shiny things in messy little piles

Month: February 2010 (Page 1 of 4)

Morning Linkage (Feb 26)

Transportation

Three wheels. The DOT calls it a motor­cy­cle. The man­u­fac­tur­er calls a T‑Rex. I call it covetable.

I don’t know what it means for the stereo­typ­i­cal ‘here comes the bad guys’ cues in movie sound tracks but for peo­ple liv­ing under the traf­fic copter pat­tern it means qui­eter com­mute times. Euro­copter intro­duces the Blue Edge rotor blade and Blue Pulse sys­tem which can cut blade noise by 3 to 4 deci­bels. Which does­n’t seem like it should help much but the in-cockpit record­ing are sub­stan­tial­ly dif­fer­ent in vol­ume and in quality.

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Science

This pho­to a glac­i­er weep­ing red ooze is stun­ning enough for inclu­sion in the link­age. But when you read the descrip­tion of what the ooze is and how this par­tic­u­lar pri­mor­dial ooze has been iso­lat­ed for 2 mil­lion years… Atlas Obscu­ra has infor­ma­tion and lots of pictures.

Infor­ma­tion is Beau­ti­ful has a good visu­al today. A bub­ble race chart of dietary sup­ple­ments and which have sol­id sup­port­ing evi­dence for effi­ca­cy and which don’t. Be sure to read the expla­na­tion of the chart and click on the Show Me tab on the right.

Increas­ing­ly spe­cial­ized iPhone apps are appear­ing. Stuff that’s a lot more use­ful that cap­tion­ing your snap­shots with thought bal­loons. This stetho­scope add on for exam­ple. Dig­i­tal diag­no­sis in your hand.

Not real­ly sci­ence but vague­ly web relat­ed. There are tons of web­sites out there that earn their keep by gen­er­at­ing link backs. In order to opti­mize your chances of grab­bing that cov­et­ed TechCrunch cita­tion I give you “Link Bait Gen­er­a­tor” I had a good lit­tle gig­gle by enter­ing ‑moto press- in the box. Try a few of your own.

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Art, Images, and Design

One com­menter accus­es this image of Aigu­ille de Midi of being over­ly Pho­to­shopped, but I per­son­al­ly like the washed out vin­tage post card feel . No I am not going up there.

Hours of amuse­ment await you in this NBC col­lec­tion of weird news pho­tos. Occa­sion­al gore and one giant, pink, cher­ry blos­som laden phal­lus. (NSFW)

The abil­i­ty to draw eludes me, the abil­i­ty to draw like Paul Lung eludes almost every­one. The ani­mal por­traits in par­tic­u­lar will make you blink. Fur in such incred­i­ble detail.

Close to my heart — book arts. A col­lec­tion of fab­u­lous bind­ings. From embossed images of peonies to sil­ver and gem encrust­ed breviaries.

and that’s it for anoth­er week. see you Mon­day my freaky lit­tle darlings.

Morning Linkage (Feb 25)

Transportation

This is the cutest scoot­er. Ever. Red and yel­low, and it has tail fins
— and a rudder.

The Ghezzi-Brian web­site is pret­ty bro­ken and this par­tic­u­lar Furia
ver­sion of the V11 seems to have dis­ap­peared from it’s galleries.
S’okay this black ver­sion shown at Top­Speed looks bet­ter than the red
one on G‑B’s sites.

I know that a num­ber of you take advan­tage of Bike Ban­dit’s impres­sive
on-line col­lec­tion of parts fich­es. For the fan­bois there’s now an
iPhone app. That’s right, you can now look up and order parts right
from the break down lane on the free­way. It works pret­ty darn well and
it’s free.

