shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: Lego (Page 1 of 2)

Morning Linkage (Jan 19)

Transportation

There’s a fan club for every vehi­cle ever made. And restora­tion nuts will go to great lengths to get their babies back on the road, or in this case, back into the air. A Viet­nam era Huey flies again — dig the Led Zep­pelin accom­pa­nied trail­er for the doc­u­men­tary. (Video — music and com­bat footage)

I am fre­quent­ly the object of friend­ly rib­bing because I can make an entire day’s worth of errands into an itin­er­ary with­out a sin­gle left turn across traf­fic. Turns out I’m not crazy. A world with­out left turns would be both safer and more efficient.

Bul­ta­co Sher­pa T. That is enough dan­gling bait for most of you. It’s a love­ly Span­ish resto.  Also Motor­cy­cle Pic­ture of the Day has moved house. Remem­ber to change your fee­dread­ers and bookmarks :)

First enjoy this soon to be a clas­sic image of a lone rid­er on the dunes. Then click on the link labeled HERE to see a huge set of Dakar ral­ly pics — lots of bikes.

Science and Tech

Sun­sets on Mars. They’re blue. Just thought you should know :)

A cou­ple of days ago I showed you a bit of ani­ma­tion made with the help of the CellScope a micro­scope add-on for cell phone cam­eras. Now some folks at U Mich have cre­at­ed a lit­tle don­gle that will HiJack the audio out­put port of your iThingy and turn it into a nifty sen­sor host. You can get one of the pro­to­types for your own — if you have a clever enough idea  about how it should be used.

Art, Images, and Design

More Lit­tle Red Rid­ing­hood. So far beyond the usu­al flat, boxy results of using  chil­dren’s blocks as a sculp­ture mate­r­i­al. The tex­tures achieved in the wolf and the bar­ren trees are per­fect. (And I think I might have a lit­tle red rid­ing hood problem.)

A short mus­ing on the nature of name and brand in pop­u­lar art. Did/does Banksy (and by exten­sion a num­ber of oth­er “famous” street artists) use a crew? The com­ments will tell about all you need to know about the state of popular/folk/commercial art appre­ci­a­tion in this coun­try. le sigh.

Char­lie Brown and Snoopy, gen­er­al­ly any­thing not drawn by Mr. Schultz is crap. Except maybe this time trav­el piece that puts the boy and his dog on a street cor­ner sell­ing com­ic books.  By Boulet for the lat­est issue of Zoo.

The full issue of Zoo for which the Snoopy and Char­lie brown illo was done is worth a cou­ple of min­utes of your time even if you don’t read French. There’s a lot of good work to see.

Animation

I’ve always loved the sly humor of the yel­low polka-dot biki­ni song. The shy­ness of the girl want­i­ng to be fab­u­lous but a lit­tle afraid of all the atten­tion. Here is Lisa T’s (Lasse Pers­son) trans­gen­der ver­sion. Big burly swedish beach boys and one teenag­er full of trep­i­da­tion. It all ends well, I promise. (Pos­si­bly NSFW, no nudity)

Morning Linkage (Jan 10)

Transportation

One of the things I love about the back­yard and small shop bike builders is how will­ing they are to share what they’ve done. A ran­dom pic of an orange bike post­ed on a cafe rac­er site brings the pre­vi­ous­ly anony­mous builder out of the wood­work with some CAD draw­ings and build pic­tures and hints of anoth­er bike in the works. (But damn — all that orange.)
http://www.returnofthecaferacers.com/2010/12/return-of-citrus-cafe-racer.html

A look at the work of Dean Jef­feries and his role in the Hol­ly­wood car cul­ture of the 60’s. For Mus­tang lovers, Jef­feries has a hand in the phan­tom fleet of ear­ly Shelbys.

Science

I did not know that Brazil pro­duces one-third of the cof­fee on the plan­et. Oth­er inter­est­ing cof­fee facts lurk in this graphic.

