Morning Linkage (Aug 26)

Transportation

Kinda unfin­ished look­ing. The Merlin starts with an old flat head and adds a cou­ple of moped parts, some stuff from the back room at the push-bike shop down the street, and bits dent­ed sheet met­al from who knows where. Appealing in its rawness.

What to do with the inevitable rust­ing away of cer­tain bits of that cheap scoot­er you bought. Bobber Passport. Check out the engraved veloc­i­ty stack. Woo.

If I had a bike this pret­ty I’d let it eat in the kitchen too. Moto Guzzi Airone 250.

Data Geeking

First up — all the Dr Who espisodes and their (approx) place in the time line of the uni­verse. As you’d expect the com­ments are FULL of ran­corous dis­agree­ment and the pick­ing of the tini­est nits. None the less, a prodi­gious feat of data scraping.

Two sets of graph­ics from Phillip Howard at Michigan State. The illu­sion of diver­si­ty in food. Soda pop and organ­ics are big busi­ness and the con­sol­i­da­tion of the lit­tle brands under the umbrel­la of the giants con­tin­ues. Soda pop and oth­er bottled/canned drinks. Who owns the organ­ic labels. Buying up the independents.

Art, Images, and Design

Alice Feagan — com­mer­cial illus­tra­tion in cut paper, this one for the cov­er of a week­ly food guide … and a pri­vate piece cel­e­brat­ing sum­mer at the lake.

Three new pieces from Alberto Cerriteno. That sweet tooth does­n’t look so sweet.

Excerpts from Sir William Hamilton’s Campi Phelgraei describ­ing his obser­va­tions of the vol­canic activ­i­ty of Mt. Vesuvius in the 1760’s and 1770’s. Engravings by Pietro Fabris.

Animation can show us the world from a dif­fer­ent height. Lucille finds her­self over­whelmed by her vis­it to the gui­tar shop.

thurs­day, chick­en for lunch?

Morning Linkage (Aug 25)

Transportation

Another tiny cus­tom CB100 out of SE Asia. This one from Deus Canggu in Bali.

Scott Flying Squirrel. Best bike name ever and inno­v­a­tive design too. Liquid cool­ing from the 1920’s. A cou­ple of oth­er Scott bikes here as well.

From Japan a TX650 cus­tom. The lines of the sub­tly brown tank are dreamy.

Documentation of mon­u­men­tal moments in bad taste. Nick Glies makes a liv­ing pho­tograph­ing the insides (and out­sides) of pri­vate jets. Ownership is, of course, not disclosed.

Technology

Tablets for Christmas this year. With the launch of the iPad this spring the tablet has reached the mid­dle amer­i­can radar. Best Buy is gear­ing up for the Xmas sea­son by pro­mot­ing the tablet as a per­fect gift.

Among the many con­tenders is like­ly to be this HTC slat­ed to run Google’s chrome.

Food

Cooking in a milk can? Steam cook­ing for messy, stew meals. Yum.

Art, Images, and Design

A quick and dirty overview of the art of Sci-Fi. Lauren Panepinto who is the Art Director for Orbit Books shows you some exam­ples and explains why and how they go about entic­ing you to pick up and read. Lots of links to lots of artists. Be sure to check the com­ments for even more art and links.

From the Long Now blog, a fine exam­ple of Panepinto’s two rules for great Sci-Fi art. Commentary on this split soci­ety image?

In the late 1970’s Andy Levin spent his non-working hours pho­tograph­ing the every­man expe­ri­ence of Coney Island. The NYT’s Lens blog brings 18 of these fine black and white pho­tos back.

And now, many years lat­er, Levin returns to Coney Island and pub­lish­es Coney Island Baby. Color pho­tos of the same place, in a very dif­fer­ent time. (NSFW — one aggres­sive­ly nude image)

enjoy the heat — eat lunch out­side today

Morning Linkage (Aug 24)

Transportation

Save this up for the third week in September — you’re gonna need a new desktop/wallpaper and this Ural in the far north will be just the thing.

This one’s gonna be flagged on the score sheet for inap­pro­pri­ate use of Red Bull. Thought he cop­per work is first-rate on this Triumph.

Absolutely per­fect. 1965 CA77 Honda. So well done, such a charm­ing bike.

Science and Pictures

BBC pro­vides anoth­er set of nice visu­al­iza­tion tools. How big is that? Start here with an image that helps you to under­stand the size of the Eastern Pacific Garbage patch. If it was cen­tered on Seattle, the east­ern edge would reach Fargo. Seriously. Lots of oth­er places, times, and object to look at.

