Morning Linkage (Sept 22)

Transportation

Replicas are one way to move bikes in a reces­sion. Spies fans can hop
a plane to the UK for this one.

A new trend in adver­tis­ing, iPhone apps. Used some­what effec­tive­ly to
adver­tise the new VW Scirocco.I have no idea if you get the Wagner
sound track to go with the game but it’s a dri­vable Nurburgring for
the iPhone.  (And you all were won­der­ing why I’d give in.…)

I prob­a­bly won’t shell out the cash for Gran Turismo 5, but I know
enough peo­ple who will that I should get at least one chance to drive
the in-game M‑B SLS AMG gull­wing.

On a more respon­si­ble note. Making pub­lic trans­porta­tion more
inter­est­ing with cool bus stops. Why so much fruit?

—————-

Technology

Projector TV and remote sen­sor tech meets pool table. Visuals that
react to the balls in play. Expensively installed in the Esquire
Ultimate Bachelor Pad, which gives you some idea of the amount of
class attached to the graph­ics being pro­ject­ed. SFW

——————

Culture

Last Friday was Parking Day. Some pics from around the coun­try. I am
as baf­fled as the poster as to what the pyra­mid of bowl­ing balls was
try­ing to indicate.

—————

Art, Images, and Illustration

Low 3‑D is a use­ful term for not-quite sculp­tures that hang on a wall.
Meredith Dittmar’s box­es are invit­ing. (Click through to her website
for more chal­leng­ing images.)

Detailed, sub­ver­sive black & white line draw­ings framed in letter
forms. Oleg Medvedev is from, and com­ments on, Moscow.

More black & white from east­ern Europe. Elena Asima’s anthro­po­mor­phic
ani­mals have the feel of hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry etchings.

This is more of a com­ment on street artist wanna-bes than the
ubiq­ui­tous IKEA flat pack. Banksy par­o­dies him­self, his fellow
artists, and their sud­den (?) legitimacy.

Tooting his own horn but not unrea­son­ably, Brett Polok shows us a few
of his lat­est paint­ings. Comic books, sten­cils, graf­fi­ti. There’s a
lot of sim­i­lar out recent­ly. This is the way it should be done.

—————————
The Coming Alien Invasion

The New Yorker gives us our com­ing alien over­lords. They think our TV
sucks too. Oh and they don’t want our pre­cious… gravel.

mean­while I shall return to the cru­cial con­sid­er­a­tion of exact­ly what
shade of pur­ple to had added to my hair this time…

Morning Linkage (Sept 21)

Transport

2010 — Ducati brings us a Hypermotard. (Which BTW is a completely
sil­ly made up word.) Is this pic­ture for real? Or did they just grab
what­ev­er looked kin­da like…

On a small­er scale — here’s a run­ning repli­ca of the Honda 50.
(lim­it­ed edi­tion of course.) Still cute as heck.

For our youngest read­ers. (Surely we can build one of these.) The
coolest rock­ing horse ever.

Broken bikes suck. Hanging around wait­ing for the sag-wagon is boring.
Just ask these guys.

————–

Technology

A rip­tide of data flows through the live on-air cov­er­age of most
sports today, Sandbox8 gives us a look behind the scenes at how
hun­dreds of vol­un­teers and a cou­ple of pro­fes­sion­als put togeth­er the
stats cov­er­age for a PGA event. Golf nutz — I’ll nev­er under­stand ’em.

A much more scenic use of imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy brings us pic­tures of
glac­i­ers from space. Damn we live on a pret­ty planet.

An aging pop­u­la­tion has health care in Japan stretched thin. A nursing
short­age makes rou­tine care par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult. One answer is to
sup­ple­ment skilled care with robots to han­dle the heavy lift­ing (if
you will.) I’m find­ing the increas­ing empha­sis on replac­ing human
inter­ac­tion with robot­ic assis­tance unsettling.

Riba is cute and cud­dly and can lift a 135 pound patient.

Regina is not cud­dly and cute but can lift much heav­ier patients.
Up to 440 pounds.

