Morning Linkage (Jul 14)

Transportation

We seem to be on a things-that-drive-themselves kick. But how about a thing that makes dri­ving using non-visual clues possible?

So this guy start­ed out to restore a NX650. But he got side­tracked by the pos­si­bil­i­ties hint­ed at by the naked frame. Lovely first go at a cus­tom bike. The crowds loved it and the builder post­ed more pho­tos.

If you have milling machines, spare bil­let, and some cre­ative tal­ent you can spend the time you’re not milling back­ing plate adapters build­ing this awe­some toy car. I’d love a set of the knurled tita­ni­um salt and pep­per shak­ers as well.

Science

Cosmology and Cosmogony are eter­nal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. Both the cur­rent attempts to deter­mine and define the shape of the uni­verse, and the his­to­ry and anthro­pol­o­gy of all mankind’s pre­vi­ous world views. io9 recent­ly fea­tured a love­ly graph­ic of a Jewish cos­mol­o­gy cre­at­ed by Micheal Paukner and I went explor­ing his flickr stream. Wow. Great graph­ics, inter­est­ing com­men­tary, and *foot­notes*!

Food

Fried avo­ca­do. I can not imag­ine any­thing bet­ter at a late evening sum­mer BBQ with a nice crisp lager.

The fine folks at the Kitch’n found the ulti­mate kitchen island in the tool sec­tion at Costco. I already have a kitchen island, but I don’t have an out­door kitchen island. Yet.

Art, Images, and Design

A walk through many years of book cov­er design. Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mocking Bird is still in print. And has been pub­lished with some love­ly sen­si­tive cov­ers and some real disasters.

If this was on your walk to work every morn­ing you prob­a­bly would­n’t notice it for the first cou­ple of days. But every day after that these lit­tle peo­ple would make you smile. Even in the rain

Animation

From Shasta W. Very fun­ny ani­mat­ed Dutch retail web­site. Probably not going to be a repeat buy­er though. (music and crash­ing noises)

alright then my dears, off you go

Morning Linkage (Jul 13)

Transportation

Destroying land­mines before they destroy you. Introducing the Assault Breacher Vehicle.  Video at the bot­tom. (Typically trag­ic choice of sound tracks.)

The VFR1200F. Any review that starts with the Ohlins tech at the track laughing…

I“m bet­ting that a num­ber of you will feel a lit­tle wisp of nos­tal­gia when you look at this shiny restored Hodaka.

Airport shut­tle, moto park­ing comes to France. Gear lock­ers, dis­count­ed price, and a ride to the ter­mi­nal. Anyone in Seattle got a chunk of land near Sea-Tac? Okay — maybe a bet­ter idea in LA.

Science

Undersea crea­tures fas­ci­nate me. I have no idea why and I don’t think I want your opin­ions on the mat­ter either. Some more portraits.

Food

Salsa verde the way I’ve seen it made in Mexico. Yummy recipe and presentation.

Art, Images, and Design

Once used to trun­dle those ter­ri­ble, not real­ly food meals down the aisles of air­planes, these trol­leys are refur­bished and cov­er­ing in decals to make hip stor­age objects.

Food stored in draw­ers with elec­tron­ic wiz­ardry. It’s kinds cool to think that draw­ers might be bet­ter than cup­boards for food. (Even if this is just a reefer concept.)

From Coilhouse — a new take on the Japanese Floating Worlds tra­di­tion of paint­ing. This is what re-visioning of old­er forms should look like.

Just because I’ve already done ten­ta­cles this morn­ing; I think I’ll add this col­lec­tion of squid images from Animalarium.

Paul Lung’s por­traits are mas­ter works of per­cep­tion. You want to meet each one of the peo­ple he’s drawn. (Done with a.5mm mechan­i­cal pen­cil — I can’t find a ref­er­ence to the hard­ness of the lead he uses.)

James Dean. Because it’s that kind of day and I’m feel­ing the girl­friend love.

Morning Linkage (Jul 9)

It’s been a good week on the inter­net and there are just too many things still to share with you all. So dig in for a good hour or two.

Transportation

A recent con­ver­sa­tion with the moto-heads of my acquain­tance ques­tioned the nature of some of Ducati’s recent crop of “spe­cial edi­tion bikes.” Here’s a look at one of the real™ clas­sics.

I don’t know whether to be offend­ed, amused, or heart­ened by this look at the role of women in the design of auto­mo­biles. I dis­agree with the state­ment that you don’t need to be a gear-head to be good, but only if you allow for gear-head to cov­er more ground than just a fas­ci­na­tion with  cylin­der head shape and  rebound cal­cu­la­tions. I hes­i­tate to admit that the most appeal­ing image in the sto­ry is the “Damsels of Design” lined up with Harley Earl. Oh, and the head­line writer should be pelt­ed with pow­der puffs.

You can go look up the his­to­ry and all that if you’d like. I’ll just sit qui­et­ly and look. Megola.

Unclassifiable

Oh you’re a div­er, how cool is that? Um, maybe not so cool if you are Carlos Barrios Orta and your job is to keep the sew­ers of Mexico City flowing.

… and the nation­al geo­graph­ic video here (not safe for lunch)

Science

Freezing tis­sue sam­ples at the American Museum of Natural History. The Ambrose Monell Cryo Collection. Bet you did­n’t know that AMNH had so many kinds of collections.

Remember the Giant Spider Crab shed­ding it’s shell from the oth­er day? Here’s a nice Nat Geo gallery fea­tur­ing him and some of his deep ocean liv­ing bud­dies. Starting with the apt­ly named Fang Tooth Fish. OMG, and there’s a Vampire Squid. The usu­al Nat Geo high qual­i­ty photography.

