shiny things in messy little piles

Month: August 2009 (Page 1 of 3)

Morning Linkage (Aug 31)

Design and Artifacts

From Tokyo, a round up of Good Design 2009 win­ners. The auto­mat­ic meat
fresh­ness indi­ca­tor is clever and use­ful. I want a cou­ple of the lamps
list­ed sec­ond. There’s cute, clever, and head scratch­ing fur­ther on.
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/08/photos-good-design-2009/

I love tea in the morn­ing. The joy of watch­ing this lit­tle shark float
around in my cup would make it even better.
http://designyoutrust.com/2009/08/30/cool-tea-infuser-%E2%80%9Csharky%E2%80%9D/

——————-

Food

Too bad this did­n’t show up ear­li­er in the sum­mer. Maybe we should
plan to build a piz­za oven next yea r… at Mar­tin and Car­ol’s house.
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/08/26/howto-build-an-outdo.html

Taco trucks get some atten­tion from a seri­ous food writer.
http://www.sundancechannel.com/sunfiltered/2009/08/eating-los-angeles/

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Infra­struc­ture

I don’t know how seri­ous these guys are about the nam­ing conventions
but the aer­i­al pho­tographs of high­ways inter­changes are great
dizzy-making fun.
http://www.infrastructurist.com/2009/05/18/dont-pluck-the-cloverleaf-a-field-guide-to-highway-interchanges-part‑1/

Fire hydrants are tempt­ing tar­gets for painters.
http://www.infrastructurist.com/2009/08/26/ha-amusingly-defaced-fire-hydrants/

—————-

Cul­ture(?)

Sat­ur­day Morn­ing Break­fast Cere­al takes a look at sci­ence reporting.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1623

David W has a go at the RIAA and copy­right mad­ness. The sit­u­a­tion is
so out of hand that the satire is sub­tle. (No, really.)
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2009/08/30/riaa-wins-dmca-case-now-illegal-to-decompose/

As I have men­tioned before, Hel­lo Kit­ty turns 35 this year. The CNet
Gad­gettes (oh gag) had a lit­tle con­test. Hel­lo Cougar.
http://www.cnet.com/2300–12552_1-10001381–1.html?tag=mncol;txt

————————

Images

I adore Tom and Jer­ry car­toons. But there is a dis­tinct­ly psychotic
edge that is nev­er far from the sur­face. This  re-rendering of a comic
book cov­er cap­tures it nicely.
http://coveredblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/james-powell-covers-tom-jerry-97.html

Drop dead sexy thighs. On a robot.
http://insomnio.org/post/173169516/robots-for-geeks-photo-by-hunyaga

Three years work in Kingston Jama­cia by  Peter Dean Rickards. The
whole book is avail­able on line as a PDF.  The por­traits define a
nation and the land­scapes define a time in that nation. NSFW — one or
two nudes and lots of guns.
http://afflictedyard.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/afflictedyard_2003-2007.pdf

End­ing the morn­ing with music by Tom Waits and video typog­ra­phy, no
I’m not kid­ding, by Jack­ie Lay, And a side of Toast.
http://vimeo.com/3046034

Until tomor­row.

Morning Linkage (Aug 28)

Trans­porta­tion

Boe­ing’s Scan Eagle UAV gets put to civil­ian use dur­ing the Alaska
wild fire sea­son. Video of the launch and recov­ery with infra-red fire
spot­ting footage. Ver­ra cool.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/firefighting-uav/

This is the most unfor­tu­nate col­or scheme for a bike I have ever seen.
Even John Deere gets the accent col­or for a green vehi­cle righter than
this. There’s a link for the real™ paint scheme in the blurb if you
need an eye cleanser.
http://www.bikeexif.com/bimota-borsalino

Aaron Hugh­es designed a sta­tion wag­on for Ford dur­ing a college
intern­ship. It looks sus­pi­cious­ly Vol­vo like. I like seeing
spec­u­la­tive vehi­cle design that is plau­si­ble. His oth­er sets are good
too.
http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_set.asp?individual_id=72279&set_id=195409

—————–

Design

The pint glass is an endan­gered species. The plas­tic replace­ment is
dread­ed and loathed. Vert Design, work­ing for Fos­ters, has made a
fair­ly suc­cess­ful ver­sion. Here’s a descrip­tion of the glass and the
think­ing that went into it’s design.
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/design_tales_designing_a_successful_plastic_pint_glass_14428.asp

