Morning Linkage (Jul 16)

Transportation

Built as a cus­tom in 1936 this Henderson is Art-Deco in all it’s black, shiny, curvy, swoop­ing glo­ry. Just don’t look at the last shot of the bike being rid­den — it’s actu­al­ly an ungain­ly midget. Le sigh.

For the junior set or aspir­ing moto design­ers and col­orists. The Ducati col­or­ing book. Print and scribble.

Nice bike. Wicked graph­ics. Matching hel­met. Royal Enfield.

1938 OEC Commander. Today’s looker.

Tools

These lit­tle handy things come up every Christmas in the Lee Valley tools cat­a­log. A bet­ter pock­et screw­driv­er. No more hop­ing that the dime fits in the slot or that a quar­ter will give you enough grip­ping pow­er for that stub­born bolt.

Food and Design

The idea of a gourmet scoop­ing ketchup is, well, so damned food­ie. And the pack­ag­ing plays just the right note.

It’s fresh fruit and veg­etable time. Most pro­duce now arrives at the gro­cery store in anony­mous, waxed card­board crates, but that was­n’t always so. Animalarium gives us a help­ing of the clever­est ani­mal themed labels. Tons more.

Art, Images, and Design

More from Yuko. The illus­tra­tions from The Beautiful and the Grotesque are enough to make you buy the book. The jack­et back blurb will clinch the deal.

Not sure who or what just yet, but this is fab abstract street art from Italy.

Anywhere but here (Houston.)

New images for Edward Gorey’s Ghastly Crumb Tinies and a cou­ple of new tinies. (One of these is NSFW if you squint real hard.)

Total Weirdness (and hotness)

Somehow you all seemed to have missed the “hot viral awe­some­ness” of the Old Spice Campaign; maybe that’s for the best. That’s okay, I watched a bunch for you. And so did the love­ly dudes and dudettes at TwoWheels. The open­er (with the bike at the end)  and a cou­ple of the bike based call and response replies. Oh, yes I do want to be some­one’s  sen­su­al bike friend of romance.

http://www.bikeexif.com/oec-commander

Morning Linkage (Jul 15)

Transportation

Accessibility. Even to the world of eXtreme sports. Joven De La Vega has designed a high­ly mobile wheel­chair for grind­ing it out at the local skate park. The design­ers full set of images, but no video yet.

Moto Beta 125 from back of the shed to pret­ty darn nice week­end toodler.

Swoon. New Ducati of my dreams.

Tools and Tech

The mushy-sweet pos­si­bil­i­ties of this loca­tion aware bracelet awe­some. Because home is a spe­cial place.

Robots

Of all the animal-like robots that I’ve seen none has cap­ti­vat­ed me with as much charm as this blocky tur­tle. Who knew this much sweet could be made out of black bake­lite cubes.

Art, Images and Design

Possibly the worst web­site nav­i­ga­tion ever. All because I was hop­ing to find more of these intri­cate­ly carved tire car­cass­es.

The artist is new to me, but who can argue with laugh­ing kites on a wall in Sao Paulo.

A pho­to jour­ney around the dis­ap­pear­ing America. As always, road trip and pho­tog­ra­phy are meant for each oth­er. Interview with pho­tog­ra­ph­er Micheal Eastman about his series Vanishing America.

Ed Emberley start­ed so many kids on the road to being illus­tra­tors and car­toon­ists. Now Scion has put togeth­er an exhib­it of his work and the work of some of the many artists who learned to draw from his books. There’s a dar­ling trail­er for the exhi­bi­tion included.

’til tomor­row my dears,

Morning Linkage (Jul 14)

Transportation

We seem to be on a things-that-drive-themselves kick. But how about a thing that makes dri­ving using non-visual clues possible?

So this guy start­ed out to restore a NX650. But he got side­tracked by the pos­si­bil­i­ties hint­ed at by the naked frame. Lovely first go at a cus­tom bike. The crowds loved it and the builder post­ed more pho­tos.

If you have milling machines, spare bil­let, and some cre­ative tal­ent you can spend the time you’re not milling back­ing plate adapters build­ing this awe­some toy car. I’d love a set of the knurled tita­ni­um salt and pep­per shak­ers as well.

Science

Cosmology and Cosmogony are eter­nal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. Both the cur­rent attempts to deter­mine and define the shape of the uni­verse, and the his­to­ry and anthro­pol­o­gy of all mankind’s pre­vi­ous world views. io9 recent­ly fea­tured a love­ly graph­ic of a Jewish cos­mol­o­gy cre­at­ed by Micheal Paukner and I went explor­ing his flickr stream. Wow. Great graph­ics, inter­est­ing com­men­tary, and *foot­notes*!

Food

Fried avo­ca­do. I can not imag­ine any­thing bet­ter at a late evening sum­mer BBQ with a nice crisp lager.

The fine folks at the Kitch’n found the ulti­mate kitchen island in the tool sec­tion at Costco. I already have a kitchen island, but I don’t have an out­door kitchen island. Yet.

Art, Images, and Design

A walk through many years of book cov­er design. Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mocking Bird is still in print. And has been pub­lished with some love­ly sen­si­tive cov­ers and some real disasters.

