shiny things in messy little piles

Month: February 2011 (Page 1 of 2)

Morning Linkage (Feb 8)

Transportation

I’m not a fan of chop­pers — it’s a style I just don’t get. But ZZ Chop is true to his roots and does graph­ics with a dis­tinc­tive chop­per ethos. Great, grungy, retro work.

Mak­ing a scram­bler out of an old­er BMW RT is cool. Though I won­der a lit­tle about bash­ing through the woods on any­thing with that kind of width :) The quote from the Cycle Mag­a­zine explain­ing the 70’s BWM nomen­cla­ture and the rela­tion­ship between the var­i­ous bikes in the line is priceless.

Planes and bikes. A love­ly lit­tle blue and white piper cub and an equal­ly sweet blue and white Pass­port. (Yeah it’s just a nice pic. Sooth­ing even.)

Science

Gyro­dactylids. Par­a­sitic flat worms liv­ing on fish. Cut paper ani­ma­tion and nest­ing dolls? As always Crea­ture Cast shows you some­thing you would­n’t come across in your dai­ly read­ing of the news. (And pro­vides great exam­ples of ama­teur ani­ma­tion used as a learn­ing tool.)

Art, Images, and Design

Faces in objects, found and enhanced by Flix. Bright mecha-man goodness.

Swoon is an Amer­i­can girl in Paris and she takes us on a night-time ram­ble to install one of her wheat paste posters. Her life-size images of peo­ple stand up well to the back­ground noise of Paris.

Snip­pets (SFW) of clas­si­cal paint­ings enlarged and past­ed into new but entire­ly appro­pri­ate con­texts. Zil­da.  More (some NSFW.)

Large scale, par­tial images, hints of a sto­ry yet untold. Mesa works up some faces on a ruined wall some­where in rur­al Spain.

keep calm and car­ry on

Morning Linkage (Feb 7)

Transportation

I know a lot of 2 stroke fans. Most of them area lit­tle less than sane. All of them would do this in a heart beat. Just to have some­thing for run­ning around on the back roads.  JAWA 350 mods. (Video is loud.)

WTF? Trans­former bike for those who han­ker for both a cafe rac­er and a cruis­er but have lim­it­ed garage space. Video demon­strates the hydraulic change over. With seat height, rake, trail, wheel base (duh) and ground clear­ance all chang­ing to pro­duce two bikes. The V‑Rod based Veon by Krug­ger. It’s also not the ugli­est thing in the world. Close but not the ugliest.

Pret­ty girls on bikes. A lit­tle some­thing to bring cheer into your Monday.

Science

NASA makes the best dig­i­tal toys. Extreme Plant Makeover. Mess about with the Earth by chang­ing it’s size, dis­tance from the sun, type of sun, and age. It’s awful­ly easy to make a bar­ren waste land or fog­gy sog­gy giant. Plan­et hacking!

Art, Images, and Design

A reminder that art is not with­out its odd mys­ter­ies and ongo­ing tiffs. We all know Raphael’s self-portrait. The guy with the perky nose and a dis­tant look sit­ting in front of a brown wall, unstruc­tured hat? But did you know that there’s a sec­ond paint­ing? Hid­ing in a vault, almost iden­ti­cal, and pos­si­bly as real as the one hang­ing in Uffizi? Nice lit­tle plot for a novel.

Bet­ty Boop, Mick­ey Mouse, and Kew­pie dolls, all mad­ly out of con­text in 1930’s Japan­ese post­cards. There are also skele­tons, and danc­ing cats. Our cul­tur­al mas­cots must have seemed impos­si­bly odd to the cre­ators of these.

Fer­ris Plock. Pieces cre­at­ed while in res­i­dence. Styled after ori­en­tal wood block prints and hang­ing scrolls but with mod­ern anom­alies — the croc­o­dile wears Keds.

Animation and Moving Images

One Wing Fly aka Y & M Nathan, Look under com­mer­cial work, there is a whole series of adverts that place a woman (real­ly beau­ti­ful) on a floor and have her “walk” through scenes. Poor­ly explained by me — utter­ly charm­ing in per­son. (Real­ly, good enough to war­rant a link into a flash-based site.)

Now off you go, it’s a busy week ahead.

Morning Linkage (Feb 4) Friday

Transportation

A con­cept bike should push an idea out beyond the run of the mill and what’s already on the show­room floor. Built for the imag­i­nary pur­pose of run­ning (the old ver­sion of) the Milan-Taranto endurance race and using such new-fangled com­po­nents as a tur­bo diesel engine and car­bon fiber wheels. What you get is Pao­lo di Giusti’s rad­i­cal sin­gle cylin­der Moto Guzzi.

I’m not sure I want to hear the word steam­punk applied to any motor­cy­cle let alone one that is sup­posed to be rid­able. And in fact I find the brass accents to be all wrong on this bike. But the idea of build­ing a cafe start­ing with the April­la RSV motor?  That makes me hap­py. And Welsh to boot. Taimoshan.

Science

Mur­phy is a right obnox­ious bas­tard, but he seems to have let loose of the NanoSail‑D solar sail project at last.  And, no, I did not know that the aim of the project is trash sweep­ing in low earth orbit either.