Tran­sis­tor radios were the iPods of the day and exhib­it­ed the same
for­ward look­ing design.  This flickr stream has 100s of pho­tos of
tran­sis­tor radios. Awesome.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/transistor_radios/

The Muse­um of Bro­ken Rela­tion­ships is a Croa­t­ian project documenting
bro­ken rela­tion­ships through arti­facts. It’s weird and not terribly
com­pelling (to me.) But this user inter­face for brows­ing the online
col­lec­tion has me fascinated.
http://www.brokenships.com/user.php?id=367

———————-

Bacon

A Top 10 list of pigs. Con­tains my two favorites.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/32909

———————–

Images and Illustration

Theodoru has new pic­tures on the front page. Flash makes it impossible
to link to my fav. 7th from the top. This is what cre­ation really
looked like. I’m smiling.
http://theodoru.com/

Ramadan has begun and The Big Pic­ture brings us pho­tographs. Check #33
for a breath­tak­ing shot of the moon. And all the desserts you can
dream of.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/ramadan_2009.html

The waifish fash­ion mod­el is one of our soci­ety’s sick­ness­es. Crystal
Renn was one and now she’s not. She talks about get­ting back to being
her­self in this arti­cle. (Yes, I agree with you all that a size 12 is
not a “plus” size for some­one that tall.)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hmWn-7qRbH26aAmvjlHs_W04ddrwD9ABCDTO0

Just to prove that Crys­tal Renn is gor­geous here are two pho­to sets. NSWF.

Matt Jones. I’m hav­ing trou­ble find­ing the orig­i­nals of these. NSFW — nudes
http://kier-cs.blogspot.com/2009/03/crystal-renn-by-matt-jones.html

From a Pol­ish? site. The guy/gal has great taste in both women and
pho­tographs. NSFW — nudes.
http://bbw.blox.pl/2009/04/Crystal-Renn.html

I’m out­ta here til Mon­day. Have a great weekend.

Morning Linkage (Aug 27)

Trans­port

Did you know that the wheel­ie was invent­ed by some guy on bicy­cle who
was try­ing to fright­en a horse? Okay it’s just a draw­ing but it’s a
giggle.
http://thelittlechimpsociety.com/barrett/the-day-the-wheelie-was-made-by-barrett/

OMG that’s fug­ly. Auto­topia cap­tion con­test. And the cap­tions are lame.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/wtf-caption-veritas/

OMG that is *not* fug­ly. Swoon.
http://www.thecoolist.com/the-1937-bmw-r7-restored-to-perfection/

—————-

Objects of Design

There were eight win­ners in the elec­tolux design con­test. The only
three good ones are here. Le Petit Prince is charm­ing and plausible.
The dish­wash­er is cool­er than mine. (Dif­fi­cult to do.) Bonus dumb
trend chas­ing design included.
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/electrolux_design_lab_2009_finalists_14401.asp

Lego and food. You might see lit­tle 2x2 brick short­bread cook­ies at
the Box­ing Day Par­ty this year.
http://shop.lego.com/ByCategory/Product.aspx?p=852530&cn=13&d=443

Piz­za rules the world on Sat­ur­day nights. Now you can rule your pizza
with chop­per styled piz­za cut­ters. Real­ly. Click images for bigger.
That is a com­mand, not a request. (Atti­tude baby.)
http://www.frankieflood.com/objects.html

———————

Tech­nol­o­gy

Make a vac­u­um flu­o­res­cent dis­play clock. The work­man­ship on the model
for this DIY is enviable.
http://www.ladyada.net/make/icetube/

Ear­ly large tele­scopes and some of the images cap­tured through them.
The fact that this is a col­lec­tion of pic­tures with very little
expli­ca­tion lends mystery.
http://butdoesitfloat.com/67562

——————

Pic­tures

This one’s espe­cial­ly for myJim.  Kit Karter was a one-off com­ic about
a go kart daffy boy. Ignore the name in the link — the poster admits
to a typo.
http://cosseyedcyclops.blogspot.com/2009/08/comic-kit-karson.html

The cov­er and an inside spread from the chil­dren’s book “Night Cars” I
agree with the poster about the spe­cial­ness of the illustrations.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/26/night-cars-gorgeous.html

