilhouse.net/2009/05/06/bajemas-web-collection-ii-etta-diem-out-now/

If you’re prowl­ing Seat­tle this week­end go to see the new show at Roq
La Rue — Lush Life. I’ll be there though sad­ly not for open­ing night.
http://roqlarue.com/index.php?module=Exhibits&id=36

The crafty bits:

First baby-food jar project that I’d let with­in a mile of my house.
Maybe under the canopy in the garden?
http://www.naturalhomemagazine.com/Homemade-Home-Decor/Baby-Food-Chandelier.aspx

Friends for your desktop.
http://www.obviousfront.com/

There are a few of you who will have to turn away from the screen for
this one. But I laughed myself silly.
http://www.duccutters.com/UnknownTrikes/Originals/apedesmosedici.jpg

Duc­Cut­ters has lots of oth­er projects many less vio­lent­ly wrong than
the one above.
http://www.duccutters.com/index.tpl

Sil­ly chil­dren’s book. The draw­ings are delight­ful. The text
abom­inable — in a cute sex­ist way. Don’t both­er read­ing the comments.
http://michiedo.blogspot.com/2008/12/im-glad-im-boy-im-glad-im-girl.html

News:

Librar­i­ans are wor­ry­ing about the Google Books set­tle­ment. No access
to put of print books vs. access con­trolled by giant corp. Rock and
hard place.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/05/libraries-weigh-in-with-worries-on-googles-book-settlement.ars

There was a lot of wor­ry about eBay encour­ag­ing the stolen antiquities
mar­ket at the begin­ning. This paper finds that, in fact, eBay has
dras­ti­cal­ly cut down on the sales of stolen mate­ri­als. Unintended
con­se­quences that win rather than fail. Nice.
http://www.archaeology.org/0905/etc/insider.html

Kind of loud and whiny but a cogent indict­ment of the per­son­al finance
guru scam.
http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/judgments/2009/05/03/end-personal-finance

Design:

The port­fo­lio of Aki­hisa Nakatani. Lots of sports gear includ­ing a few
bits of moto gear. Love his sketch­ing style.
http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_work.asp?individual_id=65196

I hate mod­ern low ener­gy light­ing. So do a lot of oth­er peo­ple. But
the solu­tions are too damned expensive.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/05/05/100-led-lamp-uses-quantum-dots-to-imitate-more-natural-light/

The CryENGINE2 ren­der­ing engine is get­ting a lot of good press right
now. Click through to the mes­sage board for tons of mind boggling
images *if* your con­nec­tion is real™ fast. Mine ain’t.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/05/05/the-crysis-engine-does-a-pretty-good-job-of-rendering-blade-runner/

Love­ly video com­posed of time lapse pho­tos as a freighter moves
through Hous­ton at night. Be sure to watch both halves.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/oneeighteen/3500258467/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/oneeighteen/3500258467/

There’s a map of the route here.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=106108931087575796421.0004692e839d29806d032

And anoth­er very sil­ly green  item to end the list.
http://archmage.livejournal.com/2062431.html

more tomor­row,