A trans­former bed that can elim­i­nate the need to lift patients
alto­geth­er. (This one is hopeful.)

Another cute robot. This one leads the elder­ly in a series of exercises.

OTOH robots may save the adult enter­tain­ment indus­try. (Really?) SFW

——————-

Images

Enough with the zom­bie machines — how about some zom­bie peanuts?

Curiosity kills the cat — in nine quirky ways. SFW

How to get a pho­to­graph of a bat tak­ing a drink from a pond. It’s hard.

I had night­mares about maraud­ing bears last night. Maybe I’ll download
one of these sets of ani­mal illus­tra­tions as desk­top wallpaper.
Abstract sur­faces and nice colors.

Or maybe I’ll just go straight to this pac­man destroys your city
car­toon wall­pa­per. The artist describes it as cheer­ful chaos.

Remake/Remodel is Warren Ellis’ chal­lenge to car­toon­ist to take an old
for­got­ten com­ic char­ac­ter and re-imagine them for the 21st century.
Recently he’s called out Black Orchid. Here are three fab­u­lous entries.
SFW. (Click through to the forum thread at your own peril.)

hap­py bloody mon­day crew,

Morning Linkage (Sept 18)

Transport

OCC goes green(again) This time with Schnieder Electric. There was a
video in the post but it’s been removed. Because, of course, OCC isn’t
in the bike build­ing busi­ness they’re in the real­i­ty TV business.
(Yes, I have an opinion.)
http://www.topspeed.com/motorcycles/motorcycle-news/orange-county-choppers-goes-greenhybrid-motorcycle-is-on-the-way-ar79269.html

So you’ll have to set­tle for this pho­to of the Siemans/OCC bike. Its
sil­ver and kind of cool.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/09/occ-goes-green-with-a-hybrid-chopper/

Meanwhile — here’s the first of two eye can­dy treats for today. This
Ducati is for sale. Really. The bonus won’t stretch that far. I’m
think­ing the look might do for the the Tiny Toy rebuild though.
http://www.bikeexif.com/thunderduc‑2–0

More real rac­ers. The Colorado Grand is a vin­tage car ral­ly that means
it when they say ral­ly. The sound track must be awesome.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/09/vintage-rally/

——————

Science and Technology

How to make all that under cov­er park­ing work for you. Solar pan­els on
top of car ports. Nice look, expen­sive, avail­able in Japan only for
now.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/09/16/japanese-company-sells-carports-with-solar-panel-roofs/

Also from Japan — touch­able holo­grams. There’s a video demonstration
of “rain” falling on a hand.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/17/touchable-holography.html

If that T Rex I told you about a cou­ple of days ago won’t fit in your
foy­er, you might want to wait until a skele­ton for this much smaller
Raptoex krieg­stei­ni comes up for auc­tion. Seems that T had a much
small­er ancestor.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/tinytrex/

I’ve been known to say that the next great war (as opposed to this
great police action) will fought over water. This mental_floss story
gives you an idea of what hap­pens when a big­ger nation/state/city
takes the water away from a small­er one.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/34713

Google Voice could­n’t find a home on the iPhone and exact­ly who made
the deci­sion and who accept­ed it are still being dis­cov­ered. A final
answer isn’t like­ly but two let­ters to the FCC (one each from Google
and Apple) make it clear that this deci­sion was not made by the lowly
folks who review and approve the fart apps.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/09/fcc-releases-confidential-details-of-google-voice-app-rejection.ars

No mat­ter what you think of Google’s book dig­i­tiz­ing project… The
Espresso Book Machine is what dig­i­tiz­ing pub­lic domain books is all
about. Lisa Gold pulls togeth­er the cov­er­age of the Google’s Print on
Demand machine. There’s one com­ing to Third Place Books in November.
http://lisagoldresearch.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/an-atm-for-books-google-partners-with-the-espresso-book-machine-to-print-public-domain-books-on-demand/

——————–

Art, Illustration, and Photographs.