Jorge Mas­caren­ha’s por­traits of girls. Haunt­ing. Some dis­turb­ing, some
inspir­ing. All uneasi­ly familiar.
http://jorgemascarenhas.bigcartel.com/

Dan­board is a card­board ver­sion of the char­ac­ter Dan­bo. 365 (more or
less) pho­tographs of the card­board mas­cot doing com­mon and odd things.
http://www.fubiz.net/galleries/set/365-days-of-danboard/

Impos­si­ble cool. Cash.
http://theimpossiblecool.tumblr.com/post/171431564/cash

Morning Linkage (Aug 25)

Trans­porta­tion

The scram­bler is a great idea for a week­end toy. Here Touratech
cre­ates a mod­ern take on the theme using a BMW F800.
http://www.bikeexif.com/bmw-f800scrambler

Tex­ting and dri­ving is a bad idea. How can any­one think that building
traf­fic mashups while on the go is a good idea.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/two-new-iphone-apps-go-beyond-navigation/

———————

Sci­ence

Sunspots and solar mag­net­ic changes fas­ci­nate me. That the things that
hap­pen on such a small (rel­a­tive) scale on the sun can have such huge
effects on earth seems improb­a­ble. We may get to have out own little
ice age.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/08/another-little-ice-age-solar-activity-and-climate-change.ars

——————-

Tech­nol­o­gy

Next time (huh?) I end up with an arm in cast I’m going to demand one
of these. I’m think­ing the pur­ple camo is nice.
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/08/24/exos-arm-brace-has‑c.html

One the eBook front. The race is on and now we all have to live
through a cou­ple of years of com­pet­ing devices and for­mats as well as
the attempts by var­i­ous com­pa­nies to wrest exclu­sive distributing
deals out of pub­lish­ers. Ad nau­se­um. Here’s the latest.

Flat World Knowl­edge a pub­lish­er of text books just fin­ished up a beta
test of a pro­gram that lets you read that 400 page tome for free
on-line. You can get more portable/useful ver­sions for a price. (Still
below that of the tra­di­tion­al dead-tree ver­sion.) They are striving
for device independence.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/flat-world-schools-textbook-publishers-with-free-web-editions.ars

Two new devices:

Irex will be bring­ing out an e‑reader to go with the new Barnes and
Noble e‑book store.
http://mobilefactor.org/coming-irex-and-barnes-noble-to-launch-new-e-book-reader/

Sony’s newest read­ers launched this morn­ing. Some include wire­less and
one ver­sion has a touch screen. I’m not entire­ly clear on what the
Library Find­er does. I’ll let you know when I know. Crunch Gear’s live
cov­er­age of the announcements.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/08/25/sony-announce-the-wireless-daily-edition-ereader/

Now that we have so many choic­es in read­ing devices here’s a list of
sources for free books. Often you get what you pay for but a free copy
of Sher­lock Holmes can make an O’Hare lay­over bearable.
http://www.rotorblog.com/2009/03/09/top-25-free-e-books-sites-the-definitive-list/

————-

Home Ec and Some Silliness.

There’s no way Future Pres­i­dent Moss can eat enough baby goop to keep
us all in baby food jars for work­shop stor­age. I found this exam­ple of
using those CD spin­dle packs for shop storage.
http://woodworkingextras.blogspot.com/2009/05/good-bye-baby-food-jars.html

Speak­ing of sprogs. If you’re the one in cubi­cle land with­out an
excuse to leave ear­ly on Fri­day for junior’s soc­cer game here’s a
solution.
http://www.theofficekid.com/index.html

————-
Art, Design, and Pop­u­lar Culture

In Philadel­phia 50 walls fac­ing the Mar­ket Street Ele­vat­ed will be
paint­ed with love letters.
Cyana­trend­land has a descrip­tion of the project.
http://cyanatrendland.com/2009/08/24/a‑love-letter-for-you-street-art/
The blog fea­tur­ing all of the paint­ings (in progress) is here.
http://www.aloveletterforyou.com/

Just as soon as they come out with the bik­er ver­sion of these little
desk­top friends I’m get­ting one. Maybe more.
http://collect3d.com/news/beit-dudes/

I’m feel­ing gen­er­ous toward my Y enhanced friends this morning.

