Year: 2009 (Page 6 of 25)

Back in the coun­try and ready to serve up linky goodness.

We’re back at boys and girls.

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Transportation

If you dig Marisa Miller, vin­tage pin-ups and H‑D motos then you’re going to have a good morn­ing. Be a men­sch, send the post­card to a sol­dier after you’re done with the drooling.

It’s TT antic­i­pa­tion time. Cafe Rac­er Soci­ety fea­tures the art of John Han­cock draw­ing TT leg­ends.

Much more Han­cock moto good­ness.

Sweet short graph­ic nov­el sto­ry about a 17 year old rac­ing the TT in 1922. There is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a full length ver­sion. I’ll keep my eye on it.

New favorite office chair. More ves­pa mad­ness.

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Tech

A cou­ple of old school links.

Nerd badges rock. The full stack web devel­op­er badge rec­og­nizes those of you (us) who know how the serv­er works as well as how to make it all look okay in IE 5. Plus break­fast food!

Fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry of the <IMG> tag. A look into how deci­sions were made in the pre-historic era; I wish it was so sim­ple now.

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Culture

There’s bound to be just the right inspi­ra­tional mes­sage in one of these two posts. (Not for the goody-goody types.)

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Images, Art, Architecture

Infor­ma­tion Archi­tec­ture and the City. ~The~ hot top­ic for con­fer­ences this year. Need a title to hang your pre­sen­ta­tion on? Head on over to the Urban Infor­mat­ics Speech Title Gen­er­a­tor. Did that last talk fall flat? Click the but­ton for anoth­er gig.

I adore the idea of con­vert­ing com­mer­cial build­ings to res­i­dences. How about a gas station?

Anoth­er one for the Ama­zon wish list. Described by Cory Doc­trow as “Fun­ny, inspir­ing, wicked-nerdy”, what more can you ask for from a kids’ com­ic about three awk­ward, brainy types in mid­dle school?

Tome Gauld does love­ly pen and ink draw­ings with sin­gle spot col­ors or back­grounds. Much of his work is com­mer­cial pub­li­ca­tion illos. You can’t escape the charm of pieces like ‘emp­ty house’.

Even if your Span­ish is full-on dopey you can’t help smil­ing at these car­toons drawn by Juan Berrio. His blog ‘cuader­no de fras­es encoun­tradas’ (note­book of over­heard phras­es) shows pairs and small groups of every­day peo­ple hav­ing every­day conversations.

Today’s ani­mat­ed video: Bave Cir­cus. A boy sits in his tree house dur­ing a rain storm and lets his mind wan­der. It took me a few sec­onds to get over the snails as pets but the ani­ma­tion is love­ly and the rainy day rever­ie is just the thing for a chilly Thurs­day in Seattle.

Transportation

Grey fog­gy Mon­days are a bitch. Here’s a much bet­ter look­ing bitch.

On the elec­tric bike front. The tale of a cou­ple of guys try­ing to get
from Detroit to DC to meet the prez on an Bram­mo Ener­tia. Fol­low their
slow, outlet-to-outlet progress.

Porsche’s fam­i­ly tree in cars and dust. I’m reserv­ing judg­ment on the
Panam­era until I’ve seen one in the flesh.

One of the clas­sic Dodge mus­cle car col­ors was ‘that pur­ple’ which it
turns out was called Plum Crazy. Now you can get the new Chal­lenger in
a sim­i­lar paint scheme. Hmmm.

More pur­ple. This time the new Nis­san Fair­la­dy. Not only do I love the
name but I think the new car is exact­ly what a new Fair­la­dy should be.

War­ren Ellis says nice things about the cam­era work and sound­track on
Top Gear. Then his fans duke it out over the ques­tion of best sound­track
on BBC, Top Gear or Dr. Who. What?!?

Smith­son­ian Air and Space has put about half of their col­lec­tion of
avi­a­tion posters on line. 600 images of yum­my fly­ing good­ness.

Piag­gio makes the icon­ic Ape three-wheel deliv­ery cart. Here are three
cut, fold, paste mod­els with wit­ty col­or schemes and amus­ing cargo.

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Art, Images, Illustration

LAPD made head­lines while inves­ti­gat­ing the theft of Warhol’s athlete
series. They have a large, com­pre­hen­sive web­site. Includ­ing a section
devot­ed to the Art Theft Detail.  Here’s all the back­ground on the
theft and dozens more.

Sto­ry­boards are an essen­tial tool for the film indus­try. An interview
with Fed­eri­co D’Alle­san­ro who did many of the boards for Where the
Wild Things Are. Includ­ing a walk through of cre­at­ing the sto­ry boards
for the dirt clods scene.

Fauns are tra­di­tion­al­ly depict­ed as male. This girl faun cre­at­ed by
John Mal­loy for an album cov­er tick­les my fancy.

Milo Man­ara’s his­to­ry of man dio­ra­ma is over­whelm­ing­ly about who
fought who and who did who. NSFW but worth a cof­fee break out­side to
peer and gig­gle through the ages.

Ben Kehoe’s naive paint­ings (and comics.) Ted­dy R, buf­fa­lo, and frogs. Uh huh.

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Animation

Stop motion using huge card­board cutouts and urban landscapes.

Impos­si­ble Cool. Cros­by.

Hap­py Mon­day campers.

Spe­cial Sat­ur­day Edition
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Transportation

Can’t get enough of the big Duc’s iden­ti­ty cri­sis? Now it wants to be
a GS and go out to play in the dirt on Saturday.

Top­speed has un-watermarked copies of the pix in res­o­lu­tions suitable
for your win­ter desk­top wall­pa­per.

