shiny things in messy little piles

Month: July 2010 (Page 1 of 3)

Morning Linkage (Jul 30)

Transportation

I believe that this is a 1960’s Velorex 350. You can get the con­fus­ing trans­lat­ed from the Hun­gar­i­an orig­i­nal here.

Very nice CB360T build out. Link to the build blog included.

Not the Cit­roen Picas­so (a bor­ing com­muter car) but UK custom-car builder Andy Sander’s Picas­so Cit­roen.

Ideas

This may make your brain warp but it’s a look at the state of the think­ing today. Attempt­ing to com­bine quan­tum physics and neu­ro­science in the quest to set­tle the argu­ment between deter­min­ism and free will.

Or if that isn’t your end­less debate of choice, how about who was right about the nature of our future dystopia? Hux­e­ly or Orwell? Recom­bi­nant Records pro­vides the key talk­ing points.

Pub­lic trans­porta­tion com­muters, bed­time read­ers, and gym-rats alike should know about longform.org. An archive of the best essay length mate­r­i­al pub­lished in the past decade. There are sev­er­al ways to access and read the mate­r­i­al. I use Instapa­per on my  iPreciouses.

Art, Images, and Design

Some real­ly love­ly posters from the Empire Mar­ket­ing Board (1936–1933) and a pon­der­ing of the trou­bling images in these efforts to mar­ket the prod­ucts of the British empire to the sub­jects of the British empire. The com­plete col­lec­tion is avail­able at Man­ches­ter Galleries.

Crow on a wall in Spain. I love the blur­ry feath­er work.

Card­board mon­ster arms.

Animation

Good illus­tra­tor, good ani­ma­tion Shaun Tan’s illus­trat­ed novel­las have made me smile. Now his The Lost Thing is being ani­mat­ed. If you have some patience left over from your week you’ll enjoy the trail­er more if you get it from the offi­cial Lost Thing but it’s a flash site and takes approx 15 sec­onds to load.

Okay, we made it to Fri­day. Now to make it through the day,

Morning Linkage (Jul 29)

Transportation

Start­ing with a cou­ple of Ducatis.

Sweet Duc 750 Sport.

Joe’s V Cycle cafe rac­ers. A ’66 Duc Mon­za 250 and a ’72 Hon­da CB750.

Ital­ian ref­er­ence, NSU licensed and built Lam­bret­tas. Stub-tailed cat on a scooter.

Not Ital­ian at all. moto — extrem­is. I love this bike.

Political Trivia

Sub­jects” became “cit­i­zens” and the tone of the doc­u­ment changed in a sub­tle and impor­tant way. Jef­fer­son­’s revi­sions of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Independence.

Art, Images, and Design

This could take all day. Titles, excerpts, and cov­er art for vin­tage tracts and pamphlets.

They draw — they cook — pas­ta al limone.

Amy show us vin­tage Chi­nese fire­works packaging.

I seem to be on a mon­sters kick this week. Fuco Ueda under­stands mon­sters and the mun­dane dis­guis­es they wear. Coil­house gives an overview.  Her site.  The nav is hid­den under shoes.

But now we need some­thing a lit­tle brighter. The Bear turns fifty today. Here’s a lit­tle birth­day par­ty.

off you go,

Morning Linkage (Jul 28)

Transportation

I don’t think I’d name any bike “Chick­en Sal­ad” but it’ll have to do for this nice, short xs650 custom.

A longer xs650. Not at all a salad.

Bob­bers come from all over. Hon­da Hawk. Srsly.

Even cuter. Hon­da Rebel Cus­tom.

Art, Images, and Design

So many chil­dren’s book seem best designed to give chil­dren night­mares. The whole cat in the hat thing weird­ed me out for months. But real­ly — noth­ing com­pared to these draw­ings done by Gojin Ishi­hara for Japan­ese chil­dren’s books. Japan has the best mon­sters under the bed (or com­ing out of the ceiling)

I’m not sure I’m going to buy the idea of a lux­u­ry Sharpie but this new stain­less steel mod­el *is* pret­ty fly.

The Urban Sketch­ers will be con­ven­ing in Port­land this week­end for their first inter­na­tion­al meet up. Sat­ur­day July 31st is the 28th annu­al world-wide sketch crawl. And in case you’ve for­got­ten why you should be on the look­out, here’s a quick cou­ple of water­col­ors of the CA coast line from Marc Holm.

