shiny things in messy little piles

Month: January 2011 (Page 2 of 4)

Morning Linkage (Jan 21)

Transportation

The auto­mo­tive press goes into its annu­al orgy of list mak­ing every win­ter around the December/January pub­lish­ing cycle. Each and every list high­light­ed with ital­ics, cap­i­tal let­ters, and Big Red head­lines. And pho­tos of each and every one of the cars or trucks. Bor­ing, copy­cat, can’t tell one mag­a­zine from an oth­er pho­tos. Except that this year Auto­mo­bile used an illus­tra­tor rather than a pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Not sure if the results will be repeat­ed but I like Daniel Stolle’s work any way.

The full arti­cle. What’s with motor rags? — find­ing any­thing on their web­sites is damned near impos­si­ble and the images are hid­den in the chaos on the right edge of the article.

Food trucks, we all love ’em. And now you can have a look at the fac­to­ry that makes them. The good fel­lows at Tel­star Logis­tics did a piece for the NYT.

1 minute of 1960’s hip. Girls go for guys on Ves­pas. Hap­py Fri­day my lit­tle scoot­er dudes and dudettes.

1959 Moto Guzzi Fal­cone, by Von Dutch. Love it, hate it? No mis­tak­ing the era.

Art, Images, and Design

Mr. Peabody, the hep-est cat around.

I can only quote John K’s first cou­ple of lines. ” If there’s one thing I learned from skulk­ing around in the paper­back sec­tion of my local drug­store when I was kid it was this: ALL THINGS EVERYWHERE CRAVE OUR WOMEN. (…)  I don’t care what race, species or gen­era you are, whether you are liv­ing or dead, ani­mal, veg­etable, min­er­al, fun­gi or bac­te­ria — your first thought upon each aching wak­ing morn is how to steal our women. (…)  And who can blame you? Look at them.”  Fol­lowed by a bitchin’ col­lec­tion of pulp sto­ry cov­ers. (NSFW)

More sedate­ly, in black and white. On  a slow boat from Africa. The New York Times would send a pho­tog­ra­ph­er to the docks to cap­ture the unload­ing of the ani­mals import­ed for Amer­i­can zoos.

Animation

Best dog ate my home­work ever.…

Hap­py Fri­day y’all.

Morning Linkage (Jan 19)

Transportation

There’s a fan club for every vehi­cle ever made. And restora­tion nuts will go to great lengths to get their babies back on the road, or in this case, back into the air. A Viet­nam era Huey flies again — dig the Led Zep­pelin accom­pa­nied trail­er for the doc­u­men­tary. (Video — music and com­bat footage)

I am fre­quent­ly the object of friend­ly rib­bing because I can make an entire day’s worth of errands into an itin­er­ary with­out a sin­gle left turn across traf­fic. Turns out I’m not crazy. A world with­out left turns would be both safer and more efficient.

Bul­ta­co Sher­pa T. That is enough dan­gling bait for most of you. It’s a love­ly Span­ish resto.  Also Motor­cy­cle Pic­ture of the Day has moved house. Remem­ber to change your fee­dread­ers and bookmarks :)

First enjoy this soon to be a clas­sic image of a lone rid­er on the dunes. Then click on the link labeled HERE to see a huge set of Dakar ral­ly pics — lots of bikes.

Science and Tech

Sun­sets on Mars. They’re blue. Just thought you should know :)

A cou­ple of days ago I showed you a bit of ani­ma­tion made with the help of the CellScope a micro­scope add-on for cell phone cam­eras. Now some folks at U Mich have cre­at­ed a lit­tle don­gle that will HiJack the audio out­put port of your iThingy and turn it into a nifty sen­sor host. You can get one of the pro­to­types for your own — if you have a clever enough idea  about how it should be used.

Art, Images, and Design

More Lit­tle Red Rid­ing­hood. So far beyond the usu­al flat, boxy results of using  chil­dren’s blocks as a sculp­ture mate­r­i­al. The tex­tures achieved in the wolf and the bar­ren trees are per­fect. (And I think I might have a lit­tle red rid­ing hood problem.)

