Morning Linkage (Jan 24)

Transportation

Oooh, this is gonna make some folks cringe. If the point of spend­ing all that trans­porta­tion mon­ey is to cre­ate jobs then maybe we’re not doing the right thing? Bike paths for the win.

Is this the mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tion of the cafe rac­er? A striped down, almost purpose-built bike with out­sider street cred? No. It is a street fight­er — the bike class that has replaced the cafe rac­er as the mad man’s built to suit machine. I have to agree with the com­menters on this one though. The Scoop maybe very pret­ty but it is not as adver­tised on the package.

Yes, I have a seri­ous case of idol wor­ship when it comes to Shiny Kimura. Anything I can find that offers an insight into his artis­tic mind is cat­nip. Today’s dose, an inter­view and pho­to set from Paul at Vintagent.

Science

Throughout his­to­ry the sud­den appear­ance and dis­ap­pear­ance of fea­tures and fig­ures in the night sky have been tak­en as por­tents and omens. I can’t wait to see what hap­pens when Betelgeuse goes super nova. The sky will sud­den­ly seem to have a sec­ond sun in it. Could be as ear­ly as, well, like today. Okay 640 years ago but inter­stel­lar tele­graph sys­tem being what it is we won’t know until this evening at the ear­li­est. Or it could be anoth­er mil­lion years or so. Still some­thing to look for­ward to, no?

Art, Images, and Design

It’s Monday, I’m in the mood to gut some­thing and leave steam­ing piles of entrails about the place to fright­en and con­fuse the interns…

The first time you see one of these words fold­ed into, or is that out of, a book, you think wow, that’s so cool. About the fifth image you yawn. But still, every­one should get to have the first — oh wow.

Seven Irving Penn por­traits. I nev­er tire of Penn’s work. No mat­ter how many times I have seen an image it always says some­thing more to me the next time. This Selvedge Yard piece is a nice intro­duc­tion to Penn’s work that ends with the artist’s words. “In por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy there is some­thing more pro­found we seek inside a per­son, while being painful­ly aware that a lim­i­ta­tion of our medi­um is that the inside is record­able only so far as it is appar­ent on the outside.’

car­ry on…

Morning Linkage (Jan 20)

Transportation

A lit­tle classier than most junk yard scrounged house­wares. Triumph teamed up with the Birmingham City University’s Institute of Art and Design to get stu­dents design­ing home fur­nish­ings built out of bike parts. A cou­ple of these are ‘teh awesome.’

CB 750’s redone as cafe rac­ers. I love ’em but it takes some­thing a lit­tle extra to catch my eye late­ly. I think the stripped down, low chrome con­tent of Military Gold by the Spanish house Cafe Racer Dreams might have just that.

Art, Images. and Design

I do not know what to make of the sto­ry syn­op­sis for Fur of the Glacial Mouse but the image of two fox­es watch­ing a train run through a val­ley on a pale moon lit win­ter’s night is a good one.

Giant creepy Russian fairy tale night­mare with a king, a cat, a frog, and a ginor­moust all-seeing eye. Yup, I still love Steven Daily. Covenant show­ing at La Luz de Jesus in LA.

Not every­one here is a fash­ion fool like I am. Doesn’t real­ly mat­ter. If you like the idea of there being peo­ple on this earth who look intent­ly at what’s going on around them every sin­gle day, then you’re going to like this inter­view with Scott Schumann a.k.a. the Sartorialist. (Video 7:11)

Animation

The wrong things… scary clown heads may be a good sub­sti­tute for the flames com­ing out of the anti-aircraft guns but the egre­gious use of Christmas items, rib­bons, bows, and glass tree orna­ments… Kaboom. PES again (Video 1:10, audio is loud)

Morning Linkage (Jan 21)

Transportation

The auto­mo­tive press goes into its annu­al orgy of list mak­ing every win­ter around the December/January pub­lish­ing cycle. Each and every list high­light­ed with ital­ics, cap­i­tal let­ters, and Big Red head­lines. And pho­tos of each and every one of the cars or trucks. Boring, copy­cat, can’t tell one mag­a­zine from an oth­er pho­tos. Except that this year Automobile used an illus­tra­tor rather than a pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Not sure if the results will be repeat­ed but I like Daniel Stolle’s work any way.

The full arti­cle. What’s with motor rags? — find­ing any­thing on their web­sites is damned near impos­si­ble and the images are hid­den in the chaos on the right edge of the article.

Food trucks, we all love ’em. And now you can have a look at the fac­to­ry that makes them. The good fel­lows at Telstar Logistics did a piece for the NYT.

1 minute of 1960’s hip. Girls go for guys on Vespas. Happy Friday my lit­tle scoot­er dudes and dudettes.

1959 Moto Guzzi Falcone, by Von Dutch. Love it, hate it? No mis­tak­ing the era.

Art, Images, and Design

Mr. Peabody, the hep-est cat around.

I can only quote John K’s first cou­ple of lines. ” If there’s one thing I learned from skulk­ing around in the paper­back sec­tion of my local drug­store when I was kid it was this: ALL THINGS EVERYWHERE CRAVE OUR WOMEN. (…)  I don’t care what race, species or gen­era you are, whether you are liv­ing or dead, ani­mal, veg­etable, min­er­al, fun­gi or bac­te­ria — your first thought upon each aching wak­ing morn is how to steal our women. (…)  And who can blame you? Look at them.”  Followed by a bitchin’ col­lec­tion of pulp sto­ry cov­ers. (NSFW)

More sedate­ly, in black and white. On  a slow boat from Africa. The New York Times would send a pho­tog­ra­ph­er to the docks to cap­ture the unload­ing of the ani­mals import­ed for American zoos.