Mar­co Zamo­ra. Pen and ink wash­es with win­dows of col­or. Urban scenes through a prism.

Dive. James Jean made the image and pres­sureprint­ing did the intaglio prints. The walk through of what it takes to make a 36 x 23 print will explain the $2000 price tag.

Animation

Boy wants to meet girl. Girl is ignor­ing boy. Boy gets a lit­tle help from the fel­low down the street. Thing is, boy is a graf­fi­ti. A lit­tle live action, a lit­tle stop motion, a whole lot of Greek charm.

Morning Linkage (Jul 27)

Transportation

So much train awe­some­ness — pages and pages. Some high­lights… retro-futuristic designs, and mod­ern reuse of old­er engines. Oh, and the pigs let­ting them­selves off at the station.

Anoth­er xs650 bob­ber. Sub­tle details in the body work. Close to perfection.

Rid­den in the dirt. Nuff said.

Science

Fried egg jel­ly­fish. The bane of my child­hood. But pret­ty dan­ged cool when giv­en the Creature-cast treatment.

Remem­ber the siphonophores from a while back? Did you know that they fig­ured in naval war­fare. Hid­ing a sub­ma­rine beneath a raft of crea­tures that sonar can’t see but can’t see through.

Art, Images, and Design

This year’s rice pad­dy art from Japan. Amaz­ing what you can do with a lit­tle plan­ning and some vari­eties of rice.

It ain’t for noth­ing that I’m known as Mizz. Shoes. This Jere­my Scott design stopped me dead in my tracks.

MOMA mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion for “Matisse: The Rad­i­cal Inven­tion 1913–1917″ Pic­tures and com­men­tary for most of the paint­ings and draw­ings in the exhibit.

More from Yuko. The illus­tra­tions from The Beau­ti­ful and the Grotesque are enough to make you buy the book. The jack­et back blurb will clinch the deal.

now go do some­thing wonderful

Morning Linkage (Jul 26)

Transportation

Dark Roast Blend — anoth­er huge col­lec­tion of stuff — micro cars. There are some gems here as well as some laughs.

New car at the top of the wish list. Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 B Cor­to Tour­ing Berlinet­ta. And why did I have to find this on That Will Buff Out?
http://thatwillbuffout.com/2010/07/21/funny-car-photos-wish-list-wednesday/
The real scoop. Sec­ond car down in this thread (After the also desir­able Bugatti)

Two-fer xs650s:

xs650 cus­tom — not quite per­fect to my eye. I can’t put my fin­ger on why. But that 3rd pic­ture is gonna keep me up nights (sweat.)

xs650 street track­er. Nice bal­ance of flash and purpose.

Wide angle shots of var­i­ous cock­pits. The black­bird will make your eyes cross and the hydro­gen pow­ered land-speed con­tender is about as sim­ple as it gets.

Visual Geography

Super­im­pos­ing aer­i­al pho­tographs of the same bit of ground from dif­fer­ent years (or decades) gives fas­ci­nat­ing insights into how we grown into and out of our geog­ra­phy over time. There are some new pho­tographs (1924) and maps avail­able for NYC.

The map­ping appli­ca­tion at NYC’s GIS is some­times over­whelmed but worth return­ing to. Click on the cam­era and then move the slid­er under­neath for a choice of dates.

Some point­ers form the WSJ about things you might want to be on the look out for while you’re cruis­ing the maps.

Visual Physics.

3 videos for the new Lagoa physics mod­el­ing engine. (Sound)

Architecture and Toys

Any­one who has attempt­ed to assem­ble one of the more com­pli­cat­ed Lego mod­els recent­ly will remem­ber curs­ing the hor­ri­ble pic­tures only direc­tions. It need not be so awful as these clever instruc­tions for a build­ing block set show. The text excerpts about edu­ca­tion­al the­o­ries are a bit more inter­est­ing than any­thing you’re like­ly to get to read today as well.

Art, Images, and Design

Some­where in this col­lec­tion of folk art cats pub­lished by Tara Books (India) is sure to the be the cat of your dreams/nightmares.

Stink­fish. Girl rid­ing a bicy­cle.


It’s always something.

Morn­ing Link­age lives at http://shinymagpie.net

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