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shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: iphone app

Morning Linakge (May 24)

May 24, 2010 /

Transportation

There’s an app for that. Rolls-Royce lets you build a Ghost on your iPhone.

Corn and used cook­ing oil aren’t the only mate­ri­als suit­able for pro­cess­ing into fuels. Amtrak is test­ing, urm, what was left on the slaugh­ter house floor.

One of the great­est things about Boe­ing’s devel­op­ment of the 787 is how much of the process is being doc­u­ment­ed and broad­cast to the curi­ous mass­es. The cli­mat­ic test­ing has begun in Flori­da. It’s dan­ged cold in that hangar. And you need an elec­tric pen­cil sharpener.

Society and Culture

Boing-Boing pro­vides a review of a nifty book about vend­ing machines. Ama­zon car­ries the book. (Some of the sell alongs are distasteful.)

There are few things more grat­ing than a car alarm in the night. This lit­tle video of Nasty Canas­ta just might go a ways to mak­ing the next sleep­less night a lit­tle more bear­able. Inno­v­a­tive bur­lesque and NSFW.

Art, Images, and Design

I know she’s kind of mor­bid and a whole lot emo but I love the way Sarah Sharp jux­ta­pos­es images and words.

Econ­o­my of  line can be the most expres­sive tech­nique for sketch­ing. These three quick stud­ies by Jean-Marie Guiv­ar­c’h from the Bidon 2 Litres are fine exam­ples and hap­pi­ly also include two side­cars. If you’d like to see more of his work — most­ly auto­mo­tive look fur­ther.

This and the next five pic­tures were tak­en in an aban­doned build­ing in Lock­port. The build­ing and the source of the bikes is IDesd in the com­ments. The HDR work is nice­ly restrained.

ooh, look, it’s anoth­er week starting…

Morning Linkage (Feb 26)

February 26, 2010 /

Transportation

Three wheels. The DOT calls it a motor­cy­cle. The man­u­fac­tur­er calls a T‑Rex. I call it covetable.

I don’t know what it means for the stereo­typ­i­cal ‘here comes the bad guys’ cues in movie sound tracks but for peo­ple liv­ing under the traf­fic copter pat­tern it means qui­eter com­mute times. Euro­copter intro­duces the Blue Edge rotor blade and Blue Pulse sys­tem which can cut blade noise by 3 to 4 deci­bels. Which does­n’t seem like it should help much but the in-cockpit record­ing are sub­stan­tial­ly dif­fer­ent in vol­ume and in quality.

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Science

This pho­to a glac­i­er weep­ing red ooze is stun­ning enough for inclu­sion in the link­age. But when you read the descrip­tion of what the ooze is and how this par­tic­u­lar pri­mor­dial ooze has been iso­lat­ed for 2 mil­lion years… Atlas Obscu­ra has infor­ma­tion and lots of pictures.

Infor­ma­tion is Beau­ti­ful has a good visu­al today. A bub­ble race chart of dietary sup­ple­ments and which have sol­id sup­port­ing evi­dence for effi­ca­cy and which don’t. Be sure to read the expla­na­tion of the chart and click on the Show Me tab on the right.

Increas­ing­ly spe­cial­ized iPhone apps are appear­ing. Stuff that’s a lot more use­ful that cap­tion­ing your snap­shots with thought bal­loons. This stetho­scope add on for exam­ple. Dig­i­tal diag­no­sis in your hand.

Not real­ly sci­ence but vague­ly web relat­ed. There are tons of web­sites out there that earn their keep by gen­er­at­ing link backs. In order to opti­mize your chances of grab­bing that cov­et­ed TechCrunch cita­tion I give you “Link Bait Gen­er­a­tor” I had a good lit­tle gig­gle by enter­ing ‑moto press- in the box. Try a few of your own.

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Art, Images, and Design

One com­menter accus­es this image of Aigu­ille de Midi of being over­ly Pho­to­shopped, but I per­son­al­ly like the washed out vin­tage post card feel . No I am not going up there.

Hours of amuse­ment await you in this NBC col­lec­tion of weird news pho­tos. Occa­sion­al gore and one giant, pink, cher­ry blos­som laden phal­lus. (NSFW)

The abil­i­ty to draw eludes me, the abil­i­ty to draw like Paul Lung eludes almost every­one. The ani­mal por­traits in par­tic­u­lar will make you blink. Fur in such incred­i­ble detail.

Close to my heart — book arts. A col­lec­tion of fab­u­lous bind­ings. From embossed images of peonies to sil­ver and gem encrust­ed breviaries.

and that’s it for anoth­er week. see you Mon­day my freaky lit­tle darlings.

Morning Linkage (Feb 25)

February 25, 2010 /

Transportation

This is the cutest scoot­er. Ever. Red and yel­low, and it has tail fins
— and a rudder.

The Ghezzi-Brian web­site is pret­ty bro­ken and this par­tic­u­lar Furia
ver­sion of the V11 seems to have dis­ap­peared from it’s galleries.
S’okay this black ver­sion shown at Top­Speed looks bet­ter than the red
one on G‑B’s sites.

I know that a num­ber of you take advan­tage of Bike Ban­dit’s impres­sive
on-line col­lec­tion of parts fich­es. For the fan­bois there’s now an
iPhone app. That’s right, you can now look up and order parts right
from the break down lane on the free­way. It works pret­ty darn well and
it’s free.

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Science and Society

The Smith­son­ian reports on the exca­va­tions at  Gob­ek­li Tepe and what
the find­ings might mean for the the­o­ries about the tran­si­tion from
hunter/gather soci­eties to agri­cul­tur­al societies.
“… these new find­ings sug­gest a nov­el the­o­ry of civilization.
Schol­ars have long believed that only after peo­ple learned to farm and
live in set­tled com­mu­ni­ties did they have the time, orga­ni­za­tion and
resources to con­struct tem­ples and sup­port com­pli­cat­ed social
struc­tures. But Schmidt argues it was the oth­er way around: the
exten­sive, coor­di­nat­ed effort to build the mono­liths lit­er­al­ly laid
the ground­work for the devel­op­ment of com­plex soci­eties.…” Read
more:

Do you remem­ber the movie “Val­ley Girls” and how we all made fun of
the odd­i­ty of adding the ques­tion­ing inflec­tion to each and every
sen­tence? The plague has spread into every nook and cran­ny and we are
now a nation that sounds as if we aren’t sure where we parked our
selves. Tay­lor Mali wrote a poem about it and Ron­nie Bruce made some
type dance for it.

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Music

I’m get­ting kick out of lis­ten­ing to these 3 and half minute duels
between John Kessler and John May­nard as they pit their col­lec­tion of
obscure and whacky vinyl against the clock, a theme, and each oth­er. Record Bin Roulette.

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Art, Images, and Design

Weapons design for the cubi­cle slave/warrior. When the Zom­bies come
I’m bar­ri­cad­ing myself in the stock room at Staples.

Paper and stop motion ani­ma­tion. Yay! Like the G wag­on as well. (Video
with sound)

The line between live action and ani­ma­tion in big bud­get movies is
con­tin­u­ing to blur and purists are up in arms. James Cameron insists
Avatar isn’t ani­ma­tion despite the enor­mous num­ber of ani­ma­tors who
worked on his film. This is nice sum­ma­ry of the ker­fluffle with links
to Cameron’s state­ments and a well rea­soned response by Kristin
Thompson.

Blocky bod­ied, bendy armed, charm­ing, robots and oth­er crit­ters. The
near­ly anony­mous Exit man.

hang in there my dears, only one more day to go.

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