Morning Linkage (Jun 28)

Transportation

One of the nec­es­sary but con­fus­ing parts of trav­el­ing is fig­ur­ing out the taxi sys­tem in var­i­ous coun­tries. How do I hail a taxi? Do I nego­ti­ate? Do I tip? Is it safe for sin­gle females? What the heck does a taxi look like any­way? In Japan they might just have one of these cute lit­tle signs on top. (Photo gallery nav­i­ga­tion challenge.)

Custom scoot­er. No clue. No com­ment. Well, okay, maybe that he should trim the tie-ties. Equally bizarre trans­la­tion of the web­site by Google here.

Previously men­tioned here for a video of a cus­tom bike arriv­ing at a tea cer­e­mo­ny (seri­ous­ly.) This new vid of cus­tom builder Shinya Kimura cap­tures the mood and atti­tude of the builder and his bikes. Pure Monday morn­ing inspi­ra­tion. My favorite of his bikes, for the moment. The Barracuda.

Maps

Thinking about air­space and air­space reg­u­la­tions. The  ref­er­enced arti­cle is good. The pro­posed “muse­um” is intriguing.

Mapping the degree of touristy. No, I did­n’t make that word up, some­one else did. Heat map of photo-tag fre­quen­cy gives you an idea how many cam­era tot­ing dweebs you are like­ly to encounter.

Art, Images, and Design

Tim Flach high­lights the exag­ger­at­ed, almost freak­ish, per­fec­tion of his sub­jects — show dogs, bats, and oth­er ani­mals. Watch the dog walk across the screen and then click on Portfolio. NSFW after image #38.

Cathy Gatland gives a quick look at the World Cup fever sweep­ing SA with a cou­ple of street cor­ner por­traits.

Animation

A nice set of black and white inter­fer­ence illu­sions. Soothing music.

Not real­ly ani­ma­tion but pup­pets. The coarse­ly vio­lent ori­gins of the mup­pets; Henson did ads for Wilkin’s Coffee. Poor Wontkins gets done-in in amaz­ing ways.

Off you go now…

Morning Linkage (Jun 23)

Sort of -

Linkage is on hia­tus while I deal with life, the uni­verse, and my back (again) But I haven’t for­got­ten you all entire­ly. Here are two nice, hap­py links for hump-day.

Another install­ment in the Smashing Magazine series on let­ter forms and cal­lig­ra­phy — this one fea­tur­ing Hebrew, Armenia, Mongolian, and Inuit among others.

I grew up with the work of Jim Flora, from the jazz album cov­ers that were a part of my child­hood to this friend­ly lit­tle car­toon. Mexican fire­works are the best!

Morning Linkage (Jun 16)

Transportation — Coming Attractions

Hand-crafters Morgan Motor com­pa­ny will be unveil­ing anoth­er sports car in August at Pebble Beach. So far all we have is a over­ly processed pho­to of a sil­hou­ette. The EvaGT. Might want.

Pretty girls and motor­cy­cles. In this case a love­ly Swedish builder and the quest to build the fastest elec­tric bike.

Builder’s Corner

Speaking of build­ing things. One of the sweet­est tools you can have in any shop that works with met­al is a Beverly Shear. On the Most Wanted list of every sil­ver­smith and anoth­er case of the real deal being worth the real dollars.

Art, Images, and Design

Turn of the (last) cen­tu­ry design can feel utter­ly mod­ern even 100 years lat­er. This serv­ing bas­ket by German sil­ver­smith Josef Hoffman is a fine example

Seems I’m on a cut the mate­r­i­al to make the design roll so, die-cut but­ter­fly sil­hou­ettes. Black and orange. Very luxe choco­late packaging.

Photographs of Places

From the Big Picture. Argentina cel­e­brates her bicen­ten­ni­al. Color, motion, pageantry, mem­o­ry. (Yes it’s a lit­tle late but dang — fine images.)

Dry glass plate neg­a­tives. An old fash­ioned, out of date, archa­ic medi­um for cap­tur­ing pho­tographs. And that might be a cry­ing shame. I dare you to click ‘View full size’ below this pho­to­graph of the Westinghouse Air-Brake plant from 1905. Be pre­pared to scroll across your multi-monitor set­up to see all the detail. Dear god, you can count the bricks.

off to be not working

Morning Linkage (Jun 15)

(Confused) Transportation Options

A Smart Car mon­ster truck. If any­one ever asks you to define the term twee oxy­moron — show them this pic­ture. Srlsy. And there’s video. More hap­pi­ly there’s a post over at Men’s Mentore about race car trans­porters from the 50’s. Lord, are these fab­u­lous look­ing. An El Camino car­ry­ing an open wheel rac­er and a swoopy round haunched Mercedes with a fro­mu­la car on the back. Swoon. I need­ed a moto pic­ture for this morn­ing’s links so I went to the big buck­et of trans­porta­tion RSS feeds and there this was — right on the top

.

Literature and Culture.

It’s sum­mer — we all need some­thing to read at the beach. But how to choose a sum­mer win­ner? Um, maybe ask the writer who penned your favorite book? William Gibson weighs in on sci-fi and Peter Cary gives you his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, along with 4 oth­ers. Propaganda mate­r­i­al of the ages is a rich source of visu­al inspi­ra­tion. Meant to grab and jerk the view­er from a dis­tance with­out much con­sid­er­a­tion for sub­tle­ty. Smashing gives us a look at 100 years of his­to­ry and some of the best and worst exam­ples. Judging the images and their effec­tive­ness with­out con­sid­er­ing the mes­sages is an try­ing exer­cise in design mind.

Art, Images, and Design

Science Television is Gianmarco Magnani. A design­er and print mak­er. His two cur­rent series of prints, Villains and Riders, and  Forgotten Monarchy bring spot col­or and line work to the fore. Vaguely ani­me inspired, girls and motos. Can’t miss. Paper and paint mixed with bits of toy-train set world-building goods. Landscape through the eyes of Gregory Euclide. Danny St. (saint) takes pic­tures in Singapore. Street pic­tures that pro­vide por­traits of the peo­ple and place. This gallery gives some of the hun­dreds of won­der­ful images.

Animation

Group ther­a­py for naughty lit­tle un-deads. Okay, it’s called Nosferatu Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. You fig­ure it out.

Noisy, Smoky, Generally Bad

Bejamin Gudel (from a cou­ple of days ago) has a nice new web­site.  But you have got to seri­ous­ly admire a guy who includes a link to this animated/audio-ated mess of a 2007 web­site. Healthy sense of humor, or mor­bid self fla­gel­la­tion. You make the call. (Moving parts, noise, and an obscene tat­too) NSFW

Tea drunk, links up, next … plumb­ing — urk.