Month: August 2009 (Page 2 of 3)

Tech and Design

These solar pan­els make alien flower art at night. Austin, what you
been drinkin’?
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/sunflower_leeds_14354.asp

Seat­tle has a cou­ple of aban­doned big box stores. Oth­er parts of the
coun­try have more. Many of them have clear or translu­cent roofs.
Here’s a pro­pos­al to reuse those spaces for food pro­duc­tion. Instead
of buy­ing con­sumer goods made in Chi­na we would be able to buy food
grown locally.
http://www.re-burbia.com/2009/08/01/a‑new-business-model-a-productive-suburb/

I think I like the pic­ture of the lit­tle girl with her bug catcher
pen­dant more than the object itself. I know sev­er­al sprogs who would
love one of these portable biol­o­gy labs though.
http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2009/08/how-to_bug_catcher_necklace.html?CMP=OTC-5JF307375954

Sil­ly is a good thing ear­ly in the morn­ing. I don’t drink bagged tea
but I’d fall off my chair gig­gling if one of these dec­o­rat­ed tea bags
appeared in my cup.
http://www.holycool.net/2009/08/tea-party-series-from-donkey-products.html

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Images

A mixed up set of pic­tures today.

From Shang­hai, Male­onn cre­ates elab­o­rate sets and cos­tumes for his, I
like the term used in the blurb, fables. This series of circus
per­form­ers car­ries an almost cin­e­mat­ic over­tone. Click through to his
web­site for much more.
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/crazy-chinese-circus-maleonn

From Rus­sia, more gen­tle, apocalyptic-cartoon illus­tra­tion. Anton Semenov.
http://designlenta.com/2009/08/19/anton-semenov-gloom82/

Bran­don Bloomaert (Ger­many) builds crea­tures from waste paper and then
stages scenes that remind one of old vaca­tion snaps.
http://www.diskursdisko.de/2009/08/brandon-blommaert-ecostation/

A very dif­fer­ent look­ing almost sten­ci­lesque set of illus­tra­tions from
the French design­er Mal­oo. A cou­ple are NSFW.
http://www.pixelelement.com/pretty-cool-illustrations-by-maloo/

A series of stills from the movie Metrop­o­lis along with a nice summary
of the movie’s style cues.
http://butdoesitfloat.com/60098

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Misc Cul­tur­al Bits

Too sweet. Life size Can­dy­land game being built in Lom­bard St.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/19/life-size-candyland.html

The impos­si­ble Cool brings us Bud Ekins. The guy who jumped the bike
in the Great Escape. (look him up in wikipedia)
http://theimpossiblecool.tumblr.com/post/165764519/ekins

Final­ly, why can’t my school trips have end­ed with all the nasty girls
get­ting eat­en by a croc­o­dile? Revenge by paper automaton.
http://www.cool4cats.biz/page16.htm

Time lim­it­ed edition.

Cov­ered is a blog that show­cas­es re-imaging of old com­ic book covers.
Most often point­less but I still read ti for gems like this Mil­lie the
Lov­able Mon­ster redo.
http://coveredblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/alessa-kreger-covers-millie-lovable.html

No link to the source but these Japan­ese crayons look like they should
be made of taffy not wax.
http://designyoutrust.com/2009/08/18/%E2%80%9Crichcolorcrayon%E2%80%9D/

Mikela Pre­vost has a nice style for chil­dren’s illus­tra­tions. Some
dark­er themes as well.
http://www.mikelaprevost.com/htmlver/galleries.php?galnum=1&sec=1&tstart=1

God Trump Cards — card based game (like Poke­mon) for reli­gions. Sense
of humor required. First skew­ered my beloved C of E.
http://newhumanist.org.uk/1915

Self-entertainment is a cru­cial skill for tod­dlers. Video babysitting
is the bug-bear of mod­ern par­ent­ing. Here’s a lit­tle help for
enter­tain­ing or babysit­ting your­self today.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/car-commercials/

Trans­porta­tion

Auto-topia pro­vides tons of links to cov­er­age of Mon­ter­rey. And this
sweet pic­ture of a BMW Iset­ta 300. A few oth­er nota­bles in the slide
show as well. The descrip­tion of the 523 Jag C‑Type as bux­om is dead
on.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/heaven-on-wheels-in-monterey/

