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.

Morning Linkage (Aug 19)

Transportation

I’m at it again with the tiny cus­toms. This non-NA mod­el Honda JX110 impress­es with a hand­made muf­fler.

At the oth­er extreme. large, low and very long. An Indian with a nod towards the bicy­cles of the 20’s.

The title says it all. Engine Porn. A well done pho­to of the RD33 engine put into such Soviet planes as the MiG29.

Science

The Earth and the moon, togeth­er. As seen look­ing back from the Messenger spacecraft.

Audio

What if GMO plants were used to cre­ate some­thing oth­er than food? Artist David Benque pro­pos­es mod­i­fi­ca­tion and selec­tive breed­ing to add cus­tom acoustics to a forest

More arti­fi­cial sounds — what hap­pens when you slow one of those ter­ri­ble songs by the boy phe­nom Justin Bieber by 800? You end up with some­thing that sounds like a Brian Eno air­port expe­ri­ence. But it’s weird­ly soothing.

Art, Images, and Design

Porto. A col­lec­tion of ran­dom images tak­en by Miss K and pub­lished by the street art blog Stick 2 Target.

Animation

Visual apho­risms. 3.5 seconds.

Dinner:  Keep calm and car­ry out

Morning Linkage (Aug 18)

- the messed up glass­es edition -

Transportation

First thing in the feed read­er this morn­ing was this beau­ty. I almost stopped there and called it a day. CB550, build direct­ed by Jeff Stephens.

Art, Images, and Design

A few brief com­ments on the book design of the sem­i­nal Design for the Real World. Aside from the funky 70’s cov­er, it might be time to revis­it this classic.

Christian Tribastone hung 6 of his sketch­es of Jamestown, NY on or near the places he had drawn. Excellent images in black and white on brown paper. He won­ders what will hap­pen to the draw­ings he left behind, so do I.

Sweet new print from Casey Roberts. Happiness.

that’s all I can see for now.