Food

Candy specif­i­cal­ly designed to be shared.

A brief look at the process of hand rais­ing apples in Japan. We’ve all mar­veled at the per­fect­ly pre­sent­ed ide­al fruit in Japanese gro­ceries, these bas­kets and trays are meant for giv­ing as a gift. Jane Alden has pho­tographed the farm­ers and their orchards.

Art, Images, and Design

Jane Alden’s own web­site fea­tures a less peace­ful but utter­ly com­pelling essay World War I on the Tears of Stone.

A cou­ple of point­ers to the art of Kodomo no kuni, a Japanese chil­dren’s mag­a­zine pub­lished in the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. From the gallery of illus­tra­tions I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the work of Takei Takeo and Onchi Koshiro. (Click on the list icon under the pic­tures to see a list of all the illus­tra­tors.) Some gen­er­al infor­ma­tion about the mag­a­zine is also given.

Summer arrived quite sud­den­ly a cou­ple of days ago and I want this instant Popsicle mak­er. Now where did I see that cit­rus cool­er pop recipe? The one with the vod­ka in it?

Video

Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle. If you don’t want to see this… I’m going to won­der about your taste in vio­lence. RED the trail­er is up.

Morning Linkage (Jul 8)

Riding into the sunshine.

Ride the hyper­bole express to a dingy Paris base­ment and col­lec­tion of aston­ish­ing vin­tage bikes.  Clicking on any one of the links leads to a lust pro­vok­ing gallery of the named bike. Including a Model 18 Norton, A Sunbeam Model 9, 1926 Ridge Special, and so many more.

Worse eclec­ti­cism than some of my posts. mish­mash of motos from the guy who climbed the fame lad­der with his 10 most dan­ger­ous roads in the world list.

Autotopia’s list of 12 desir­able sta­tion wag­ons. Littered with mod­ern bland­ness but a few gems - the Vista Cruiser, the Saab 95, and a fab Chevy Nomad.

… and an addi­tion that could eas­i­ly replace any of the mod­ern lux­u­ry car man­u­fac­tur­er boring-mobiles in the orig­i­nal list. The Citroen DS Safari.

Science

Cryptoforestry and the Return of the Repressed. How could you write a bet­ter head­line? As any­one with a lit­tle bit of prop­er­ty can tell you, nature will out and the forests will return — to the odd­est places.

Marine biol­o­gy. Giant crab moves out of a too small shell. Awesome clip.

Art, Images, and Design

Pianos have been appear­ing ran­dom­ly in NYC. I’m always aston­ished at how many of the peo­ple play but I did­n’t know. Play Me I’m Yours.

Urban Sketcher Tommy Kane drew one — of course.

Peskimo are best known for their vinyl toys. This year they’re doing the poster and sig­nage for the Mozilla Summit. Dollars to donuts these lit­tle direc­tion­al signs dis­ap­pear in an instant.

From Ellis Nadler via Journey Round My Skull to Coil House. The Cards of Wu. (I just want­ed to write some­thing with more words cap­i­tal­ized than low­er case.)

Charming, but to eyes raised on the edi­tions of Tolkein’s books with his own illus­tra­tions  these  illus­tra­tions from the Russian edi­tion of the Hobbit are off kil­ter. Bonus video at the end of a chil­dren’s show based on the books — you’ll rec­og­nize the scenes. Gollum is wicked good.

soakin’ in the heat, lovin’ it.

Morning Linkage (Jul 7)

The Art/Science of Getting There

The quad goes ful­ly enclosed to make a high­ly mobile fire­fight­ing plat­form. The Amatoya is con­sid­er­ably big­ger than you’re going to assume when you first look at the pic­tures. Lots of inter­est­ing tech employed, like aero­gel insu­lat­ed win­dows.  (thx toucan)

The Story Of Amatoya

Mitch Boehm holds forth on BikeEXIF on the Yamaha DT‑1. For many of you this is a nice reminder of the excite­ment the DT‑1 caused when it was released. For oth­ers it will be a look at might arguably be the ori­gin of the dual pur­pose bike and the sport of adven­ture touring.

The offi­cial pro­mo for 2011 Dakar.

Culture and Living

50’s Kabul — not what you think it will be like.

Air-delivered city in a crate, the prod­uct of the merg­er of two vast­ly dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es: expe­di­tion orga­niz­ing and con­struct. So many pos­si­bil­i­ties for com­merce and human­i­tar­i­an aid.

Technology

Archival stor­age of dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion is ham­pered by the short lifes­pan of most record­ing tech­nolo­gies. Tamper-proof col­lec­tion and stor­age of dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion is fraught with pit­falls. These WORM SD cards are a big step in solv­ing both prob­lems. Also a sim­pler answer to the Iron Butt no more Polaroid dilem­ma than the cur­rent dance of the SD cards. WORM — Write Once Read Many

Art, Images, and Design

Very ornate french chest, but yeah, I’d find a place for this in my house.

Cardboard steam punk. A card­board col­lec­tion of gears and levers. It does­n’t do much but it does it nicely.

Pretty, creepy. Pretty creepy. Japanese sur­re­al­ist painter Tetsuya Ishida makes the claus­tro­pho­bic side of Japanese cul­ture visible.

Japanese mon­sters. I’ve done some­thing like this before? Worth hav­ing a look at some more then.

Animation

Animated paint chips. Commercials for Sherwin Williams use paint chips to make lit­tle scenes and inspire you to get out the brush­es and rollers.

keep calm and car­ry on,

-lara-

–
It’s always something.

Morning Linkage lives at http://shinymagpie.net