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Science and Society

The Smith­son­ian reports on the exca­va­tions at  Gob­ek­li Tepe and what
the find­ings might mean for the the­o­ries about the tran­si­tion from
hunter/gather soci­eties to agri­cul­tur­al societies.
“… these new find­ings sug­gest a nov­el the­o­ry of civilization.
Schol­ars have long believed that only after peo­ple learned to farm and
live in set­tled com­mu­ni­ties did they have the time, orga­ni­za­tion and
resources to con­struct tem­ples and sup­port com­pli­cat­ed social
struc­tures. But Schmidt argues it was the oth­er way around: the
exten­sive, coor­di­nat­ed effort to build the mono­liths lit­er­al­ly laid
the ground­work for the devel­op­ment of com­plex soci­eties.…” Read
more:

Do you remem­ber the movie “Val­ley Girls” and how we all made fun of
the odd­i­ty of adding the ques­tion­ing inflec­tion to each and every
sen­tence? The plague has spread into every nook and cran­ny and we are
now a nation that sounds as if we aren’t sure where we parked our
selves. Tay­lor Mali wrote a poem about it and Ron­nie Bruce made some
type dance for it.

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Music

I’m get­ting kick out of lis­ten­ing to these 3 and half minute duels
between John Kessler and John May­nard as they pit their col­lec­tion of
obscure and whacky vinyl against the clock, a theme, and each oth­er. Record Bin Roulette.

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Art, Images, and Design

Weapons design for the cubi­cle slave/warrior. When the Zom­bies come
I’m bar­ri­cad­ing myself in the stock room at Staples.

Paper and stop motion ani­ma­tion. Yay! Like the G wag­on as well. (Video
with sound)

The line between live action and ani­ma­tion in big bud­get movies is
con­tin­u­ing to blur and purists are up in arms. James Cameron insists
Avatar isn’t ani­ma­tion despite the enor­mous num­ber of ani­ma­tors who
worked on his film. This is nice sum­ma­ry of the ker­fluffle with links
to Cameron’s state­ments and a well rea­soned response by Kristin
Thompson.

Blocky bod­ied, bendy armed, charm­ing, robots and oth­er crit­ters. The
near­ly anony­mous Exit man.

hang in there my dears, only one more day to go.

Morning Linkage (Feb 24)

Transportation

Yes­ter­day it was bum­ble­bee fairy tales. This morn­ing it’s a bum­ble­bee hacked hack. Ural. Cit­roen engine. Really.

April­i­a’s print ads have a dis­tinct fla­vor about them, no mat­ter which part of the line up they are show­ing you. (NSFW butt cheeks)
Enclosed motor­cy­cle park­ing con­tain­er. Would you pay to be able to lock up your bike like this? The only down side I can see is that the 3 vehi­cles in one park­ing space advan­tage of rid­ing is elim­i­nat­ed by the bulk of the con­tain­er. Also avail­able for pri­vate pur­chase for your garage­less house.

Girl shaped moto gear is avail­able. Sort of. Most­ly it’s guy gear recut and not designed from the ground up. Except maybe this grrl shaped chest pro­tec­tor. Tac­ti­cal corsets indeed. (NSFW — black plas­tic girl shaped stuff)

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Science

3 videos of neu­rons at work. Awe­some to think that all this stuff is going on inside my head. Keep the mutant com­ments to yourselves.

Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion  2009 Inter­na­tion­al Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Visu­al­iza­tion Chal­lenge. A video in which some of the win­ners talk about their sci­ence and the illus­tra­tion there of. Also links to big­ger ver­sion of all the winners.

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Art, Images, and Design

Fritz Hoff­man’s pho­tographs con­trast­ing the new and the old in Shang­hai. For Nat’l Geo­graph­ic. Fla­vor­less mod­ernism does not age well, Shang­hai will come to regret it’s push to elim­i­nate the old every­day parts of it’s city

Jason Hol­ley’s paint­ings have appeared on the cov­ers of many well know mag­a­zines includ­ing, New Repub­lic and Rolling Stone. He also writes well about each paint­ing and it’s role in cre­at­ing the theme of the issue. His anti-ode to Okra for the Texas Month­ly echos my own hatred of that veg. Far left, fourth row.

Very, very obscene, slight­ly dis­turb­ing, lyri­cal­ly grace­ful, and a sly poke at the PC-filled world of BDSM. Bound a type face for spe­cial projects. By Gatis Cir­ulis. Don’t miss the sketch book pages at the bot­tom of the post. (NSWF)

that’s enough slack­ing for one day.

