Morning Linkage (Nov 5)

Transportation

I have no expla­na­tion for the face paint that match­es the hel­met. But it’s the nicest B&W bike pic I’ve seen this week.

Vintagent pulls togeth­er a brief his­to­ry of a 1938 BSA Gold Star for sale in Oz. Bonus pic of the “movie-star hand­some”  Wal Handley who earned the cov­et­ed gold star at Brooklands for BSA.

None of the rac­ers I know has this kind of class. The FIAT trans­porter that fer­ried around the Ferrari cars in the late 1950s isn’t exact­ly with­in the bud­getary con­straints of most of my rac­er mates either.

Officer Silent is sneak­ing up behind you. First it was the elec­tric cars in the NYC fleet. Now Utah based ATK would like to sell your local LEOs some elec­tric bikes.

Science

The physics of the wet-dog shake (as well as mice, rats, and griz­zly bears.)

Why do gigan­tic pump­kins always look like they were left in the sun and melt­ed? All squat and squashed? There’s an answer to that. It’s a bet­ter shape than round for grow­ing out sized squash.

Art. Images, and Design

Animalarium high­lights the ani­mals por­trayed in the work of two Finnish illus­tra­tors. Sanna Annukka whose work for Marimekko you can find on her web­site. (The look into the pro­duc­tion process for Marimekko fab­rics is cool.) And Klaus Haapaniemi whose large-scale pic­tures of fan­ci­ful ani­mals always make me smile.

The Book or Revelations is puz­zling to even the most devote of schol­ars. Commentaries have been writ­ten through­out the cen­turies. Bibliodyssey brings images from the Beatus Apocalypse. Noah’s ark fea­tures some par­tic­u­lar­i­ty unset­tling animals.

I have to agree. The posters for Black Swan are so unlike the usu­al run of actor’s faces poor­ly pho­to­shopped onto stand-ins’ air­brushed bod­ies in front of CGI explo­sions that at first I did­n’t real­ize that Black Swan was a movie. (It’s a ballet/psychological thriller movie. Who’s going with me?)

Lovely cal­lig­ra­phy exe­cut­ed on video. Legacy of Letters pro­mo piece. Luca Barcellona’s econ­o­my of motion while let­ter­ing is amaz­ing. (Video)

Animation

When you have a band named the Kandinsky Effect. the best pos­si­ble pro­mo video would fea­ture a piece (or two) of Kandinsky art, no? (Video)

But is you need some­thing a lit­tle less high-brow you can’t go wrong with the episode of Saari. A preschool pro­gram designed by a Finn and pro­duced in Spain. Charming. (Video)

And that’s it for this week. be hap­py, have fun, be safe.

Morning Linkage (Nov 4)

Transportation

I am utter­ly uncon­vinced that I want to see Green Hornet in January. The trail­ers made me cringe. On the oth­er hand this video extolling the won­ders of Black Beauty, the Crown Vic based auto­mo­tive star of the film may change my mind. Bonus is that there’s footage of the art of film­ing chase scenes here. (video — loud music. 2:51)

Church of Choppers brings us pic­tures of a Sunday of dirt/mud rac­ing spon­sored by the Blackheads MC in Finland. Proving that bikes and mud are fun on any con­ti­nent. (anoth­er tip-off from one of the fab mag­pie spotters.)

One for the orange kool-aid crowd. Cyril Despres rides the new KTM 450 on his pri­vate test track in the Pyrenees moun­tains. The man has his own test track in the moun­tains. Good god.

I like this BMW R60 striped back to the essentials.

Sweet lit­tle Triumph.

Technology and Science

Real time video manip­u­la­tion. It’s now pos­si­ble to make some­thing dis­ap­pear from the CCTV mon­i­tor are it’s hap­pen­ing. Cool…and a lit­tle frightening.

I apol­o­gize in advance for the num­ber of point­less Lego posts. But damn, frog dis­sec­tion.

