Morning Linkage (Dec 8)

Transportation

The odd sto­ry of George Disteel and his hoard­er’s col­lec­tion of motor­cy­cles. Which I give to you most­ly because the dog in the first pic­ture of Disteel, late and crazy in his life, clear­ly shows a Bouvier des Flanders. Proving that good taste in motor­cy­cles and good taste in dogs often go together.

Getting a bike that fits right and looks good is tough. Or was that shoes? Nope bike. Help is at hand. Cycle Ergo takes your mea­sure­ments and plops a lit­tle man­nequin built like you onto any one of hun­dreds of bikes. Though it claims that your rather petite cura­tor of shiny can flat foot a K1600 GLT. I am skeptical.

Speaking of the salt. (We were just yes­ter­day) Triumph — mod­i­fied. Prettiest sil­ver bike ever. Ever.

Science

We were just dis­cussing these mag­nets in the shop the oth­er day. Neodymium mag­nets are such a geeky won­der. Tiny lit­tle bits of (nickel-plated) met­al that grab on and won’t let go. You can get all sorts from K & J Magnetics. But more impor­tant­ly you can get their newslet­ter with stuff like this: “How Neodymium Magnets are Made.”

Art, Images, and Design

A hand­ful of Sanjeev Joshi’s quick sketch­es from Istanbul.

I know of Cliff Roberts only from car­toons in my father’s New Yorker mag­a­zines. Turns out he did some won­der­ful chil­dren’s books as well. I so want a copy of Thomas — he’s cer­tain­ly the finest cat I’ve seen this fall.

Though odd­ly, I do recall a copy of Langston Hughes’ First Book of Jazz also illus­trat­ed by Cliff Roberts. I just nev­er con­nect­ed the two.

Fascination with 60’s and 70’s design. There are pho­tog­ra­phers who seek out and cap­ture images of the every­day objects that filled our lives and homes. Browsing in this col­lec­tion can fill up your inspi­ra­tion well in just a cou­ple of min­utes. (via phil k)

Morning Linkage (Dec 7)

Transportation

Seemingly ran­dom, Japanese, custom-bike guy blog. I pre­fer look­ing at these with­out the assis­tance of Google trans­late. The sto­ry of one guy’s life, his friends, his lunch­es, and his bikes. (Occasional bits of NSFW — most­ly ani­me girls.)

For all of you drinkers of the Orange kool-aid who were dis­ap­point­ed by the small (125cc) size of the pro­posed KTM mini machines can relax. There’s a new pro­pos­al — for a 250 or 300. Sometime in 2012? Maybe that’s long enough for them to find some­one to do some­thing about the 1980’s era water­craft graph­ics. Urk. (And, yes, I know that’s the pro­mo pic for the 125.)

The pho­tog­ra­pher’s site is down for main­te­nance. But here are a hand­ful of Christopher Wilson’s images from the salt. Ethereal indeed. (thanks Chicane)

Science

A lit­tle fic­tion leads to a whole bunch of facts and a cou­ple of videos about giant squid.

Art, Images, and Design

Another of the Portuguese artists from the turn of the last cen­tu­ry. Amadeo Souza Cardosa is lit­tle known out­side of his home coun­try. Bright, often geo­met­ric, paint­ings full of life and good humor.

Do pup­pets count as design or ani­ma­tion? The giant pup­pets of Royal de Luxe arrived in Mexico City with a spe­cial per­for­mance for the bicentennial.

Little, frag­ile, ephemer­al bits of the real world are added to Micheal Aaron William’s street art. Heartbreaking.

Animation

I want to like this. I think I like this. The trail­er for O Apostolo. Frightening folk and fairy tales from Northern Spain. Review in English, trail­er in Spanish. (Video 1:06)

keep calm and car­ry on

Morning Linkage (Dec 6)

Transportation

I love it when a com­pa­ny uses com­pe­tent styl­ish women to sell cars. I also love the unapolo­getic piz­zaz of these Tail fins from ’58.

Soft tail frame plus R1100RS engine… um… Here’s the fin­ish, click back to page 1 to read the entire sto­ry. Some of the cus­tom fab­ri­ca­tion and more impres­sive­ly mod­i­fi­ca­tions of stock parts from ran­dom mod­els are worth a look.

Pointless Editorial Commentary

One of the rare fun­nies I have to share with you all. Cookie Monster in a fix.

Art, Images, and Design

The French artist Dran has a show in London this month, I Have Chalks. With a new twist on the usu­al prints on a the wall. 100 screen prints of one of his well known char­ac­ters, the lit­tle boy draw­ing on the wall, were made up with­out the back­ground. In oth­er words there’s no draw­ing on the wall. Darn then drew on each print. That’s a ter­ri­ble expla­na­tion. Just go look at the pictures.

I give you, with­out com­ment, The Architect’s Brother.

The link to the exhi­bi­tion info at George Eastman House is bro­ken. However, Simone Preuss gives some back­ground on the artist and the process over on Environmental Graffiti.

Animation

The video qual­i­ty isn’t the best but the tech­nique and the sto­ry­line are top-notch. Animation that mim­ics a pop-up book, the sto­ry of a duck that unwise­ly stalks a lit­tle boy. The Happy Duckling.

Long week = short links. But I’ll try to have some­thing for you every day.

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.