Morning Linkage (Dec 16)

Transportation

Electric-Spoofaloo. Tron Angry Birds. ‘Nuff said.

A medi­a­tion on what makes the Nurburgring spe­cial. It’s his­to­ry and it’s cre­ation in an era when rac­ing was about rac­ing and not prod­uct place­ment. Bonus shots of the ear­li­est con­struc­tion work.

Even the track maps had more charm back in the day. Le Mans ’55

Dubious Theories

Spencil Borchard has at least as cred­i­ble set of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries as any of the oth­er freaks out there get­ting air time. Moon gophers indeed.

History

Last year, when I was on walk-about, I drove down the Ohio River from my home town (Pittsburgh) to the con­flu­ence with the Mississippi. There was noth­ing, or damn near noth­ing when I got there. The state park was closed and the road to the point washed out. So I crossed the riv­er and head­ed into Cairo, IL. I did not stop, I did not get out, and I did not take any pic­tures. You can prob­a­bly fig­ure out why by hav­ing a look at this small col­lec­tion of pic­tures tak­en by peo­ple who did stop.

And if you won­der how a once thriv­ing indus­tri­al town could have end­ed up in this state you can spend some time with the Reddit thread mentioned.

Art, Images, and Design

I like old fash­ioned sil­hou­ettes and I think this updat­ed ver­sion of the cutout sil­hou­ette may just have to find a place on one of my walls. Though I may have to use some oth­er mate­r­i­al for the back­ground as these are a bit twee.

How to make some­one else’s words your own. Tree of Codes is the text of The Street of Crocodiles remade. Die cut pages with most of their words stripped away allow a new nar­ra­tive to emerge. Pictures, a video of the cre­ator, and can­did reac­tions from read­ers when they open the book. (Yes I bought a copy imme­di­ate­ly after see­ing the vids.)

Animation

You know I love ani­ma­tion but who has the time and resources to get the soft­ware or buy the cam­eras and learn the rou­tines. What if all you need­ed was google docs? Seriously, three guys, three days, 450 pages. All google docs.