shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: BSA

Morning Linkage (Jan 5)

Transportation

If you’ve got 25 min­utes to kill and the desire for a new career in the excit­ing field of mil­i­tary avi­a­tion you might want to sit down with this video. Or maybe if you need at a look of the unfor­tu­nate his­to­ry of humor and pret­ty girls in train­ing films. 1943 Army Air Forces P‑47 Thun­der­bolt train­ing video. That real­ly is worth a watch for plane fiends. (Video 24:41)

For my Super­Mo­to lov­ing friends. The Black Pearl. But could you go out and get this one all dirty?

Pure, unadul­ter­at­ed yum. BSA Gold Star Day­tona Spe­cial. Because some­time restora­tion is way more effec­tive than customizing.

Science

Must be some­thing about the hol­i­day hang­over but I can’t wrap my mind around any sort of seri­ous sci­ence news. Instead you get shit like this… io9 writ­ers and com­menters rule the world (again.) Why we need to do real, exper­i­men­tal sci­ence. Involves giraffes and water and no computers.

More help­ful­ly, and more seri­ous­ly. An insight­ful decon­struc­tion of the sub­tle aids that Google maps use to make their maps the most read­able maps on the web. (Arguably.)

Art, Images, and Design

Jim Flo­ra did this Baba Yaga late in his life. Won­der­ful depic­tion of the wise old witch.

Tan­gen­tial­ly, I was watch­ing a doc­u­men­tary recent­ly and saw a pic­ture of the cov­er of Char­lie Park­er’s Char­lie Park­er with Strings. Not my fav Bird album but the art work is way cool. So I went look­ing… David Stone Mar­tin did tons of the cov­ers that I remem­ber from my child­hood. Includ­ing the one at the top of the post. (NSFW — artis­tic nudes)

Animation

Pop-up fairy tales in French. Not at all what you’re expecting.

Morning Linkage (Nov 5)

Transportation

I have no expla­na­tion for the face paint that match­es the hel­met. But it’s the nicest B&W bike pic I’ve seen this week.

Vin­ta­gent pulls togeth­er a brief his­to­ry of a 1938 BSA Gold Star for sale in Oz. Bonus pic of the “movie-star hand­some”  Wal Han­d­ley who earned the cov­et­ed gold star at Brook­lands for BSA.

None of the rac­ers I know has this kind of class. The FIAT trans­porter that fer­ried around the Fer­rari cars in the late 1950s isn’t exact­ly with­in the bud­getary con­straints of most of my rac­er mates either.

Offi­cer Silent is sneak­ing up behind you. First it was the elec­tric cars in the NYC fleet. Now Utah based ATK would like to sell your local LEOs some elec­tric bikes.

Science

The physics of the wet-dog shake (as well as mice, rats, and griz­zly bears.)

Why do gigan­tic pump­kins always look like they were left in the sun and melt­ed? All squat and squashed? There’s an answer to that. It’s a bet­ter shape than round for grow­ing out sized squash.

Art. Images, and Design

Ani­malar­i­um high­lights the ani­mals por­trayed in the work of two Finnish illus­tra­tors. San­na Annuk­ka whose work for Marimekko you can find on her web­site. (The look into the pro­duc­tion process for Marimekko fab­rics is cool.) And Klaus Haa­panie­mi whose large-scale pic­tures of fan­ci­ful ani­mals always make me smile.

The Book or Rev­e­la­tions is puz­zling to even the most devote of schol­ars. Com­men­taries have been writ­ten through­out the cen­turies. Bib­liodyssey brings images from the Bea­t­us Apoc­a­lypse. Noah’s ark fea­tures some par­tic­u­lar­i­ty unset­tling animals.

I have to agree. The posters for Black Swan are so unlike the usu­al run of actor’s faces poor­ly pho­to­shopped onto stand-ins’ air­brushed bod­ies in front of CGI explo­sions that at first I did­n’t real­ize that Black Swan was a movie. (It’s a ballet/psychological thriller movie. Who’s going with me?)

Love­ly cal­lig­ra­phy exe­cut­ed on video. Lega­cy of Let­ters pro­mo piece. Luca Bar­cel­lon­a’s econ­o­my of motion while let­ter­ing is amaz­ing. (Video)

Animation

When you have a band named the Kandin­sky Effect. the best pos­si­ble pro­mo video would fea­ture a piece (or two) of Kandin­sky art, no? (Video)

But is you need some­thing a lit­tle less high-brow you can’t go wrong with the episode of Saari. A preschool pro­gram designed by a Finn and pro­duced in Spain. Charm­ing. (Video)

And that’s it for this week. be hap­py, have fun, be safe.

Morning Linkage (Sep 8)

Transportation

Stun­ning indeed. I love the red cra­dle frame and the squat mush­roomy tank. Tri­umph.

You will, no doubt, have an opin­ion. I think the mechan­i­cals are inter­est­ing and the paint abominable.

Some­times a sim­ple clean up and sort a few details job turns into a real remake/remodel. Espe­cial­ly when the “run­ning” part of the advert was, well, opti­mistic. Some­times that remake turns out to be way more spe­cial than a sim­ple spruc­ing up could ever have been. A 1957 BSA B31 becomes a Club­man Gold­star Replica.

Unset­tling views of a beam that need­ed repair on the Taco­ma Nar­rows Bridge. I hat­ed dri­ving over it before. I may nev­er cross is again. (WS-DOT con­tin­ues to pub­lish inter­est­ing stuff on its blog and on flickr .)

Science

Sunspots are the celes­tial weath­er machines that dri­ve our atmos­phere (hyper­bole alert.) The Big Bear Solar Obser­va­to­ry cap­tured the best-so-far real light image of a sunspot recent­ly. It’s like a black hole in the sun. Very cool. There’s more inter­est­ing stuff at the obser­va­to­ry’s web­site includ­ing lots of raw data. I haven’t a clue what to do with the data but I want to applaud that it’s there, freely avail­able to any­one who cares to use it.

Art, Images, and Design

Anoth­er delight­ful lit­tle build­ing. This one per­fect for a bib­lio­phile with a tiny bit of a back yard. The Read­ing Nest would have been a per­fect hide away for the 13-year-old me. The Read­ing Nest is pre­fab and you can see pho­tos of one being trucked in and placed on site on the web­site of the architects.

Good­ly Crea­ture by Leah Palmer Preiss. A vin­tage feel and form but a mod­ern imag­i­nary ani­mal. Details of the Good­ly Crea­ture’s cre­ation on her blog, Curi­ous Art Lab.

Pop-ups, fairy tales, and an ani­mat­ed trail­er for a book. What could be bet­ter? Il Etait Une Fois, to be pub­lished in Novem­ber, illus­trates a hand­ful of fairy tales with com­plex pop-ups of cru­cial scenes. I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the play­ing card army from Alice in Won­der­land. Leave the sound on while watch­ing the video if you can. (Video)

it’s mid-week dar­lings, hang in there,