Morning Linkage (Oct 28)

Transportation

Helmut Fath’s mul­ti­ple cham­pi­onship win­ning URS side­car recent­ly sold for more than $150K. Worth it? There cer­tain­ly is enough his­to­ry here to make it interesting.

The log­ic of the pick­ings and place­ments of these 50 best rac­ing liv­er­ies will baf­fle you. Until you real­ize that each place­ment had to had a video. (Not true, a few don’t.) Try the 1988 Porsche rac­ing in the 24 hours of Le Mans — with the fog addled start. Or maybe the 15 sec­onds of pure son­ic joy to had Parnelli Jone’s Boss 302.  All the rest are in the box on the right. Just don’t look at #50. Tic tac.

New Norton Commando- ditch the lit­tle idjit screen, and pony up for the wire wheels and the sport­ing exhaust. Then get the hell out­ta my way. (Oh and tell the dude on the video to shut up. m’kay?)

Cute Natural World

Big cats love the post Halloween gro­cery clean-up. And who knew that pump­kins float? The tigers loved chas­ing them in the ponds. (2 dif­fer­ent videos.)

Internet Tips and Tricks.

Um, Google now index­es all of the LIFE images. So go to google.com, click Images in the top nav bar and type : “fer­rari source:life” into the search box.. or maybe “duke elling­ton source:life” if you’re in a more laid back kin­da mood.

Art, Images, and Design

A brief overview of the work of Finnish pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nelli Palomaki. Portraits of women and girls sug­gest­ing depths to their life sto­ries that are not revealed causally.

Somehow the croc­o­dile on the side of this bricked up build­ing in Lisbon looks ter­ri­bly sad about some­thing. Lucy McLauchlan’s lit­tle birds, how­ev­er, are hav­ing a very good day.

Using up the relics of the WWII. Making fur­ni­ture and home decor out of naval mines. Yup, that’s gonna look right­eous in my library.

Swing Shift Cinderella — with this Flashy Lassie with the Classy Chassis. Um, it’s the lob­by card for an upcom­ing car­toon short from the mid-century. I love it. More ads fea­tur­ing the car­toons here. And a reminder that car­toons were orig­i­nal­ly for the grown-ups. (SFW)

sec­ond times the charm :)

Morning Linkage (Oct 26)

Transportation

Want a lit­tle mys­tery to pon­der today? How about get­ting to the bot­tom of this MV Augusta 60cc Monomoto Superleggera. Tragic Italian opera? Wacky art project? Total BS? Keep looking.

Headline — 60 Years on Jaguar Sexy C‑Type Still Seduces — and here are the pic­tures to prove it. Honestly is there any­thing sex­i­er on 4 wheels?

Start in Philadephia — end up in New Zealand. Plan on about a month of trav­el time. Telastar logis­tics will get you start­ed by point­ing you to Justin Watt’s con­tain­er ship trav­el FAQ and toss in a cou­ple of pics of the journey.

Puzzles

The old River Crossing Puzzle giv­en a new set of char­ac­ters and rules that come from a more mod­ern per­spec­tive. Played with life-size pieces and real world rules.  An inter­ac­tive instal­la­tion by Ahmet Ogut.

Art, Images, and Design

There are a hand­ful of excel­lent pho­tographs in this intro­duc­tion to the Facing Change pho­to­graph­ic project. Based on the founders’ desire to cre­ate a pub­lic col­lec­tion of images that illus­trate our times in the man­ner of the FSA (Farm Security Administration) projects of the 30’s but with­out polit­i­cal ties.

So, is this archi­tec­tures? Sculpture? Collage? Papercraft? Don’t know, don’t care. You must spend time with the images and nar­ra­tive descrip­tion of “The Migration of Mel and Judith” a trav­el­ogue built into a “self-enclosed curl­ing world of the lamp­shade”… which … “adds a won­der­ful­ly anti-perspectival, frilly con­cav­i­ty to the cou­ple’s journey.”

And if Mel and Judith was­n’t enough for you, you can move along and explore Thomas Hillier’s more recent work “The Emperor’s Castle” A vague­ly creepy, organ­i­cal­ly extrav­a­gant, origa­mi inspired pop-up book.

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Morning Linkage (Oct 25)

Transportation

Hell for Leather dug in and got the details on the new hel­met design that has been ping-ponging around the inter­net. The tech­ni­cal details of Del Rosario’s hel­met are a lot more inter­est­ing than the space ranger looks. (Del Rosario home page.)

Another damned CB450 that I want. Dime City Cycles are evil. This is the one they built for the Discovery Channel spe­cial. They have oth­ers

Photographs from the French fac­to­ry of Patrick Godet — where the Egli-Vincent is produced.

More on Godet-Vincent. Is this awe­some ded­i­ca­tion to recre­at­ing an impor­tant piece of bike his­to­ry? Or an attempt to milk a few more dol­lars out of some­one else’s cre­ation? I can’t say.

