shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: batman

Morning Linkage (Nov 30)

Transportation

Bor­ing Euro sedans, re-makes of already clas­sic cars, and the Porsche con­vert­ible for the mass­es. This list of 10 future col­lec­tor cars from folks at Hager­ty Insur­ance Agency does­n’t make me want to run out and buy some­thing to stash in the barn. Except maybe the Fiat or the Mini Club­man. But you can still get the orig­i­nals if you’re look­ing for clas­sic. Whad­da ya think?

I am dis­turbed that the com­mon name for the own­ers and oper­a­tors of these wild­ly cus­tom vans from Japan is Yan­kee. Or maybe it’s just the reac­tion to see­ing so many fly­ing plas­tic wings and those low­er mandible spoil­ers. Bonus — all these vans make the 2 cus­tom sedans includ­ed in the gallery look real­ly tame.

I like this Sport­ster. I like old school and I like satin paint. New­Blood by Deus.

Anoth­er Sport­ster. Com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from VTM in France. Best Tron-ish future bike I’ve seen recently.

Very ear­ly attempt at the hub steer. Many more inno­va­tions in this 1921 Ner-a-Car.

Science

Fly­ing squid. It’s a con­fus­ing mix of squid­li­ness (ten­ta­cles) and ray­ness (flap­ping wings) but the video is cool and the glimpse into doing deep-sea research with remote-controlled sub­marines will make your desk job seem bor­ing. CreatureCast.

Where’s George? And what can the data col­lect­ed on the web about the trav­els of dol­lar bills tell us about the coun­try we live in? First things first. How are you going to look at all those bills? This student-created video from North­west­ern shows how some of the cal­cu­la­tions of net­works and bound­aries look while they’re grind­ing away. Cool.

Art, Images, and Design

Orig­i­nal­ly I was just going to point out the pic­ture of the under­side of the wave. But that’s just not the only awe inspir­ing pic­ture in this round up of Nat’l Geog­ra­phy 2010 Pho­tog­ra­phy Con­test.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/11/national_geographics_photograp.html

These pho­tos of ants in mossy places look like the set designs for Avatar. Maybe bet­ter, the nar­ra­tive makes more sense.

DieLine takes anoth­er look back­wards — this time to the seed pack­ages of old. The let­ter­ing is love­ly, flow­ing, and all hand drawn.

Animation

I don’t care if it is in Span­ish — it’s not like we’re going to need to fol­low the dia­logue. Javier Oli­vares does a new  Bat­man car­toon for TV. The look is just right, goth­ic, gotham, and lit­tle grainy.

Morning Linkage (Nov 2)

Transportation

New nom­i­nee for the ugli­est bike ever. White, chopped to bits, and oh dear god fug­ly.

I often point the moto-heads in my crowd to arti­cles at Hell for Leather. Here Bike­EXIF talks to one half of the Hell for Leather team. Wes Siler. (A lit­tle fluffy, but there you have it.)
http://www.bikeexif.com/wes-siler

I have no idea, but these are the best tin-toy bikes I’ve ever seen.

Yes? No? 1970’s Bon­neville.

Information in Words and Pictures

Visu­al­ly pre­sen­ta­tion of sim­ple facts. Africa is big­ger than the Unit­ed States, India, and Chi­na com­bined. Enough big­ger to have room for France, Spain, Italy, Ger­many, Italy, and most of east­ern Europe and still not full. I was sur­prised to find the Japan is near­ly as big as Italy. I think of Japan as being very small and crowded.

I have, over the years, bought many of the print­ed bound col­lec­tions of the Paris Review’s inter­views with authors. Now you can read all of them. (from the 1950 on) Your favorite author is like­ly to be here some­where and the chances of dis­cov­er­ing an author you’d like to read more of is pret­ty dan­ged high. (via lisa gold)

Art, Images, and Design

I love these Nordic mon­sters drawn on a sim­ple post-it. Espe­cial­ly the rein­deer peo­ple he post­ed on Sept 7th. John Kenn

Oh lordy, more Japan­ese folk­lore mon­sters. This time ghost sto­ries with a more mod­ern feel and paint­ed by Matthew Mey­er. Can’t get enough of this stuff.

Today’s visu­al inspi­ra­tion — vin­tage house­hold prod­ucts pack­ag­ing. What can you make out of teal, mus­tard, and brown? Oh, and ser­ifs. I miss serifs.

Animation

I went from this annoy­ing inter­net meme. (Bat­man and kit­tens ) to the Vimeo port­fo­lio of the cre­ator Pol­ly Guo. and found this. Maybe the guy’s ex-girlfriend had a point about  the sea mon­sters?

Morning Linkage (May 14)

Transportation

Wretched excess, the new Porsche 911.

Would you leave this under­stat­ed beau­ty behind if you were mov­ing over­seas? I think not.

Look­ing a bit too much like Wolver­ine in squid­ly guise, hold­ing a white chi­na tea cup, and rat­tling on. Road rac­er Guy Mar­tin gives the BBC an inter­view and you get a snick­er. (There’s a love­ly east­er egg in the video. Check the comments.)

Science

Yeah, we put some sharks in our aquar­i­um. We don’t think they’ll eat a whole lot of the exhib­it. Uh huh. Look at what ate the shark. Ignore the ‘scary’ nar­ra­tion, the images aren’t gross, just fas­ci­nat­ing. (homage to schneier)

Tru­ly ran­dom num­bers are the holy grail of cryp­tog­ra­phy. Quan­tum physics may be the answer. Isn’t QP the answer to every­thing? So now there are 42 tru­ly ran­dom num­bers. Maybe — or not. IO9 tries to explain how it works and why it mat­ters. Vio­la­tion of Bell inequal­i­ties… My head hurts.

Art, Images, and Design

These are so sil­ly and so cute. Masaku Hori ‘s lit­tle wait­ing dogs that hold your fruit.

Fab black and white dou­ble por­trait: Joe  Lewis and Josephine Bak­er.

Animation (Sorta)

Rule 34: If you can think of it there is porn of it on the ‘net. Bet­ter than Rule 34: Bat­man porno. Not the Dark Knight bat­man, the late 60’s campy TV ver­sion. Com­plete with cheesy car­toons bal­loons that say Pop and Pow. Stun­ning­ly, this trail­er is SFW.

… and that’s the end your week with the magpie.

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)