Sweet 1916(?) Miche­lin poster. The com­ments are worth a read as well.
At least until they reach the inevitable BB con­clu­sion “Duck in the
face at…”
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/08/17/michelin-tire-ad-by.html

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The Visu­al Arts

A nice vin­tage pho­to of a cabaret cast on hols. (Point­ed out by Amy
C.) Mov­ing back­wards in the pool there is a col­lec­tion of ban­jo player
pix. No doubt why Amy was there in the first place.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ricksoloway/3814037151/

David Lan­ham does child­ish (in the nicest pos­si­ble way) vec­tor art.
Nav­i­gate by click­ing on the tiny fav­i­cons in the left pan­el. Here a
tree reacts to change from fall to win­ter about the way I do.
http://dlanham.com/art/fall/

Things I don’t think I need­ed to know. Graf­fi­ti artists use specially
con­coct­ed spray paints man­u­fac­tured by the likes of Upper Playground
and Mon­tana. For a lim­it­ed time you can order your professional
van­dal­ism tools in these cus­tom cans.
http://viacomit.net/2009/08/12/upper-playground-x-montana-limited-edition-spray-cans/

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Lit­er­a­ture and Booze

Yup in one post. War­ren Ellis points us to the Jura Writ­ers Retreat.
http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=7663

Okay the real site is here. But War­ren is funnier.
http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/node/3757

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Commentary

If you’ve got­ten as tired of the Indus­tri­al Design­ers “Design can save
the world” cant. You’ll like the last item in this list of things
IDers should stop doing. (Con­tains a naughty word)
http://www.productdesignhub.com/articles/36-tips-a-advices/91-dont-design-a-logo-five-self-promotion-rules-industrial-designers-should-break

Absti­nence porn reach­es a new low. Can­dies — the brand that’s brought
you some of the finest strip­per shoes aimed at teens and twenty
some­things — uses sexy to sell, well, not hav­ing sex
http://www.sundancechannel.com/sunfiltered/2009/08/candies-sexes-up-abstinence-campaign/

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Sci­ence and Animation

Stu­dents of  Brown Uni­ver­si­ty biol­o­gy prof Casey Dunn are producing
video pod­casts about top­ics in zool­o­gy. Here’s the first, a discussion
of iri­des­cence in squid. The top­ic is cool, the sci­ence is cool, the
sci­en­tists are cool, and the ani­ma­tion will make you giggle.
http://creaturecast.org/archives/127-creaturecast-episode‑1

that’s all for today

Trans­porta­tion News — a lit­tle moto

Boe­ing has a new best sell­ing plane. The Scan Eagle UAV.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/boeing-uav/

The 3‑point seat belt is 50 years old. Invent­ed by Vol­vo and now
uni­ver­sal­ly installed. The top pho­to in the arti­cle is too retro cute
for words.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/strapping-success-the-3-point-seatbelt-turns-50/

Tel­sa goes drag rac­ing at Pacif­ic Race­ways. I find drags without
thun­der­ous engine noise, or in this case noise from only one lane,
unsat­is­fy­ing. The cost of a run’s worth of fuel is giv­en as 8 — 16
cents, vs. 5 — 26 dol­lars for a gas fueled car. I got­ta ask. This is
drag rac­ing who cares about  the cost of fuel? (Yes, I’ve been racing.
Yes, I know that the cost of fuel counts.)
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/teslas-look-sexy-in-drag/

The web­site for the (soon to be) revi­tal­ized Brough-Superior is short
on infor­ma­tion. But it has this slide show of the SS101K engine. Dead
sexy.
http://www.brough-superior.com/ws/frontend/seite/SeiteCms.php?coId=259&coType=navigation1

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WTF

A well designed heav­i­ly researched com­plete­ly bug nutz conspiracy
web­site. You’ll love the series called Sin­is­ter Sites, detail­ing the
satan­ic, mason­ic, and occult read­ings of the var­i­ous build­ings and
locales. Try the Cathe­dral of St, John the Divine for what has to be
the best 9–11, satanism, neo-pagan, envi­ron­men­tal­ist threat to
human­i­ty mash-up ever. Tons more where that came from.

http://vigilantcitizen.com/

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Design

Clever busi­ness card for a house painter. Prob­a­bly a lit­tle expensive
to leave a stack lay­ing on the paint counter at the Home Depot though.
http://glossyinc.com/agriecard.html

Alex Andreyev’s port­fo­lio is a stun­ning col­lec­tion of surrealist
illus­tra­tion. I sug­gest you start with the exhib­it he calls A Separate
Real­i­ty Part 2. The unteth­ered, frag­men­tary world he draws is eerie
and rich.
http://www.behance.net/Gallery/A‑Separate-Reality-02/278736

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Lit­er­ary News

Back in April (20th)I point­ed to Neil Gaiman’s Blue­ber­ry Girl, a
poem/prayer for his god-daughter.
Now he and Charles Vess are team­ing up to do a book for Gaiman’s poem
instructions.

