Morning Linkage (Jan 4)

Transportation

KZ400 by Mad Crow in Barcelona. The head­light and tank details make it special.

There are many things to like about this Wrenchmonkees Ducati 750ss. The frame treat­ment, the col­ors, and the front clip.

I nev­er can quite seem to wrap my mind around the idea of a bike called a Virago. But the front end of this XV750 brings me pret­ty close to what I think it should be. On the oth­er hand, no Virago I’ve ever met had such a tee­ny inef­fec­tu­al rear end.

Science

What is the evo­lu­tion­ary pur­pose of tick­ling? An incred­i­bly impor­tant ques­tion whose answer remains a mys­tery. (And whose impor­tance is total­ly poo-poo’d by the spoil-sport commenters. )

Art, Images, and Design

The idea of deliv­er­ing teach­ing mate­ri­als as a sec­ondary use of the card­board box the food aid rice came in is … well I don’t know, either inspired or con­de­scend­ing. With some thought and effort this could work very well. More com­mer­cial­ly, Amazon should jump on this  — imag­ine a box to ship toys in that turns into a toy.

Scary octo­pus but not in the way you expect. A col­lec­tion of plas­tic bags and oth­er trash takes on new life mean­der­ing through the streets of Slovenia.

The char­ac­ter ani­ma­tions in first per­son shoot­ers make me wince every time I see one. But some of the vehi­cle and weapon designs are first-rate. Like these from Damnation. Several nice guns and a bonus of a bike and a trike at the end. Winter build project anyone?

Animation

Information is Beautiful is branch­ing out into ani­ma­tion as a tech­nique for the visu­al dis­play of infor­ma­tion. Here is a Tetris inspired retelling of the world’s spend­ing habits. Debtris. This first effort gets an A for being infor­ma­tive and a D for the sound track. Watch, but turn the speak­ers down.

Morning Linkage (Dec 20)

Transportation

KZ400, El Diablo by Mad Crow in Barcelona. The details on the head­light and tank make it special.

Hedton. A rare Hedlund engine crow­barred into a Norton(?) frame. Includes links to the Hedlund engine sto­ry and a flickr stream of Hedlund motos.

Odd-bits bicy­cle sculp­ture. A Monday morn­ing smile.

Science and Technology

Yeah, soci­ol­o­gy is a soft sci­ence but wth. Why a lim­it­ed lev­el of cor­rup­tion among offi­cials and law enforce­ment may be nec­es­sary to the cohe­sive­ness of society.

Something to mull over. this map of the world shows the heav­i­ly walled nation­al and inter­na­tion­al bor­ders. Are we walling off the rest of the world? And can you think of oth­er heav­i­ly for­ti­fied bor­ders and how do they fit into this map?

Art, Images, and Design

Thomas Allen brings pulp fic­tion paper­backs to life by mov­ing the sub­jects out of the flat plain of the cov­er. Artist bio.

A sam­ple of the work of Hermann Huppen — one of the rare breed of writer/illustrators in the world of comics. Some of the Jeremiah series fea­tured here are avail­able in English translation.

Animation

Headless Productions. Teaser for I’m a Monster. It’s going to be a first-rate fam­i­ly giggle.

Morning Linkage (Dec 17)

Transportation

It start­ed with see­ing the pho­to of a team of rac­ers in front of a BA Air Ferry on one of the ran­dom bike pic blogs. And went on from there until I came to this full report on the 1967 Zandvoort Sprint. Photos, videos, and lots of words.

Oh if only he had roughed up the front forks. Just a lit­tle. It would be a per­fect rat. Or near enough. XS650.

Initially mis­named but now cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fied. I just like that this Norton looks so hap­py to sit­ting out there wait­ing it’s turn.

Science

My world has just became a sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter place. I now know that it has pale­o­mag­netists in it. Scientists who study the his­to­ry of the changes of the earth­’s mag­net­ic field. And now they’ve dis­cov­ered some unprece­dent­ed­ly rapid shifts that occurred about 3000 years ago. By study­ing the mag­net­ic sig­na­tures of heaps of slag left over from smelt­ing cop­per in the Middle East.

Order breaks down into dis­or­der in a very order­ly way. Video demon­strat­ing an aspect of non-linear physics.

Art, Images, and Design

Old hard dri­ves. New toys. And then there are the pic­tures of the lit­tle guys tak­ing the machines apart. Joy.

A reminder that the Space Needle was once new, and that graph­ic design in the ear­ly 60’s had some moments of brilliance.

