shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: macro photos (Page 1 of 2)

Morning Linkage (Dec 17)

Transportation

It start­ed with see­ing the pho­to of a team of rac­ers in front of a BA Air Fer­ry on one of the ran­dom bike pic blogs. And went on from there until I came to this full report on the 1967 Zand­voort Sprint. Pho­tos, videos, and lots of words.

Oh if only he had roughed up the front forks. Just a lit­tle. It would be a per­fect rat. Or near enough. XS650.

Ini­tial­ly mis­named but now cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fied. I just like that this Nor­ton looks so hap­py to sit­ting out there wait­ing it’s turn.

Science

My world has just became a sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter place. I now know that it has pale­o­mag­netists in it. Sci­en­tists who study the his­to­ry of the changes of the earth­’s mag­net­ic field. And now they’ve dis­cov­ered some unprece­dent­ed­ly rapid shifts that occurred about 3000 years ago. By study­ing the mag­net­ic sig­na­tures of heaps of slag left over from smelt­ing cop­per in the Mid­dle East.

Order breaks down into dis­or­der in a very order­ly way. Video demon­strat­ing an aspect of non-linear physics.

Art, Images, and Design

Old hard dri­ves. New toys. And then there are the pic­tures of the lit­tle guys tak­ing the machines apart. Joy.

A reminder that the Space Nee­dle was once new, and that graph­ic design in the ear­ly 60’s had some moments of brilliance.

Week­end DIY cam­era rigs for tak­ing high-speed, super close, mul­ti­ple expo­sures, or just look at the amaz­ing pictures. 

…he want­ed to cap­ture fly­ing insects, such as the hon­ey­bee above. “I have a prob­lem with killing them, plus they don’t fly when they’re dead,”

as well as but­ter­fly wing scales and mag­net­ic ferrofluids.

Animation

Team­Cer­f’s Meet Buck illus­trates the exis­ten­tial… um, shows fol­ly as… er, … it’s fun­ny, okay?

Morning Linkage (Nov 30)

Transportation

Bor­ing Euro sedans, re-makes of already clas­sic cars, and the Porsche con­vert­ible for the mass­es. This list of 10 future col­lec­tor cars from folks at Hager­ty Insur­ance Agency does­n’t make me want to run out and buy some­thing to stash in the barn. Except maybe the Fiat or the Mini Club­man. But you can still get the orig­i­nals if you’re look­ing for clas­sic. Whad­da ya think?

I am dis­turbed that the com­mon name for the own­ers and oper­a­tors of these wild­ly cus­tom vans from Japan is Yan­kee. Or maybe it’s just the reac­tion to see­ing so many fly­ing plas­tic wings and those low­er mandible spoil­ers. Bonus — all these vans make the 2 cus­tom sedans includ­ed in the gallery look real­ly tame.

I like this Sport­ster. I like old school and I like satin paint. New­Blood by Deus.

Anoth­er Sport­ster. Com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from VTM in France. Best Tron-ish future bike I’ve seen recently.

Very ear­ly attempt at the hub steer. Many more inno­va­tions in this 1921 Ner-a-Car.

Science

Fly­ing squid. It’s a con­fus­ing mix of squid­li­ness (ten­ta­cles) and ray­ness (flap­ping wings) but the video is cool and the glimpse into doing deep-sea research with remote-controlled sub­marines will make your desk job seem bor­ing. CreatureCast.

Where’s George? And what can the data col­lect­ed on the web about the trav­els of dol­lar bills tell us about the coun­try we live in? First things first. How are you going to look at all those bills? This student-created video from North­west­ern shows how some of the cal­cu­la­tions of net­works and bound­aries look while they’re grind­ing away. Cool.

Art, Images, and Design

Orig­i­nal­ly I was just going to point out the pic­ture of the under­side of the wave. But that’s just not the only awe inspir­ing pic­ture in this round up of Nat’l Geog­ra­phy 2010 Pho­tog­ra­phy Con­test.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/11/national_geographics_photograp.html

These pho­tos of ants in mossy places look like the set designs for Avatar. Maybe bet­ter, the nar­ra­tive makes more sense.

DieLine takes anoth­er look back­wards — this time to the seed pack­ages of old. The let­ter­ing is love­ly, flow­ing, and all hand drawn.

Animation

I don’t care if it is in Span­ish — it’s not like we’re going to need to fol­low the dia­logue. Javier Oli­vares does a new  Bat­man car­toon for TV. The look is just right, goth­ic, gotham, and lit­tle grainy.

Morning Linkage (Nov 1)

Transportation

I’m not actu­al­ly that fond of the Triumph/Indian/Whathaveyou vin­tage bob­ber idea. So the Royal-Enfield item does­n’t do it for me. But some of the detail­ing and engrav­ing on this machine are awesome.

1962 CZ 175 Type 450. Show­ing how old school bikes were adapt­ed for dirt. Back before there were “dirt bikes”

I shall now die ful­filled. Mercedes-Benz, AMG and Ducati togeth­er at last.

This weird lit­tle bike is based, loose­ly, on a Ducati. Well done, or just ran­dom? discuss.

Science

#16 — a snow crys­tal. Wow. And there’s the new to me Orna­men­tal Baboon Taran­tu­la. Big pic­tures of the small world.

Air­plane food sucks because you can’t hear your­self think. Okay that’s inter­est­ing, but it does­n’t help does it?

