shiny things in messy little piles

Month: March 2010 (Page 1 of 3)

Morning Linkage (Mar 31)

Transportation

Oh sweet baby jee­bus. A 1970 Husky 400 Cross all fet­tled up and ready to go… to the 2010 Baja 500? Mucho gory details on the build-out build-up. (The rest of the site will send cer­tain men I know into nos­tal­gia comas for a week.)

KTM’s e‑bike.

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Society and Culture

All pub­lish­ing eyes are on the iPad as the big boys of books wait to see how much fur­ther Apple can push eBook pen­e­tra­tion into the main­stream (of the tech­ni­cal elite.) Some of the self-publishing ser­vices are also prepar­ing for Apple book store publication.

Sec­ond in my heart only to car­i­ca­tures of Hel­lo kit­ty are mash-ups of My Lit­tle Pony. I bog­gle at the idea that some­one went to  the trou­ble to find 45 of these things. If you have a favorite pop cul­ture trope it’s here.  I’m dis­mayed that the crafts­man­ship dis­played on some of these has­n’t been put to bet­ter use.

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Art, Images, and Design

The pic­ture of this spider/tractor hybrid have made the rounds and end­ed up on That Will Buff Out, but here’s what they did­n’t show you. The orig­i­nal CGI footage. Sweet.

Lob­by cards adver­tise the cur­rent and up-coming fea­ture films. They’ve been around for ages. And some of them are full of awe­some. Like this col­lec­tion of Mex­i­can film cards.

I hear you can buy your own on-line. Steve Wor­thing­ton calls out three eBay sources at the bot­tom of this post. No I am not going to admit to look­ing — or buy­ing. (The video is a scream — but NSFW)

This will take you more than a few min­utes to work through but Smash­ing mag­a­zine’s col­lec­tion of 50 images of India will def­i­nite­ly give you some­thing to day­dream about.

Morning Linkage (Mar 29)

Transportation

Awe­some. Okay, it’s Pho­to­shop. I don’t care.

BTW the orig­i­nal bike pics are shiny too. (Ouch — need shades.)

Liv­ing here out­side of Seat­tle, the biggest user of mem­o­ry space in my brain is pot­hole loca­tions. I don’t real­ly dri­ve like a stoned mon­key. I just look like it as I avoid the mul­ti­tude of rim bend­ing chuck­holes.  A clever Ital­ian solu­tion that frees up brain space and let’s strangers in on the wonky dri­ving fun.

What hap­pens when you let an air­plane mechan­ic build a Moto-Guzzi cafe rac­er? Mag­ic.

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Science

Psy­chopaths are … heavy users of dopamine? Maybe it’s not the lack of inhi­bi­tions or lack of fear of the con­se­quences of buck­ing social norms that prompts their actions, but dif­fer­ences in their reward seek­ing behav­ior. Inter­est­ing set of insights.

Very pret­ty sun­set image look­ing away from the sun. The bright star is Mars.

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Society

From the web­site of the British char­i­ty Shel­ter­box. The con­tents of a sim­ple plas­tic tote box that can pro­vide mid-term shel­ter for up to 10 peo­ple in the after­math of a nat­ur­al or civ­il dis­as­ter. Nice­ly executed.

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Art, Images, and Design

A lit­tle some­thing from my pas­sion — jew­el­ry. Rings with hous­es, or maybe hous­es with rings. Some com­plete with swim­ming pools or court­yards. Phillipe Tour­naire.

More hous­es, but not in pre­cious met­al. This piece is from the senior the­sis exhi­bi­tion of the Kyoto Uni­ver­si­ty of Art and Design.

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Animation

Anoth­er entry from the Oscar short-list for short ani­ma­tion. “Granny O’Grimm’s Sleep­ing Beau­ty,” Oh my, I may nev­er sleep again. Dark, cack­ling, and well grimm. Dis­ney will nev­er recover.

go get ’em my dears.

Morning Linkage (Mar 26)

Transportation

Eerie silent video of the valves and fir­ing spark plug of an inter­nal com­bus­tion engine. Eru­dite dis­cus­sion of the cap­ture tech­nol­o­gy in the comments.

