shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: Bonneville

Morning Linkage (Dec 7)

Transportation

Seem­ing­ly ran­dom, Japan­ese, custom-bike guy blog. I pre­fer look­ing at these with­out the assis­tance of Google trans­late. The sto­ry of one guy’s life, his friends, his lunch­es, and his bikes. (Occa­sion­al bits of NSFW — most­ly ani­me girls.)

For all of you drinkers of the Orange kool-aid who were dis­ap­point­ed by the small (125cc) size of the pro­posed KTM mini machines can relax. There’s a new pro­pos­al — for a 250 or 300. Some­time in 2012? Maybe that’s long enough for them to find some­one to do some­thing about the 1980’s era water­craft graph­ics. Urk. (And, yes, I know that’s the pro­mo pic for the 125.)

The pho­tog­ra­pher’s site is down for main­te­nance. But here are a hand­ful of Christo­pher Wilson’s images from the salt. Ethe­re­al indeed. (thanks Chicane)

Science

A lit­tle fic­tion leads to a whole bunch of facts and a cou­ple of videos about giant squid.

Art, Images, and Design

Anoth­er of the Por­tuguese artists from the turn of the last cen­tu­ry. Amadeo Souza Car­dosa is lit­tle known out­side of his home coun­try. Bright, often geo­met­ric, paint­ings full of life and good humor.

Do pup­pets count as design or ani­ma­tion? The giant pup­pets of Roy­al de Luxe arrived in Mex­i­co City with a spe­cial per­for­mance for the bicentennial.

Lit­tle, frag­ile, ephemer­al bits of the real world are added to Micheal Aaron William’s street art. Heartbreaking.

Animation

I want to like this. I think I like this. The trail­er for O Apos­to­lo. Fright­en­ing folk and fairy tales from North­ern Spain. Review in Eng­lish, trail­er in Span­ish. (Video 1:06)

keep calm and car­ry on

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 (Aug 4)

Transportation

I am tak­en by the smart sim­plic­i­ty of the head­lamp brack­et and the mat­te black on the head­er pipes. Moto Guzzi.

Hell for Leather stops just short of accu­rate­ly describ­ing this lat­est pro­mo video from Tri­umph. Lis­ten to the voice over with­out watch­ing the video. He’s not talk­ing about a bike

As penance for  the pre­vi­ous content-free link, I bring you… Drags and Rac­ing’s all dark Tri­umph Bon­neville. I sat on a Bon­neville last week­end… It fits. Drags and Rac­ing web­site — in Ital­ian,. NSFW nudity.

Girls on bikes. A lit­tle sweet for some of you but I’m charmed and it is a Laverda.

Boys on bikes. Same look and feel but a boy and a Honda.

Science

If lasers cre­ate light in care­ful­ly con­trolled wave­lengths what would an anti-laser do? Absorb light in care­ful­ly con­trolled wave­lengths. Okay, I’m not smart enough to have come up with that but some­one has. And now that the idea has been described there’s a race on to build one and to fig­ure out what it’s use­ful for.

Words and Food

Work­ing Word­smith Alert. New CMoS. Sneak a peak at some of the shiny new rules and learn which of your old favorites they took out back and shot. (Chica­go Man­u­al of Style)

Nora May­nard dis­cuss­es her top picks from the field of new drink­ables offered at Tales of the Cock­tail. I’m think­ing that I’ll have to hunt down a bot­tle of the Coc­chi Amer­i­cano before sum­mer ends.

Art, Images, and Design

- the dreamy sum­mer edition

These are Jim Denevan’s tools. These are his images.

The chil­dren’s book illus­tra­tions of Igor Oleynokov. Flu­id pas­tel worlds. The seascapes are espe­cial­ly enchanting.

Have I told you about Pooh Sticks? Maybe not. But that’s for anoth­er day, when there’s a weak autumn sun and noth­ing much to regret. Mean­while here’s a sum­mer ver­sion of play­ing with bits of wood and water. Lit­tle Drifters. Lenny makes oth­er things out of flot­sam and jet­sam as well.

Beach scene, black and white per­fec­tion. (Mild­ly NSFW)

Morning Linkage (May 11)

Transportation

I am devel­op­ing a the­o­ry that green bikes are always chal­leng­ing. Take for exam­ple this ‘83 R80ST bob­ber. It is fas­ci­nat­ing; in a train wreck of a gas tank sort of way. Points for brav­ery though.

This Tiger 100 fea­tured at Quail is the def­i­n­i­tion of col­lectible. A one-off pro­duced in 1940 for Rody Roden­burg. Nev­er restored and doc­u­ment­ed all ways to hell. This one should be parked in the liv­ing room.

Anoth­er bike seen at Quail. The Mule Motor­cy­cles “Street­mas­ter” a Bon­neville based street track­er. Build details and plans for a lim­it­ed pro­duc­tion run. 70+ hp in 300 pounds. Oh my,

Society and Culture

The LA Times pro­vides a brief look inside Dis­ney­land after hours. 600 busy peo­ple make the Mag­ic King­dom sparkling new every night.
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All that eco-responsible toi­let paper you buy? You might want to start hord­ing. Too much recy­cled paper in the world means too lit­tle high qual­i­ty paper for mak­ing that cushy bum stuff.

Art, Images, and Design

Design­ers are now social engi­neers and cre­ators of solu­tions. At Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of Arts the design stu­dents were giv­en a brief to design prod­ucts that fall (rough­ly) into the cat­e­go­ry of health and fit­ness. Some are prag­mat­i­cal, some are sil­ly, and few are out right good. Like the smack down dolls of Sam Free­man and the eas­i­er to grip wine glass of Aaron McKenzie.

I love shoes. I have tons of friends who love choco­late. I think I’ve found the per­fect gift for all occa­sions . Some­thing that clear­ly reflects my pas­sion and their crav­ing. What could be bet­ter than choco­late shoes?

Hid­den behind the easy, pas­tel  japan-kitsch there is some­thing painful­ly hon­est in Zain7’s depic­tions of ado­les­cence.

Her blog is NSFW (nudi­ty)