shiny things in messy little piles

Year: 2009 (Page 5 of 25)

Morning Linkage (Nov 16)

Transportation

Nov 1909. World record bro­ken. 200+ km/hr. Real­ly. The Light­ning Benz. It’s pret­ty too.

I first found ‘lapin barcelona’ on Urban Sketch­ers and then again a cou­ple of days ago on Wrench Mon­kees. Sweet Flickr set of two wheelers.

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Technology

There’s no way to make a sim­ple moral judg­men­tal about the use of cell phone tech­nol­o­gy as a tool to help ille­gal immi­grants cross the US-Mexico bor­der. That said, lives will be saved and there are so many oth­er places that this sim­ple cell phone based, GPS, com­pass, ser­vice loca­tion set­up could be used… (Fol­low the link at the bot­tom of the Boing-Boing arti­cle to learn more about the cre­ator and his long stand­ing role in “elec­tron­ic civ­il disobedience”)

A year ago the plug was pulled on the moth­er of spam gen­er­a­tors —  McCo­lo. What it took to make it hap­pen and what some of the con­se­quences have been are dis­cussed by Bri­an Krebs. I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigued by the cre­ation of “IP ghet­tos” as a result of IP blacklisting.

The fight to pre­serve a trade­mark is a game of chick­en. Too lax and you’ll find your­self accused of hav­ing aban­doned your trade­mark and you’ll lose it. Too zeal­ous and you’ll get swat­ted with counter-suits and drown in legal fees. Or you could just end up look­ing down the bar­rel of the clown can­non. Edge Games (UK) has been aggres­sive­ly — and most­ly suc­cess­ful­ly — going after any oth­er game that uses the term ‘edge’ in it’s title. It all went most­ly their way until they went after indie game mak­er Mobigame, get­ting Apple to remove their wild­ly pop­u­lar EDGE game from the App Store. Oh dear, those are some pissed off clowns…

Google crows about it’s new Lock­ing SafeSearch.“Even from across the room, the col­ored balls give par­ents and teach­ers a clear visu­al cue that Safe­Search is still locked. And if you don’t see them, it’s quick and easy to ver­i­fy and re-lock Safe­Search.” I esti­mate that it will take exact­ly 48 sec­onds for some tyke with a screen cap­ture and paint pro­gram to fix that.

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Art Images and Design

The short­list for the 2009 Dig­i­tal Cam­era Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year award have been announced (and post­ed.) 10 Categories.

Alice picks 30 of the above.

1920s Chica­go. The CTA com­mis­sioned a series of posters high­light­ing the places you could go on Chica­go Tran­sit. Deco images, lush col­ors, nos­tal­gic locations.

Local­ly, Roq La Rue has Bri­an Despain paint­ings hang­ing. Most­ly sold — sigh.

Ryohei Hase paints in Tokyo. Weird, sur­re­al, night­mar­ish and total­ly fas­ci­nat­ing.

Con­sid­er­ably less fright­en­ing are the mon­sters of Bob­by Chui of Imag­in­ism Studios

I have no idea what is going to hap­pen with the charm­ing char­ac­ter designs by Jaime Ander­son. Some­thing about the chil­drens and YA mar­ket. I was­n’t read­ing the words, just look­ing at the people.

Video of the day. Bal­anc­ing a tow­er of toys and then send­ing in the windups to knock it over. Because he can, why else?

Hap­py Mon­day my lovelies.

Morning Linkage (Nov 12)

Transportation

A love­ly trio of two and three wheel toys. There’s some­thing about the
dreamy 50’s pas­tel style that I like so much.

Not quite toys but wicked fun look­ing lit­tle bikes. Why don’t we get
these sorts of things in the USA? And who writes KTM’s press releases?
Not good.

A world speed record hold­ing boat has been bought by Sea Shep­herd for
use “against” the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet this sea­son. What­ev­er your
opin­ion of Paul Wat­son and the Sea Shep­herd group this boat is just
plain cool
. (Too bad it’s going to get smashed to lit­tle bits.)

The use of video in recre­at­ing acci­dents has come a long way since the
ear­ly toy cars and paint­ed lines era. This (one of sev­er­al) video
recre­ation of the events of Flight 1549 is jaw dropping.

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Science

The sci­ence of fore­cast­ing is fraught. BBC takes a look at the
sim­i­lar­i­ties between weath­er fore­cast­ing and epidemiological
fore­cast­ing. You can get the jist from the write up. (Can some­one find
a link to the full length TV report?)

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Society

I’m includ­ing this shal­low lit­tle piece from Autopia sole­ly for the
pur­pose of intro­duc­ing a new term/concept. Dog-Whistle Taste. Snort.

A case study in the ques­tion of causal­i­ty vs. cor­re­la­tion vs
coin­ci­dence. The pro­duc­tion of  good rock and roll leads the
pro­duc­tion of oil.

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Images

Car­tog­ra­phy in ser­vice of roller coast­er thrills. Boin- Boing points
to a site full of maps of theme parks. Some of them are love­ly. The
site index isn’t much to look at but ran­dom click­ing is fun.

