shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: children's books

Morning Linkage (Dec 9)

Transportation

Because you real­ly need to know how engine ori­en­ta­tion of a Melkus affects the design of it’s rear hatch. A col­lec­tion of cut away draw­ings of cars. Thou­sands of them.

Bob­bers, meh. Hon­das, meh. On the oth­er hand — this maroon beau­ty does the thing up right.

le sigh. Real­ly if you don’t get this…

Science

Once again we may dis­cov­er that there was once water where this now a desert.

Could I be any hap­pi­er? Ani­ma­tion and sea crea­tures. The Secret of the Stom­ato­pod Strike.

Art, Images, and Design

Words and pic­tures. Such won­der­ful pic­tures. Ste­vie Ray Vaughn.

Sim­ple, col­or­ful, images of ani­mals from Russ­ian chil­dren’s books. Boris Kalaushin.

Some­one is bound to com­plain that there images depict cru­el and dan­ger­ous treat­ment of chil­dren. I sug­gest instead that Jason Lee’s pic­tures of kids reflect n the fun and goofi­ness that chil­dren them­selves imagine.

off you go…

Morning Linkage (Jul 6)

Transportation

Ore­gon race­way park — extreme shifter cart. Though 800 pounds makes it some­thing oth­er than a go-cart IMO.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/palatov-motorsports-dp4/

More extreme. These cars (and bikes) look like car­toon char­ac­ters. In part because they spring from Japans otaku culture.

Exam­ples of boso­zoku bikes are a lit­tle hard­er to find but here’s a cou­ple. (Nice non boso-Morowaki 600RR smack in the mid­dle of the thread.)

And for some­thing sooth­ing. Bernardet pro­duced a very com­mon and suc­cess­ful line of scoot­ers in France in the late 40s and the 50s. But from 1921 until 1940 they pro­duced rac­ing and street side­cars. Scroll down to see some wicked racers.

Science

Sci­ence of pret­ty. How do but­ter­fly wings get their color?

More sci­ence of pret­ty. How do fire­flies light up?

A slight­ly dif­fer­ent view on the prob­lem of lag­ging sci­ence inno­va­tion in the US. It’s not the edu­ca­tion it’s the jobs.

Art, Images, and Design

Peter Tay­lor’s round lit­tle fel­lows with pat­terns and swirly pret­ties. Jol­ly. (NSFW bare car­toon butts)

Only the shad­ow knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. The rest of us just assumed that the aver­age beach going kid has a bit of mon­ster in their heart.

Edmund Dulac illus­trat­ed many books in the 30’s Here is a set of scans from Trea­sure Island. Soft clear col­ors and charm­ing images.

Per­haps you could also look at his illus­tra­tion for the Rubaiy­at. Much dark­er and lush.

Animation

This is anoth­er one of those “how could I pos­si­bly write a bet­ter intro than Mered­ith wrote?” items. Czech chil­dren’s film — Kooky’s Return. I can’t. Just watch.

wel­come back to the real™ world

Morning Linkage (Mar 11)

Transportation

You’ve seen the pic­tures of the hacked togeth­er ones but here’s the real deal. Motor­cy­cle side-car based cam­era mount. The fab­ri­ca­tion qual­i­ty blows me away. Based on a 6 cylin­der 1500cc what? Seats 4.

Sexy enough to make me con­sid­er a elec­tric car. Almost. Or I could buy one and put a real engine in it. Porsche 918 Spy­der.

A lyric piece of descrip­tion. The destruc­tion of a medi­an strip is care­ful­ly watched from it’s seem­ing­ly innocu­ous begin­nings with a few dusty foot prints to it’s take over a a cross­ing point for auto-rickshaws. (New Del­hi, but it would be under the Viaduct here in Seattle.)

A few pages from the cat­a­log of the 1930 Ear­l’s Court Bicy­cle and Motor­cy­cle Show. Love Smith’s gauges.