A trip to Japan. Juliana Wang’s con­certi­na book of ink draw­ings takes
you along. (The whole draw­ing is the fourth image in the set.)
http://julianawang.com/work/its-a-funny-place-japan/

A recipe as a car­toon. How to make Chai Tea. Smiling sauce pans are a bonus.
http://lucylou.livejournal.com/575537.html

Fiction and maps. Fiction as maps. Maps as fic­tion. Shane Watt draws
fic­tion­al maps. Or is it that he draws maps of fic­tion. Cue the
LitCrit crowd. Or read the inter­view and look at the pictures.
http://www.diskursdisko.de/2009/09/interview-shane-watt/

Charlie Roberts’ paint­ings of the chaos of artists’ stu­dios are
fright­en­ing­ly accu­rate — right down to the chee­rios box in the
windowsill.
http://www.booooooom.com/2009/09/16/charlie-roberts-artist-painter/

I’m leav­ing the flash based cat­a­log site of jew­el­er Jennifer Gehbauer
run­ning on the oth­er machine as inspi­ra­tion. Design You Trust has a
review and some images here.
http://designyoutrust.com/2009/09/18/2s-design/

No, that is not an illus­tra­tion of a car­toon dog float­ing on a calm
sea beneath a paper moon. It’s a photograph.
http://www.mccartyphotoworks.com/epostcard/epostcard_73.html

Here are 10 images from the Nostalgia series by South African Stefan
van Deventer. Evocative black and white.
http://definitivetouch.com/news/stefan-van-deventers-nostalgia/

Last Word

TGIF — now hop in your dog­mo­biles and speed out­ta here.
http://thelittlechimpsociety.com/adria/adria-fruitos-new-prints-at-inprint/

Morning Linkage (Sept 17)

Transportation

This KTM con­cept bike is too future-freaky for com­fort. The TopSpeed
review does­n’t make much sense of the bike.
http://www.topspeed.com/motorcycles/motorcycle-news/amazing-ktm-concept-motorbike-ar79248.html

Old-skewl, shiny, prob­a­bly unrid­able. I don’t care. Drool wor­thy Indian.
http://www.bikeexif.com/indian-arrow-motorcycle

Czysz toots his own horn with the Motorcyclist cov­er­age of the I.C.E.
Prettiest of the electrics? Possibly.
http://www.motoczysz.com/rss_news_view.php?id=105

Speaking of elec­tric trans­port. News we nev­er need­ed to see. Trabant
returns — as an electric.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/09/electric-trabant/

——————-

Science and Technology

Congress Considers the future of NASA. Wired Science live blogs. Aside
— is the live blog­ging of tes­ti­mo­ny going to pro­vide an alter­na­tive to
offi­cial tran­scripts? Is this good or bad? Certainly in this case it
high­lights the con­trast between the rec­om­men­da­tions of experts and the
feel­ings of the meme­bers of the Committee.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/live-blog-congress-on-the-future-of-nasa/

The future of space explo­ration and extra-terrestrial sci­ence may be
in hands of small inde­pen­dent exper­i­menters like Armadillo Aerospace.
Simulated moon land­ings by their Scorpius vehi­cle saw them move one
step clos­er to the Northrop Grumman Lander Challenge grand prize.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/09/armadillo_aerospace/

Birds vs. Airplanes. The Bird Strike North America Conference is
get­ting unac­cus­tomed pub­lic­i­ty this year. Wired Science brings us a
round up of some promis­ing devel­op­ments in the bat­tle to keep birds
and planes fly­ing. At least click through for the nice blue bird
picture.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/09/bird-strike-conference/

Gene Therapy con­tin­ues to get press. Nature report­ed on the successful
cure of col­or­blind­ness in two monkeys.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/colortherapy/

——————-

Society

Chumming the waters. Medina is now track­ing all vehi­cles that enter
the city. Rich peo­ple are para­noid and, well, rich enough to do
some­thing about it.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009873854_medina16m.html

Medinites can now cel­e­brate their com­plete safe­ty with a skillfully
sabered bot­tle of cham­pagne. Do the West Pointers still do this at
weddings?
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/16/how-to-saber-a-bottl.html