Any­one who’s spent much time in the world of man­ga knows what hentai
means but few casu­al users ful­ly under­stand the icong­ra­phy and slang
that is used in the Japan­ese ver­sions and just how hen­tai much of the
seem­ing­ly inno­cent work passed around is. Hush (artist) is open­ing a
show in Lon­don this week­end that explores the issue.

You can get a look at more of his sub­ver­sive work on:

Very sil­ly Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel spot “The World is Just Awe­some” part 2. Yay!

A spe­cial birth­day today. Grace Kel­ly. Class all the way.

is it Thurs­day already?

Morning Linkage (Nov 11)

Transportation

Japan­ese cus­tom mak­er M&M fea­tured this sly cus­tom Kawi W650 in July.
(Site in Japanese)

We’ve all seen the futur­is­tic trans­porta­tion in a sci-fi movie that
has pods join­ing up on the free­way to make “trains.” The assump­tion is
that this sort of con­stant­ly recon­fig­ur­ing con­voy would require
mas­sive infra­struc­ture invest­ment and com­plex con­trol­ling software.
Maybe not. Maybe all it takes is an in-car mod­ule and a professional
driver/conductor in the front vehi­cle. Draft­ing that semi may actually
prove to be the answer to the traf­fic mess.

Mas­sive time-waster alert. Track marine traf­fic in real time. Like so
many of the best infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing and report­ing efforts this one
is a vol­un­teer col­lab­o­ra­tion. Using exist­ing tech­nol­o­gy and pip­ing the
data to a cen­tral data gath­er­ing and dis­play app is the way to go for
so many track­ing prob­lems. (Weath­er under­ground is anoth­er brilliant
example.)

The Unitd FWD Time Attack­Un­lim­it­ed Scion tC is arguably the ugli­est
damn race car
in the world at the moment. But it’s kin­da fun to cruise
the pic­ture gallery and won­der what we could do with that Datsun
sit­ting out behind Dav­e’s shop. (It would be nice if these guys to
set­tle on the exact name of the car too.)

For those of you fly­ing this hol­i­day sea­son. Try to book something
through SFO. I had for­got­ten about see­ing this exhib­it of space toys
from the past
dur­ing a lay­over in Feb. 30 min­utes of pure nostalgic
joy.

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Society

Ars Tech­ni­ca has a decent sum­ma­ry of the Bilis­ki patent case. (Can a
com­mod­i­ty trad­ing method be patent­ed? No, it fails the transformation
test.) The impli­ca­tions for oth­er none tra­di­tion­al (soft­ware) patents
aren’t entire­ly clear yet but the case bears close fol­low­ing by those
of us who make our liv­ing mov­ing bits from one state to anoth­er. The
fact that the case under con­sid­er­a­tion isn’t about a soft­ware patent
trou­bles me, but it looks to be the start­ing point for the judicial
recon­sid­er­a­tion of what a patent is meant to protect.

War­ren Ellis has a bad day and puts an end to the dis­cus­sion of the
aug­ment­ed real­i­ty as the urban dig­i­tal future. One of the finest
snarks ever and he uses the word shou­ti­ness.

I don’t think any of my loy­al read­ers have access to a scanning
elec­tron micro­scope. (I’m prob­a­bly wrong) So if you sim­ply must have
that sam­ple of Bar­bie Hair exam­ined in great detail, pack it up with
the appro­pri­ate form and send it off to ASPEX. The mak­er of SEMs is
run­ning the clever­est publicity/public ser­vice cam­paign ever. You send
it, they scan it
and post it on the web­site. There’s a link below the
exam­ple pic­tures on this page to a cou­ple more.

Anoth­er site that focus­es on the very small. Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah’s
Genet­ic Sci­ence Learn­ing Cen­ter has a wid­get that lets you experience
just how small small can be. Move the slid­er to the right and watch
small (coffe bean) get small­er (bak­er’s yeast) and small­er (‘flu
virus) and final­ly small­est (car­bon atom)

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Art, Images

Under­wa­ter pho­tog­ra­phy is cool. Under­wa­ter movie mak­ing is awesome.
Here’s a set of pic­tures tak­en by a diver/photographer of the action
at Pinewood Stu­dio’s under­wa­ter tank.

More about the facil­i­ty on the Pinewood site. Click on the Water
Film­ing
link in the left sidebar.

Chanzhi Lee’s Nestcage book is an extreme exam­ple of the
trans­for­ma­tion of text as book into book as object. What­ev­er that
means. The artist’s own web­site is fun but flash based and unlinkable.

On the Span­ish lan­guage blog WIP (work in progress) you can watch the
pro­gres­sion of a page of a com­ic from the rough sketch to the finished
prod­uct. Love it.

more tomor­row my lovelies.

Morning Linkage (Nov 10)

Transportation

Old school, TT, side­cars, and air. Can’t miss picture.

Mak­ing cus­tom bikes out of any­thing with a radi­a­tor is a challenge.
this CX500 gets close to perfection.