A video that demon­strates the pow­er of the pow­er of 10. By mov­ing out­ward from a square meter of an image of a nice cou­ple hav­ing a pic­nic in Chica­go and end­ing up at the every edges of human abil­i­ty to see into space in an image 100 mil­lion light years across.   Old IBM film but still rel­e­vant and still fun.

Art. images, and Design

Nice com­bos of sim­ple graph­ics and unso­phis­ti­cat­ed type. Steve Pow­ers explored the glo­ry and gory of rela­tion­ships on the walls of Philadel­phia. I’ve shown you sev­er­al of them before but this is my new favorite.

And now I’m lov­ing his “Dai­ly Met­al­ta­tion

This is as good as any place to start explor­ing the work of Dan Mount­ford. Dou­ble expo­sures made in the cam­era. The world before photoshop.

Animation and Moving Images

Chain-gang tap dance. Okay it’s a lit­tle hard to explain why two girls — the Holst Sis­ters — are tap danc­ing while attached at the ankle. But they’re good at it.

I have no idea who the band is or what the song is about or any of that — I don’t speak Japan­ese. But the music is cheery and vague­ly jazzy and the ani­ma­tion ranges from live­ly to over the top.

Morning Linkage (Feb 3) Thursday

Transportation

I love this Ducati cafe for no bet­ter rea­son than the brass bezeled clock. le sigh

This one is hard to post. Copen­hagen has a live­ly cus­tom scene with some of my favorite builders. Many of them not­ed the cat­a­stroph­ic fire that result­ed in loss of Frank’s one of their HD go-to parts sup­pli­ers. James posts some pho­tos of the after­math. Sad, haunt­ing, beau­ti­ful pictures.

Art, Images, and Design

More for the qual­i­ty of the pho­to­graph of the first piece than the oth­er pieces in the series. String on a wall in Raven­na IT. By Moneyless.

Cat­woman. (SFW) Yum. Ben­gal’s ver­sion is both coy and dark. Excel­lent com­bi­na­tion. More of Ben­gal. (NSFW)

Okay — these are just cute. And a lit­tle sil­ly. They’re all exam­ples of cre­at­ing a purpose-built device for what is a com­mon house­hold impro­vi­sa­tion. Orange rinds on the radi­a­tor, a small dish of cof­fee in the fridge… but the designs are min­i­mal and straight forward.

Animation and Moving Images

Nick Cross’s Pig Farmer. Vio­lent and trag­ic. (Video 5:05 NSFW or Chil­dren — real­is­tic vio­lence and squealing)

Morning Linkage (Feb 2)

Trans­porta­tion

The 2 door sta­tion wag­on (or is that 3 doors?) has always been a bit of an odd fish. But Fer­rari thinks that it’s the answer to the demand for a four seat super-car, the FF. And Pin­in­fa­ri­na can make just about any­thing beau­ti­ful. I think 12 cylin­ders is all the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion it needs. With Ferrari-in-the-snow video good­ness Woot!

I’m a total suck­er for Nick Clements videos. Pre­ten­tious as hell and too hip for their own cool. Still… pret­ty scenery, pret­ty bikes, and gor­geous cin­e­matog­ra­phy. Fea­tur­ing Cro Cus­tom’s BS1.  (Video)

Chopcult  pro­vides a fine set of images and info on the BS1 and the builder, Cro Cus­tom’s, site has a cou­ple of oth­er more typ­i­cal­ly chop­per bikes.

Arty inte­ri­or shots fea­tur­ing motor­cy­cles, and the bikes are for rent to use in your own shoots. The care­ful­ly dis­tressed Cross­bones is, well… actu­al­ly, a real­ly appeal­ing piece of rolling sculp­ture. Gen­try Day­ton is cre­ative direc­tor of EvaGentry.

Art, Images, and Design

Ray Cae­sar is one of the many painters cur­rent­ly doing pal­lid, big-headed girls in per­il. Much of a much­ness, except that once in a while he does some­thing that stops me dead. Like the sleigh and courtier in  Home­com­ing. (Par­don the hell­ish URLs — they are shortened ;)

View the full show, A Gen­tle Kind of Cru­el­ty, at Jonathan Levine Gallery’s web­site. (Some NSFW when zoomed)

Elab­o­rate­ly com­posed pho­tographs can go either way for me. Some are just noise, oth­ers like the first two of these from Simon Proc­tor’s Daystar series cap­ti­vate me. The videos cre­at­ed from the stills and oth­er ele­ments I’m very much on the fence about.

I’ve always loved the Burr puz­zles. Now there’s this… Burr tables!

More about the Burr puz­zles. (oh lordy that’s one seri­ous­ly ugly web­site but it’s all I’ve got…)

Moving Images, and Animation

Did you know that there was a Japan­ese ver­sion of the Flint­stones pro­duced in the 1980s? Nope, nei­ther did I. It’s a giggle.

Danc­ing robots… I said, Danc­ing Robots. New ident spots for (UK) Chan­nel 4’s, T4 pro­gram­ming. (Video and loud music)

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