shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: crocodiles

Morning Linkage (Feb 7)

Transportation

I know a lot of 2 stroke fans. Most of them area lit­tle less than sane. All of them would do this in a heart beat. Just to have some­thing for run­ning around on the back roads.  JAWA 350 mods. (Video is loud.)

WTF? Trans­former bike for those who han­ker for both a cafe rac­er and a cruis­er but have lim­it­ed garage space. Video demon­strates the hydraulic change over. With seat height, rake, trail, wheel base (duh) and ground clear­ance all chang­ing to pro­duce two bikes. The V‑Rod based Veon by Krug­ger. It’s also not the ugli­est thing in the world. Close but not the ugliest.

Pret­ty girls on bikes. A lit­tle some­thing to bring cheer into your Monday.

Science

NASA makes the best dig­i­tal toys. Extreme Plant Makeover. Mess about with the Earth by chang­ing it’s size, dis­tance from the sun, type of sun, and age. It’s awful­ly easy to make a bar­ren waste land or fog­gy sog­gy giant. Plan­et hacking!

Art, Images, and Design

A reminder that art is not with­out its odd mys­ter­ies and ongo­ing tiffs. We all know Raphael’s self-portrait. The guy with the perky nose and a dis­tant look sit­ting in front of a brown wall, unstruc­tured hat? But did you know that there’s a sec­ond paint­ing? Hid­ing in a vault, almost iden­ti­cal, and pos­si­bly as real as the one hang­ing in Uffizi? Nice lit­tle plot for a novel.

Bet­ty Boop, Mick­ey Mouse, and Kew­pie dolls, all mad­ly out of con­text in 1930’s Japan­ese post­cards. There are also skele­tons, and danc­ing cats. Our cul­tur­al mas­cots must have seemed impos­si­bly odd to the cre­ators of these.

Fer­ris Plock. Pieces cre­at­ed while in res­i­dence. Styled after ori­en­tal wood block prints and hang­ing scrolls but with mod­ern anom­alies — the croc­o­dile wears Keds.

Animation and Moving Images

One Wing Fly aka Y & M Nathan, Look under com­mer­cial work, there is a whole series of adverts that place a woman (real­ly beau­ti­ful) on a floor and have her “walk” through scenes. Poor­ly explained by me — utter­ly charm­ing in per­son. (Real­ly, good enough to war­rant a link into a flash-based site.)

Now off you go, it’s a busy week ahead.

Morning Linkage (Oct 28)

Transportation

Hel­mut Fath’s mul­ti­ple cham­pi­onship win­ning URS side­car recent­ly sold for more than $150K. Worth it? There cer­tain­ly is enough his­to­ry here to make it interesting.

The log­ic of the pick­ings and place­ments of these 50 best rac­ing liv­er­ies will baf­fle you. Until you real­ize that each place­ment had to had a video. (Not true, a few don’t.) Try the 1988 Porsche rac­ing in the 24 hours of Le Mans — with the fog addled start. Or maybe the 15 sec­onds of pure son­ic joy to had Par­nel­li Jone’s Boss 302.  All the rest are in the box on the right. Just don’t look at #50. Tic tac.

New Nor­ton Commando- ditch the lit­tle idjit screen, and pony up for the wire wheels and the sport­ing exhaust. Then get the hell out­ta my way. (Oh and tell the dude on the video to shut up. m’kay?)

Cute Natural World

Big cats love the post Hal­loween gro­cery clean-up. And who knew that pump­kins float? The tigers loved chas­ing them in the ponds. (2 dif­fer­ent videos.)

Internet Tips and Tricks.

Um, Google now index­es all of the LIFE images. So go to google.com, click Images in the top nav bar and type : “fer­rari source:life” into the search box.. or maybe “duke elling­ton source:life” if you’re in a more laid back kin­da mood.

Art, Images, and Design

A brief overview of the work of Finnish pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nel­li Palo­ma­ki. Por­traits of women and girls sug­gest­ing depths to their life sto­ries that are not revealed causally.

Some­how the croc­o­dile on the side of this bricked up build­ing in Lis­bon looks ter­ri­bly sad about some­thing. Lucy McLauch­lan’s lit­tle birds, how­ev­er, are hav­ing a very good day.

Using up the relics of the WWII. Mak­ing fur­ni­ture and home decor out of naval mines. Yup, that’s gonna look right­eous in my library.

Swing Shift Cin­derel­la — with this Flashy Lassie with the Classy Chas­sis. Um, it’s the lob­by card for an upcom­ing car­toon short from the mid-century. I love it. More ads fea­tur­ing the car­toons here. And a reminder that car­toons were orig­i­nal­ly for the grown-ups. (SFW)

sec­ond times the charm :)