Wrench mon­kees gets some qual­i­ty dig­i­tal print in the lat­est issue of
El Dia­blo. Start­ing on page 11. Warning(s) oth­er por­tions of the El
Dia­blo issue are NSFW and not every­one likes Duranguense.

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Tech

Neces­si­ty is a moth­er, or shrinky-dinks to the res­cue. No, nev­er mind,
save the bud­get and just hit up Micheals the next time you need to
build a bunch of micro-fluidic chips.

There were/are so many tal­ent­ed engi­neers behind the illu­sions that
are Dis­ney
. Dustin Cur­tis’s seat mate on day 10 let him in on some of
how the music/ambient sound envi­ron­ment is cre­at­ed. Sub­tle and
amazing.

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Science

For my fav. mycol­o­gists. ‘His­toire Naturelle des Champignons
Comestibles et Vénéneux’ [The nat­ur­al his­to­ry of edi­ble and poisonous
mush­rooms] by the French phar­ma­cist, Guil­liame Sicard. Pretty.

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Images, Illustrations, Art

I remem­ber a few too many of the album cov­ers fea­tured in this
ret­ro­spec­tive of work by Shu­sei Nagao­ka. Enjoy.

Urban Sketch­ers made the in-flight mag­a­zine of Mid­west air­lines. Take
a cruise around the site. It’s the kind of sketch­ing I would do if I
could and the sort of expres­sion I aim for with a camera.

Short and Sweet today my lovelies. (Not at all like me.)

Morning Linkage (Nov 9)

Transportation

From old­est to newest:

Two love­ly ladies set­ting out for a spin.  I think is staged (the bike is lean­ing against a wall and both girls are side-saddle.) None-the-less it’s going into my rota­tion of motor­cy­cle wallpapers.

In hon­or of a lot of things includ­ing a motor­cy­cle, a watch, and one of the Great­est Movies of All Time. A Heuer liv­er­ied Bon­neville. It lacks only Steve McQueen to make it the sex­i­est thing I have seen in a decade.

From about the same time, a Dor­mo­bile Camper Van. Adorably dorky.

Fur­tur­is­tic. A design for a fuel-cell pow­ered scooter/bike hybrid with car­go capac­i­ty. The trick with the han­dle­bars that con­vert from up-right scoot­er to more lay-down bike pro­file is par­tic­u­lar­ly clever. Cute, but it’ll be  along time before this replaces the Hon­da Car­go as the intra-urban stuff hauler of the 2nd and 3rd world.

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Science

Anoth­er in the series — Geez, We Live on a Pret­ty Plan­et. A set of space shots of tiny islands.

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Tech and Society

Google has a new, most­ly unre­port­ed, tool. The Google Dash­board lets you look at all of the ser­vices asso­ci­at­ed with your gmail account. It’s aim is to give you one place to check to see what you are and are not reveal­ing to the world about your use of gmail, picasa, google docs, etc. Check your account. You may dis­cov­er, as I did, that you have accounts with ser­vices that you don’t remem­ber sign­ing up for. (Google docs? I own doc­u­ments on Google Docs? Huh?)

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Images, Design, Animation

You all know that I am all about the shoes. I wish I had had room in my lug­gage on my recent trip to Mex­i­co for  Dia de los Muer­tos to haul along a pair of the Ladies Mue­tre Plat­forms. (Sec­ond row, far left). Zom­bie stom­pers indeed.

The last time I lived in a tru­ly tiny space was in a dorm room in col­lege. We con­served space with jury rigged bunk beds built on top of milk crates stacked to the ceil­ing. The con­vert­ible beds fea­tured here are so much more attrac­tive and prob­a­bly less prone to cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ure under heavy use.

In 2004 a group of artists pro­duced a dig­i­tal loop­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive piece called ZOOMQUILT. It is a ton of fun to play with. Be patient with the load time. It’s worth it.

This year anoth­er group made a sim­i­lar piece called ZOOMQUILTII. The art is of the same high qual­i­ty but the inter­face is god awful. Sigh. Some­times old-skewl real­ly is best.

Three fine, very dif­fer­ent illus­tra­tors this morning:

Prop4g4nda4 takes a riff on the Sovi­et Era to pro­duce con­cert  posters. These are so far beyond the stuff stuck to the pow­er poles around town.

Jeff Mira­co­la had dropped off my radar until he post­ed about hav­ing a piece includ­ed in the recent issue of Spec­trum. A quick look at the front page of his site remind­ed me why I’d added him to list of artists to keep track of. Also he might get the week­ly award for rea­son­able and attrac­tive use of flash. I love the con­stant­ly chang­ing head­er art.

Flo­ra Chang’s Hap­py Doo­dle Land is a good place to spend a cou­ple of min­utes on Mon­day morning.

Here is a ani­mat­ed teas­er for a French car­toon that is still look­ing for pro­duc­tion and broad­cast deals. Sweet, yes, but so far from sac­cha­rine.  If I owed a pro­duc­tion company…

Here’s hop­ing this is the start of a fab­u­lous week.

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