Weekend DIY cam­era rigs for tak­ing high-speed, super close, mul­ti­ple expo­sures, or just look at the amaz­ing pictures. 

…he want­ed to cap­ture fly­ing insects, such as the hon­ey­bee above. “I have a prob­lem with killing them, plus they don’t fly when they’re dead,”

as well as but­ter­fly wing scales and mag­net­ic ferrofluids.

Animation

TeamCerf’s Meet Buck illus­trates the exis­ten­tial… um, shows fol­ly as… er, … it’s fun­ny, okay?

Morning Linkage (Dec 16)

Transportation

Electric-Spoofaloo. Tron Angry Birds. ‘Nuff said.

A medi­a­tion on what makes the Nurburgring spe­cial. It’s his­to­ry and it’s cre­ation in an era when rac­ing was about rac­ing and not prod­uct place­ment. Bonus shots of the ear­li­est con­struc­tion work.

Even the track maps had more charm back in the day. Le Mans ’55

Dubious Theories

Spencil Borchard has at least as cred­i­ble set of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries as any of the oth­er freaks out there get­ting air time. Moon gophers indeed.

History

Last year, when I was on walk-about, I drove down the Ohio River from my home town (Pittsburgh) to the con­flu­ence with the Mississippi. There was noth­ing, or damn near noth­ing when I got there. The state park was closed and the road to the point washed out. So I crossed the riv­er and head­ed into Cairo, IL. I did not stop, I did not get out, and I did not take any pic­tures. You can prob­a­bly fig­ure out why by hav­ing a look at this small col­lec­tion of pic­tures tak­en by peo­ple who did stop.

And if you won­der how a once thriv­ing indus­tri­al town could have end­ed up in this state you can spend some time with the Reddit thread mentioned.

Art, Images, and Design

I like old fash­ioned sil­hou­ettes and I think this updat­ed ver­sion of the cutout sil­hou­ette may just have to find a place on one of my walls. Though I may have to use some oth­er mate­r­i­al for the back­ground as these are a bit twee.

How to make some­one else’s words your own. Tree of Codes is the text of The Street of Crocodiles remade. Die cut pages with most of their words stripped away allow a new nar­ra­tive to emerge. Pictures, a video of the cre­ator, and can­did reac­tions from read­ers when they open the book. (Yes I bought a copy imme­di­ate­ly after see­ing the vids.)

Animation

You know I love ani­ma­tion but who has the time and resources to get the soft­ware or buy the cam­eras and learn the rou­tines. What if all you need­ed was google docs? Seriously, three guys, three days, 450 pages. All google docs.

Morning Linkage (Dec 15)

Transportation

3 from Asphalt and Rubber this AM.

I seem to be all about the black bikes late­ly. And Ducati has got­ten the mes­sage. The dis­as­trous­ly white Diavel has got­ten a pre-release make-over and now comes in a much yum­mi­er Diamond Black. More rid­ing, less polishing.

And Aprilia has the per­fect Xmas gift for your fav boy-racer. The RSV4 car­bon fiber fair­ing kit. Perfect if you’re a bit more flush than most of us. 5K? Srsly? Damned pret­ty though.

I can­not explain the pic that goes with this post. Other than to assume that I am not the only who could use an appetite sup­pres­sant dur­ing the hol­i­day (over) feed­ing sea­son. But the news appears to be real. Paris Hilton has flung a bunch of mon­ey at a cred­i­ble 125GP team.

Toys and Maps

The unfor­tu­nate­ly named Fuck Yeah Cartography tum­blr. Many , many pages of maps. Some clever, some odd, some cheesy, some more art than maps. Links to the sources vary in their use­ful­ness but some lead on to won­der­lands of images and history.

It was inevitable. Foodie Lego. A vil­lage bak­ery and Parisian green gro­cers. I’m not sure the local four-year old is gonna be pleased to see either of these under the tree instead of the next Star Wars set, but I’m going to have a great time on Xmas.

Art. Images, and Design

A love­ly print of a line of pranc­ing dev­ils. Matt Forsythe.

Episode One — Robots in film. The usu­al sus­pects from the ear­ly days are here. Maria, Gort, Robbie. And few that are new to me. Tobor? He looks like fun.

Fruit and Veggie Alphadeath. Maybe a few too many deaths by knife but there’s not many oth­er ways you can mur­der an egg­plant. (Click through to flickr)

Animation

Made for Moleskine by Rogier Wieland. Cut paper ani­ma­tion of dates in a plan­ner. Bonus dinosaur appear­ance. (1:07 — the sound track is grat­ing and you don’t need it)