If this was on your walk to work every morn­ing you prob­a­bly would­n’t notice it for the first cou­ple of days. But every day after that these lit­tle peo­ple would make you smile. Even in the rain

Animation

From Shasta W. Very fun­ny ani­mat­ed Dutch retail web­site. Probably not going to be a repeat buy­er though. (music and crash­ing noises)

alright then my dears, off you go

Morning Linkage (Jul 13)

Transportation

Destroying land­mines before they destroy you. Introducing the Assault Breacher Vehicle.  Video at the bot­tom. (Typically trag­ic choice of sound tracks.)

The VFR1200F. Any review that starts with the Ohlins tech at the track laughing…

I“m bet­ting that a num­ber of you will feel a lit­tle wisp of nos­tal­gia when you look at this shiny restored Hodaka.

Airport shut­tle, moto park­ing comes to France. Gear lock­ers, dis­count­ed price, and a ride to the ter­mi­nal. Anyone in Seattle got a chunk of land near Sea-Tac? Okay — maybe a bet­ter idea in LA.

Science

Undersea crea­tures fas­ci­nate me. I have no idea why and I don’t think I want your opin­ions on the mat­ter either. Some more portraits.

Food

Salsa verde the way I’ve seen it made in Mexico. Yummy recipe and presentation.

Art, Images, and Design

Once used to trun­dle those ter­ri­ble, not real­ly food meals down the aisles of air­planes, these trol­leys are refur­bished and cov­er­ing in decals to make hip stor­age objects.

Food stored in draw­ers with elec­tron­ic wiz­ardry. It’s kinds cool to think that draw­ers might be bet­ter than cup­boards for food. (Even if this is just a reefer concept.)

From Coilhouse — a new take on the Japanese Floating Worlds tra­di­tion of paint­ing. This is what re-visioning of old­er forms should look like.

Just because I’ve already done ten­ta­cles this morn­ing; I think I’ll add this col­lec­tion of squid images from Animalarium.

Paul Lung’s por­traits are mas­ter works of per­cep­tion. You want to meet each one of the peo­ple he’s drawn. (Done with a.5mm mechan­i­cal pen­cil — I can’t find a ref­er­ence to the hard­ness of the lead he uses.)

James Dean. Because it’s that kind of day and I’m feel­ing the girl­friend love.

Morning Linkage (Jul 9)

It’s been a good week on the inter­net and there are just too many things still to share with you all. So dig in for a good hour or two.

Transportation

A recent con­ver­sa­tion with the moto-heads of my acquain­tance ques­tioned the nature of some of Ducati’s recent crop of “spe­cial edi­tion bikes.” Here’s a look at one of the real™ clas­sics.

I don’t know whether to be offend­ed, amused, or heart­ened by this look at the role of women in the design of auto­mo­biles. I dis­agree with the state­ment that you don’t need to be a gear-head to be good, but only if you allow for gear-head to cov­er more ground than just a fas­ci­na­tion with  cylin­der head shape and  rebound cal­cu­la­tions. I hes­i­tate to admit that the most appeal­ing image in the sto­ry is the “Damsels of Design” lined up with Harley Earl. Oh, and the head­line writer should be pelt­ed with pow­der puffs.

You can go look up the his­to­ry and all that if you’d like. I’ll just sit qui­et­ly and look. Megola.

Unclassifiable

Oh you’re a div­er, how cool is that? Um, maybe not so cool if you are Carlos Barrios Orta and your job is to keep the sew­ers of Mexico City flowing.

… and the nation­al geo­graph­ic video here (not safe for lunch)

Science

Freezing tis­sue sam­ples at the American Museum of Natural History. The Ambrose Monell Cryo Collection. Bet you did­n’t know that AMNH had so many kinds of collections.

Remember the Giant Spider Crab shed­ding it’s shell from the oth­er day? Here’s a nice Nat Geo gallery fea­tur­ing him and some of his deep ocean liv­ing bud­dies. Starting with the apt­ly named Fang Tooth Fish. OMG, and there’s a Vampire Squid. The usu­al Nat Geo high qual­i­ty photography.

Food

Candy specif­i­cal­ly designed to be shared.

A brief look at the process of hand rais­ing apples in Japan. We’ve all mar­veled at the per­fect­ly pre­sent­ed ide­al fruit in Japanese gro­ceries, these bas­kets and trays are meant for giv­ing as a gift. Jane Alden has pho­tographed the farm­ers and their orchards.

Art, Images, and Design

Jane Alden’s own web­site fea­tures a less peace­ful but utter­ly com­pelling essay World War I on the Tears of Stone.

A cou­ple of point­ers to the art of Kodomo no kuni, a Japanese chil­dren’s mag­a­zine pub­lished in the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. From the gallery of illus­tra­tions I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the work of Takei Takeo and Onchi Koshiro. (Click on the list icon under the pic­tures to see a list of all the illus­tra­tors.) Some gen­er­al infor­ma­tion about the mag­a­zine is also given.

Summer arrived quite sud­den­ly a cou­ple of days ago and I want this instant Popsicle mak­er. Now where did I see that cit­rus cool­er pop recipe? The one with the vod­ka in it?

Video

Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle. If you don’t want to see this… I’m going to won­der about your taste in vio­lence. RED the trail­er is up.