shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: evolution

Morning Linkage (Dec 14)

Transportation

We’ve had some bad weath­er around here late­ly. Too much rain leads to sat­u­rat­ed ground which leads to mud and rock slides. Here’s one of the fab pics from the WA-DOT of some of the clear­ing activ­i­ty. This one is on Chuck­anut Dri­ve a bit north of here.

Some­thing spe­cial for afi­ciona­dos of the small­er makes. A visu­al his­to­ry of KTM. Sad­ly with­out iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion for the bikes. Still fun.

Science

Per­haps all those flood myths in the mid­dle east have a basis in a pre­vi­ous round of glob­al warm­ing? Are the remains of a once thriv­ing civ­i­liza­tion damply wait­ing for us beneath the Per­sian Gulf.

Art, Design, and Images

A lit­tle over the top for most office recep­tion areas but if you have the need… TF2 sen­try gun. (WETA, of course)

Thomas Perkins draws trip­tych comics. Every day. On his three kids’ lunch bags. And he posts them for the rest of us to enjoy.

Animation

Is it even pos­si­ble that I did not post this the first time I saw it? BLU makes ani­ma­tion on build­ings. Real­ly. The evo­lu­tion of life on earth.

There you go my dears, see you tomorrow.

Morning Linkage (May 19)

Transportation

Bridge­stone pro­vides two videos that explain the tire pro­gram for MotoGP.  Lots of you all know this stuff but the vids make a good intro­duc­tion for the uninitiated.

I love my Benz, but per­haps not enough to get me up in this Eurocoptor/MB col­lab­o­ra­tion. Luxo traf­fic beat­er.

In 2011 the Dakar Ral­ly will once again be held in South Amer­i­ca. Ral­ly dates and routes were released recent­ly. Looks like a great tour through Chile and Argentina.

Science and Tech

This arti­cle on open soft­ware offers anoth­er inter­est­ing visu­al­iza­tion of the process of cre­at­ing soft­ware. Open soft­ware is some­times said to ‘evolve’ but does it? And  does that evo­lu­tion mim­ic the evo­lu­tion of bio­log­i­cal enti­ties? Infor­ma­tists Marc Ger­stein co-wrote a study com­par­ing the net­worked infor­ma­tion trans­fers involved in the change process­es of E. coli and Lin­ux. Inter­est­ing conclusions.

Anoth­er use for LEDs. Gui­tar picks. Seri­ous­ly. A mini-light show in your liv­ing room.

Pass­word secu­ri­ty is a right roy­al pain. Either you can remem­ber the dan­ged thing XOR it’s secure — rarely can you have both. And writ­ing your pass­words down on a cheat sheet is a big no-no. Unless your cheat sheet is some­thing like this. It may take you a few min­utes to fig­ure out how this is sup­posed to work. But it’s both sim­ple and ingenious.

Art, Images, and Design

Take some of the best street art being done today, add a pho­tog­ra­ph­er with an eye for line and col­or in his por­trait work and you have Gabriel Mendes’ Urban Puns. Bold, bright, and bit­ing. 8th image down NSFW.

My own, sim­ple as I can make it, web­site isn’t per­haps the best exam­ple to use for the geo-citieizer but hey this is my list of links so I’ll use my web­site. (Results are some­what ran­dom. If you don’t think it’s too bad try the link again in anoth­er tab.) Try mess­ing with your own site by using the generator.

Bonus bike and choco­late com­bo link today. “This motor­cy­cle runs on choco­late but needs to be parked in the deep-freezer when tem­per­a­tures are not ade­quate.” nuff said.

Alex­is Grotius’ sum­mer bike is pret­ty cool as well. Except that it’s creepy.