shiny things in messy little piles

Month: June 2010 (Page 1 of 4)

Morning Linkage (Jun 30)

Transportation and Engineering

Some of these future of trans­porta­tion ideas from Japan, pub­lished in 1936, are nov­el riffs on the com­mon themes. But the two-color illus­tra­tions fea­tur­ing red and a love­ly inky blue-black and spiffy, speedy white wisps are so won­der­ful.

The cru­cial dif­fer­ence between math and engi­neer­ing is decibels.

Art, Design and Architecture

A nifty beer bot­tle meant to have a sec­ond life as build­ing material.

Play­ing with your food has nev­er been quite this sat­is­fy­ing. John Baldessari has built a dig­i­tal DIY still life kit using the ele­ments of Abra­ham van Bey­eren’s orig­i­nal 17th cen­tu­ry paint­ing. Orig­i­nal­ly an instal­la­tion at the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art, the expe­ri­ence is now avail­able on the web (or your iPhone)

Animation

Clay-mation,  sort of  — the title char­ac­ter is a blob of blue clay. Answer­ing the age-old ques­tion what’s the dif­fer­ence between a bank pres­i­dent and a porn star. For all it’s blob­by­ness this is (NSFW.)

What this is doing on a site ded­i­cat­ed to nature pho­tos I do not know. But it’s a total­ly clever ani­mat­ed com­bi­na­tion of memes. Tetris, park­our, duck hunt­ing, and that weird build­ing game. (SFW)

Okay — time to rebuild the office fur­ni­ture (again)

Morning Linkage (Jun 28)

Transportation

One of the nec­es­sary but con­fus­ing parts of trav­el­ing is fig­ur­ing out the taxi sys­tem in var­i­ous coun­tries. How do I hail a taxi? Do I nego­ti­ate? Do I tip? Is it safe for sin­gle females? What the heck does a taxi look like any­way? In Japan they might just have one of these cute lit­tle signs on top. (Pho­to gallery nav­i­ga­tion challenge.)

Cus­tom scoot­er. No clue. No com­ment. Well, okay, maybe that he should trim the tie-ties. Equal­ly bizarre trans­la­tion of the web­site by Google here.

Pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned here for a video of a cus­tom bike arriv­ing at a tea cer­e­mo­ny (seri­ous­ly.) This new vid of cus­tom builder Shinya Kimu­ra cap­tures the mood and atti­tude of the builder and his bikes. Pure Mon­day morn­ing inspi­ra­tion. My favorite of his bikes, for the moment. The Bar­racu­da.

Maps

Think­ing about air­space and air­space reg­u­la­tions. The  ref­er­enced arti­cle is good. The pro­posed “muse­um” is intriguing.

Map­ping the degree of touristy. No, I did­n’t make that word up, some­one else did. Heat map of photo-tag fre­quen­cy gives you an idea how many cam­era tot­ing dweebs you are like­ly to encounter.

Art, Images, and Design

Tim Flach high­lights the exag­ger­at­ed, almost freak­ish, per­fec­tion of his sub­jects — show dogs, bats, and oth­er ani­mals. Watch the dog walk across the screen and then click on Port­fo­lio. NSFW after image #38.

Cathy Gat­land gives a quick look at the World Cup fever sweep­ing SA with a cou­ple of street cor­ner por­traits.

Animation

A nice set of black and white inter­fer­ence illu­sions. Sooth­ing music.

Not real­ly ani­ma­tion but pup­pets. The coarse­ly vio­lent ori­gins of the mup­pets; Hen­son did ads for Wilk­in’s Cof­fee. Poor Won­tkins gets done-in in amaz­ing ways.

Off you go now…

Morning Linkage (Jun 23)

Sort of -

Link­age is on hia­tus while I deal with life, the uni­verse, and my back (again) But I haven’t for­got­ten you all entire­ly. Here are two nice, hap­py links for hump-day.

Anoth­er install­ment in the Smash­ing Mag­a­zine series on let­ter forms and cal­lig­ra­phy — this one fea­tur­ing Hebrew, Arme­nia, Mon­go­lian, and Inu­it among others.

I grew up with the work of Jim Flo­ra, from the jazz album cov­ers that were a part of my child­hood to this friend­ly lit­tle car­toon. Mex­i­can fire­works are the best!

Morning Linkage (Jun 16)

Trans­porta­tion — Com­ing Attractions

Hand-crafters Mor­gan Motor com­pa­ny will be unveil­ing anoth­er sports car in August at Peb­ble Beach. So far all we have is a over­ly processed pho­to of a sil­hou­ette. The EvaGT. Might want.

Pret­ty girls and motor­cy­cles. In this case a love­ly Swedish builder and the quest to build the fastest elec­tric bike.

Builder’s Corner

Speak­ing of build­ing things. One of the sweet­est tools you can have in any shop that works with met­al is a Bev­er­ly Shear. On the Most Want­ed list of every sil­ver­smith and anoth­er case of the real deal being worth the real dollars.

Art, Images, and Design

Turn of the (last) cen­tu­ry design can feel utter­ly mod­ern even 100 years lat­er. This serv­ing bas­ket by Ger­man sil­ver­smith Josef Hoff­man is a fine example

Seems I’m on a cut the mate­r­i­al to make the design roll so, die-cut but­ter­fly sil­hou­ettes. Black and orange. Very luxe choco­late packaging.

Photographs of Places

From the Big Pic­ture. Argenti­na cel­e­brates her bicen­ten­ni­al. Col­or, motion, pageantry, mem­o­ry. (Yes it’s a lit­tle late but dang — fine images.)

Dry glass plate neg­a­tives. An old fash­ioned, out of date, archa­ic medi­um for cap­tur­ing pho­tographs. And that might be a cry­ing shame. I dare you to click ‘View full size’ below this pho­to­graph of the West­ing­house Air-Brake plant from 1905. Be pre­pared to scroll across your multi-monitor set­up to see all the detail. Dear god, you can count the bricks.

off to be not working

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