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.

Morning Linkage (Nov 12)

Transportation

Way too much of the report­ing done on Wired’s Autotopia blog is auto­mo­tive indus­try due dili­gence. Even the writ­ers sound a bit dazed by all the cute lit­tle urban com­muter and eVehicle fluff late­ly. But once in a while they strike gold. On the occa­sion of what would have been his 100th birth­day they pub­lished this fab air­borne pho­to of  Georg “Schorsch” Meier at the 1939 Isle of Mann TT.

Dear heav­ens the boys over at Christies’ cat­a­log depart­ment are hav­ing fun with this bike auc­tion. “…com­plete the trans­for­ma­tion and end up with a cafe-racer ne plus ultra, a gen­uine road-going Manx Norton with lit­er­ary prove­nance…” Henry Manning III’s Norton Manx is for sale. (Along with a few oth­er trea­sures from his son’s shed.)

I try, I real­ly try to ele­vate the lev­el of this blog — but some days…  so here it is a fan­ci­ful design for a space going vehi­cle for hon­ey­moon­ers. Sex in space. I know you all want it. (NSFW)

Inexplicable Culture.

The Lying Down Game.

Art, Images, and Design

Totally charm­ing. Cut paper sil­hou­ettes of two peo­ple on bicy­cles. Other vehi­cles, ani­mals, map parts, and mus­tach­es too.

Verve. No, not the record com­pa­ny, the mag­a­zine: French 1950’s. Joan Miro — The Dog Barking at the Moon. One of the strangest sil­li­est, most won­der­ful prints ever. In the same issue a Chagall (meh), a Matisse col­lage (ooh), and  Leger (Leger always con­fus­es me.)

Animation

Yes, I’m late with it but I can’t resist show­ing you this love­ly lit­tle snip­pet. The offi­cial ani­ma­tion for International Animation Day. Reminds me of explod­ing­dog cartoons.

In the Beginning. Another look at Genesis, with a sense of  humor and bet­ter voic­es by Katie Wendt. (NSFW — Adam is naked)

git out­ta here — the week is done.

Morning Linkage (Nov 11)

Transportation — Pretty Bike Thursday

I do not have the time to crawl through the moun­tain­ous pile of images on ADV Rider. Luckily I have friends who do. MV Augusta 750S.

Another bit of his­to­ry goes up for auc­tion.  Bobby Sirkegian’s 1953 Triumph drag rac­er “Pretty Boy II”

A nice lit­tle RD400 cus­tom. Nothing extra, just enough to make it sweet. Nice resurrection.

Science

I have a lot of pho­tog­ra­phers among my read­ers. So the occa­sion­al pho­to­graph­ic DIY is always wel­come. Maybe you all would like to learn a lit­tle about cap­tur­ing images of the sun? Wired Science brings you the sto­ry and tech­niques behind Alan Friedman’s mind blow­ing sun photo.

Art, Images, and Design

Not your dad­dy’s Disney. Four great muta­tions of the Mouse and the Duck. Then four rather dull and pre­dictable waifish girls. And then… then, Odo cre­ates some Bender fabulousness.

Paco Pomet’s quirky, spooky paint­ings. Click around a bit. You’ll espe­cial­ly like Fabula (far right col­umn — 4th down.)

Vincent.zp is a fan of pack­ag­ing and indus­tri­al design. Among his many col­lec­tions is a Flickr stream of face pow­der box­es. Calm, love­ly pack­ag­ing for a prod­uct not often seen today. The Three Flowers box was post­ed on Amy Crehore’s blog last week. And the masked char­ac­ter on this box of Cipria Mascherina is my cur­rent favorite. There are dozens of oth­er inspir­ing images to found here.

Animation

God, I hate OK GO music, but seri­ous­ly, ani­ma­tion on toast. It can’t fail. Bonus fish play­ing a guitar.

I’m off to be very cul­tured (Picasso exhib­it, din­ner date, and then the sym­pho­ny) behave your­selves while I’m out.