Morning Linkage (Dec 1)

Transportation

There may have been video from this Japanese live-action super hero series post­ed here before. But how can any­one resist this set of per­fect­ly posed pub­lic­i­ty shots. Not to men­tion that awe­some teal and red liv­er­ied mid-80’s Japanese dirt bike.

For more Japanese super­hero on bikes gig­gles try this search on the New Cafe Racer Society.

There will be opin­ions about this bike. The Sbay Flying 1800.

Sub-300 pounds, 250 sin­gle, and not embar­rass­ing to look at. Perhaps a new cafe styled entry-level bike is just what the world needs. Tha Misfit.

Science — Images

Phytoplankton bloom off the coast of Namibia.

Playing with Gigapan. Using robots to move cam­eras to cre­ate per­fect­ly stitch­able images. Zoom in, zoom out. A flock of hum­ming birds, a school of fish, and penguins.

Ultraviolet images of the Andromeda galaxy. The vis­i­ble light pic­tures obscure a lot of the details that the UV images pro­vide. (Nifty roll-over effect too.)

Art, Images, and Design

From yes­ter­day’s ani­ma­tion. The cre­ator Javier Olivares. Love his blocky style and the range of projects.

Animation

A stop motion film about … stop motion ani­ma­tion. (video 1:52)

car­ry on…

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 (Nov 29)

Transportation

Pretty girls on bikes. Catherine — who does­n’t get a last name here  but you can look it up — had a Norton Commando and a set of red cus­tom leathers in the 1970’s in Paris. And she wrote for La Moto.

I don’t think you’ll ride it far but this CB350 is so per­fect­ly simple.

Another unrid­able 350. This time a Ducati. But damn, just look at what he did with the exhaust. Ingenious.

The famous red London bus­es get redone for the 21st century.

Art, Images, and Design

Basil Wolverton. The name sounds like he should be the but­ler in one of Bertie Wooster’s aun­t’s house. But no, he’s a the cre­ator of some fine sci-fi illus­tra­tions from the 1930’s. And yes, I did read the Meteor Morgan comics shown here.

Mikela Prevost’s paint and paper illus­tra­tions look most at home in a chil­dren’s book. The sec­ond page of her port­fo­lio opens with a girl look­ing for some­thing in the back of the pantry and con­tin­ues through sev­er­al more cook­ing adventures.

Nightmare sci-fi fairy tales told with big blocks of col­or. Bunnies, dogs, cat heads, squir­rels, and oth­er for­mer­ly cute crea­tures inhab­it a cold spiky land­scape. Talita Hoffman. Brazil.

Animation

Alligator, golf ball, deer, alli­ga­tor. That’s it. There’s noth­ing else to ginny+garth’s Pixel Film:Oo (video 0:27)

Morning Linkage (Nov 26)

#BlackFriday edi­tion

Linked three-some. Plus two bonus links that give you a chance to do good. (Hint.)

Sally Bridges Metal love­ly whim­si­cal met­al work for fur­ni­ture. I’m not sure about the din­ing room chairs but the head­boards are a sure win­ner. The full line. But WTF “Rustic Modern”?

More met­al fur­ni­ture — this time with a decid­ed­ly more mas­cu­line feel. Pipe wrench tres­tle table.

And this prob­a­bly won’t be the case in a month or two but right now Dudecraft is run­ning a ban­ner ad in sup­port of 826. A group that brings writ­ing pro­grams to store­fronts. Odd store­fronts. In DC the 826 project is in the Museum of Unnatural History. And Oliver Munday has cre­at­ed a line of pack­ag­ing for their “sou­venirs” You can have Unicorn Tears, unfil­tered of course, Hindsight, or Existentially Distraught Wood.

826DC — The Museum of Unnatural History is here. (Amusing twit­ter stream as well.)

The Seattle ver­sion. Greenwood Space Travel Supply.

Morning Linkage (Nov 24)

Transportation

If the Lamborghini has been dropped from your new ride shop­ping list due to its fixed roof and slight­ly porky pro­file. You might want to recon­sid­er. The new Gallardo. Lighter. Topless.

The main­te­nance guys’ Cushman Carts were the object of deri­sion, prank­ing, and com­mon theft in col­lege. I guess we weren’t the only ones who secret­ly thought they were cool.

The horse track in Aarhaus Denmark was giv­en over to the sport of motor(cycle) rac­ing in the 1950’s. Included on this Speedway Life page are rac­ing pro­grams, pho­tographs, and race results. The pic­tures and draw­ings of the side­car rac­ing, like the one above, are espe­cial­ly fine. In the orig­i­nal Danish.

Art, Images, and Design

Arrested Motion’s best pho­tos of the ROA show in LA at Thinkspace. The work on accor­dioned reclaimed doors is good.

The Sherlock Holmes sto­ries were not the only thing that A. Conan Doyle wrote. The Arthurian romance “The White Company” was illus­trat­ed by N.C. Wyeth and pub­lished by David McKay in 1922.

Paul Bunyan, Babe the Blue Ox. Shaw Nielsen makes me hap­py by adding a cou­ple of masked birds as well.

A whim­si­cal lit­tle bit of met­al and the most won­der­ful turquoise enam­el ever. The cir­cus ring. (And go read Jonah Leslie’s bio and shop infor­ma­tion — cura­tion of goods in an internet-linked world.)

Animation and Science and Papercraft

Combining live action, paper cos­tumes, and sex. How can you miss? Just to remind you that the first episodes of Sundance Channel’s Seduce Me Season 2 are up. For the moment they are unlink­able on the flash-based SC web­site. Expect links to the indi­vid­ual episodes as they come up on YouTube.

As a teas­er I’m giv­ing you this behind-the-scenes from Season 1. (NSFW unless you are a zoologist.)