A short mus­ing on the nature of name and brand in pop­u­lar art. Did/does Banksy (and by exten­sion a num­ber of oth­er “famous” street artists) use a crew? The com­ments will tell about all you need to know about the state of popular/folk/commercial art appre­ci­a­tion in this coun­try. le sigh.

Char­lie Brown and Snoopy, gen­er­al­ly any­thing not drawn by Mr. Schultz is crap. Except maybe this time trav­el piece that puts the boy and his dog on a street cor­ner sell­ing com­ic books.  By Boulet for the lat­est issue of Zoo.

The full issue of Zoo for which the Snoopy and Char­lie brown illo was done is worth a cou­ple of min­utes of your time even if you don’t read French. There’s a lot of good work to see.

Animation

I’ve always loved the sly humor of the yel­low polka-dot biki­ni song. The shy­ness of the girl want­i­ng to be fab­u­lous but a lit­tle afraid of all the atten­tion. Here is Lisa T’s (Lasse Pers­son) trans­gen­der ver­sion. Big burly swedish beach boys and one teenag­er full of trep­i­da­tion. It all ends well, I promise. (Pos­si­bly NSFW, no nudity)

Morning Linkage (Jan 18)

Transportation

Eco-driving, the
social­ly accept­able in-car video game, where you do your best to make the lit­tle leaf as green as grass. If stud­ies con­tin­ue to prove that instan­ta­neous dis­play of mileage infor­ma­tion prompts dri­vers to tune their dri­ving style to max­i­mize mpg, you may be see­ing more and more of these dis­plays on your dash. Speak­ing of auto-data
tech­nol­o­gy, the boys at Cult of MAC are clear­ly not gear heads but they kind of get the point of the OBD-II read­er that Grif­fin has announced for the iPhone. I just won­der if the soft­ware (app) will be use­ful to the gear heads or only a dri­ve nice­ly pret­ty please app to make the eco-driving crowd coo. 

The Grif­fin site claims that the Car­Trip read­er will allow code check and reset. I’ll be get­ting one to test on the airbag fault light on the Rover. (Grrr.)

To atone for all the geeky green-weenie crap above, I give you: The high­lights of the 2010 British Super Bike Cham­pi­onship. 4 min­utes of thrills, chills, and a cou­ple of spills. (For­give me?) 

Science and Society

30 years of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic pic­tures by Bruce Dale. 9 min­utes of video and a ter­ri­ble pun­ning joke. 

We as a soci­ety are always rewrit­ing our past. It’s inevitable and in large part uncon­scious. But to what extent can we jus­ti­fy delib­er­ate­ly mess­ing about with the images of the past? Did the USPS real­ly need to remove the cig­a­rette from Robert John­son’s mouth? 

Art, Images, and Design

Wal­nut is love­ly. And the dark col­or goes per­fect­ly with cof­fee. Scrap lum­ber becomes some­thing use­ful and beautiful. 

An anony­mous small token of grat­i­tude and gen­eros­i­ty. Com­pli­ments on tear-off tabs. PDF to print. Bring your own sta­ple gun. 

Oooh, the roman­tic allure of the aban­doned sub­way sta­tion. The City Hall Sta­tion in NYC was opened in 1904 and closed to use in 1945. Until recent­ly the only way to get a glimpse at what is arguably the pret­ti­est of the NYC sub­way sta­tions was to sneak in. Not any­more. A recent rule change means that you can now sit tight on the Num­ber 6 as it makes it loop through the old station.

Animation

Megan Tup­per, a recent grad of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wales, has a fine sense of char­ac­ter and the com­ic impli­ca­tions of every­day life. Keys. The truth about cats. (Video 3:26)

Morning Linkage (Jan 17)

Transportation

Con­tem­plat­ing the changes in the cul­ture of rac­ing and rule mak­ing. Reims in ’54 the return of the Mer­cedes and a grid full of indi­vid­u­al­is­tic machines.

Real­ly I spoil you all. I should be look­ing these bikes up and dol­ing them out one at a time. But what the hel­lz. A bonan­za bou­quet of old (real­ly old) bikes at the Bon­ham’s Las Vegas auc­tion. Munch Mam­mut, an H‑D Peashoot­er from a mine in West­ern Aus­tralia, and my fav the Indi­an Camelback.

