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…