shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: shadows

Morning Linkage (Aug 4)

Transportation

I am tak­en by the smart sim­plic­i­ty of the head­lamp brack­et and the mat­te black on the head­er pipes. Moto Guzzi.

Hell for Leather stops just short of accu­rate­ly describ­ing this lat­est pro­mo video from Tri­umph. Lis­ten to the voice over with­out watch­ing the video. He’s not talk­ing about a bike

As penance for  the pre­vi­ous content-free link, I bring you… Drags and Rac­ing’s all dark Tri­umph Bon­neville. I sat on a Bon­neville last week­end… It fits. Drags and Rac­ing web­site — in Ital­ian,. NSFW nudity.

Girls on bikes. A lit­tle sweet for some of you but I’m charmed and it is a Laverda.

Boys on bikes. Same look and feel but a boy and a Honda.

Science

If lasers cre­ate light in care­ful­ly con­trolled wave­lengths what would an anti-laser do? Absorb light in care­ful­ly con­trolled wave­lengths. Okay, I’m not smart enough to have come up with that but some­one has. And now that the idea has been described there’s a race on to build one and to fig­ure out what it’s use­ful for.

Words and Food

Work­ing Word­smith Alert. New CMoS. Sneak a peak at some of the shiny new rules and learn which of your old favorites they took out back and shot. (Chica­go Man­u­al of Style)

Nora May­nard dis­cuss­es her top picks from the field of new drink­ables offered at Tales of the Cock­tail. I’m think­ing that I’ll have to hunt down a bot­tle of the Coc­chi Amer­i­cano before sum­mer ends.

Art, Images, and Design

- the dreamy sum­mer edition

These are Jim Denevan’s tools. These are his images.

The chil­dren’s book illus­tra­tions of Igor Oleynokov. Flu­id pas­tel worlds. The seascapes are espe­cial­ly enchanting.

Have I told you about Pooh Sticks? Maybe not. But that’s for anoth­er day, when there’s a weak autumn sun and noth­ing much to regret. Mean­while here’s a sum­mer ver­sion of play­ing with bits of wood and water. Lit­tle Drifters. Lenny makes oth­er things out of flot­sam and jet­sam as well.

Beach scene, black and white per­fec­tion. (Mild­ly NSFW)

Morning Linkage (Jul 6)

Transportation

Ore­gon race­way park — extreme shifter cart. Though 800 pounds makes it some­thing oth­er than a go-cart IMO.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/palatov-motorsports-dp4/

More extreme. These cars (and bikes) look like car­toon char­ac­ters. In part because they spring from Japans otaku culture.

Exam­ples of boso­zoku bikes are a lit­tle hard­er to find but here’s a cou­ple. (Nice non boso-Morowaki 600RR smack in the mid­dle of the thread.)

And for some­thing sooth­ing. Bernardet pro­duced a very com­mon and suc­cess­ful line of scoot­ers in France in the late 40s and the 50s. But from 1921 until 1940 they pro­duced rac­ing and street side­cars. Scroll down to see some wicked racers.

Science

Sci­ence of pret­ty. How do but­ter­fly wings get their color?

More sci­ence of pret­ty. How do fire­flies light up?

A slight­ly dif­fer­ent view on the prob­lem of lag­ging sci­ence inno­va­tion in the US. It’s not the edu­ca­tion it’s the jobs.

Art, Images, and Design

Peter Tay­lor’s round lit­tle fel­lows with pat­terns and swirly pret­ties. Jol­ly. (NSFW bare car­toon butts)

Only the shad­ow knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. The rest of us just assumed that the aver­age beach going kid has a bit of mon­ster in their heart.

Edmund Dulac illus­trat­ed many books in the 30’s Here is a set of scans from Trea­sure Island. Soft clear col­ors and charm­ing images.

Per­haps you could also look at his illus­tra­tion for the Rubaiy­at. Much dark­er and lush.

Animation

This is anoth­er one of those “how could I pos­si­bly write a bet­ter intro than Mered­ith wrote?” items. Czech chil­dren’s film — Kooky’s Return. I can’t. Just watch.

wel­come back to the real™ world

Morning Linkage (Jun 14)

Bikes and Swap Meets.

From the mid­dle of nowhere France, Mike Wern­er reports on the week­end mar­ket at Cany-Barville. Indoor and out­door dis­play space, piles of junk, and one very cute beach scene. You won’t rec­og­nize a lot of the vehi­cles but it does­n’t mat­ter. These lit­tle trea­sures are fine. Can any­one iden­ti­fy the red and black bike in the 3rd and 4th pictures?

So while I was look­ing for some­thing that would help to ID a cou­ple of the items in the pre­vi­ous gallery I came across this report from the 2007 Her­shey, PA swap meet. And now I want a Sim­plex Ser­vi­cy­cle, 6th pho­to down. Or how about a 1952 moped that runs on diesel? 2nd pho­to down.

Infrastructure and Illustrated Cities

And back to for­eign shores. How do you han­dle mov­ing motor traf­fic from a coun­try that dri­ves on the right (Chi­na) to an island that dri­ves on the left (Hong Kong.) Not to men­tion a com­plex set of bor­der cross­ing pro­to­cols. You can attempt to hide the mechan­ics of the process or you cel­e­brate the com­plex­i­ty. NL Archi­tects designed a loop­ing road dot­ted with arti­fi­cial islands and tons of sub­lime. Cau­tion huge wash­es of archi­tec­ture and urban design speak.

Some­what jum­bled — hasty com­pi­la­tion? Tak­ing crime data from the city of San Fran­sis­co and run­ning it through a map and some 3‑D soft­ware gets these topo­graph­ic look­ing maps show­ing crime as a ter­rain of peaks and valleys.

Imaginary Places

I know I’ve seen this work before but I can’t find any evi­dence that I’ve shared it with you all. A 4 year project, A Cas­tle on the Ocean has lights, trains, and all the gin­ger­bread cas­tle bits any princess could want. And a Fer­ris Wheel. Wataru Itou.

Flash put to good use. The world of Syfy chan­nel’s mini-series, Tin­man. BTW Tin­man is now stream­able on Net­flix. Flash — Sound.

Art, Images, and Printers

Take one pho­tog­ra­ph­er — not afraid of water, add some nifty cam­era gear, and a real tal­ent for push­ing post pro­cess­ing to the lim­its and you get this set of pho­tographs from Clark Lit­tle’s new book “The Shore­break Art of Clark Little”

Ignore the art school speak and just look. Espe­cial­ly study the work­ing draw­ings and pro­to­type videos. Joon Y. Moon has cre­at­ed an world of light and shad­ow that moves, grows, and goes qui­es­cent as the user manip­u­lates blocks on a surface.

Hard work­ing Lego peo­ple. Or what you always want­ed to tell your kids was going on inside the print­er.