Science

Jog­ging, not just hat­ed exer­cise but per­haps an adap­tive evo­lu­tion­ary advan­tage? Some­thing called endurance hunt­ing may have been an impor­tant fac­tor in the suc­cess of our ances­tors. Oh hell, pass the fries.

I’m going to lose big kar­ma points for post­ing this but… cats con­fused about what’s up and what’s down in weight­less­ness. On video.

Art, Images, and Design

Paper — cut and lay­ered by Brit­te­ny Lee. Her ani­mals always have way too much personality.

Impul­sive kiss­es. Giv­en on a street cor­ner. Paint­ed on a street cor­ner. C215 and, prob­a­bly, his girl Alice.

Betray­ing a sense of the del­i­ca­cy of the divide between humans and their fel­lows that is far more sophis­ti­cat­ed than you expect from a 21 year old. Russ­ian artist Eugene Soloviev cre­ates stripped-down float­ing landscapes.

Animation

Street art, meets stop-motion, meets flip-book. 294 walls, 4 cities, 3000 kilo­me­ters. Think about what that means. Think about how the vid ends. By the Turk­ish group, Sokak Savasa Kar­si.  (Video 1:30 — music)

hap­py Mon­day y’all

Morning Linkage (Jan 13)

Transportation

Night Mar­ket. Or what to do with a box truck on a Sat­ur­day night in San Fran­sis­co. Wheels have always been our tick­et to the lim­i­nal places.

The first per­son who does the math and points out to me that $2995 in 1962 dol­lars is … hey wait a minute. That’s only $22K in 2010. I want my Porsche Speed­ster!

This should be so wrong, but I love it. A ‘67 Tri­umph Tiger. Cus­tom and orange. And any­one who is will­ing to cus­tom machine his own brass…

Cool Tools

Hot knives are a sta­ple with the prop, decor, and fan­ta­sy object build­ing types. It’s the only way to cut Sty­ro­foam, foam rub­ber, and a hand­ful of oth­er mate­ri­als. But most hot cut­ters use a straight wire so get­ting any sort of con­tour is a long, fid­dly job. Not any more. Bend­able wire to the res­cue. A Prox­xon hot wire cut­ter will make that next set of drag­on scales a cinch!

Art, Images, and Design

This intri­cate­ly detailed and some­what fan­ci­ful cross sec­tion of the Kowloon walled city was drawn by a Japan­ese team just before the city was lev­eled in 1993. And some fol­low up in the com­ments on doobybrain.

To cre­ate a map of a place from mem­o­ry is to your soul. Maps Drawn from Mem­o­ry is was the name a Flickr pool and Visu­al News grabbed a hand­ful of the best and offered them up with link to the Google maps of the actu­al loca­tions. If you care about real­i­ty. Which you won’t when you’ve seen the much more human ver­sions of places that live in the artist’s head. (SFW)

The Flickr pool has been changed to from “Maps Drawn from Mem­o­ry” to sim­ply “From Mem­o­ry” and is, sad­ly, no longer sole­ly about maps. (And is now NSFW)

A pho­tog­ra­pher’s body of work. The images she cre­ates from the time she first picks up a cam­era until her death can be the most illu­mi­nat­ing record of a life, and the time and place that it was lived. John Mal­oof found and pur­chased the near­ly com­plete works of one woman, Vivian Maier, who lived, worked, and pho­tographed in Chica­go from the 1950s through the 1990s. Here are just a hand­ful of her images. I sus­pect there will be con­tro­ver­sy in the com­ing months as the full sto­ry of the dis­cov­ery, pur­chase, and lan­guish­ing of these pic­tures comes out. But you need to have a first look at them now, while they are still new and intrigu­ing. More of Vivian Maier’s photos.

Animation

Claim­ing to be the world’s small­est stop-motion ani­ma­tion, cre­at­ed by Aard­man and shot using a Nokia 8 and the field med­ical Cellscope tech­nol­o­gy (yes, that’s a cell phone used as a micro­scope) — Dot. Also a mak­ing of video, and a time-lapse of the shoot­ing rig. The phone, the mag­ni­fy­ing lens, the 3‑d print­er… oh hel­lz this is the best gig­gle I’ve has all day.

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