Soooo geeky. Here’s a PDF of the “Space Shuttle Weather Launch Commit Criteria and KSC End of Mission Weather Landing Criteria” Yup, exact­ly what it sounds like. Fascinating look into the minu­tia of get­ting big things off the ground and into space. (BTW NASA has sev­er­al inter­est­ing twit­ter accounts. Things like this show up.)

Art, Images, and Design

This quick pen­cil sketch that been fol­low­ing me around all day.

Archeology meets street-art. Um, no that’s not quite right. The arche­o­log­i­cal inter­est is decades away. Street-art meets pop-up gallery? Nope. Pop-ups are tem­po­rary. An aban­doned sub­way project is hard­ly tem­po­rary. Well any­way, under New York there’s a big space that has been filled with the work of many of the best street artists. Underbelly. It was opened to a select few recent­ly. And now has been closed up again.

I’m an ani­ma­tion fan. I spend a lot of time crawl­ing around the web look­ing for rare bits and pieces. A lot of what I like and find isn’t pro­duced in the US. I get a lot of leads to links that serve up to a notice read­ing “This video is not avail­able in your region.” How far behind the real­i­ty of glob­al cul­ture are we here? And is it only going to get worse?

Animation

A month or so ago I wrote a note to myself about a link: “Someone has got to stop these peo­ple. Once again a fab­u­lous piece of ani­ma­tion might nev­er see the light of day because it was cre­at­ed with­out obtain­ing the rights to the music. Enjoy this trail­er for the imag­i­na­tive Hendrix inspired The Experience and hope that the cre­ators can come up with the scratch to license Voodoo Child so that we can see the rest.” But today when I want­ed to post the item I rechecked the link and it seems that they did secure rights. So I’m a lit­tle slow to get this post­ed and you reap the ben­e­fit of see­ing the full video of the roller coast­er trib­ute to the man. (Video. Music. 8:06)

Go do some­thing sur­pris­ing, it will make me happy.

Morning Linkage (Nov 3)

Transportation

(the slight­ly con­fused brand­ing edition)

First a lit­tle some­thing sooth­ing for the mid-week slog. When was the last time you were prop­er­ly enter­tained dur­ing a flight delay, hm? A lit­tle cham­ber music might help the time go by.

Ducati brand­ing reach­es into all the impor­tant parts of your life. Like break­fast. Red is a good col­or for coffee-making equipment.

Strange BMW Thing 1. A scoot­er.  All sorts of fan­cy body-work, some high-tech giz­mos, and tons of fluffy PR. But don’t imag­ine that they aren’t seri­ous about mak­ing a maxi-scooter. The sec­ond video is much more visu­al­ly appeal­ing than the talk­ing PR heads on the first one.

And if the maxi-scooter isn’t enough weird for ya here’s Strange BMW Thing 2.  The Husqvarna Mille 3 Concept.

Palette cleanser. 1953 BMW R51/3. Better now?

Cool Machines

What could be bet­ter than machine pr0n? Maybe typo­graph­ic fan­tasies? A touch of lit­er­ary did­dling? How about a trail­er for a movie about the Linotype machine. Oh god yes, yes, yes…

Art, Images, and Design

Amy was right, I want this cal­en­dar too. Images from ear­ly blues records and sheet music.

I can’t imag­ine how unac­cept­able to OSHA Anthony Burrill’s choice of ink was, but he’s mak­ing a great point. Oil and Water Don’t Mix, a lim­it­ed edi­tion screen print to ben­e­fit Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.

Restoring the old mas­ters is one of those I‑wish-I-had jobs. An old dark sooty crusty cru­ci­fix turns out to be a bright shiny mas­ter­piece by Giotto. A small image of the cross before restora­tion is includ­ed in the Corriere Della Sera article.

A tip-off from a fan of the Magpie brought me to Betsy Youngquist. Elaborately bead­ed dolls and fig­ures. Surreal, cud­dly and spiny at the same time. Buck Fish is fab.