The Solar Dynamic Observatory app on my iPhone is one of my favorite 2‑minute time wasters. SDO now pro­vides this image of the erupt­ing sun with the lines of mag­net­ic force drawn in. Confusing, swirling, wow.

Sex, drugs, and motos. “The results sug­gest motor­cy­cles ful­fill an appet­i­tive need, acti­vat­ing an impor­tant node in the dopamine reward sys­tem.” Details of the MRI test­ing and words from the inves­ti­ga­tor James Loughead.

Food

It would­n’t be sum­mer with­out cock­tails on the veran­da. But should you go off to some swanky veran­da that has a bar­tender to pre­pare your cock­tails or would you be bet­ter off stay­ing home on your own com­fy lit­tle patch of open air? To hunt prey of the appro­pri­ate species/gender you’ll prob­a­bly need to go to one of those pub­lic spots but if you’ve already got a tro­phy or are sim­ply tired of hunt­ing you could do a lot worse than stay­ing in (out­side). Staying home is cheap­er too. How much cheap­er? Ask the cock­tail cal­cu­la­tor.

Art, Images, and Design

Playing with your food. Edible crayons that real­ly col­or. Lush food pho­tog­ra­phy too.

I want some Monster Friends. Posters.

Morning Linkage (Aug 23)

Transportation

Gaze Longingly at These Buicks of Yore. Well at the first three or four any­way. Classic designs. After the 60’s Wildcat it all goes down hill.

The Zaeta 530. Now (or soon) avail­able in street legal two-up trim. There’s a nice video that fea­tures arty footage of hors­es, fol­lowed by the Zaeta and a Porsche doing some seri­ous drift­ing in the dirt.

The Wilson II. Extreme and prob­a­bly unrid­able but omg the pipes…

Notable espe­cial­ly for its ori­gins. Mohammed Shojaie’s Ostoure (‘Legend’ in Persian) con­cept bike.  Much of the artist’s oth­er work is includ­ed in Bloom, an Iranian on-line rac­ing game.

Science

Jack Horkheimer — the Star Gazer — passed away late last week.  For some back­ground and a taste of his humor have a look at this Profile col­umn from the Jan 06 edi­tion of Astronomy. (PDF)

Looking back at earth from space. Wired Science presents a gallery of images of algal blooms. Damn we live on a beau­ti­ful planet.

Art, Images, and Design

Only one artist this morn­ing. But this overview of Alex Varanese’s work includ­ing the won­der­ful Alt1977 retro-futurism project will give you a good start to your week.

off you go kiddies.

Morning Linkage (Aug 20)

Transportation

Cherry picked from the var­i­ous flickr tags and a cou­ple of col­lec­tor web­sites. Dark Roast Blend brings you Classic Trash Trucks. Including a Dempsey Dumpmaster seen all over Western PA dur­ing my child­hood and ori­gin of the term Dempsey Dumpster for a drop box. I did­n’t know they had any oth­er name until I was in my 20s.

“If the H1 were a lad, it would be the sort of boy you des­per­ate­ly hoped your daugh­ter would­n’t bring home. Fast, noisy, dan­ger­ous — and such bril­liant fun to be with.” A nice write up about one of the first hooli­gan bikes. A pleas­ant stroll down mem­o­ry lane for one or two of my fav boys.

Rumors, teasers, pho­to gal­leries. It’s all here. Now if KTM would just give us a date and a price for the lit­tle 125 stunter we’d all be happy.

Ancient Cultures and Archeology

We’re so used to the view of clas­si­cal Greece as a white mar­ble par­adise that we build our own great mon­u­ments to look like them. Um, not so fast. The Washington Post exam­ines the ori­gin of the clas­si­cal look …

… and Colour Lovers gives us a look at what those cold clas­si­cal fig­ures actu­al­ly looked like in glo­ri­ous col­or. (Oh my eyes)

Art, Images, and Design

The take away from this col­lec­tion of Japanese sub­way posters is — don’t take up more than your fair share of space, remem­ber your umbrel­la, and don’t drop your chew­ing gum on the floor. M’kay? I love the graphics.

I enjoy the dai­ly image or two from Covered, a blog that posts clas­sic com­ic book cov­ers re-drawn by con­tem­po­rary artists. Some days they’re nice but unre­mark­able. Some days you get this won­der­ful rework­ing of a Tin-Tin cover.

Hours and hours of look­ing and dream­ing. Over 100 maps, new, old, and some­times incom­pre­hen­si­ble.

Black & white Hong Kong. Photographs by Fan Ho. I am par­tic­u­lar­ly tak­en by the images col­lect­ed in “The Living Theater”

move along now, you have things to do.