shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: XS650 (Page 1 of 2)

Morning Linkage (Dec 17)

Transportation

It start­ed with see­ing the pho­to of a team of rac­ers in front of a BA Air Fer­ry on one of the ran­dom bike pic blogs. And went on from there until I came to this full report on the 1967 Zand­voort Sprint. Pho­tos, videos, and lots of words.

Oh if only he had roughed up the front forks. Just a lit­tle. It would be a per­fect rat. Or near enough. XS650.

Ini­tial­ly mis­named but now cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fied. I just like that this Nor­ton looks so hap­py to sit­ting out there wait­ing it’s turn.

Science

My world has just became a sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter place. I now know that it has pale­o­mag­netists in it. Sci­en­tists who study the his­to­ry of the changes of the earth­’s mag­net­ic field. And now they’ve dis­cov­ered some unprece­dent­ed­ly rapid shifts that occurred about 3000 years ago. By study­ing the mag­net­ic sig­na­tures of heaps of slag left over from smelt­ing cop­per in the Mid­dle East.

Order breaks down into dis­or­der in a very order­ly way. Video demon­strat­ing an aspect of non-linear physics.

Art, Images, and Design

Old hard dri­ves. New toys. And then there are the pic­tures of the lit­tle guys tak­ing the machines apart. Joy.

A reminder that the Space Nee­dle was once new, and that graph­ic design in the ear­ly 60’s had some moments of brilliance.

Week­end DIY cam­era rigs for tak­ing high-speed, super close, mul­ti­ple expo­sures, or just look at the amaz­ing pictures. 

…he want­ed to cap­ture fly­ing insects, such as the hon­ey­bee above. “I have a prob­lem with killing them, plus they don’t fly when they’re dead,”

as well as but­ter­fly wing scales and mag­net­ic ferrofluids.

Animation

Team­Cer­f’s Meet Buck illus­trates the exis­ten­tial… um, shows fol­ly as… er, … it’s fun­ny, okay?

Morning Linkage (Jul 28)

Transportation

I don’t think I’d name any bike “Chick­en Sal­ad” but it’ll have to do for this nice, short xs650 custom.

A longer xs650. Not at all a salad.

Bob­bers come from all over. Hon­da Hawk. Srsly.

Even cuter. Hon­da Rebel Cus­tom.

Art, Images, and Design

So many chil­dren’s book seem best designed to give chil­dren night­mares. The whole cat in the hat thing weird­ed me out for months. But real­ly — noth­ing com­pared to these draw­ings done by Gojin Ishi­hara for Japan­ese chil­dren’s books. Japan has the best mon­sters under the bed (or com­ing out of the ceiling)

I’m not sure I’m going to buy the idea of a lux­u­ry Sharpie but this new stain­less steel mod­el *is* pret­ty fly.

The Urban Sketch­ers will be con­ven­ing in Port­land this week­end for their first inter­na­tion­al meet up. Sat­ur­day July 31st is the 28th annu­al world-wide sketch crawl. And in case you’ve for­got­ten why you should be on the look­out, here’s a quick cou­ple of water­col­ors of the CA coast line from Marc Holm.

Mar­co Zamo­ra. Pen and ink wash­es with win­dows of col­or. Urban scenes through a prism.

Dive. James Jean made the image and pres­sureprint­ing did the intaglio prints. The walk through of what it takes to make a 36 x 23 print will explain the $2000 price tag.

Animation

Boy wants to meet girl. Girl is ignor­ing boy. Boy gets a lit­tle help from the fel­low down the street. Thing is, boy is a graf­fi­ti. A lit­tle live action, a lit­tle stop motion, a whole lot of Greek charm.

Morning Linkage (Jul 27)

Transportation

So much train awe­some­ness — pages and pages. Some high­lights… retro-futuristic designs, and mod­ern reuse of old­er engines. Oh, and the pigs let­ting them­selves off at the station.

Anoth­er xs650 bob­ber. Sub­tle details in the body work. Close to perfection.

Rid­den in the dirt. Nuff said.

Science

Fried egg jel­ly­fish. The bane of my child­hood. But pret­ty dan­ged cool when giv­en the Creature-cast treatment.

Remem­ber the siphonophores from a while back? Did you know that they fig­ured in naval war­fare. Hid­ing a sub­ma­rine beneath a raft of crea­tures that sonar can’t see but can’t see through.

