shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: Japan (Page 1 of 2)

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 (Feb 4) Friday

Transportation

A con­cept bike should push an idea out beyond the run of the mill and what’s already on the show­room floor. Built for the imag­i­nary pur­pose of run­ning (the old ver­sion of) the Milan-Taranto endurance race and using such new-fangled com­po­nents as a tur­bo diesel engine and car­bon fiber wheels. What you get is Pao­lo di Giusti’s rad­i­cal sin­gle cylin­der Moto Guzzi.

I’m not sure I want to hear the word steam­punk applied to any motor­cy­cle let alone one that is sup­posed to be rid­able. And in fact I find the brass accents to be all wrong on this bike. But the idea of build­ing a cafe start­ing with the April­la RSV motor?  That makes me hap­py. And Welsh to boot. Taimoshan.

Science

Mur­phy is a right obnox­ious bas­tard, but he seems to have let loose of the NanoSail‑D solar sail project at last.  And, no, I did not know that the aim of the project is trash sweep­ing in low earth orbit either.

A video that demon­strates the pow­er of the pow­er of 10. By mov­ing out­ward from a square meter of an image of a nice cou­ple hav­ing a pic­nic in Chica­go and end­ing up at the every edges of human abil­i­ty to see into space in an image 100 mil­lion light years across.   Old IBM film but still rel­e­vant and still fun.

Art. images, and Design

Nice com­bos of sim­ple graph­ics and unso­phis­ti­cat­ed type. Steve Pow­ers explored the glo­ry and gory of rela­tion­ships on the walls of Philadel­phia. I’ve shown you sev­er­al of them before but this is my new favorite.

And now I’m lov­ing his “Dai­ly Met­al­ta­tion

This is as good as any place to start explor­ing the work of Dan Mount­ford. Dou­ble expo­sures made in the cam­era. The world before photoshop.

Animation and Moving Images

Chain-gang tap dance. Okay it’s a lit­tle hard to explain why two girls — the Holst Sis­ters — are tap danc­ing while attached at the ankle. But they’re good at it.

I have no idea who the band is or what the song is about or any of that — I don’t speak Japan­ese. But the music is cheery and vague­ly jazzy and the ani­ma­tion ranges from live­ly to over the top.

Morning Linkage (Aug 20)

Transportation

Cher­ry picked from the var­i­ous flickr tags and a cou­ple of col­lec­tor web­sites. Dark Roast Blend brings you Clas­sic Trash Trucks. Includ­ing a Dempsey Dump­mas­ter seen all over West­ern PA dur­ing my child­hood and ori­gin of the term Dempsey Dump­ster for a drop box. I did­n’t know they had any oth­er name until I was in my 20s.

If the H1 were a lad, it would be the sort of boy you des­per­ate­ly hoped your daugh­ter would­n’t bring home. Fast, noisy, dan­ger­ous — and such bril­liant fun to be with.” A nice write up about one of the first hooli­gan bikes. A pleas­ant stroll down mem­o­ry lane for one or two of my fav boys.

Rumors, teasers, pho­to gal­leries. It’s all here. Now if KTM would just give us a date and a price for the lit­tle 125 stunter we’d all be happy.

Ancient Cultures and Archeology

We’re so used to the view of clas­si­cal Greece as a white mar­ble par­adise that we build our own great mon­u­ments to look like them. Um, not so fast. The Wash­ing­ton Post exam­ines the ori­gin of the clas­si­cal look

… and Colour Lovers gives us a look at what those cold clas­si­cal fig­ures actu­al­ly looked like in glo­ri­ous col­or. (Oh my eyes)

Art, Images, and Design

The take away from this col­lec­tion of Japan­ese sub­way posters is — don’t take up more than your fair share of space, remem­ber your umbrel­la, and don’t drop your chew­ing gum on the floor. M’kay? I love the graphics.

I enjoy the dai­ly image or two from Cov­ered, a blog that posts clas­sic com­ic book cov­ers re-drawn by con­tem­po­rary artists. Some days they’re nice but unre­mark­able. Some days you get this won­der­ful rework­ing of a Tin-Tin cover.

Hours and hours of look­ing and dream­ing. Over 100 maps, new, old, and some­times incom­pre­hen­si­ble.

Black & white Hong Kong. Pho­tographs by Fan Ho. I am par­tic­u­lar­ly tak­en by the images col­lect­ed in “The Liv­ing Theater”

move along now, you have things to do.

Morning Linkage (Aug 9)

Transportation

Super­im­posed time-lapse pho­tog­ra­phy. Ston­er does the corkscrew. I’m dizzy.
So here’s the thing. We all know about art cars. (and most of them are sht) But what about art bikes? No past­ed on dolls heads or racks of bub­ble machines here. Just an R‑80 with some excel­lent met­al work and a cou­ple of bits of jet­sam that got caught in the backwash.

H‑D. 883. Details are every­thing. Check the heat shields and the mat­te black fin­ish with the glossy black pin­stripes. Rough Craft out of Tai­wan. Spend some time with their blog as well.

The venue is a toy mod­der’s forum. That’s about all I can tell you oth­er than that this moto toy is six kinds of night­mare induc­ing awe­some.

Art, Images, and Design

Japan­ese posters from the 30’s. Show­ing the influ­ence of both west­ern design and west­ern com­mu­nism in mes­sages for the proletariat.
More posters. The movie genre that brought you Reefer Mad­ness pro­duced 100’s more, equal­ly sala­cious, movies in the 40’s and 50’s. Gold­en Age Comics col­lect­ed the lob­by posters for you. Cat women of the Moon, Juve­nile Jun­gle, and Alimo­ny — gasp. (NSFW — squicky)

Clas­si­cal themes and com­po­si­tions Francois-Emile Bar­raud paint­ed in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. An unde­served­ly obscure painter. (NSFW artis­tic nudes)

Book arts and ani­ma­tion. “This is Where We Live” by ATP and Asy­lum Films. Take a walk through a world of books.

Morning Linkage (Jul 27)

Transportation

So much train awe­some­ness — pages and pages. Some high­lights… retro-futuristic designs, and mod­ern reuse of old­er engines. Oh, and the pigs let­ting them­selves off at the station.

Anoth­er xs650 bob­ber. Sub­tle details in the body work. Close to perfection.

Rid­den in the dirt. Nuff said.

Science

Fried egg jel­ly­fish. The bane of my child­hood. But pret­ty dan­ged cool when giv­en the Creature-cast treatment.

Remem­ber the siphonophores from a while back? Did you know that they fig­ured in naval war­fare. Hid­ing a sub­ma­rine beneath a raft of crea­tures that sonar can’t see but can’t see through.

Art, Images, and Design

This year’s rice pad­dy art from Japan. Amaz­ing what you can do with a lit­tle plan­ning and some vari­eties of rice.

It ain’t for noth­ing that I’m known as Mizz. Shoes. This Jere­my Scott design stopped me dead in my tracks.

MOMA mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion for “Matisse: The Rad­i­cal Inven­tion 1913–1917″ Pic­tures and com­men­tary for most of the paint­ings and draw­ings in the exhibit.

More from Yuko. The illus­tra­tions from The Beau­ti­ful and the Grotesque are enough to make you buy the book. The jack­et back blurb will clinch the deal.

now go do some­thing wonderful

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