Month: September 2009 (Page 4 of 4)

It’s a big list today. So many inter­est­ing things going on in the
world that beg to be logged.

Trans­port

Ger­man built H‑D side car rigs. Um, that’s weird.
http://mobec-international.com/range/harleycombo/53276097890f1cb09/o000.html

There’s been lots of talk about the 747 tanker being used to fight the
fires in LA Coun­ty. Here’s a round up of links to pics, videos, and
oth­er stuff. (Also a cou­ple of the old­er fly­ing boat that is way
cool­er looking.)
http://telstarlogistics.typepad.com/telstarlogistics/2009/08/747-supertanker-makes-its-firefighting-debut-.html
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/09/evergreen-supertanker/
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/01/big-ass-flying-boats.html

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Cul­ture (?)

News of the pur­chase of Mar­vel by Dis­ney has the comics crowd howling.
Most­ly in pain, but here’s a lit­tle of what’s lead­ing to laugh­ter in
the cheap seats.
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/top-10-disneymarvel-mashups

Do you remem­ber the fam­i­ly tree of rock-n-roll that Jack Black drew
for his stu­dents in School of Rock? Here’s a sim­i­lar effort that
describes the evo­lu­tion of sci-fi themes on pop TV.
http://io9.com/5347631/at-last-a-graph-that-explains-scifi-tv-after-star-trek

In case you need a refresh­er on the his­to­ry of rock, here’s a post
with a num­ber of genealo­gies includ­ing the famous blackboard.
http://www.fakeplasticrock.com/2008/07/09/the-genealogy-of-rock/

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eBooks and read­ers and copyright

iRiver’s US-bound read­er. Based on a Japan­ese mod­el with a built in
“comics mode.” Does this mean I can read graph­ic nov­els on it?
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/09/01/iriver-shows-off-its-us-e-book-reader/

Google teams up with Interead to bring us cool­er­books and cool-er
read­ers. No one doubt­ed that Google meant to get into the sale of
copy­right books to go with it’s Google Books initiative.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/02/google-widens-attack-on-amazon-kindle-partners-with-coolerbooks/

Tucows, the unfor­tu­nate­ly named Cana­di­an ISP (and more) has provided
David Wein­berg­er with a chance to address the Cana­di­an copyright
con­sul­ta­tion. David W pro­vides a read­able refu­ta­tion to the”: strong
copy­right pro­vides an incen­tive to cre­ate, weak copy­right is a
dis-incentive” argument.
http://tucowsinc.com/news/2009/08/copyrights-creative-disincentive/

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Ran­dom Things that Made Me Smile

Plushy microbes. There are sev­er­al sets avail­able but this one seems
the ide­al gift for some­one you don’t quite like.
http://www.giantmicrobes.com/us/main/venereals/

Cook­ie dough and ice cream are both good. Cook­ie dough and ice cream
togeth­er are great. Cook­ie dough and ice cream togeth­er shaped like
gyoza are… incred­i­bly clever.
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/icecreamgyoza

An exten­sive gallery of beau­ti­ful chick­en coops. Mine is look­ing quite
tawdry by comparison.
http://www.mypetchicken.com/about-chickens/chicken-pictures/Chicken-coop-X127.aspx

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Images

Masakat­su Sashie’s orbs are float­ing col­lec­tion of life and living
space. Japan­ese sur­re­al­ism well done.
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/09/orb-paintings-by-masakatsu-sashie/

A selec­tion from Saman­tha Zaza­’s large port­fo­lio. In this case, her
regal pigeons in uni­form. Yes, this is what pigeons see when they look
in the men­tal mirror.
http://cyanatrendland.com/2009/08/31/pigeons-in-uniform/

If I had a win­ery I would want July Macu­d­a’s naive paint­ings for my
bot­tle labels.
http://www.pincelvirtual.cl/

Some­thing new. A video trail­er for a book, Scott West­er­feld’s latest
YA Leviathan. Visu­al­ly it’s much steam-punky good­ness. The voice over
is all wrong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYiw5vkQFPw

Tech­nol­o­gy and a lit­tle Transportation

Skype is an impor­tant part of the ‘net ecol­o­gy espe­cial­ly in parts of
the world where phone taps are ubiq­ui­tous. Var­i­ous pro­grams have been
writ­ten to allow inter­cept­ing and record­ing VOIP. Now the programmer
who wrote one of them has released his code to the pub­lic. Interesting
results.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/skype-trojan/

If you are the fam­i­ly IT depart­ment you should book mark this page. It
con­tains about half of the flow charts devel­oped by Mor­ris Rosenthal
for trou­bleshoot­ing PC hard­ware. If your fam­i­ly is par­tic­u­lar­ly hard
on lap­tops or par­tic­u­lar­ly demand­ing you might want to buy the book.
http://www.fonerbooks.com/pcrepair.htm

He’s also got a set for repair­ing cars. All avail­able on line.
http://www.ifitjams.com/

We often make fun of twit­ter and it’s users. But it has become an
impor­tant plat­form for devel­op­ment. Here’s a list of 10 mash-ups.
http://www.inspiredm.com/2009/08/31/the-most-creative-10-websites-and-apps-built-on-top-of-twitter/

The most pleas­ant of the batch is an ani­mat­ed stream search. Enter a
term in the box in the low­er left hand cor­ner. Click on the
magnifier/search icon. Rolling your mouse over the blue birds gets you
the con­tents of the tweet that each is car­ry­ing. (I’ve set the initial
search to moto GP.) Or you can just watch the lit­tle birds flitter
past. It’s kind of restful.
http://toriseye.quodis.com/#moto%20GP

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News and Culture

What ever your opin­ion of Ted Kennedy, the Big Pic­ture’s col­lec­tion of
images from his life and the trib­utes and memo­ri­als to his life is a
visu­al his­to­ry of one of the most pow­er­ful fam­i­lies in America.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/senator_ted_kennedy_19322009.html

I haven’t read an adult/literary nov­el in ages. Writ­ing in the WSJ,
Lev Gross­man looks at why I and so many oth­ers are aban­don­ing the
Mod­ern Nov­el and what we’re read­ing instead.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574377163804387216.html

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Images

Today is water­col­or artist day.

Drawn looks at “The Art of Ponyo.” Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s char­ac­ter studies
are done in watercolor.Miyazaki’s choose of medi­um under­lies the
com­mon look to all of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s productions.
http://drawn.ca/2009/08/28/ponyo/

This paint­ing of the Bloor Bridge is just one Her­ry Afrin’s lovely
urban landscapes.
http://www.herryarifin.com/index_files/Page2313.htm

Howie Tsui’s car­toon­ish take on tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese paint­ing is both
beau­ti­ful and horrifying.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/31/howie-tsuis-asianwes.html

He’s not using water­col­ors but… Luc Grateau does speed por­traits of
the denizens of the Paris Metro on metro tick­ets. The site includes
exam­ples of his work and a news report on his paint­ing. The video is
in french but you don’t need to under­stand the voice over to enjoy the
story.
http://viacomit.net/2009/08/30/subway-ticket-portraits-by-luc-grateau/

Awe­some pic­ture of the day. Space shut­tle lift-off at night.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1458.html

New com­ic that I will be watch­ing. Space­men, robots, and ger­bils!  (No
feed at the moment — so I’ll put it on my watch list and let you know
when there are new installments.)
http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=comic&id=50969&page=1

Enjoy the day,