Animation

Best dog ate my home­work ever.…

Happy Friday y’all.

Morning Linkage (Jan 19)

Transportation

There’s a fan club for every vehi­cle ever made. And restora­tion nuts will go to great lengths to get their babies back on the road, or in this case, back into the air. A Vietnam era Huey flies again — dig the Led Zeppelin accom­pa­nied trail­er for the doc­u­men­tary. (Video — music and com­bat footage)

I am fre­quent­ly the object of friend­ly rib­bing because I can make an entire day’s worth of errands into an itin­er­ary with­out a sin­gle left turn across traf­fic. Turns out I’m not crazy. A world with­out left turns would be both safer and more efficient.

Bultaco Sherpa T. That is enough dan­gling bait for most of you. It’s a love­ly Spanish resto.  Also Motorcycle Picture of the Day has moved house. Remember to change your fee­dread­ers and bookmarks :)

First enjoy this soon to be a clas­sic image of a lone rid­er on the dunes. Then click on the link labeled HERE to see a huge set of Dakar ral­ly pics — lots of bikes.

Science and Tech

Sunsets on Mars. They’re blue. Just thought you should know :)

A cou­ple of days ago I showed you a bit of ani­ma­tion made with the help of the CellScope a micro­scope add-on for cell phone cam­eras. Now some folks at U Mich have cre­at­ed a lit­tle don­gle that will HiJack the audio out­put port of your iThingy and turn it into a nifty sen­sor host. You can get one of the pro­to­types for your own — if you have a clever enough idea  about how it should be used.

Art, Images, and Design

More Little Red Ridinghood. So far beyond the usu­al flat, boxy results of using  chil­dren’s blocks as a sculp­ture mate­r­i­al. The tex­tures achieved in the wolf and the bar­ren trees are per­fect. (And I think I might have a lit­tle red rid­ing hood problem.)

A short mus­ing on the nature of name and brand in pop­u­lar art. Did/does Banksy (and by exten­sion a num­ber of oth­er “famous” street artists) use a crew? The com­ments will tell about all you need to know about the state of popular/folk/commercial art appre­ci­a­tion in this coun­try. le sigh.

Charlie Brown and Snoopy, gen­er­al­ly any­thing not drawn by Mr. Schultz is crap. Except maybe this time trav­el piece that puts the boy and his dog on a street cor­ner sell­ing com­ic books.  By Boulet for the lat­est issue of Zoo.

The full issue of Zoo for which the Snoopy and Charlie brown illo was done is worth a cou­ple of min­utes of your time even if you don’t read French. There’s a lot of good work to see.

Animation

I’ve always loved the sly humor of the yel­low polka-dot biki­ni song. The shy­ness of the girl want­i­ng to be fab­u­lous but a lit­tle afraid of all the atten­tion. Here is Lisa T’s (Lasse Persson) trans­gen­der ver­sion. Big burly swedish beach boys and one teenag­er full of trep­i­da­tion. It all ends well, I promise. (Possibly NSFW, no nudity)

Morning Linkage (Jan 18)

Transportation

Eco-driving, the
social­ly accept­able in-car video game, where you do your best to make the lit­tle leaf as green as grass. If stud­ies con­tin­ue to prove that instan­ta­neous dis­play of mileage infor­ma­tion prompts dri­vers to tune their dri­ving style to max­i­mize mpg, you may be see­ing more and more of these dis­plays on your dash. Speaking of auto-data
tech­nol­o­gy, the boys at Cult of MAC are clear­ly not gear heads but they kind of get the point of the OBD-II read­er that Griffin has announced for the iPhone. I just won­der if the soft­ware (app) will be use­ful to the gear heads or only a dri­ve nice­ly pret­ty please app to make the eco-driving crowd coo. 

The Griffin site claims that the CarTrip read­er will allow code check and reset. I’ll be get­ting one to test on the airbag fault light on the Rover. (Grrr.)

To atone for all the geeky green-weenie crap above, I give you: The high­lights of the 2010 British Super Bike Championship. 4 min­utes of thrills, chills, and a cou­ple of spills. (Forgive me?) 

Science and Society

30 years of National Geographic pic­tures by Bruce Dale. 9 min­utes of video and a ter­ri­ble pun­ning joke. 

We as a soci­ety are always rewrit­ing our past. It’s inevitable and in large part uncon­scious. But to what extent can we jus­ti­fy delib­er­ate­ly mess­ing about with the images of the past? Did the USPS real­ly need to remove the cig­a­rette from Robert Johnson’s mouth? 

Art, Images, and Design

Walnut is love­ly. And the dark col­or goes per­fect­ly with cof­fee. Scrap lum­ber becomes some­thing use­ful and beautiful. 

An anony­mous small token of grat­i­tude and gen­eros­i­ty. Compliments on tear-off tabs. PDF to print. Bring your own sta­ple gun. 

Oooh, the roman­tic allure of the aban­doned sub­way sta­tion. The City Hall Station in NYC was opened in 1904 and closed to use in 1945. Until recent­ly the only way to get a glimpse at what is arguably the pret­ti­est of the NYC sub­way sta­tions was to sneak in. Not any­more. A recent rule change means that you can now sit tight on the Number 6 as it makes it loop through the old station.

Animation

Megan Tupper, a recent grad of the University of Wales, has a fine sense of char­ac­ter and the com­ic impli­ca­tions of every­day life. Keys. The truth about cats. (Video 3:26)