Morning Linkage (Feb 28)

Transportation

Alter­nate engine tech isn’t all about elec­trons; there’s still inter­est in steam. After the recent British retak­ing of the world speed record for a steam pow­ered car, the gents from the USA area ready to give it anoth­er go.

Extra­or­di­nar­i­ly pret­ty Opel Moto­club. The red tires just bring the whole look together.

I hes­i­tate to post this, some of you will not make it back to check out the rest of this morn­ing’s links. Ah well, ser­vice is what we’re about here. Loud­pop Voy­ager, hours of brows­ing and that’s just the bike pics.

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Society

From NPR, an inter­est­ing pro­pos­al for rebuild­ing Ice­land’s econ­o­my, a safe haven for ideas and infor­ma­tion. Think Canary Islands for Wikileaks.

Cross plat­form gam­ing, mas­sive­ly coop­er­a­tive game play, and a girl who stretch­es all the way across the solar sys­tem? All that and Plu­to is still a plan­et. Noby Noby Boy, please go down­load it and play. I want to see the ending.

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Science

I love my Kauf­man Guide to Birds. There is now anoth­er filed guide from Kenn Kauf­man — The Kauf­man Guide to Insects. (Also insect puns in the comments.)

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Art, Images, and Design

Today, a look at what’s up in the world of Urban and Street Art.

Ripo’s large scale work is cre­at­ed using words and phras­es, cho­sen to be rel­e­vant to the loca­tion. Well, except the guy moon­ing the cruise liners.

el Crudo has tak­en the walls left when a neigh­bor­ing house was torn down and recre­at­ed the imag­ined life of it’s occu­pants. The park­our cat trip­ping down the stairs (green back­ground) is par­tic­u­lar­ly fine.

Anoth­er flickr set. This time the bum­ble bee news­box sto­ries. Each news­pa­per box con­tains a scene. The pho­tographs con­tains lots tags that expand the story.

2:12 makes mar­velous sten­cil based images in Hous­ton. Here the tan­go dancer and the geisha. The video of paint­ing the geisha sign is worth watch­ing. (Video with Sound)

That should keep you all busy until tomorrow.

Morning Linkage (Feb 22)

Transportation

I seri­ous­ly need this truck. Well, okay, a few of you seri­ous­ly need this truck. Site Com­man­der — the ulti­mate work truck, every­thing you need to run a nuclear pow­er plant build out. And an all ter­rain Seg­way, with it’s own lit­tle garage. Entries close May 1st.

The Fiat 500 Abarth of my dreams is com­ing to Amer­i­ca. But not soon enough.

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Science

Strain spe­cif­ic antibi­ot­ic. More dif­fi­cult, more expen­sive, and quite pos­si­bly safer and more effec­tive than the cur­rent shot­gun approach. If noth­ing else, a fas­ci­nat­ing and reveal­ing look into how bac­te­ria function.

A rather more sane than usu­al pro­pos­al for clar­i­fy­ing copy­right and fair use.

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Art, Images and Design

Remem­ber the mock ups of the “new” cov­ers for the Jules Verne clas­sics? Jim Tier­ney has fin­ished his project. Four love­ly, mem­o­rable cov­ers for four favorite books. (Video)

Insane­ly great design­er and builder of wood­en clocks.

Stick bomb­ing, mon­key chains, xylo­ex­plo­sives, call them what you will. Tongue depres­sors, acrylic paint, and an excess amount of free time leads to this.
Direc­tions for build­ing your own.

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii devel­oped a tech­nique for tak­ing and print­ing full col­or pho­to­graph­ic images in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. Involv­ing three glass plates and col­ored fil­ters, the process is com­plex and awk­ward. But the results are love­ly. Images of the Russ­ian Empire just before it’s dis­so­lu­tion. From the Library of Con­gerss collection.

And “Pre­cise­ly who thought a War­ren Ellis alarm clock was a good idea?”

That’s all for today my freaky darlings.

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