shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: street photos

Morning Linkage (Jan 13)

Transportation

Night Mar­ket. Or what to do with a box truck on a Sat­ur­day night in San Fran­sis­co. Wheels have always been our tick­et to the lim­i­nal places.

The first per­son who does the math and points out to me that $2995 in 1962 dol­lars is … hey wait a minute. That’s only $22K in 2010. I want my Porsche Speed­ster!

This should be so wrong, but I love it. A ‘67 Tri­umph Tiger. Cus­tom and orange. And any­one who is will­ing to cus­tom machine his own brass…

Cool Tools

Hot knives are a sta­ple with the prop, decor, and fan­ta­sy object build­ing types. It’s the only way to cut Sty­ro­foam, foam rub­ber, and a hand­ful of oth­er mate­ri­als. But most hot cut­ters use a straight wire so get­ting any sort of con­tour is a long, fid­dly job. Not any more. Bend­able wire to the res­cue. A Prox­xon hot wire cut­ter will make that next set of drag­on scales a cinch!

Art, Images, and Design

This intri­cate­ly detailed and some­what fan­ci­ful cross sec­tion of the Kowloon walled city was drawn by a Japan­ese team just before the city was lev­eled in 1993. And some fol­low up in the com­ments on doobybrain.

To cre­ate a map of a place from mem­o­ry is to your soul. Maps Drawn from Mem­o­ry is was the name a Flickr pool and Visu­al News grabbed a hand­ful of the best and offered them up with link to the Google maps of the actu­al loca­tions. If you care about real­i­ty. Which you won’t when you’ve seen the much more human ver­sions of places that live in the artist’s head. (SFW)

The Flickr pool has been changed to from “Maps Drawn from Mem­o­ry” to sim­ply “From Mem­o­ry” and is, sad­ly, no longer sole­ly about maps. (And is now NSFW)

A pho­tog­ra­pher’s body of work. The images she cre­ates from the time she first picks up a cam­era until her death can be the most illu­mi­nat­ing record of a life, and the time and place that it was lived. John Mal­oof found and pur­chased the near­ly com­plete works of one woman, Vivian Maier, who lived, worked, and pho­tographed in Chica­go from the 1950s through the 1990s. Here are just a hand­ful of her images. I sus­pect there will be con­tro­ver­sy in the com­ing months as the full sto­ry of the dis­cov­ery, pur­chase, and lan­guish­ing of these pic­tures comes out. But you need to have a first look at them now, while they are still new and intrigu­ing. More of Vivian Maier’s photos.

Animation

Claim­ing to be the world’s small­est stop-motion ani­ma­tion, cre­at­ed by Aard­man and shot using a Nokia 8 and the field med­ical Cellscope tech­nol­o­gy (yes, that’s a cell phone used as a micro­scope) — Dot. Also a mak­ing of video, and a time-lapse of the shoot­ing rig. The phone, the mag­ni­fy­ing lens, the 3‑d print­er… oh hel­lz this is the best gig­gle I’ve has all day.

Morning Linkage (Jun 15)

(Confused) Transportation Options

A Smart Car mon­ster truck. If any­one ever asks you to define the term twee oxy­moron — show them this pic­ture. Srl­sy. And there’s video. More hap­pi­ly there’s a post over at Men’s Men­tore about race car trans­porters from the 50’s. Lord, are these fab­u­lous look­ing. An El Camino car­ry­ing an open wheel rac­er and a swoopy round haunched Mer­cedes with a fro­mu­la car on the back. Swoon. I need­ed a moto pic­ture for this morn­ing’s links so I went to the big buck­et of trans­porta­tion RSS feeds and there this was — right on the top

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Literature and Culture.

It’s sum­mer — we all need some­thing to read at the beach. But how to choose a sum­mer win­ner? Um, maybe ask the writer who penned your favorite book? William Gib­son weighs in on sci-fi and Peter Cary gives you his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, along with 4 oth­ers. Pro­pa­gan­da mate­r­i­al of the ages is a rich source of visu­al inspi­ra­tion. Meant to grab and jerk the view­er from a dis­tance with­out much con­sid­er­a­tion for sub­tle­ty. Smash­ing gives us a look at 100 years of his­to­ry and some of the best and worst exam­ples. Judg­ing the images and their effec­tive­ness with­out con­sid­er­ing the mes­sages is an try­ing exer­cise in design mind.

Art, Images, and Design

Sci­ence Tele­vi­sion is Gian­mar­co Mag­nani. A design­er and print mak­er. His two cur­rent series of prints, Vil­lains and Rid­ers, and  For­got­ten Monar­chy bring spot col­or and line work to the fore. Vague­ly ani­me inspired, girls and motos. Can’t miss. Paper and paint mixed with bits of toy-train set world-building goods. Land­scape through the eyes of Gre­go­ry Euclide. Dan­ny St. (saint) takes pic­tures in Sin­ga­pore. Street pic­tures that pro­vide por­traits of the peo­ple and place. This gallery gives some of the hun­dreds of won­der­ful images.

Animation

Group ther­a­py for naughty lit­tle un-deads. Okay, it’s called Nos­fer­atu Over The Cuck­oo’s Nest. You fig­ure it out.

Noisy, Smoky, Generally Bad

Bejamin Gudel (from a cou­ple of days ago) has a nice new web­site.  But you have got to seri­ous­ly admire a guy who includes a link to this animated/audio-ated mess of a 2007 web­site. Healthy sense of humor, or mor­bid self fla­gel­la­tion. You make the call. (Mov­ing parts, noise, and an obscene tat­too) NSFW

Tea drunk, links up, next … plumb­ing — urk.