Art, Images, and Design

An inter­est­ing attempt to change up the usu­al (fail­ing) inter­face for door open­ers. Can we stop peo­ple push­ing when they should pull and pulling when they should push? Maybe.

Cars 2 com­ing next sum­mer from Pixar. It’s a spy sto­ry? Check out the logo reveal on the offi­cial YouTube chan­nel. And there’s a web­site — of course. I hope it’s worth the hype. Pixar is awful­ly close to becom­ing pre­dictable. And that would be sad.

The adven­ture game Machi­nar­i­um (Amani­ta Design) was a mini-hit in 2009. Now if you want to have your own lit­tle robot you can. Paper­craft score!

Abstract pat­terns com­bined to cre­ate a fox on a wall. Philippe Baude­locque does some fine work in Paris. His per­son­al web­site has an awful mov­ing back­ground.

Morning Linkage (Jul 5)

Transportation

Mus­cle car mad­ness does­n’t seem to be going away. If you can’t afford the ride of your teenage dreams, maybe this print “Ply­mouth” by Kareem Rizk will make up for it. A little.

What does it mean that the best look­ing cus­tom work on Japan­ese bikes is com­ing out of Europe and the best cus­tom work on Amer­i­can bikes is com­ing out of Japan? Anoth­er great Harley cus­tom, this one from Ace Motor­cy­cles. The details, look at the head­light brack­et, cap­ti­vate me.

A photo-tag Ace Motor­cy­cles on a Japan­ese site. Ace itself has no web­site but one of their fans has put a bunch of pics on his blog fortyt­wo. and trans­lat­ed

Science and Technology

Geo-thermal heat­ing — not just for green build­ing. The first users of geot­her­mal heat­ing may have been dinosaurs look­ing for a way to keep very large eggs at a per­fect, con­stant temperature.

You know how you nev­er have enough bowls for that chili par­ty but the next week­end there’s not enough plates for the BBQ? Some­how own­ing 24 set­tings of din­ner­ware just for the occa­sion­al moment when you need that many soups plates, does­n’t seem prac­ti­cal. And where are you going to keep all that chi­na? What if you had 40 flat discs in a cup­board that could turn into what-ever size and shape of dish you need at the moment?

Bug-eyed. 6 macro pho­tos of insect optics. Cool enough for wall-paper or desk­top. It’s nice to see the species iden­ti­fied on pho­tos like these.

I hate bat­ter­ies. I hate putting bat­ter­ies in my gad­gets. I can’t see the dan­ged lit­tle draw­ings that tell me which end to put in first. But now I don’t have to look. Two bat­ter­ies, in any old way, will get the job done. Did some­one say Microsoft does­n’t do hard­ware well?

Art, Images, Illustration (and Food)

Not the most com­plex recipe I’ve seen on They Draw, They Cook. But one of the sweet­est, most sum­mery so far.

A tree muse­um. Real­ly. Using hard­scape ele­ments to high­light the unique attrib­ut­es of spec­i­men trees. Nice pho­to cat­a­log of orna­men­tal trees as well. Too bad Switzer­land is so far away.

Black wal­nut and weath­ered met­al make an ele­gant if some­what odd­ly con­struct­ed desk. It’s the com­bi­na­tion of the mate­ri­als that attracts me.

Animation

It’s a three-day-weekend Mon­day so you have no excuse not to sit down and watch each and every one of the the clips pro­vid­ed in this trib­ute to Ray Har­ry­hausen. The genius behind the sum­mer camp, rainy after­noon, enter­tain­ment of my youth.

Now go away and look at some­thing interesting.

Morning Linkage (Apr 29)

Transporation

A col­lec­tion of SR400 and SR500 videos. These high­ly mod­i­fi­able sin­gles are the start­ing point for tons of cus­toms in Japan. Now in addi­tion a to the work on the bike — it seems that you have to make a rid­ing video. Kick start bike, cruise the neigh­bor­hood, hit the under­pass, have your bud­dy take lots of shaky close­ups of your pants pock­ets :-D But you real­ly want to spend time with the SR500 built by trouthunter. It’s the nicest build doc­u­men­tary I’ve seen. (Video #4 — Music)

Amir Glinik draws CGI bikes that you can hear rum­bling in your brows­er. Swear to God.  This ‘45 Harley can be had in either red or white. Luscious.

The fel­lows at Jamesville (that’d be James) have moved a lit­tle out of the cus­tom bike field to work on a 1936 Ford Coupe. Maybe I read too many R. Crumb car­toons as teenag­er but these always give the gig­gles. It’s a beau­ti­ful job.

Science

Very nifty opti­cal illu­sion. You’ll see a spi­ral but it’s not there. I’m not sure how it’s done, some­thing about the background.
There are a ton more exam­ples here. and some explanations.

Art, Images, and Design

Insects and dew. Macro pho­tos of the bejew­eled denizens of a world we over­look every morning.

I’m not sure where to go with these, a mutant bio­log­i­cal dystopia. Line and sim­ple col­ors cre­ate charm­ing night­mares. (Fer­nan­do Hereñú (AKA Pulpo)

Sim­i­lar­ly, not-quite human char­ac­ters but full of whim­sy and bright col­ors. Hap­py robots liv­ing in a hap­py world drawn by lit­tle kong.

keep calm and car­ry on…

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