Cap­puc­ci­no Coast is the name that res­i­dents of Cape Town and envi­rons give to the rare phe­nom­e­na that turns the ocean swells into a thick brown­ish sea foam. This set of pic­tures makes the descrip­tion seem entire­ly right.

Art, Images, and Design

Take the dumpy kid and one of the weird birds from UP add a lit­tle St. George, shake well. Chad King gets the mix right in this quick one-off. Quick? That’s a speed paint­ing? Okay so the rest of us suck just a lit­tle more this morning.

His “real” work is smoother and tighter, and pleas­ing­ly puz­zling.

Imaginary Transportation

Fairy tale trans­porta­tion for girls. Inspi­ra­tion.

Fur­ther inspi­ra­tion for fly­ing girls.

Animation

Lego live action/stop motion short. The cheesi­est mus­tache ever and a won­der­ful wall of lit­tle doors into oth­er peo­ple’s lives. Gig­gly fun.

out the door and knock ’em dead

Morning Linkage (Dec 15)

Transportation

3 from Asphalt and Rub­ber this AM.

I seem to be all about the black bikes late­ly. And Ducati has got­ten the mes­sage. The dis­as­trous­ly white Diav­el has got­ten a pre-release make-over and now comes in a much yum­mi­er Dia­mond Black. More rid­ing, less polishing.

And April­ia has the per­fect Xmas gift for your fav boy-racer. The RSV4 car­bon fiber fair­ing kit. Per­fect if you’re a bit more flush than most of us. 5K? Srsly? Damned pret­ty though.

I can­not explain the pic that goes with this post. Oth­er than to assume that I am not the only who could use an appetite sup­pres­sant dur­ing the hol­i­day (over) feed­ing sea­son. But the news appears to be real. Paris Hilton has flung a bunch of mon­ey at a cred­i­ble 125GP team.

Toys and Maps

The unfor­tu­nate­ly named Fuck Yeah Car­tog­ra­phy tum­blr. Many , many pages of maps. Some clever, some odd, some cheesy, some more art than maps. Links to the sources vary in their use­ful­ness but some lead on to won­der­lands of images and history.

It was inevitable. Food­ie Lego. A vil­lage bak­ery and Parisian green gro­cers. I’m not sure the local four-year old is gonna be pleased to see either of these under the tree instead of the next Star Wars set, but I’m going to have a great time on Xmas.

Art. Images, and Design

A love­ly print of a line of pranc­ing dev­ils. Matt Forsythe.

Episode One — Robots in film. The usu­al sus­pects from the ear­ly days are here. Maria, Gort, Rob­bie. And few that are new to me. Tobor? He looks like fun.

Fruit and Veg­gie Alphadeath. Maybe a few too many deaths by knife but there’s not many oth­er ways you can mur­der an egg­plant. (Click through to flickr)

Animation

Made for Mole­sk­ine by Rogi­er Wieland. Cut paper ani­ma­tion of dates in a plan­ner. Bonus dinosaur appear­ance. (1:07 — the sound track is grat­ing and you don’t need it)

Morning Linkage (Nov 4)

Transportation

I am utter­ly uncon­vinced that I want to see Green Hor­net in Jan­u­ary. The trail­ers made me cringe. On the oth­er hand this video extolling the won­ders of Black Beau­ty, the Crown Vic based auto­mo­tive star of the film may change my mind. Bonus is that there’s footage of the art of film­ing chase scenes here. (video — loud music. 2:51)

Church of Chop­pers brings us pic­tures of a Sun­day of dirt/mud rac­ing spon­sored by the Black­heads MC in Fin­land. Prov­ing that bikes and mud are fun on any con­ti­nent. (anoth­er tip-off from one of the fab mag­pie spotters.)

One for the orange kool-aid crowd. Cyril Despres rides the new KTM 450 on his pri­vate test track in the Pyre­nees moun­tains. The man has his own test track in the moun­tains. Good god.

I like this BMW R60 striped back to the essentials.

Sweet lit­tle Triumph.

Technology and Science

Real time video manip­u­la­tion. It’s now pos­si­ble to make some­thing dis­ap­pear from the CCTV mon­i­tor are it’s hap­pen­ing. Cool…and a lit­tle frightening.

