shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: moto guzzi (Page 1 of 2)

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 (Dec 13)

Transportation

That Enduro XT sure is cute. Well fet­tled too.

I was all set to show you the newest Fat Attack show bike when I acci­den­tal­ly clicked on the pre­vi­ous post link. Thank god. Or we all would have missed this beau­ty. 1928 Moto Guzzi racer.

And here’s that Fat Attack. H&R Erbach­er The One. Just because a flat black hyper-bike is a good fit for a Monday.

Science

Com­plete­ly, utter­ly squee. Red pan­das on live cam spon­sored by Firefox.

Art, Images, and Design

Entry point for Lee Mis­en­heimer’s flickr stream. Curly lines make for both sin­is­ter and amus­ing creatures.

A change of pace from the usu­al water­col­or or pen and ink sketch­es. Quick­ly scrib­bled pas­tels give the col­or and shape of Autumn trees.

This is the nicest wed­ding invi­ta­tion I’ve seen in ages. And at the LeBrea Tar Pits. Could­n’t be more roman­tic.

Ani­ma­tion

I want to see this .… when it’s done. Fan­tas­tic Fly­ing Books of Mr. Mor­ris Lessmore.

Morning Linkage (Oct 20)

Transportation

Fea­tured in the most recent issue of Ital­ian Motor Mag­a­zine (which looks like a very worth­while off-line effort.) John W’s Mk 2 Le Man’s based Guzzi cafe rac­er is one of the finest cus­toms that I’ve seen. Fine enough to over­come my dis­like of the all knees and elbows look of the MG engine. And that’s going a ways.

Just the thing for the rut­ted grav­el path out to the back forty. CT90 in OD and kha­ki. Well sort­ed lit­tle thing.

Four fine old Detroit icons. Pen and water­col­or. The out­line draw­ing of the Pon­ti­ac logo is worth the price of admis­sion. Click for embiggens. Wall­pa­per worthy.

Okay — this is just weird. I think it’s a Fairchild J‑44 jet engined trike built by EJ Pot­ter. Read more about the Michi­gan Mad­man at the Knee Slider.

Science

Remem­ber­ing just how pol­lut­ed out night skies are. Com­par­ing the vis­i­bil­i­ty of night sky objects.

With the goal of cre­at­ing a tiny lit­tle sun inside a ware­house in Liv­er­more, the Nation­al Igni­tion Facil­i­ty on both a macro and micro scale. Bonus pic­ture of the Gov­er­na­tor on tour in 2008.

Art, Images, and Design

One of the nicest let­ter­press adver­tis­ing sets I’ve seen. Cranky Press­man sends out a set of 4 Par­li­ment of Owls designed coast­ers with the charm­ing res­i­dents of an imag­i­nary sea­side town. Meet Edna, Mr. Snog­gle­baum, Ade­laide and her pal Mr. Pis­ta­chio, and Cranky him­self. Now I must con­sid­er exact­ly what I want in the way of cus­tom, die-cut, letter-pressed coast­ers for my next social func­tion, hmmmm.

Lost artists. Jos Albert. Umber and grey. Domes­tic scenes and still-lifes, look­ing as if an under-painting was over­laid with graphite and then aban­doned. A slow­er, calmer world than the one we live in.

Cut-out paper ani­ma­tion. The sto­ry of Star Wars told by lit­tle paper peo­ple. (Video/Music 2:41)

Morning Linkage (Sep 3)

Transportation

A double-up. Axel Bud­de builds Moto Guzzi cafe bikes.
Scraper bikes. A cus­tom bicy­cle cul­ture in LA. Top notch video work too.
Okay — that thing I said the oth­er day? About chrome being evil? I’d like to make an excep­tion. A _single_ excep­tion. Using the dirt-simplest jet engine ever, the pulse jet, Robert Mad­dox makes chrome look good, sound good, and go good.

Science

Pic­tures from space tell us so much about our plan­et. The fun­ny thing is that in order to pro­vide quan­tifi­able col­or images of the ocean — a satel­lite has to turn around and look at the moon once in a while.  This com­pli­cates things a bit.
1700 CE to 2000 CE, 300 years that sub­stan­tial­ly remade the sur­face of the earth. These maps and graphs from ecol­o­gists Erle Ellis and Navin Ramankut­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land illus­trate the changes in the type and size of human habi­tats.

Art, Images, and Design

Pur­vey­ors of fine garage sale col­lectibles, Dinosaurs and Robots, intro­duces the Grid and the Wave and points you toward my new favorite geek­ing site. PACIN, the Pack­ing, Art han­dling, and Crat­ing Infor­ma­tion Net­work. (BTW I’m pret­ty darn  sure that col­lectibles is *not* a word even if I did just use it, m’kay?)
You don’t have to watch all 7 and a half min­utes of the video but you’ll enjoy watch­ing Mear One paint a sev­er­al of the items for the Sketch­es of Baby­lon series. Full gallery of the paint­ings here.
Arnold Bock­lin. A sin­gle sum­mer image. Such dark green in the trees beside this river.

Animation

Some days you just can’t get it right. Dad takes Jr and Sis to the play­ground. Mom comes along a bit lat­er. Sim­ple line ani­ma­tion by Bird­box Studio.

Morning Linkage (Aug 26)

Transportation

Kin­da unfin­ished look­ing. The Mer­lin starts with an old flat head and adds a cou­ple of moped parts, some stuff from the back room at the push-bike shop down the street, and bits dent­ed sheet met­al from who knows where. Appeal­ing in its rawness.

What to do with the inevitable rust­ing away of cer­tain bits of that cheap scoot­er you bought. Bob­ber Pass­port. Check out the engraved veloc­i­ty stack. Woo.

If I had a bike this pret­ty I’d let it eat in the kitchen too. Moto Guzzi Airone 250.

Data Geeking

First up — all the Dr Who espisodes and their (approx) place in the time line of the uni­verse. As you’d expect the com­ments are FULL of ran­corous dis­agree­ment and the pick­ing of the tini­est nits. None the less, a prodi­gious feat of data scraping.

Two sets of graph­ics from Phillip Howard at Michi­gan State. The illu­sion of diver­si­ty in food. Soda pop and organ­ics are big busi­ness and the con­sol­i­da­tion of the lit­tle brands under the umbrel­la of the giants con­tin­ues. Soda pop and oth­er bottled/canned drinks. Who owns the organ­ic labels. Buy­ing up the independents.

Art, Images, and Design

Alice Fea­gan — com­mer­cial illus­tra­tion in cut paper, this one for the cov­er of a week­ly food guide … and a pri­vate piece cel­e­brat­ing sum­mer at the lake.

Three new pieces from Alber­to Cer­riteno. That sweet tooth does­n’t look so sweet.

Excerpts from Sir William Hamil­ton’s Campi Phel­graei describ­ing his obser­va­tions of the vol­canic activ­i­ty of Mt. Vesu­vius in the 1760’s and 1770’s. Engrav­ings by Pietro Fabris.

Ani­ma­tion can show us the world from a dif­fer­ent height. Lucille finds her­self over­whelmed by her vis­it to the gui­tar shop.

thurs­day, chick­en for lunch?

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