Ducati North Beach had a take your pic­ture with the Ducati umbrel­la
girls event a cou­ple of weeks ago. There’s a cou­ple of odd four wheel
vehi­cles in the stream as well.

How not to treat your scoot­er.

What to do with a well worn ves­pa. This is the sec­ond seriously
rockin’ rock­ing horse I’ve shown you all. Maybe I need to do a theme post?

The Hon­da Ruckus, ide­al plat­form for per­son­al expression.

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Society

Lisa Gold once again pro­vides a round up of the lat­est on the Google
Books set­tle­ment. It’s look­ing more and more like an up-settlement.
Includes a link to the Slate arti­cle “Ser­gy Brin Blows Smoke Up Your Ass.”

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Technology

Esquire Mag­a­zine a look at the Creech Air Force Base home of the remote
fly­ers of the 42nd Attack Squadron. The men and women who remotely
pilot the Reaper and Preda­tor UAVs. The slide into war by joystick
fright­ens me.

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Images

Total­ly cute hood­ie idea. Mouth­man hood­ies that change when you cross your arms.

Con­tes absur­des, absurd sto­ries. Illus­trat­ed in ink and water­col­or by
Lou Beauchesne.

Annie Lebowitz is a tal­ent­ed por­traitist. These adver­tis­ing images for
Dis­ney from 2007–2008 are unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly flat except for the sly irony with
which she casts the celebri­ties as Dis­ney characters.

Sin­is­ter. Unset­tling.

Love­ly pack­ag­ing fea­tur­ing mega-fauna of cof­fee grow­ing regions. (Yes,
I saw the surfer. I’ll stick to my characterization.)

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Math Video

No groan­ing. A clever ani­mat­ed expla­na­tion of some of the cal­cu­la­tions
involv­ing pi.

Transportation

Wow, slow day. All I can give you is this. But hey, there are bikes in
the back­ground.

If you’re more inter­est­ed in long dis­tance trav­el this Nat’l Geo
info-graphic is a nifty way to track 50 years of awe­some trips. CG has it
right, go straight to the flickr ver­sion for close-ups.

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Infrastructure

Is this for real? (Yes.) A plan to route elec­tric­i­ty between the
grids. The elec­tri­cal cable tech­nol­o­gy is very cool.

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Art Architecture and What-Not

Rea­son num­ber 307 that I think the Olympics have got to go.
Archi­tec­ture that would be unbe­liev­able in a mod­ern space opera.

Cig­a­rette papers used to come in lit­tle, fan­tas­ti­cal­ly ornamented
book­lets. Explore art, sci­ence, and history.

Liv­ing up to my nick­name. But where the heck would I wear these
lus­cious­ly over the top boots?

A lit­tle back­ground for my obses­sion with street art and sten­cil­ing in
par­tic­u­lar. Banksy is now too com­mer­cial for most peo­ple but his
clas­sic moments were the source of hip illus­tra­tion and advertising
for a while.

Anoth­er sil­ly flash based, ran­dom plot gen­er­a­tor. It seems that I may
final­ly make my mil­lions by writ­ing a fish out of water tale set in an
under water cave. Uh huh.

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Videos

I’d nev­er heard of the com­pos­er Van­ge­lis. He wrote the Blade Runner
score.  And it turns out the back­ground for this steamy damn near
total­ly SFW scene from the Year of Liv­ing Dangerously.

More music. A weird upbeat song about being Already Dead. Pen and ink
paper cut outs with a clear nod to Edward Gorey. Can I say that a
video about being dead made me happy?

hap­py mid-week review

Transportation

I was all het up to be able to bring you pic­tures of the 2010 Ducati
Stradaper­ta. Okay, so now you know what the head­light looks like. Not good.

Life mag­a­zine brings you a col­lec­tion of pho­tographs of space­craft
mod­els. From the sweet­ly adorable NASA  wood­en lunar mod­ule that opens
the set to the nee­dle shaped shut­tle from When Worlds Collide

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Art and Images

A review of xkcd: vol­ume 0. Tons of peo­ple will be get­ting and giving
this com­ic col­lec­tion for the holidays.

So you’re stand­ing in Bor­ders look­ing at the New Releas­es in Paperback
dis­play, have you ever won­dered where the art for the cov­ers comes
from? There’s a guy in Rus­sia who will cre­ate the cov­er art and
mar­ket­ing images for your mas­ter­piece, for $750. Here’s a gallery of
94 of his images. Mouse over the image for the title (in Eng­lish) of
the book. You’ll rec­og­nize a lot of them.

Speak­ing of books, Mutt Ink has a new book out, There was an Old Lady.
Which leads us to his port­fo­lio page for chil­drens books. Tasty lines,
mut­ed col­or and sly humor.

Jen Lobo has a revamped web­site. Whim­si­cal ani­mal paint­ings that
ref­er­ence famil­iar stories.

Cafe Rac­er Soci­ety brings us two of Ralph Stead­man’s (of Hunter S
Thomp­son fame) images fea­tur­ing motor­cy­cles.

Mike Stil­lkey has new work that sits hap­pi­ly next to Steadman’s
car­i­ca­tures. Angu­lar, angsty peo­ple liv­ing in a not quite hostile
world. His cats look sleek and curi­ous.

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Video

Mil­ton Glaser talks about draw­ing as a way of observ­ing the
world, while draw­ing a por­trait. He starts with the eye­brows. hmmm.

Laugh out loud fun­ny. A love sto­ry about two squid (and skinny
deliv­ery dri­ver.) French short film that was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar.

Stormy Tues­day? That’s not quite right.