I apol­o­gize in advance for the num­ber of point­less Lego posts. But damn, frog dis­sec­tion.

Soooo geeky. Here’s a PDF of the “Space Shut­tle Weath­er Launch Com­mit Cri­te­ria and KSC End of Mis­sion Weath­er Land­ing Cri­te­ria” Yup, exact­ly what it sounds like. Fas­ci­nat­ing look into the minu­tia of get­ting big things off the ground and into space. (BTW NASA has sev­er­al inter­est­ing twit­ter accounts. Things like this show up.)

Art, Images, and Design

This quick pen­cil sketch that been fol­low­ing me around all day.

Arche­ol­o­gy meets street-art. Um, no that’s not quite right. The arche­o­log­i­cal inter­est is decades away. Street-art meets pop-up gallery? Nope. Pop-ups are tem­po­rary. An aban­doned sub­way project is hard­ly tem­po­rary. Well any­way, under New York there’s a big space that has been filled with the work of many of the best street artists. Under­bel­ly. It was opened to a select few recent­ly. And now has been closed up again.

I’m an ani­ma­tion fan. I spend a lot of time crawl­ing around the web look­ing for rare bits and pieces. A lot of what I like and find isn’t pro­duced in the US. I get a lot of leads to links that serve up to a notice read­ing “This video is not avail­able in your region.” How far behind the real­i­ty of glob­al cul­ture are we here? And is it only going to get worse?

Animation

A month or so ago I wrote a note to myself about a link: “Some­one has got to stop these peo­ple. Once again a fab­u­lous piece of ani­ma­tion might nev­er see the light of day because it was cre­at­ed with­out obtain­ing the rights to the music. Enjoy this trail­er for the imag­i­na­tive Hen­drix inspired The Expe­ri­ence and hope that the cre­ators can come up with the scratch to license Voodoo Child so that we can see the rest.” But today when I want­ed to post the item I rechecked the link and it seems that they did secure rights. So I’m a lit­tle slow to get this post­ed and you reap the ben­e­fit of see­ing the full video of the roller coast­er trib­ute to the man. (Video. Music. 8:06)

Go do some­thing sur­pris­ing, it will make me happy.

Morning Linkage (Oct 7)

Transportation

You *can* go back in time. To your hap­py tod­dler days. With this grownup sized Radio Fly­er.

LIFE’s archives have yield­ed a num­ber of motor­cy­cle themed col­lec­tions. A friend recent­ly remind­ed me of the 1948 Day­tona set you’ve seen here before. There’s a new set of images. All but one of these Hel­l’s Angels images from 1965 were nev­er pub­lished. A reminder of a time when HA was more about bikes, rid­ing, and carous­ing than cor­po­rate struc­ture and meth dis­tri­b­u­tion deals.

New from Deus. Le Moulin Rouge. Sim­plic­i­ty. The front forks intrigue me. 2 gal­leries, use the scroll bar at the bot­tom to view.

Engineering, Construction

Legos. Brick­Con 2010. Pho­to overview. Lov­ing the dinosaurs.

Bldg­blog dis­cuss­es the doc­u­men­tary “The Soli­tary Life of Cranes” by Eva Weber who is also respon­si­ble for “City of Cranes.”  The life and out­look of the men who sit in the lit­tle cab at the top of the tallest objects in our cities — the con­struc­tion cranes.

Art, Images, and Design

Col­or wheels are an ubiq­ui­tous tool for design­ers but they did­n’t always exist. Imprint takes a look at the his­to­ry of illus­trat­ing col­or rela­tion­ships from line charts, to wheels, to spheres, to a fab­u­lous set of umbrel­las. (2 parts)

From Ani­malar­i­um, the most crea­ture like of Jacek Yerka’s soft­ly col­ored, dreamt of ani­mals. And more of his meta­mor­phic land­scapes.

If only my hair was still long enough to braid. The best girl in the world. Pip­pi.

be good to your­selves today,

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