——————-

Art, Illustration, and Images

The ques­tion of which pho­to print­er to buy comes up all the time.
Here’s the short sweet answer. Less that $500.
http://drawn.ca/2009/09/16/best-printer-home-studio/

Logo-rific LA ani­mat­ed as a pulpy PI movie. Ronald McDonald is the
vil­lain. The Michelin man the hard boiled detec­tive. Stills and clips.
You can be sure that I’ll let you know as soon as the full length vid
makes it’s way to the ‘nets.
http://creativity-online.com/news/h5-builds-the-world-of-logorama/138951

The Afflicted Yard is get­ting an out­door show­ing. I’ve aready pointed
you all to the book of pho­tographs of life in Kingston Jamaica as
doc­u­ment­ed by Peter Dean Rickards.  There a cou­ple of pho­tos in this
announce­ment that did­n’t make the book.
http://cafehabanablog.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/the-afflicted-yard/

Erotic art giv­en a sen­si­tive and real edge by street artist Mode2.
This is the set to show the judge when youw ant to make the
dis­tinc­tion between erot­ic art and porn. NSFW.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/no-eyed-dear/sets/72157621973413086/

Surreal short ani­ma­tion. Morbidly Gallic humor.
http://vimeo.com/muzorama

———————

On the Way out the Door

Stop motion, paper craft, Samuri Jack. You can not fail with this 15
sec­ond pro­mo for Cartoon Network.
http://drawn.ca/2009/09/16/samurai-jack-cutout-animation/

Morning Linkage (Sept 16)

Transportation

The future(?) is all red and swoopy in these five exam­ples of
futur­is­tic design. I want a jet bike!

Okay, all the green­ers want us to know that the future is public
trans­porta­tion. Maybe if they can make all the bus­es as cool as these
bus shel­ters. Erm, adver­tis­ing is promi­nent fea­ture in all of them.
The future looks an awful lot the present.

Graham Parker and his bud­dy Stewart Cauley has got­ten their hands on a
trove of pho­tographs from the 1917 Beekman Street sub­way col­lapse in
NYC. They’ve uploaded them to Panorama and mapped the loca­tions using
the nota­tions on the pics. Fascinating.

—————–

Technology and Society

Google’s Public Policy blog announces DataLiberation.org. Freeing your
data from the cloud keep­ers. The com­par­i­son to rent­ing an apart­ment in
the first ‘graph push­es the anal­o­gy fur­ther than usu­al — to good
effect IMO.

Books car­ried by back­pack­ers are care­ful­ly cho­sen with an eye to
weight vs. ben­e­fit. Here’s a set of sug­ges­tions for books that
qual­i­fy. Motorcyclist choose almost as care­ful­ly. What would you add
to the list?

Ars Technica’s review of Scribblenauts is enough to con­vince me to dig
out my old DS in prepa­ra­tion for the next long plane trip.

xkcd con­tem­plates a Scribblenauts ver­sion of real­i­ty. <face­book> Like
</facebook>

The Wizard of Oz is 70 years old. Wow. I was trau­ma­tized by those
damned mon­keys as a child. Now I wish I have my own fly­ing monkey
army. SunFiltered offers a cou­ple of links.

Do your­self a favor and give this Eric Clapton ver­sion of Somewhere
Over the Rainbow a lis­ten. A palate cleanser if you will.

————

Fashion and Design

Dorothy need­ed ruby slip­pers to get home. I’m lik­ing these from Ahmet
Baytar bet­ter than the sequined orig­i­nals. (Link to my site because
the design­er’s site is unlink­able flash.)

Inspiration for girls who are going to get what they need and don’t
feel like putting up with a fairy god­moth­er to do it.
http://insomnio.org/post/188578223/the-gun-and-the-girl

Color and pat­tern inspi­ra­tion for the day. Batik.

———————–

Video(s) of the Day

Don’t be like this guy.

Or this pig. (Or sing like Nureyev.)

More mup­pet creepi­ness here.