shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: visualization (Page 1 of 2)

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 (Aug 24)

Transportation

Save this up for the third week in Sep­tem­ber — you’re gonna need a new desktop/wallpaper and this Ural in the far north will be just the thing.

This one’s gonna be flagged on the score sheet for inap­pro­pri­ate use of Red Bull. Thought he cop­per work is first-rate on this Triumph.

Absolute­ly per­fect. 1965 CA77 Hon­da. So well done, such a charm­ing bike.

Science and Pictures

BBC pro­vides anoth­er set of nice visu­al­iza­tion tools. How big is that? Start here with an image that helps you to under­stand the size of the East­ern Pacif­ic Garbage patch. If it was cen­tered on Seat­tle, the east­ern edge would reach Far­go. Seri­ous­ly. Lots of oth­er places, times, and object to look at.

The Solar Dynam­ic Obser­va­to­ry app on my iPhone is one of my favorite 2‑minute time wasters. SDO now pro­vides this image of the erupt­ing sun with the lines of mag­net­ic force drawn in. Con­fus­ing, swirling, wow.

Sex, drugs, and motos. “The results sug­gest motor­cy­cles ful­fill an appet­i­tive need, acti­vat­ing an impor­tant node in the dopamine reward sys­tem.” Details of the MRI test­ing and words from the inves­ti­ga­tor James Loughead.

Food

It would­n’t be sum­mer with­out cock­tails on the veran­da. But should you go off to some swanky veran­da that has a bar­tender to pre­pare your cock­tails or would you be bet­ter off stay­ing home on your own com­fy lit­tle patch of open air? To hunt prey of the appro­pri­ate species/gender you’ll prob­a­bly need to go to one of those pub­lic spots but if you’ve already got a tro­phy or are sim­ply tired of hunt­ing you could do a lot worse than stay­ing in (out­side). Stay­ing home is cheap­er too. How much cheap­er? Ask the cock­tail cal­cu­la­tor.

Art, Images, and Design

Play­ing with your food. Edi­ble crayons that real­ly col­or. Lush food pho­tog­ra­phy too.

I want some Mon­ster Friends. Posters.

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.

Morning Linkage (May 19)

Transportation

Bridge­stone pro­vides two videos that explain the tire pro­gram for MotoGP.  Lots of you all know this stuff but the vids make a good intro­duc­tion for the uninitiated.

I love my Benz, but per­haps not enough to get me up in this Eurocoptor/MB col­lab­o­ra­tion. Luxo traf­fic beat­er.

In 2011 the Dakar Ral­ly will once again be held in South Amer­i­ca. Ral­ly dates and routes were released recent­ly. Looks like a great tour through Chile and Argentina.

Science and Tech

This arti­cle on open soft­ware offers anoth­er inter­est­ing visu­al­iza­tion of the process of cre­at­ing soft­ware. Open soft­ware is some­times said to ‘evolve’ but does it? And  does that evo­lu­tion mim­ic the evo­lu­tion of bio­log­i­cal enti­ties? Infor­ma­tists Marc Ger­stein co-wrote a study com­par­ing the net­worked infor­ma­tion trans­fers involved in the change process­es of E. coli and Lin­ux. Inter­est­ing conclusions.

Anoth­er use for LEDs. Gui­tar picks. Seri­ous­ly. A mini-light show in your liv­ing room.

Pass­word secu­ri­ty is a right roy­al pain. Either you can remem­ber the dan­ged thing XOR it’s secure — rarely can you have both. And writ­ing your pass­words down on a cheat sheet is a big no-no. Unless your cheat sheet is some­thing like this. It may take you a few min­utes to fig­ure out how this is sup­posed to work. But it’s both sim­ple and ingenious.

Art, Images, and Design

Take some of the best street art being done today, add a pho­tog­ra­ph­er with an eye for line and col­or in his por­trait work and you have Gabriel Mendes’ Urban Puns. Bold, bright, and bit­ing. 8th image down NSFW.

My own, sim­ple as I can make it, web­site isn’t per­haps the best exam­ple to use for the geo-citieizer but hey this is my list of links so I’ll use my web­site. (Results are some­what ran­dom. If you don’t think it’s too bad try the link again in anoth­er tab.) Try mess­ing with your own site by using the generator.

Bonus bike and choco­late com­bo link today. “This motor­cy­cle runs on choco­late but needs to be parked in the deep-freezer when tem­per­a­tures are not ade­quate.” nuff said.

Alex­is Grotius’ sum­mer bike is pret­ty cool as well. Except that it’s creepy.

Morning Linkage (May 17)

Transportation

Pho­tog­ra­phers Guer­ry and Prat (no web­site yet) are mak­ing very spe­cial por­traits of very spe­cial bikes. This Vin­cent Rapid is swoon worthy.

Equal­ly black and ele­gant look­ing is this ’68 CB450 K1 also shot by Guer­ry and Prat.

Rumor has it… and the prices have been announced. Buell race machines from $16,900. Also “Erik Buell Rac­ing is report­ing that is has a few track­day bikes…” for $10,500 get yours now.

Tech and Gadgets

Code Swarm is a soft­ware project visu­al­iza­tion tool. Not a visu­al­iza­tion of the code, but of the team and it’s func­tion­ing as revealed by the activ­i­ty in the source code con­trol system.

It’s a lit­tle bit out of order, but here’s the code swarm view of the ilomi­lo game devel­op­ment project. If you look down in Art, Images, and Design you can find the trail­er for the game.

Art, Images, and Design

Anamor­phic pub­lic art isn’t new. But the sim­ple, brush-stroke based lines used to cre­ate these illu­sions are so much less aggres­sive and threat­en­ing that the charm just oozes. Toron­to sub­way system.

Ilomi­lo — a new xbox game for the pas­tel rompers set. But oh my the love­ly graph­ics. I got­ta agree with the gent on boing-boing who said he want­ed the flop­py eared dog fish as a plushy toy. Trail­er (Music)

Some­ones very sassy grand­ma. Vin­tage sum­mer photo.

hap­py zom­bie day…

« Older posts