Morning Linkage (Aug 6)

Transportation

Watching moto-cop drill teams is always a hoot. Please note that this team is lit­tle extra spe­cial. *Tokyo* motor police and all women. 2 videos, a bunch of stills.

Givin’ away the goods. Visual grat­i­fi­ca­tion is a reli­able source of good-looking and good to look at bikes. It also has a “com­mu­ni­ty” page fea­tur­ing oth­er bike blogs. Here’s a run down of some of the best of the bunch. Along with sam­ple pics from each.

Again from Visual Grat. Over the top details of the Confederate P120 as revealed in a spe­cial email to subscribers.

More fine details. This time on a XJR 1200. Triples, fork brace, and blue on the calipers.

From huge to tiny. The Suzuki EN125 pop­u­lates S.E. Asia like fruit flies on old bananas. And some­times gets used to cre­ate nifty lit­tle buzz-bombs like this one.

Tech and Science

Again with the hack­ers, def­con, and the sup­posed high secu­ri­ty locks. Always a good sto­ry and always a good reminder that secu­ri­ty is more than a bet­ter lock.

Goby. With a name like that it’s got­ta be a weird fish — and it is. Trash-eater.

Art, Images, and Design

I did­n’t know that those vicious­ly ugly con­crete build­ing of the 50’s and 60’s (and their even worse revival in 70’s aca­d­e­m­ic set­tings) had a style name. Brutalism. Perfect fit. Andy Spain is not so dis­mis­sive as I am. His black and white pho­tographs bring as much beau­ty to these build­ings as any­one ever will be able to.

Day dream­ers hide-away. I can’t find the orig­i­nal image but this is too won­der­ful to pass up.

Photoshop is the most overused tool in the uni­verse. Somedays. And then oth­er days you see it put to use to reveal the world in a new light.  The ghosts of WWII merge with the present in these dual image pho­tographs cre­at­ed by Sergey Larenkov.

Nice lit­tle joke with your morn­ing cof­fee if you slop a bit over the edge of the cup.

Friday Animation

A three­some. All with some con­nec­tion to Gooby Herms.

El Kabong — done for Cartoon Network. A horse, some more hors­es, and a bad guy.  Mexican cin­e­ma lam­poon. Look for the National Steel near the end. (1:57)

5 words that sound dirty but aren’t. For Chicklets. I’m all over the gum and ink draw­ing style. (0:15)

Lovely and lyric, ani­mat­ed intro for a doc­u­men­tary film about danc­ing in PR. Bomba y ple­na. (1:30)

now go play out­side if you’re to make all that racket.

Morning Linkage (Aug 4)

Transportation

I am tak­en by the smart sim­plic­i­ty of the head­lamp brack­et and the mat­te black on the head­er pipes. Moto Guzzi.

Hell for Leather stops just short of accu­rate­ly describ­ing this lat­est pro­mo video from Triumph. Listen to the voice over with­out watch­ing the video. He’s not talk­ing about a bike…

As penance for  the pre­vi­ous content-free link, I bring you… Drags and Racing’s all dark Triumph Bonneville. I sat on a Bonneville last week­end… It fits. Drags and Racing web­site — in Italian,. NSFW nudity.

Girls on bikes. A lit­tle sweet for some of you but I’m charmed and it is a Laverda.

Boys on bikes. Same look and feel but a boy and a Honda.

Science

If lasers cre­ate light in care­ful­ly con­trolled wave­lengths what would an anti-laser do? Absorb light in care­ful­ly con­trolled wave­lengths. Okay, I’m not smart enough to have come up with that but some­one has. And now that the idea has been described there’s a race on to build one and to fig­ure out what it’s use­ful for.

Words and Food

Working Wordsmith Alert. New CMoS. Sneak a peak at some of the shiny new rules and learn which of your old favorites they took out back and shot. (Chicago Manual of Style)

Nora Maynard dis­cuss­es her top picks from the field of new drink­ables offered at Tales of the Cocktail. I’m think­ing that I’ll have to hunt down a bot­tle of the Cocchi Americano before sum­mer ends.

Art, Images, and Design

- the dreamy sum­mer edition

These are Jim Denevan’s tools. These are his images.

The chil­dren’s book illus­tra­tions of Igor Oleynokov. Fluid pas­tel worlds. The seascapes are espe­cial­ly enchanting.

Have I told you about Pooh Sticks? Maybe not. But that’s for anoth­er day, when there’s a weak autumn sun and noth­ing much to regret. Meanwhile here’s a sum­mer ver­sion of play­ing with bits of wood and water. Little Drifters. Lenny makes oth­er things out of flot­sam and jet­sam as well.

