shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: KZ400

Morning Linkage (Jan 4)

Transportation

KZ400 by Mad Crow in Barcelona. The head­light and tank details make it special.

There are many things to like about this Wrench­mon­kees Ducati 750ss. The frame treat­ment, the col­ors, and the front clip.

I nev­er can quite seem to wrap my mind around the idea of a bike called a Vira­go. But the front end of this XV750 brings me pret­ty close to what I think it should be. On the oth­er hand, no Vira­go I’ve ever met had such a tee­ny inef­fec­tu­al rear end.

Science

What is the evo­lu­tion­ary pur­pose of tick­ling? An incred­i­bly impor­tant ques­tion whose answer remains a mys­tery. (And whose impor­tance is total­ly poo-poo’d by the spoil-sport commenters. )

Art, Images, and Design

The idea of deliv­er­ing teach­ing mate­ri­als as a sec­ondary use of the card­board box the food aid rice came in is … well I don’t know, either inspired or con­de­scend­ing. With some thought and effort this could work very well. More com­mer­cial­ly, Ama­zon should jump on this  — imag­ine a box to ship toys in that turns into a toy.

Scary octo­pus but not in the way you expect. A col­lec­tion of plas­tic bags and oth­er trash takes on new life mean­der­ing through the streets of Slovenia.

The char­ac­ter ani­ma­tions in first per­son shoot­ers make me wince every time I see one. But some of the vehi­cle and weapon designs are first-rate. Like these from Damna­tion. Sev­er­al nice guns and a bonus of a bike and a trike at the end. Win­ter build project anyone?

Animation

Infor­ma­tion is Beau­ti­ful is branch­ing out into ani­ma­tion as a tech­nique for the visu­al dis­play of infor­ma­tion. Here is a Tetris inspired retelling of the world’s spend­ing habits. Deb­tris. This first effort gets an A for being infor­ma­tive and a D for the sound track. Watch, but turn the speak­ers down.

Morning Linkage (Dec 20)

Transportation

KZ400, El Dia­blo by Mad Crow in Barcelona. The details on the head­light and tank make it special.

Hed­ton. A rare Hed­lund engine crow­barred into a Nor­ton(?) frame. Includes links to the Hed­lund engine sto­ry and a flickr stream of Hed­lund motos.

Odd-bits bicy­cle sculp­ture. A Mon­day morn­ing smile.

Science and Technology

Yeah, soci­ol­o­gy is a soft sci­ence but wth. Why a lim­it­ed lev­el of cor­rup­tion among offi­cials and law enforce­ment may be nec­es­sary to the cohe­sive­ness of society.

Some­thing to mull over. this map of the world shows the heav­i­ly walled nation­al and inter­na­tion­al bor­ders. Are we walling off the rest of the world? And can you think of oth­er heav­i­ly for­ti­fied bor­ders and how do they fit into this map?

Art, Images, and Design

Thomas Allen brings pulp fic­tion paper­backs to life by mov­ing the sub­jects out of the flat plain of the cov­er. Artist bio.

A sam­ple of the work of Her­mann Hup­pen — one of the rare breed of writer/illustrators in the world of comics. Some of the Jere­mi­ah series fea­tured here are avail­able in Eng­lish translation.

Animation

Head­less Pro­duc­tions. Teas­er for I’m a Mon­ster. It’s going to be a first-rate fam­i­ly giggle.