Morning Linkage (Nov 23)

Transportation

Just in case any of you thinks that this gig is all about spend­ing the day look­ing at pret­ty bikes and enjoy­ing adult bev­er­ages. I’d like to give you a lit­tle look into the prob­lems of shiny hunt­ing. Scott over at Pipeburn shares a hand­ful of pic­tures that he’s been hang­ing onto because he does­n’t have enough info to post them. (And his ace read­ers get the goods for him on two out four — go read­ers!) A Guzzi, 2 BMWs and a Sportster.

I’m unde­cid­ed about this cus­tom bike with a Buell motor. The frame is unique enough to pull in my eye and the exe­cu­tion is top-notch. But hey the motor’s gonna have to be changed. The spud.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Is that a Tony Kart chassis?

Art, Images, and Design

Yuko got to do a cov­er illo for the NYT Review of Books. The Keith Richards cov­er. Wow.

Etch-a-Sketch, sports fig­ures.  ’nuff said. (Making of videos too.)

30 year-old Jung-Yeon Min paints peo­ple in the every­day world with the sur­re­al land­scape of the human soul on the edge of break­ing through.(NSFW — artis­tic nudes)

Animation and CGI

Is this real­ly all CGI? Reliable sources say it is.

This just makes me hap­py. I hope it makes you hap­py too. Betty Boop does the hula. Bamboo Isle. If you want the full meal deal (with some fab Hawaiian music) and have 8 min­utes you can watch the low-res ver­sion of the com­plete film here. Is Betty SFW?

sled­ding and hot choco­late today?

Morning Linkage (Nov 22)

Transportation

I will do this man’s TPS reports for noth­ing. Honestly. Tim Lawrence of Cinema Vehicle Services.

BMW’s plug-in sports car is due in 2013. I would­n’t even con­sid­er an elec­tric sports car. Unless of course they bring this one out with the high­ly hal­lu­cino­genic camo paint scheme intact.

T‑Shirt of the week. Do good and look cool. Support the Bultaco effort in Dakar. Okay — it’s one crazy Spaniard — all the more rea­son you should give a lit­tle. A bit on the crazy Spaniard.

Totally sweet lit­tle Gilera. The whole sto­ry of Morton’s Gilera TS — start to fin­ish with 100s of pic­tures and com­men­tary in at least 3 languages.

Art, Images, and Design

I am charmed and lit­tle sad­dened by this side­ways crea­ture and the dan­de­lion puffs.

Squirrels kin­da freak me out. They twitch too much and are always scold­ing. But I’m glad I got to see all of these because I was remind­ed of a cou­ple of my favorite illustrators.

A wry detail or two makes these car­toons per­fect. Daan Botlek.

Animation

Old school car­toons still have a mag­ic that the newest all dig­i­tal stuff can’t touch. For exam­ple this great telling of the Shooting of Dan McGrew. Most of the sto­ry is told by the back­grounds. Enjoy the 6 min­utes of high cul­ture and then crawl around the oth­er links to soak up more of Walt Peregoy’s work.

keep calm and car­ry on (it’s just a lit­tle snow)

Morning Linkage (Nov 18)

Transportation

Jesse Dixon had a rotary wing take on the fly­ing car. In 1940.

Google may have its rov­ing all-seeing eye to give you a good look at each inter­sec­tion but Microsoft has a bet­ter idea for pro­duc­ing direc­tions. Ask a cab­bie.

Backwards Porsche, mutant Prius, horned hel­mets, and ‘busa engine in a National Guard brand­ed three wheel­er.… Autotopia picks its weird­est of SEMA.

Science and Technology

You’ve seen those pic­tures of the wind­mill farms locat­ed out at sea? Here’s the ship that builds them. Pics, video, and link to one of the crew’s flickr stream. Who said infra­struc­ture is boring?

Art, Images, and Design

Geometry, geog­ra­phy, and celes­tial maps. Eye can­dy from the 17th century.

Kick Start Calico Bean Salad. A recipe and a fab moto illustration.

Neighborhoods as swing sets, roller coast­ers, and jun­gle gyms. Amy Casey’s fab­u­lous hous­es.

Moving Images

Are play­er pianos the new clowns? Mark Tucker has freaked me out.

And just to share lit­tle more of the creepy that’s inhab­it­ing my brain this week, here’s Dirty Night Clowns… and that fun­ny, floaty way that mar­i­onettes move.  Making Of bonus material.

…off you go, there’s a week­end just ahead…

Morning Linkage (Nov 16)

Transportation

This lit­tle cub mod is just too cute to pass up.

A nice col­lec­tion of exam­ples of the art of Pakistani trucks and bus­es from Animalrium. Saudi Aramco World gives us back­ground.

From a Japanese Ducati blog. Found object sculp­ture. Small, sim­ple, sweet.

Take a good long look at the pic­ture before you read the arti­cle. Maybe I’m slow but it took me a at least 30 sec­onds to twig to what is so wrong with this Triton.

Science

Little tiny Big Bangs. I’m just hav­ing trou­ble with the con­cept of atoms melt­ing. More fun from LHC.

Art, Images, and Design

Look very close­ly. Each of these botan­i­cal images is made up of very non-herbaceous mate­r­i­al. Cecelia Webber.

Of all of 2much’s work these lit­tle sculp­tures made from ping-pong balls while he was try­ing to give up cig­a­rettes are the most inti­mate and heart­felt. More 2much aka Bundeli Patrik

Painter Vincent Hui. Perhaps a lit­tle dif­fi­cult, cer­tain­ly some Bruegelish grotes­queries. More bet­ter but dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate web­site. My favorite, Table.

I have a friend cur­rent­ly engaged in clean­ing out her shed(s). Perhaps I’ll send her this col­lec­tion of ideas for things to make out of the old bicy­cles. There are some win­some gates here.

that’s all for today

Morning Linkage (Nov 15)

Transportation

Northeast Ohio is not a friend­ly envi­ron­ment for out­door stor­age of equip­ment. Weep for this rot­ting col­lec­tion of most­ly mil­i­tary  air­craft. The video is well done. Shot with a Nikon D90.

Old school indeed. GS1150ES.

Mods vs. rock­ers but this time the vio­lence was con­fined to the tug-o-war. Lots of nice pics of clas­sic cafe rac­ers — Tritons, Guzzis, Norvin (wtf?)

Science (high-speed photography)

Popcorn. I can’t watch this with­out think­ing that the pop­corn pop­ping looks like an angel open­ing it’s wings.

Beginning with the ques­tion “How do cats drink?” and end­ing with a some­what freaky elephant-trunk based robot arm. A bit of a walk through the lands of sci­ence for the fun of it. Side note, the paper about cat lap­ping may be the first time that a YouTube video has played a role in a pub­lished sci­en­tif­ic paper.

Art, Images, and Design

Interactive maps can be so very good. The best jour­neys of fact and fic­tion mapped out with details and high­lights. (And a few lowlights.)

Old globes are pret­ty darned use­less, unless you want to make art out of them. Here are a cou­ple of nice exam­ples and a bonus video of how globes are made.

Animation

Smigly’s life is hard. and noisy.

yeah — it’s kind of Monday out here too.