Or per­haps you’re more inter­est­ed int he valve action inside the new S1000RR? More dis­cus­sion of the video cap­ture tech.

The late 60’s CB450s had become rats by the time I met my first motor­cy­clist friends in 1979. It’s nice to have a glimpse at what
Eugene’s bike looked like new.

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Science

I knew that nat­ur­al gas was stored under vast corn fields in Iowa but I had no idea that there was a heli­um bub­ble that spanned three states.

Some­what local to Puge­topo­lis. Cliff Mass dis­cuss­es the diur­nal vari­a­tions. That is, the changes in tem­per­a­ture, winds, etc that occur in a 24 hour peri­od even when the weath­er is “bor­ing”

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Art, Images, and Design

Cheeky mon­key! Ben New­man’s work always has a sense of humor.

Insane mix­ing of fairy tales: Alien vs. Pooh and there’s some damned mouse in the mid­dle… NSFToddlers

Richard Kirk, spooky, del­i­cate crea­tures. Pen and pen­cil on white.

Dizzie.

And to put you in a mel­low week­end mood. The anoth­er trum­pet genius per­forms La Vie en Rose.

yaz­za.

Morning Linkage (Mar 25)

Transportation

Art Deco meets H‑D. Over­whelm­ing­ly beau­ti­ful met­al work. Note that the
bike is not unfin­ished. There was no paint planned.

I’ll have to agree with the writer on this one. With­out a doubt the
ugli­est Moto Guzzi ever made. The Mulo.

Very cus­tom. There was once a Sport­ster under Walt Siegl’s MotoBe XLX. Once.

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Science

Bar­na­cle sex, not as easy as you’d think being stuck to a rock and
all. Anoth­er peek into the under­wa­ter world from Crea­ture Cast.(NSFW?)

The April 2010 issue of Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can has a nice set of
illus­tra­tions from Ron Miller, show­ing the Eight Won­ders of the solar
sys­tem. It is, of course, behind a pay wall. But Ron Miller’s own
Black Cat Stu­dio site isn’t. Pages of astro­nom­ic illus­tra­tion. Yum.

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Literature

Finest book review I’ve read this week. Mr. P‑Orridge on Picabi­a’s YES/NO.

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Art, Images, and Design

Jaw drop­ping rich­ness of detail in pho­tographs. Images of old metal
objects from the series Forged by Harold Ross.

14 still-lifes, the con­tents of pock­ets and purs­es laid out in careful
rows and columns. From 21 pack­ets of pink sweet­en­er to 10 chicklets.

Col­lages cre­at­ed from images cut from fine arts auc­tion cat­a­logs. Neat­ly made.

For your lis­ten­ing plea­sure — Nat King Cole doing Nature Boy. Lover­ly.

almost done with the week dar­lings, some­thing spe­cial for tomorrow?

Morning Linkage (Mar 24)

Transportation

From Life mag­a­zine. Day­tona in 1948. 22 pics. Take your time.

Anoth­er CB750, this one from Chica­go. I like the rough edges.

Or per­haps this one — a tad rougher.

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Society and Culture (Food)

Food­ie Trend Watch. Your cup­cakes are no longer cool, hip, and indis­pens­able for (adult) birth­day par­ties. Meet the dough­nuts, the new cup­cakes. Yes there is a recipe, no I don’t want to know how good they are.

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Art, Images, and Design

The Rhythms of Mod­ern Life:  British Prints 1914–1939.  Exhi­bi­tion from Miami’s Wolf­son­ian Muse­um.  So many things that go fast, bikes, cars, run­ners. Fab­u­lous mod­ernistic style.

Scrap yard objects become moto-mechano-men. Or some­thing. Stephan Halleux.

Some­what sim­i­lar, but not at all the same. Ron Pip­pen builds armor for angels.

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Animation

Anoth­er selec­tion from the Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tions.  “The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte),” Javier Recio Gra­cia, direc­tor.  (Kan­dor Graph­ics and Green Moon) The lady would like to go now. All the sil­ly slap stick vio­lence of  Oscar win­ning Logo­ra­ma — except this time it’s about death and it’s funny.

behave your­selves

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