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Technology

In Afghanistan there are peo­ple work­ing hard with lit­tle more than trash to bring some con­nec­tion to the mod­ern world. Wi-fi points and repeaters made from stuff scrounged out of the garbage — lit­er­al­ly. Great inge­nu­ity and dri­ve. And so much of the same-same has­sles, pet­ty pol­i­tics, and inter­per­son­al fail­ures of rela­tion­ships that affect any tech project. As Amy says, it’s fun­ny but it’s not.

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Literature

Good Night Moon has dri­ven par­ents bonkers since 1947. Now there’s a Star Wars based update called Good Night For­est Moon. Bet­ter yet it’s a down­load and bind your­self project with excel­lent instruc­tions. Craft time to bed time.

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Art, Images, and Design

Best iPhone stand ever. What is this gad­get hold­er doing in Art, Image and Design? — It’s great found object sculp­ture. Fork over.

Also an iPhone/iPod acces­so­ry. The ammo box speak­er set, per­fect dis­guise. Do Want.

More cross-over stuff. Why won’t the world stay nice­ly sort­ed in to my cat­e­gories? The title of this recent­ly released book says it all — Go Faster: The Graph­ic Design of Rac­ing Cars

A lit­tle cool for my day today. Here’s Ms. Loren from the Impos­si­ble Cool.

onward and upward, or at least out the door.

Morning Linkage (Mar 2)

Transportation

The F1 safe­ty car. M‑B SLS AMG. My very favorite alpha­bet soup car. The rear light­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly stylish.

Vin­ta­gent pro­vides anoth­er fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry from yes­ter­year. A 1967 “pro­duc­tion” bike class at the Isle of Man TT led to the cre­ation of a spe­cial Velo­cette Thrux­ton. Tales of it’s suc­cess­es and failures.

Lover­ly. In-car and side-of-the-road video of a prac­tice dri­ve for the 100 Acre Wood ral­ly. This is why they do it.

Fun­ny British “Watch for Motor­cy­clists” ad. Humor and a reminder. Plus per­haps the ulti­mate hel­met acces­so­ry, neon.

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Tools

A nice vari­a­tion on the multi-tool. I like rounder shapes for pock­et objects.

I love my rotary cut­ters for cut­ting both fab­ric and paper. I have sev­er­al includ­ing a cou­ple of the pret­ty flower pat­terned spe­cial edi­tions. Now the rotary cut­ter prin­ci­ple has been applied to emer­gency equip­ment. A bet­ter way to cut through lay­er of den­im, tex­tile, or leather.

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Science

A real­is­tic recon­struc­tion of a snake prey­ing on a rep­tile. Unre­mark­able except for the fact that the snake is 11 feet long and the rep­tile is an infant Titanosaur. Nice pho­tos of the orig­i­nals fos­sils as well as the reconstruction.

Tiny-saurs. Build-it-yourself mini mod­els, less than $20 for the deluxe kits.They also do cus­tom work if any­one is look­ing for the ulti­mate trade show swag.

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Art, Images and Design

Ani­ma­tion — sort of. Aard­man presents Home Sheep Home. Infu­ri­at­ing­ly sim­ple brows­er based game for lovers of Shaun the Sheep. Hate, hate, hate. I suck at video games.

Flickr user A Jour­ney Around My Skull is always a good source for new things to look at. These illus­tra­tions from Iran­ian chil­dren’s books are at the same time famil­iar and alien. Many seem to be folk­tales. This image of two rich­ly dressed char­ac­ters with flow­ers for heads sets the tone. There are many equal­ly fine images through out the set.

These are scary and weird and full of vague­ly obscene pigs pro­vid­ing moral guid­ance(?). In oth­er words, ter­rif­ic. Scott Has­sell.  Most­ly pen and ink. (NSFW)

Bird obsessed Jungil Hong was trained in ceram­ics at RISD but is best known for her collages.

More tomor­row…