Beach scene, black and white per­fec­tion. (Mildly NSFW)

Morning Linkage (Jul 30)

Transportation

I believe that this is a 1960’s Velorex 350. You can get the con­fus­ing trans­lat­ed from the Hungarian orig­i­nal here.

Very nice CB360T build out. Link to the build blog included.

Not the Citroen Picasso (a bor­ing com­muter car) but UK custom-car builder Andy Sander’s Picasso Citroen.

Ideas

This may make your brain warp but it’s a look at the state of the think­ing today. Attempting to com­bine quan­tum physics and neu­ro­science in the quest to set­tle the argu­ment between deter­min­ism and free will.

Or if that isn’t your end­less debate of choice, how about who was right about the nature of our future dystopia? Huxely or Orwell? Recombinant Records pro­vides the key talk­ing points.

Public trans­porta­tion com­muters, bed­time read­ers, and gym-rats alike should know about longform.org. An archive of the best essay length mate­r­i­al pub­lished in the past decade. There are sev­er­al ways to access and read the mate­r­i­al. I use Instapaper on my  iPreciouses.

Art, Images, and Design

Some real­ly love­ly posters from the Empire Marketing Board (1936–1933) and a pon­der­ing of the trou­bling images in these efforts to mar­ket the prod­ucts of the British empire to the sub­jects of the British empire. The com­plete col­lec­tion is avail­able at Manchester Galleries.

Crow on a wall in Spain. I love the blur­ry feath­er work.

Cardboard mon­ster arms.

Animation

Good illus­tra­tor, good ani­ma­tion Shaun Tan’s illus­trat­ed novel­las have made me smile. Now his The Lost Thing is being ani­mat­ed. If you have some patience left over from your week you’ll enjoy the trail­er more if you get it from the offi­cial Lost Thing but it’s a flash site and takes approx 15 sec­onds to load.

Okay, we made it to Friday. Now to make it through the day,

Morning Linkage (Jul 29)

Transportation

Starting with a cou­ple of Ducatis.

Sweet Duc 750 Sport.

Joe’s V Cycle cafe rac­ers. A ’66 Duc Monza 250 and a ’72 Honda CB750.

Italian ref­er­ence, NSU licensed and built Lambrettas. Stub-tailed cat on a scooter.

Not Italian at all. moto — extrem­is. I love this bike.

Political Trivia

“Subjects” became “cit­i­zens” and the tone of the doc­u­ment changed in a sub­tle and impor­tant way. Jefferson’s revi­sions of the Declaration of Independence.

Art, Images, and Design

This could take all day. Titles, excerpts, and cov­er art for vin­tage tracts and pamphlets.

They draw — they cook — pas­ta al limone.

Amy show us vin­tage Chinese fire­works packaging.

I seem to be on a mon­sters kick this week. Fuco Ueda under­stands mon­sters and the mun­dane dis­guis­es they wear. Coilhouse gives an overview.  Her site.  The nav is hid­den under shoes.

But now we need some­thing a lit­tle brighter. The Bear turns fifty today. Here’s a lit­tle birth­day par­ty.

off you go,

Morning Linkage (Jul 28)

Transportation

I don’t think I’d name any bike “Chicken Salad” but it’ll have to do for this nice, short xs650 custom.

A longer xs650. Not at all a salad.

Bobbers come from all over. Honda Hawk. Srsly.

Even cuter. Honda Rebel Custom.

Art, Images, and Design

So many chil­dren’s book seem best designed to give chil­dren night­mares. The whole cat in the hat thing weird­ed me out for months. But real­ly — noth­ing com­pared to these draw­ings done by Gojin Ishihara for Japanese chil­dren’s books. Japan has the best mon­sters under the bed (or com­ing out of the ceiling)

I’m not sure I’m going to buy the idea of a lux­u­ry Sharpie but this new stain­less steel mod­el *is* pret­ty fly.

The Urban Sketchers will be con­ven­ing in Portland this week­end for their first inter­na­tion­al meet up. Saturday July 31st is the 28th annu­al world-wide sketch crawl. And in case you’ve for­got­ten why you should be on the look­out, here’s a quick cou­ple of water­col­ors of the CA coast line from Marc Holm.

Marco Zamora. Pen and ink wash­es with win­dows of col­or. Urban scenes through a prism.

Dive. James Jean made the image and pres­sureprint­ing did the intaglio prints. The walk through of what it takes to make a 36 x 23 print will explain the $2000 price tag.

Animation

Boy wants to meet girl. Girl is ignor­ing boy. Boy gets a lit­tle help from the fel­low down the street. Thing is, boy is a graf­fi­ti. A lit­tle live action, a lit­tle stop motion, a whole lot of Greek charm.