Morning Linkage (Apr 26)

Transportation

There is very lit­tle infor­ma­tion on the bike in this pic­ture but the set­ting — BBQ and the pho­tos are nice. A Ducati cafe rac­er. But which one?  The paint looks real­is­ti­cal­ly, well, rough. But would some­one please aim the headlight?

I’ll make it 2‑fer Guzzi Monday

Moto Guzzi Le Mans — sub­tle silver.

Moto Guzzi Condor — arrest me red.  Mind bog­gling mechanicals.

Science and Pretty Girls

What are we cut­tle­fish? Isabella Rossellini is back with more paper cre­ations and crea­tures to explain the world of sex­u­al repro­duc­tion. Seduce Me sea­son 1 begins with — Cuttlefish.

Food

How to eat a cup­cake. I know you think you don’t need instruc­tions. You need these instructions.

More cup­cakes. Cupcakes, cup­cakes, cup­cakes. Been done to death so what can I pos­si­bly have come up with that would jus­ti­fy anoth­er post on cup­cakes? Muppet wed­ding cake — that’s what.

Art, Images, and Design

Any of you that have been involved in the com­mer­cial design world will remem­ber, fond­ly or not, crits. Well, here’s one you might have enjoyed par­tic­i­pat­ing in. The sum­ma­ry of couch forts as archi­tec­ture.

John Burge makes inti­mate por­traits in either water­col­or or oil. Old school paint­ing. Just like life, some images are NSFW.

Yuko Shimizu is draw­ing for Vertigo (DC Comics) again, anoth­er cov­er for Unwritten. This stand­alone edi­tion deliv­ers a fairy-tale world with a dark preda­tor. As usu­al her post has lots of in process scans of the work, some edi­to­r­i­al changes, and snaps of her visu­al ref­er­ence material.

march­ing on…

Morning Linkage (Apr 23)

Transportation

Don’t let the URL fool you. It’s a groovy Norton. For real? Dear lord, that’s way too much flower for me.

Have $10K lying around? You might want to head over to the Duc deal­er and get one of these, and a mocha. 2011 Duc Monster 796. Yum.

Honda goes two-wheel elec­tric. Japan only mod­el the EV-neo. Available for lease at the end of the year. A new busi­ness mod­el for the prob­lem of rapid­ly devel­op­ing elec­tric vehi­cle tech mak­ing this year’s mod­el obso­lete before you’ve fin­ished mak­ing the payments.

Science

The role of Asia’s some­times mas­sive spring dust storms in the weath­er of the Pacific Northwest.

Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher taught at Stanford University at the turn of the last cen­tu­ry. Her work includ­ed in depth stud­ies of wom­en’s sex­u­al atti­tudes in the late 19th cen­tu­ry. Work that remained buried in the Stanford archives until 1973.

Art, Images, and Design

21 con­dom ads you won’t see here in the United States of Puritan. Some of these are damned fun­ny. (Love the water bot­tles — sub­tle and would fit right into a Seattle mag­a­zine, what with our ded­i­ca­tion to the sport­ing life.)

Dumfries Scotland. A land­scape whose plants are irrel­e­vant. Stone and met­al objects that visu­al­ize the basic tenets of math and physics. Utterly nerd cool.

Strong lines and vibrant col­ors makes Julie Oakley one of my favorite urban sketchers.

and that’s that…
see you next week.

Morning Linkage (Apr 22)

Transportation

Hello Kitty tank — is there noth­ing that can not be made more
ridicu­lous with the addi­tion of pink paint and that evil feline?

I have a soft spot for Scramblers. Maybe I’m just old school that way.
This one belongs to some guy named Mike — he’s work­ing his way through
his ’06 doing the lit­tle mods that make a good bike great.

BikeEXIF gets it wrong again. And BikeEXIF’s read­ers do the spade work to iden­ti­fy the “Triumph” as most like­ly a BSA and the name of the cus­tom shop that built this chal­leng­ing­ly shiny bobber.

