Morning Linkage (May 4)

Transportation

Truly bizarre build from a CBR1000F. Top notch fab­ri­ca­tion qual­i­ty, stun­ning­ly ugly design, and it’s orange.

Every kids dream — work­ing on the rail­way. Children’s rail­ways in east­ern Europe.  Follow the links for more “I can’t believe I’m too old” envy.

Pretty bike — ele­gant, under­stat­ed, and vague­ly sin­is­ter. CB550.

Science and Tech

Well, sci­ence fic­tion actu­al­ly. The most awe­some inven­tion yet. WETA legs — A pair of leg exten­sions that allows the wear­er to have “demon” legs. Kim Grahams invent­ed these in Seattle and is now work­ing on pro­duc­tion mod­els for WETA (the film com­pa­ny) in New Zealand. Tons of video and an exten­sive inter­view. Do Want. but so does every­one else.

Art, Images, and Design

A hand­ful of bird pho­tos — the Winners of the WeLoveBirds.org pho­to con­test. The pair of Great Blue Herons will knock your socks off.

I’m not sure why you’d want a sin­gle flower appear­ing to grow out of your din­ing room table. But if you did this is a quick inge­nious way to have one.

Alison Wright has been pho­tograph­ing Tibet since 1988. The NYT Lens blog brings us 19 of her pic­tures of the nomads. Traditional horse­men are rapid­ly tak­ing to the motor­cy­cle as a means of transportation.

Animation

I know you’ll remem­ber the work of Al Jarnow. You may not know his name but if you grew up on Public tele­vi­sion in the gold­en age you’ve seen his work. Look at this trail­er for the DVD com­pi­la­tion Celestial Navigations.

anoth­er day, anoth­er cup of coffee

Morning Linkage (May 3)

Transportation

Apparently things are lit­tle dif­fer­ent in GT rac­ing in Japan. Anime fran­chis­es spon­sor cars paint­ed like space ships, dri­vers wear suits pat­terned after offi­cers uni­forms and the ‘race queens’ look like cos-players. Evangelion gets the treatment.

It’s not all Evangelion and Gundams. Run’a did Toy Story. (It’s worth run­ning this through Google trans­late of Babble Fish. The dri­ver is a fun­ny guy.

Speaking of car­toons: Are you cool enough for the Dark Knight? Yup, they’re back — for a lim­it­ed time you can get your very own, per­son­al, cus­tom craft­ed, bat­man moto gear.

Closer to home and bit more real: A nice, very cus­tom, Harley flat-tracker. Lots of build info too.

Society, Culture, and Literature

There’s a new esti­mate of the dol­lar val­ue of fair use: $4.7 tril­lion. Google’s pol­i­cy blog sum­ma­rizes and points to the full PDF. I’ve been wait­ing for the con­tent car­tels to pro­vide some counter points argu­ing against the num­bers giv­en here. I haven’t seen them. Hmmm.

Art, Images, and Design

Shoes and fan­ta­sy pho­tog­ra­phy No, it’s not what you think it is. These are images cre­at­ed by Khuong Nguyen for Louboutin’s Fall-Winter 2010 fash­ion mag­a­zine ads.

Free-form blocks, in bright col­ors and pat­terns. Alberto Garcia makes com­mer­i­cal illos in Spain. Check out the Red Hot Chili Peppers CD art.

Paper quilling is an old fash­ioned art. Something for maid­en aunts to do in the kitchen on week­nights. Or the young Russian, Yulia Brodskaya, to cre­ate for Starbucks and Nokia to use in some very cheery and col­or­ful adver­tise­ments.

Animation

You might want to turn the sound off after the first minute of so — the music does­n’t get any bet­ter — but def­i­nite­ly watch the video all the way through. Yes, your print­er is haunt­ed :-) (Sound)

Morning Linkage (Apr 29)

Transporation

A col­lec­tion of SR400 and SR500 videos. These high­ly mod­i­fi­able sin­gles are the start­ing point for tons of cus­toms in Japan. Now in addi­tion a to the work on the bike — it seems that you have to make a rid­ing video. Kick start bike, cruise the neigh­bor­hood, hit the under­pass, have your bud­dy take lots of shaky close­ups of your pants pock­ets :-D But you real­ly want to spend time with the SR500 built by trouthunter. It’s the nicest build doc­u­men­tary I’ve seen. (Video #4 — Music)

Amir Glinik draws CGI bikes that you can hear rum­bling in your brows­er. Swear to God.  This ‘45 Harley can be had in either red or white. Luscious.

