shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: space travel

Morning Linkage (Nov 12)

Transportation

Way too much of the report­ing done on Wired’s Auto­topia blog is auto­mo­tive indus­try due dili­gence. Even the writ­ers sound a bit dazed by all the cute lit­tle urban com­muter and eVe­hi­cle fluff late­ly. But once in a while they strike gold. On the occa­sion of what would have been his 100th birth­day they pub­lished this fab air­borne pho­to of  Georg “Schorsch” Meier at the 1939 Isle of Mann TT.

Dear heav­ens the boys over at Christies’ cat­a­log depart­ment are hav­ing fun with this bike auc­tion. “…com­plete the trans­for­ma­tion and end up with a cafe-racer ne plus ultra, a gen­uine road-going Manx Nor­ton with lit­er­ary prove­nance…” Hen­ry Man­ning III’s Nor­ton Manx is for sale. (Along with a few oth­er trea­sures from his son’s shed.)

I try, I real­ly try to ele­vate the lev­el of this blog — but some days…  so here it is a fan­ci­ful design for a space going vehi­cle for hon­ey­moon­ers. Sex in space. I know you all want it. (NSFW)

Inexplicable Culture.

The Lying Down Game.

Art, Images, and Design

Total­ly charm­ing. Cut paper sil­hou­ettes of two peo­ple on bicy­cles. Oth­er vehi­cles, ani­mals, map parts, and mus­tach­es too.

Verve. No, not the record com­pa­ny, the mag­a­zine: French 1950’s. Joan Miro — The Dog Bark­ing at the Moon. One of the strangest sil­li­est, most won­der­ful prints ever. In the same issue a Cha­gall (meh), a Matisse col­lage (ooh), and  Leg­er (Leg­er always con­fus­es me.)

Animation

Yes, I’m late with it but I can’t resist show­ing you this love­ly lit­tle snip­pet. The offi­cial ani­ma­tion for Inter­na­tion­al Ani­ma­tion Day. Reminds me of explod­ing­dog cartoons.

In the Begin­ning. Anoth­er look at Gen­e­sis, with a sense of  humor and bet­ter voic­es by Katie Wendt. (NSFW — Adam is naked)

git out­ta here — the week is done.

Morning Linakge (Oct 4)

Transportation

Over at WebUr­ban­ist, Steve Lev­en­stein gives us a heav­i­ly illus­trat­ed overview of the con­stant­ly chang­ing art on the cars at the Cadil­lac Ranch. I did­n’t know just how inten­tion­al the invi­ta­tion to pass­ing graf­fi­ti artists was.

Dis­cov­ery­HD brings us a 2 part doc­u­men­tary on the Cafe Rac­er sub-culture. Air­ing Oct 13 and 14. Fire up the Beta­max Ethel.

For all I know this web page is adver­tis­ing bogus “like a tiger” nos­trums. It’s in Japan­ese, I don’t feel like deal­ing with the trans­la­tor. I just want you to see the pic­ture of the 70’s era wall of death rid­ers.

Okay I lied, I did trans­late it and it’s the web page for Din Tai Fung Speed Stunt Troupe. There’s a few more pic­tures here.

Science

The total­ly awe­some adven­ture of two guys, a lit­tle video cam­era, and a heli­um filled weath­er bal­loon. Not quite to infin­i­ty and beyond, but to the edge of space and back.  The footage from the flight will make you feel both small com­pared to the vast­ness just out of our reach and proud to be a mem­ber of such a curi­ous species.

Some­what spe­cial­ized and tech­ni­cal, but of inter­est to the pho­tog­ra­phers and web geeks in the group. Google has pro­posed, demo’d, and open sourced for pub­lic use, the exper­i­men­tal new image com­pres­sion tech­nique WebP as an alter­na­tive to the com­mon­ly used jpeg com­pres­sion tech­niques. Your opin­ion on the qual­i­ty of the com­pressed images?

Art, Images, and Design

A new wall por­trait by Vhils for the Nuart show in Nor­way. Cre­at­ed by cut­ting, (drilling, punch­ing, and pound­ing) into the lay­ers of fin­ish on a wall. More infor­ma­tion on Alexan­dre Far­to (aka Vhils) and more walls.

Object of desire — but unavail­able at this moment. Pint Size has a water bot­tle. Pint size appears — inex­plic­a­bly — in the com­ic Ques­tion­able Content.

Practicality-stretching design exer­cis­es are all over the inter­net. Beds that do origa­mi to hide away dur­ing the day, cof­fee tables with inter­est­ing shapes but no place to put a cup or a mag­a­zine, it’s goes on and on. Most of these exist only in ren­der­ing files but once in a while… A swing set like din­ing table and chairs. Um, no drink­ing at this din­ner par­ty, okay?

Two min­utes of Mon­day humor. If it’s rain­ing on you too this morn­ing I hope you find a big guy with an umbrel­la.  Man­fred. (Ani­ma­tion — 2:00)

keep calm and car­ry on,