For those of you in the mar­ket for a new desk­top wall paper, there’s a Turkish KTM ad here might do. Depending on your office culture ;-)

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Literature

Japan is awash in the pulp paper ver­sions of man­ga. Here’s a wry use of the result­ing waste stream. I don’t think this farm­ing tech­nique will scale but the idea of putting seeds into the detri­tus of imag­i­na­tion pleas­es me.

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Science

We’ve all been oohing and aahing over the pho­tos of the erup­tion of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland. But there are storms right here at home (well Kansas and Nebraska) that offer equal­ly stun­ning photo-ops. This gallery from 2004 is par­tic­u­lar­ly choice.

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Art, Images, and Design

Bansksy’s movie “Exit Through the Gift Shop” gets a big­ger open­ing soon. Pieces of his art are show­ing up in LA.
This park­ing sign and this cop with a use­less K‑9 unit in an aban­doned park­ing garage. (video has music but not awful music) but then this hap­pened:

Exit Through the Gift Shop trail­er here.  Opens April 23 in Seattle.

and that my dears is anoth­er day…

Morning Linkage (Apr 20)

Transportation

Very pret­ty bicy­cles.

A love­ly, par­tial­ly built out Triumph Scrambler. Clean look­ing and I like the low­er look.

One of the women in my stone set­ting class is Austrian. We had a gig­gle the oth­er day nam­ing Austrian motor­cy­cle com­pa­nies that no one else in the class had ever heard of — all of them — and then rem­i­nisc­ing about the lit­tle Puch mope­ds.

Some damned sil­ly stunt­ing on 99 between Eugene and Junction City. In, um, 1938. Sweetness. (Music)

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Food and Packaging

Chocolate is good. The odd­ly uneven break-lines on the Bold bar are fun. The orange peel in dark choco­late just begs for taste test­ing. The white choco­late with green tea is utter­ly unap­pe­tiz­ing even if the pack­age is pretty.

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Art, Images, and Design

Illustrator Iv Irlov’s work is famil­iar to many mag­a­zine read­ers. Here’s a selec­tion of his most recent images. I love the stomp­ing robots he did for CEO Magazine.

Reading is dan­ger­ous. Just how dan­ger­ous is shown in these post­cards from Joost Swarte. Happy Tin-Tin feel­ing to the images.

I have no idea what’s tem­po­rary about Gideon Chase’s tem­po­rary blog but I love his work. Things are always bro­ken. Interestingly broken.

…anoth­er day anoth­er post…

Morning Linkage (Apr 19)

Transportation

Riding the Tiger Shiva. Rotax engine, six for­ward gears, fan­cy met­al work, and you can ride it. It’s absolute­ly gorgeous.
Videos: The Tiger Walks (Horrible music ) and Riding the Tiger (You can hear the rotax putt-putt)

It’s a trail­er, for a movie, about rid­ing Royal Enfields in India. 2 Roues Sinon Rien. (two wheels or noth­ing) Yeah,  it’s in French. Maybe they’ll sub­ti­tle the flic? Do not miss the danc­ing camel.

The title says it all “Vincent Lust.” Desktop wor­thy B&W pho­tos of a nice example.

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Science and Technology

Ball bear­ings are every­where. I found a nice­ly illus­trat­ed essay on how they are made. The process is both sim­pler and more com­plex that I had imagined.

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Art, Images, and Design

Two bev­er­age pack­ag­ing sets from the win­ners of this year’s Dieline deign competition.

Clever return to a clas­sic image. Coke. Love the soda cup design.

A nice­ly coher­ent brand ID for a win­ery but each pack­age stands on its own as well. Expect maybe the High Roller cab. It’s too min­i­mal for my taste. (Tobacco Jaqk Cellars)

A hand­ful of cov­ers from the Swiss mag­a­zine Graphis. Graphis pub­lished the lat­est in graph­ics and graph­ic design for 60 years (1944–2004)

Paper feath­ers arranged in sin­u­ous shapes. These Kate McGuire sculp­tures sug­gest both flight and captivity.

…and here we are again