Animation

Principal Skeleton. The fine art of stu­dent moti­va­tion. Yet anoth­er gig­gle induc­ing grick­le ani­ma­tion. (Graham Annable)

hap­py hump­day — I’m off to get my hair done. It’s hard work being a redhead.

Morning Linkage (Nov 2)

Transportation

New nom­i­nee for the ugli­est bike ever. White, chopped to bits, and oh dear god fug­ly.

I often point the moto-heads in my crowd to arti­cles at Hell for Leather. Here BikeEXIF talks to one half of the Hell for Leather team. Wes Siler. (A lit­tle fluffy, but there you have it.)
http://www.bikeexif.com/wes-siler

I have no idea, but these are the best tin-toy bikes I’ve ever seen.

Yes? No? 1970’s Bonneville.

Information in Words and Pictures

Visually pre­sen­ta­tion of sim­ple facts. Africa is big­ger than the United States, India, and China com­bined. Enough big­ger to have room for France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Italy, and most of east­ern Europe and still not full. I was sur­prised to find the Japan is near­ly as big as Italy. I think of Japan as being very small and crowded.

I have, over the years, bought many of the print­ed bound col­lec­tions of the Paris Review’s inter­views with authors. Now you can read all of them. (from the 1950 on) Your favorite author is like­ly to be here some­where and the chances of dis­cov­er­ing an author you’d like to read more of is pret­ty dan­ged high. (via lisa gold)

Art, Images, and Design

I love these Nordic mon­sters drawn on a sim­ple post-it. Especially the rein­deer peo­ple he post­ed on Sept 7th. John Kenn

Oh lordy, more Japanese folk­lore mon­sters. This time ghost sto­ries with a more mod­ern feel and paint­ed by Matthew Meyer. Can’t get enough of this stuff.

Today’s visu­al inspi­ra­tion — vin­tage house­hold prod­ucts pack­ag­ing. What can you make out of teal, mus­tard, and brown? Oh, and ser­ifs. I miss serifs.

Animation

I went from this annoy­ing inter­net meme. (Batman and kit­tens ) to the Vimeo port­fo­lio of the cre­ator Polly Guo. and found this. Maybe the guy’s ex-girlfriend had a point about  the sea mon­sters?

Morning Linkage (Nov 1)

Transportation

I’m not actu­al­ly that fond of the Triumph/Indian/Whathaveyou vin­tage bob­ber idea. So the Royal-Enfield item does­n’t do it for me. But some of the detail­ing and engrav­ing on this machine are awesome.

1962 CZ 175 Type 450. Showing how old school bikes were adapt­ed for dirt. Back before there were “dirt bikes”

I shall now die ful­filled. Mercedes-Benz, AMG and Ducati togeth­er at last.

This weird lit­tle bike is based, loose­ly, on a Ducati. Well done, or just ran­dom? discuss.

Science

#16 — a snow crys­tal. Wow. And there’s the new to me Ornamental Baboon Tarantula. Big pic­tures of the small world.

Airplane food sucks because you can’t hear your­self think. Okay that’s inter­est­ing, but it does­n’t help does it?

Art, Images, and Design

An inter­est­ing attempt to change up the usu­al (fail­ing) inter­face for door open­ers. Can we stop peo­ple push­ing when they should pull and pulling when they should push? Maybe.

Cars 2 com­ing next sum­mer from Pixar. It’s a spy sto­ry? Check out the logo reveal on the offi­cial YouTube chan­nel. And there’s a web­site — of course. I hope it’s worth the hype. Pixar is awful­ly close to becom­ing pre­dictable. And that would be sad.

The adven­ture game Machinarium (Amanita Design) was a mini-hit in 2009. Now if you want to have your own lit­tle robot you can. Papercraft score!

Abstract pat­terns com­bined to cre­ate a fox on a wall. Philippe Baudelocque does some fine work in Paris. His per­son­al web­site has an awful mov­ing back­ground.