Food

Oh heav­ens, how won­der­ful. An entire blog of car­toon cook­ing instruc­tions. Easily leap­ing over the lan­guage bar­ri­er. Alya Mark is good.

And she’ll show you how to make a cake box out of tag board.

Words

I am not always a fan of the reviews and inter­views at Spike mag­a­zine. But with 600 pages worth to choose from you will prob­a­bly find some­thing  you’d like to read in this col­lec­tion of essays, inter­views, and reviews.

Art, Images, and Design

Kinetic paper-works. MechaniCards are 3‑D build-it-yourself won­ders. (Or you can buy one already made up — but where’s the fun in that?) The sec­ond print­ing of the rotary engine is sure to sell out quick­ly. So get on with it.

Excellent lin­ear illus­tra­tions in pri­ma­ry col­ors. Andrew Pawley put new work up on Hire-an-Illustrator. Too many won­der­ful things to choose from. Try these.  Bathtub, Cosmonaut, Oiseau.

Playing with Light. Short ani­ma­tion with a real sto­ry. A boy, his robot, and a lit­tle trip out to get sup­plies. Nice sound­track as well. (Video 4:00)

get mov­ing peo­ple, it’s Monday :)

Morning Linkage (Oct 21)

Transportation

Except for the choice of blue hoses, I can see this charm­ing CB550 being a some­one’s pride and joy in the ear­ly 80’s.

Love the paint. CB450. Yeah, anoth­er one.

1970 Japan. You do not want to see this police mod­el CB750 in your mir­rors. Original in Japanese (more pix)

(Bonus Transportation Animation) REDLINE. Nope, it’s not mak­ing the lists of Christmas sea­son block busters. But we might get a look at Takeshi Koike’s rac­ing epic (with sub­ti­tles) in the Spring. Wicked cool, intra-galactic rac­ing. (Video — loud, vio­lent and full of aliens — oh and racing)

Science

I should be much more hyped about the deep eco­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions of the work of Lucy and Jorge Orta, but real­ly I just want to watch the but­ter­flies. (Video with voice over. 1:40) More details on the multi-media instal­la­tion “Amazonia” at the Natural History Museum

Art, Images, and Design

If you need a lit­tle some­thing eldritch for your Halloween par­ty invites you could do no bet­ter than to con­sid­er one of Sidney Sime’s fine ghosties and ghoulies.

More grue­some images for late October. The Walter Potter col­lec­tion has been (par­tial­ly) reassem­bled. “A fine exam­ple of Victorian whim­sy.” If your taste in whim­sy runs to stuffed squir­rels.

Pen and water­col­or. A lit­tle reminder to all those who don’t live here in Pugetopolis why we love it. Crisp, sun­ny, morn­ing in the ID.

Animation

Doomed, A bio­log­i­cal car­toon by Guillermo Garcia Carsi. Inverted hedge­hogs, coral par­rots, strange song­birds, and cube fish.  Click on the word Doomed to start the pre­view. Snork. (Video with voice-over. 1:07 — Flash)

Morning Linkage (Oct 20)

Transportation

Featured in the most recent issue of Italian Motor Magazine (which looks like a very worth­while off-line effort.) John W’s Mk 2 Le Man’s based Guzzi cafe rac­er is one of the finest cus­toms that I’ve seen. Fine enough to over­come my dis­like of the all knees and elbows look of the MG engine. And that’s going a ways.

Just the thing for the rut­ted grav­el path out to the back forty. CT90 in OD and kha­ki. Well sort­ed lit­tle thing.

Four fine old Detroit icons. Pen and water­col­or. The out­line draw­ing of the Pontiac logo is worth the price of admis­sion. Click for embiggens. Wallpaper worthy.

Okay — this is just weird. I think it’s a Fairchild J‑44 jet engined trike built by EJ Potter. Read more about the Michigan Madman at the Knee Slider.

Science

Remembering just how pol­lut­ed out night skies are. Comparing the vis­i­bil­i­ty of night sky objects.

With the goal of cre­at­ing a tiny lit­tle sun inside a ware­house in Livermore, the National Ignition Facility on both a macro and micro scale. Bonus pic­ture of the Governator on tour in 2008.

Art, Images, and Design

One of the nicest let­ter­press adver­tis­ing sets I’ve seen. Cranky Pressman sends out a set of 4 Parliment of Owls designed coast­ers with the charm­ing res­i­dents of an imag­i­nary sea­side town. Meet Edna, Mr. Snogglebaum, Adelaide and her pal Mr. Pistachio, and Cranky him­self. Now I must con­sid­er exact­ly what I want in the way of cus­tom, die-cut, letter-pressed coast­ers for my next social func­tion, hmmmm.

Lost artists. Jos Albert. Umber and grey. Domestic scenes and still-lifes, look­ing as if an under-painting was over­laid with graphite and then aban­doned. A slow­er, calmer world than the one we live in.

Cut-out paper ani­ma­tion. The sto­ry of Star Wars told by lit­tle paper peo­ple. (Video/Music 2:41)