shiny things in messy little piles

Month: August 2010 (Page 1 of 3)

Morning Linkage (Aug 30)

Transportation

The week­end’s over, but there’s a new week­end just around the cor­ner. Some of you are gonna need this. Hayes M1030 — bitchin’ off road machine. Multi-fuel, 2‑foot ford­ing depth, option­al IR dri­ving light! woohoo!

And one of these. Bufali­no. Piag­gio APE goes camper. Yup­pers, I’ll take one.

Snick­er. That’s some bal­last you got there. Fright­en­ing­ly close to home for some of us hack own­ers. And more Stan Mott car and bike art. Bonus pho­tos at 2/3rds. Go Carts!

Science

Astronomer Seth Shostak pro­pos­es that we could increase our chances of find­ing intel­li­gent life in the stars by expand­ing the type of intel­li­gence we are look­ing for. Where should we look if we want to find alien arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence?

Slight­ly more earth bound news. Migra­tion is a com­plex social func­tion; not just a mat­ter of every­one in the flock gets an urge for bright sun­ny beach­es come October.

Art, Images, and Design

Tum­blinger­strasse? Tag Tag? Super Paper? Still does­n’t mean any­thing to you? How about Hot Wheels stop-motion ani­ma­tion and graffiti?

These do not look like tat­toos. But they are… I’m unde­cid­ed about them but I val­ue the reminder that ink on skin does­n’t have to con­form to a look. More of Aman­da Wachob’s work (click on abstract)

Utter­ly point­less ani­mat­ed gif. But there’s a monkey…

Animation

Sad news from Japan, Satochi Kon has passed away.

He gave us many films but none so won­der­ful as Tokyo God­fa­thers. A look at three mis­fits who find a bun­dle on Christ­mas Eve. T.G. long ago replaced It’s a Won­der­ful Life as our Christ­mas movie of choice. Earthy, humor­ous, and real­is­ti­cal­ly hope­ful. (Avail­able on disc from netflix.)
Amer­i­can ver­sion of the Tokyo God­fa­thers trail­er. Lame trail­er, good movie.

oh so Mon­day around here, I hope your locale is a lit­tle less inundated.

Morning Linkage (Aug 27)

Transportation

Engine porn. Full view of the gear dri­ven cams on an awe­some lit­tle Benelli.

Per­fect­ly, post-apocalyptically Vespa.

Nice lines on this yel­low Hon­da cafe. The light driz­zling of water drops does not hurt the look of these shots.

Gaming and Culture

SEGA has a yakuza based game for play sta­tion. How good is it? Jake Adel­stein asked 3 “guys” to have a look. Oth­er than the red shirt…

Art, Images, and Design

Elsa Lan­ches­ter was the orig­i­nal Bride of Franken­stein. Made­line Khan will always be my favorite BoF, but you have lots of images to choose from in this round-up by Wicked Halo. NSFWerot­ic mon­ster nudi­ty.

Animation

We’ve all done it; let our sense of dread over­whelm our com­mon sense, and been embar­rass­ed­ly cha­grined at our silli­ness in the end. Smooth­ly ani­mat­ed with soft sculp­tures and quirky card­board, Some­thing Tak­en, Some­thing Left Behind, reminds us that chil­dren aren’t the only ones giv­en to irra­tional cat­a­stro­phiz­ing. (Video, 10:14)

off you go into the rainy weekend…

Morning Linkage (Aug 26)

Transportation

Kin­da unfin­ished look­ing. The Mer­lin starts with an old flat head and adds a cou­ple of moped parts, some stuff from the back room at the push-bike shop down the street, and bits dent­ed sheet met­al from who knows where. Appeal­ing in its rawness.

What to do with the inevitable rust­ing away of cer­tain bits of that cheap scoot­er you bought. Bob­ber Pass­port. Check out the engraved veloc­i­ty stack. Woo.

If I had a bike this pret­ty I’d let it eat in the kitchen too. Moto Guzzi Airone 250.

Data Geeking

First up — all the Dr Who espisodes and their (approx) place in the time line of the uni­verse. As you’d expect the com­ments are FULL of ran­corous dis­agree­ment and the pick­ing of the tini­est nits. None the less, a prodi­gious feat of data scraping.

Two sets of graph­ics from Phillip Howard at Michi­gan State. The illu­sion of diver­si­ty in food. Soda pop and organ­ics are big busi­ness and the con­sol­i­da­tion of the lit­tle brands under the umbrel­la of the giants con­tin­ues. Soda pop and oth­er bottled/canned drinks. Who owns the organ­ic labels. Buy­ing up the independents.

Art, Images, and Design

Alice Fea­gan — com­mer­cial illus­tra­tion in cut paper, this one for the cov­er of a week­ly food guide … and a pri­vate piece cel­e­brat­ing sum­mer at the lake.