Art, Images, and Design

This year’s rice pad­dy art from Japan. Amaz­ing what you can do with a lit­tle plan­ning and some vari­eties of rice.

It ain’t for noth­ing that I’m known as Mizz. Shoes. This Jere­my Scott design stopped me dead in my tracks.

MOMA mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion for “Matisse: The Rad­i­cal Inven­tion 1913–1917″ Pic­tures and com­men­tary for most of the paint­ings and draw­ings in the exhibit.

More from Yuko. The illus­tra­tions from The Beau­ti­ful and the Grotesque are enough to make you buy the book. The jack­et back blurb will clinch the deal.

now go do some­thing wonderful

Morning Linkage (Jul 26)

Transportation

Dark Roast Blend — anoth­er huge col­lec­tion of stuff — micro cars. There are some gems here as well as some laughs.

New car at the top of the wish list. Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 B Cor­to Tour­ing Berlinet­ta. And why did I have to find this on That Will Buff Out?
http://thatwillbuffout.com/2010/07/21/funny-car-photos-wish-list-wednesday/
The real scoop. Sec­ond car down in this thread (After the also desir­able Bugatti)

Two-fer xs650s:

xs650 cus­tom — not quite per­fect to my eye. I can’t put my fin­ger on why. But that 3rd pic­ture is gonna keep me up nights (sweat.)

xs650 street track­er. Nice bal­ance of flash and purpose.

Wide angle shots of var­i­ous cock­pits. The black­bird will make your eyes cross and the hydro­gen pow­ered land-speed con­tender is about as sim­ple as it gets.

Visual Geography

Super­im­pos­ing aer­i­al pho­tographs of the same bit of ground from dif­fer­ent years (or decades) gives fas­ci­nat­ing insights into how we grown into and out of our geog­ra­phy over time. There are some new pho­tographs (1924) and maps avail­able for NYC.

The map­ping appli­ca­tion at NYC’s GIS is some­times over­whelmed but worth return­ing to. Click on the cam­era and then move the slid­er under­neath for a choice of dates.

Some point­ers form the WSJ about things you might want to be on the look out for while you’re cruis­ing the maps.

Visual Physics.

3 videos for the new Lagoa physics mod­el­ing engine. (Sound)

Architecture and Toys

Any­one who has attempt­ed to assem­ble one of the more com­pli­cat­ed Lego mod­els recent­ly will remem­ber curs­ing the hor­ri­ble pic­tures only direc­tions. It need not be so awful as these clever instruc­tions for a build­ing block set show. The text excerpts about edu­ca­tion­al the­o­ries are a bit more inter­est­ing than any­thing you’re like­ly to get to read today as well.

Art, Images, and Design

Some­where in this col­lec­tion of folk art cats pub­lished by Tara Books (India) is sure to the be the cat of your dreams/nightmares.

Stink­fish. Girl rid­ing a bicy­cle.


It’s always something.

Morn­ing Link­age lives at http://shinymagpie.net

Morning Linkage (May 7)

Transportation

The Fri­day freaky find. This was spot­ted on eBay and now it lives on pipeburn and per­haps in some­one’s garage. Is it a Nor­ton? A Tri­umph? An ungod­ly mashup? Twin engine goofy­ness.

You know that I love the work of Wrench Mon­kees. So do a lot of oth­er folks and now we’re start­ing to see some very nice builds in the same grit­ty style.

Black and white image of an SS750 engine with­out the side case. This pic is big enough for net­book wall paper. Just sayin’

Society and Culture

Aban­doned places. A Sovi­et mis­sile defense instal­la­tion, even allow­ing for the degra­da­tion of aban­don­ment this must have been a grim place to live and work.

Art, Images, and Design

uhu­ru design in Brook­lyn has brought out a line of fur­ni­ture fea­tur­ing wood tak­en from the Coney Island board­walk. The lounger design is a swoopy delight.

A cou­ple of days ago I men­tioned Lean­dro Caste­lao in a post about rhi­nos. Here’s a look at some more of his work. Robots for T‑shirts.Click around for more goodness.

A sweet Jim Flo­ra illo done for the cov­er of Com­put­er Design some time in the 60s or 70s. Ear­ly geek art!

Animation

A dark world and a bright umbrel­la. A well done senior year project from CalArts by philip vose.

week­end ahead, off you go.

« Older posts