The fel­lows at Jamesville (that’d be James) have moved a lit­tle out of the cus­tom bike field to work on a 1936 Ford Coupe. Maybe I read too many R. Crumb car­toons as teenag­er but these always give the gig­gles. It’s a beau­ti­ful job.

Science

Very nifty opti­cal illu­sion. You’ll see a spi­ral but it’s not there. I’m not sure how it’s done, some­thing about the background.
There are a ton more exam­ples here. and some explanations.

Art, Images, and Design

Insects and dew. Macro pho­tos of the bejew­eled denizens of a world we over­look every morning.

I’m not sure where to go with these, a mutant bio­log­i­cal dystopia. Line and sim­ple col­ors cre­ate charm­ing night­mares. (Fernando Hereñú (AKA Pulpo)

Similarly, not-quite human char­ac­ters but full of whim­sy and bright col­ors. Happy robots liv­ing in a hap­py world drawn by lit­tle kong.

keep calm and car­ry on…

Morning Linage (Apr 28)

Transportation

Simple and sweet. The RD350 as cafe racer.

Rat scoot­ers. There are a cou­ple of home­ly lit­tle items in this col­lec­tion that I would hap­pi­ly take home and shine up. And a WTF or two.

I remain uncon­vinced, but there are folks who think this clip from a dyno test of the MotoCzysz D1-10 proves that elec­tric bikes will make cool nois­es. I think it sounds like cat­a­stroph­ic bear­ing  fail­ure in the main gen­er­a­tor house at Hoover Dam.

Society and Culture

Fabulously obscene blues song by Lucille Bogan from 1935 proves that mod­ern music has always been degen­er­ate. Shave Em Dry. NSFW

I care very much about the future of comics, car­toons, and ani­ma­tion. The old mod­el of polar oppo­sites (Marvel comics vs xerox­ed ‘zines) is giv­ing way to new­er pos­si­bil­i­ties at points in between. Options that allow cre­ators to earn a liv­ing at a small­er scale than was pos­si­ble before. From wikipedia a list of “self-supporting’ web comics. Brave folks tak­ing big risks. And some of them are damned fun­ny too

Art, Images, and Design

I’m not sure what it means when a woman begins to paint her­self as a young boy. The results of Julie Heffernan’s exper­i­ments are deep, com­plex, and hyp­not­ic. Romanticism gone wrong. It’s worth spend­ing time with her oth­er paint­ings as well. (NSFW artis­tic nudes)

Modern hero. 38 of your favorite super heroes depict­ed in mod­ern angu­lar glo­ry. Unfortunately they are no longer avail­able as prints. le freakin’ sigh.

Black and White image of the day. Lyn Fontane and Alfred Lunt — laid back and louche — with a side of wiener dog.

so it goes…

Morning Linkage (Apr 27)

Transportation

Is this real­ly what it says it is? A Vincent drag rac­er? New or old? Dang I love this site for the pics but they have less info than BikeEXIF. Though the loca­tion is ID’d in the comments.

We’ve all seen the city bus­es and the occa­sion­al hum­mer cov­ered in vinyl graph­ics adver­tis­ing some­thing — usu­al­ly an ener­gy drink. But those cus­tom wrap­pers are com­ing to a car near you. Going to be pop­u­lar with the smug-mobile crowd… and the lit­tle urban deliv­ery van folks.

5 great shots of the best play­ing around at desert rac­ing at  Ocotilla Wells, CA. Click to en-biggen.

Science

Wild-life pho­tog­ra­phy gets a new gad­get. Beetlecam - a low to the ground view from Africa. Camera, track dri­ven plat­form (the size of a rab­bit), and a warn­ing about things that might be mis­tak­en for a cat toy.

Money

Using flash on your web­site is often scorned as being inac­ces­si­ble and point­less­ly com­plex for no val­ue, but it can be well done. For exam­ple: The $100 bill is has been redesigned and new ver­sions will begin to cir­cu­late in Feb of 2011. You can check out all of the new fea­tures of the $100 bill in this inter­ac­tive app. (Note the easy to link to URL.)

Art, Images, and Design

Richard Kirk’s work is best summed up by the quote that he uses on his front page. “there is no beau­ty that hath not some strange­ness in the pro­por­tion” Sir Frances Bacon (1625) Thin, ethe­re­al, twig­gy human ‑botan­i­cal cross breeds.

Super sat­u­rat­ed pho­tographs. Vivid col­or­ing that push­es the fall into the dere­lic­tion to the foreground.

Micheal Quigg has a good eye for less beat­en down images as well.  This pho­to of anoth­er pho­tog­ra­ph­er and her grand­child in his cher­ry blos­soms Flicker set warms the heart.

now get moving…