Three new pieces from Alber­to Cer­riteno. That sweet tooth does­n’t look so sweet.

Excerpts from Sir William Hamil­ton’s Campi Phel­graei describ­ing his obser­va­tions of the vol­canic activ­i­ty of Mt. Vesu­vius in the 1760’s and 1770’s. Engrav­ings by Pietro Fabris.

Ani­ma­tion can show us the world from a dif­fer­ent height. Lucille finds her­self over­whelmed by her vis­it to the gui­tar shop.

thurs­day, chick­en for lunch?

Morning Linkage (Aug 25)

Transportation

Anoth­er tiny cus­tom CB100 out of SE Asia. This one from Deus Cang­gu in Bali.

Scott Fly­ing Squir­rel. Best bike name ever and inno­v­a­tive design too. Liq­uid cool­ing from the 1920’s. A cou­ple of oth­er Scott bikes here as well.

From Japan a TX650 cus­tom. The lines of the sub­tly brown tank are dreamy.

Doc­u­men­ta­tion of mon­u­men­tal moments in bad taste. Nick Glies makes a liv­ing pho­tograph­ing the insides (and out­sides) of pri­vate jets. Own­er­ship is, of course, not disclosed.

Technology

Tablets for Christ­mas this year. With the launch of the iPad this spring the tablet has reached the mid­dle amer­i­can radar. Best Buy is gear­ing up for the Xmas sea­son by pro­mot­ing the tablet as a per­fect gift.

Among the many con­tenders is like­ly to be this HTC slat­ed to run Google’s chrome.

Food

Cook­ing in a milk can? Steam cook­ing for messy, stew meals. Yum.

Art, Images, and Design

A quick and dirty overview of the art of Sci-Fi. Lau­ren Panepin­to who is the Art Direc­tor for Orbit Books shows you some exam­ples and explains why and how they go about entic­ing you to pick up and read. Lots of links to lots of artists. Be sure to check the com­ments for even more art and links.

From the Long Now blog, a fine exam­ple of Panepin­to’s two rules for great Sci-Fi art. Com­men­tary on this split soci­ety image?

In the late 1970’s Andy Levin spent his non-working hours pho­tograph­ing the every­man expe­ri­ence of Coney Island. The NYT’s Lens blog brings 18 of these fine black and white pho­tos back.

And now, many years lat­er, Levin returns to Coney Island and pub­lish­es Coney Island Baby. Col­or pho­tos of the same place, in a very dif­fer­ent time. (NSFW — one aggres­sive­ly nude image)

enjoy the heat — eat lunch out­side today

Morning Linkage (Aug 24)

Transportation

Save this up for the third week in Sep­tem­ber — you’re gonna need a new desktop/wallpaper and this Ural in the far north will be just the thing.

This one’s gonna be flagged on the score sheet for inap­pro­pri­ate use of Red Bull. Thought he cop­per work is first-rate on this Triumph.

Absolute­ly per­fect. 1965 CA77 Hon­da. So well done, such a charm­ing bike.

Science and Pictures

BBC pro­vides anoth­er set of nice visu­al­iza­tion tools. How big is that? Start here with an image that helps you to under­stand the size of the East­ern Pacif­ic Garbage patch. If it was cen­tered on Seat­tle, the east­ern edge would reach Far­go. Seri­ous­ly. Lots of oth­er places, times, and object to look at.

The Solar Dynam­ic Obser­va­to­ry app on my iPhone is one of my favorite 2‑minute time wasters. SDO now pro­vides this image of the erupt­ing sun with the lines of mag­net­ic force drawn in. Con­fus­ing, swirling, wow.

Sex, drugs, and motos. “The results sug­gest motor­cy­cles ful­fill an appet­i­tive need, acti­vat­ing an impor­tant node in the dopamine reward sys­tem.” Details of the MRI test­ing and words from the inves­ti­ga­tor James Loughead.

Food

It would­n’t be sum­mer with­out cock­tails on the veran­da. But should you go off to some swanky veran­da that has a bar­tender to pre­pare your cock­tails or would you be bet­ter off stay­ing home on your own com­fy lit­tle patch of open air? To hunt prey of the appro­pri­ate species/gender you’ll prob­a­bly need to go to one of those pub­lic spots but if you’ve already got a tro­phy or are sim­ply tired of hunt­ing you could do a lot worse than stay­ing in (out­side). Stay­ing home is cheap­er too. How much cheap­er? Ask the cock­tail cal­cu­la­tor.

Art, Images, and Design

Play­ing with your food. Edi­ble crayons that real­ly col­or. Lush food pho­tog­ra­phy too.

I want some Mon­ster Friends. Posters.

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