Mort Kun­stler did cov­ers for the men’s adven­ture mag­a­zines in the
60’s. Wicked awe­some and SFW. Though gen­er­al­ly lurid and tacky. Yum.
http://www.americanartarchives.com/kunstler.htm

Almost SFW — depends in whether you could get away with the Stihl
gi’me cal­en­dar. George Pet­ty’s 1947 cal­en­dar girls. Giggle-icious.
http://cyanatrendland.com/2009/08/24/george-petty-curvy-pin-up-from-1947/

And for those of us XXs. A brief arti­cle on the flap­per phe­nom­e­na. The
vin­tage pho­tos are worth a look.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/32657

enjoy!

Morning Linkage (Aug 24)

Tech­nol­o­gy

Just in case there’s any­one who has­n’t seen this infor­ma­tion on
extend­ing the win7 tri­al period.
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/how-to-use-windows-7-for-free-for-120-days-legally.ars

There’s a new lap­top in my future. I just wish it could be this one. A
built in graph­ic tablet would mean one less piece of hard­ware to try
to find a space for when I’m on the road.
http://www.whitezine.com/en/design/laptop-concept-for-designers-and-illustrators.html

———————–

Trans­porta­tion

Ilmor is work­ing on a 5 stroke, 3 cylin­der engine. Sort of. I need
time to hunt up videos before I“ll claim to under­stand how this works.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/five-stroke-engine/

——————-

Sci­ence

Why hav­ing a cou­ple of drinks with the plan­ning ses­sion won’t help you
meet your goals. I think we all intu­itive­ly know that the things you
say you’re going to do dur­ing the Sat­ur­day night bull ses­sion don’t
amount to much on Mon­day morn­ing but now sci­ence is set­ting out to
prove it.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/vodkagoals/

Toss­ing a coin is sub­tly not as fair as your old­er broth­er told you it was.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/08/non-randomness.html

An mys­te­ri­ous cloud for­ma­tion in Queens­land Aus­tralia. Look like rolls
of cot­ton batting.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/morninggloryclouds/

A TV sta­tion in Cleve­land man­ages to top our own King5 for heinously
fear mon­ger­ing report­ing. That is until it becomes clear that someone
is pulling off a bril­liant farce. Do you think the news director
caught on to it before the seg­ment hit the air?
http://www.misscellania.com/miss-cellania/2009/8/22/backyard-bear-report.html

——————

Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty and Copyright

Nom­i­nee for the best worst use of copy­right. How doc­tors (or rather
their rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment lack­eys) are using the DMCA take down
pro­vi­sions to remove bad reviews from rat­ings sites.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090328/1445494290.shtml

A nice sum­ma­ry of the State of Union with respect to the Google Books
set­tle­ment and the many chal­lenges to it. Microsoft and Ama­zon have
clear motives for their objec­tions but that does­n’t inval­i­date their
point that Google seems to have made a land grab for the rights to
books that are out of print.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/microsoft-amazon-join-opposition-to-google-books-settlement.ars

————————-

Visu­al Arts

Not the same as the Google land grab but a col­lec­tion of old map based
games and puz­zles. By old I mean the first was pub­lished in 1680.
http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2009/08/puzzle-and-game-maps.html

A recent dis­cus­sion of low­er prices wines on this list yield­ed several
rec­om­men­da­tions for the “the label is pret­ty” school of wine shopping.
Here’s a selec­tion of wine labels and pack­ages that would qualify.
http://www.thecoolist.com/amazing-wine-labels-30-creative-and-unique-wine-label-designs

A love­ly gold­fish paint­ing. Click on the fishy for bigness.
http://thejasminedragon.deviantart.com/art/a‑fish-a-fish-a-fishy-oo-98009668

I don’t real­ly dig the pic­ture but the fact that it was cre­at­ed on an
iPhone kind of makes the iPhone look like less of a sil­ly idea.
http://insomnio.org/post/170004968/a‑walk-in-the-park-created-on-an-iphone-using

I love the soft old school look of these illus­tra­tions by the Russian
Dmit­ry Ligay.
http://www.evasion.cc/blog/comments/illustration-dmitry-ligay/

Last night Elvis Costel­lo made a Sean Con­nery joke. Almost too easy, I
admit. As an anti­dote here’s a clas­sic Con­nery pic.
http://theimpossiblecool.tumblr.com/post/168151304/connery

Until tomor­row campers,

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