Neil announces and pro­vides a sam­ple here:
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/08/your-instructions-should-you-choose-to.html

Tor art direc­tor Irene Gal­lo gives us a cou­ple more here:
http://igallo.blogspot.com/2009/08/charles-vess-at-work-on-neil-gaimans.html

Charles Vess him­self gives us a few more and dis­cuss­es some of the
design process here:
http://greenmanpress.com/news/archives/447

Full text of the poem here:
http://www.endicott-studio.com/cofhs/cofinstr.html

Have as best a Mon­day as you can,

Trans­porta­tion

Some peo­ple are lament­ing the loss of pos­si­ble future clas­sic cars to
the cash for clunk­ers pro­gram. The NYT Week in Review pon­ders the
ques­tion and comes up with 4 pos­si­ble clas­sics cur­rent­ly eli­gi­ble for
crush­ing. The 88 Jag maybe. The oth­er three, I rather have a Pacer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/weekinreview/09mayersohn.html?_r=2&hp

OTOH so many of us have fond mem­o­ries of car camp­ing in the old family
sta­tion wag­on. Here’s a peek at a 1957 book on the subject.
http://daddytypes.com/2009/08/09/nomadic_car_furniture_ford_treasury_of_station_wagon_living.php

and a link to the full text of the book from the Inter­net Archive.
http://www.archive.org/details/fordtreasuryofst00reckrich

I had a (most­ly non-running) Ves­pa in col­lege and still think the
lit­tle scoot­ers are the epit­o­me of small trans­port design. Here’s a
chance to get one for your­self and match­ing mini for your fav sprog.
Very Pretty™
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/08/10/everyone-needs-a-vespa-even-the-kiddies/

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Sci­ence

High­ly effi­cient LEDs may be get­ting close. Good for flash­lights, bad
for atmos­pher­ic room light­ing (IMO).
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/new_energyboosting_led_tech_the_breakthrough_weve_been_waiting_for_14272.asp

Ever won­der why your top­py sadist friends have thing for redheads?
Turns out car­rot tops real­ly are more sensitive.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/10/are-red-headed-peopl.html

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Design

I have a ter­ri­ble time with those lit­tle flash dri­ves. They don’t have
enough bulk to pre­vent them hid­ing in the dark­est recess­es of my
purse, and the exposed con­nec­tors either get stepped on and mangled,
or so full of purse dust that they don’t plug in. If there’s a cover
for the con­nec­tor it gets lost… etc. This may be the solu­tion. Ugly
but nice­ly functional.
http://www.verbatim.com/products/detail.cfm?product_id=54232290–1143-3415–5F762303CCD7756E&cat_id=8263FD89-1143–3415-5F27986110DFB583

Frank Plant is an Amer­i­can Sculp­ture liv­ing in Spain. He builds
pic­tures from heavy gauge wire and small bits of the real world.  His
blog posts show fin­ished works, work in progress, and details of
build­ing sev­er­al of his pieces. Every­one who writes about him points
to his big red Kalash­nikov hang­ing over a sofa but I like his smaller
scenes from every­day life things. Par­tic­u­lar­ly Tak­ing in the Laundry
and the series Sketch­es of mun­dane chores like vacuuming.
http://www.hierroglyphic.blogspot.com/

From Por­tu­gal a white stuc­co build­ing cov­ered with raised text blocks.
The typog­ra­phy and lay­out is wonderful.
http://www.the-refined.com/2009/08/typography-refinado/

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Bonus

This sort of belongs in Sci­ence but it’s here at the end so that I can
jus­ti­fy includ­ing this awe­some  I don’t get teenagers quote.
http://www.newscientist.com/special/ten-mysteries-of-you

“Even our clos­est rel­a­tives, the great apes, move smooth­ly from their
juve­nile to adult life phas­es – so why do humans spend an agonising
decade skulk­ing around in hoodies?”