Morning Linkage (Sep 8)

Transportation

Stunning indeed. I love the red cra­dle frame and the squat mush­roomy tank. Triumph.

You will, no doubt, have an opin­ion. I think the mechan­i­cals are inter­est­ing and the paint abominable.

Sometimes a sim­ple clean up and sort a few details job turns into a real remake/remodel. Especially when the “run­ning” part of the advert was, well, opti­mistic. Sometimes that remake turns out to be way more spe­cial than a sim­ple spruc­ing up could ever have been. A 1957 BSA B31 becomes a Clubman Goldstar Replica.

Unsettling views of a beam that need­ed repair on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. I hat­ed dri­ving over it before. I may nev­er cross is again. (WS-DOT con­tin­ues to pub­lish inter­est­ing stuff on its blog and on flickr .)

Science

Sunspots are the celes­tial weath­er machines that dri­ve our atmos­phere (hyper­bole alert.) The Big Bear Solar Observatory cap­tured the best-so-far real light image of a sunspot recent­ly. It’s like a black hole in the sun. Very cool. There’s more inter­est­ing stuff at the obser­va­to­ry’s web­site includ­ing lots of raw data. I haven’t a clue what to do with the data but I want to applaud that it’s there, freely avail­able to any­one who cares to use it.

Art, Images, and Design

Another delight­ful lit­tle build­ing. This one per­fect for a bib­lio­phile with a tiny bit of a back yard. The Reading Nest would have been a per­fect hide away for the 13-year-old me. The Reading Nest is pre­fab and you can see pho­tos of one being trucked in and placed on site on the web­site of the architects.

Goodly Creature by Leah Palmer Preiss. A vin­tage feel and form but a mod­ern imag­i­nary ani­mal. Details of the Goodly Creature’s cre­ation on her blog, Curious Art Lab.

Pop-ups, fairy tales, and an ani­mat­ed trail­er for a book. What could be bet­ter? Il Etait Une Fois, to be pub­lished in November, illus­trates a hand­ful of fairy tales with com­plex pop-ups of cru­cial scenes. I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the play­ing card army from Alice in Wonderland. Leave the sound on while watch­ing the video if you can. (Video)

it’s mid-week dar­lings, hang in there,