Morning Linkage (Jul 27)

Transportation

So much train awe­some­ness — pages and pages. Some high­lights… retro-futuristic designs, and mod­ern reuse of old­er engines. Oh, and the pigs let­ting them­selves off at the station.

Another xs650 bob­ber. Subtle details in the body work. Close to perfection.

Ridden in the dirt. Nuff said.

Science

Fried egg jel­ly­fish. The bane of my child­hood. But pret­ty dan­ged cool when giv­en the Creature-cast treatment.

Remember the siphonophores from a while back? Did you know that they fig­ured in naval war­fare. Hiding a sub­ma­rine beneath a raft of crea­tures that sonar can’t see but can’t see through.

Art, Images, and Design

This year’s rice pad­dy art from Japan. Amazing what you can do with a lit­tle plan­ning and some vari­eties of rice.

It ain’t for noth­ing that I’m known as Mizz. Shoes. This Jeremy Scott design stopped me dead in my tracks.

MOMA mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion for “Matisse: The Radical Invention 1913–1917″ Pictures and com­men­tary for most of the paint­ings and draw­ings in the exhibit.

More from Yuko. The illus­tra­tions from The Beautiful and the Grotesque are enough to make you buy the book. The jack­et back blurb will clinch the deal.

now go do some­thing wonderful

Morning Linkage (Jul 26)

Transportation

Dark Roast Blend — anoth­er huge col­lec­tion of stuff — micro cars. There are some gems here as well as some laughs.

New car at the top of the wish list. Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 B Corto Touring Berlinetta. And why did I have to find this on That Will Buff Out?
http://thatwillbuffout.com/2010/07/21/funny-car-photos-wish-list-wednesday/
The real scoop. Second car down in this thread (After the also desir­able Bugatti)

Two-fer xs650s:

xs650 cus­tom — not quite per­fect to my eye. I can’t put my fin­ger on why. But that 3rd pic­ture is gonna keep me up nights (sweat.)

xs650 street track­er. Nice bal­ance of flash and purpose.

Wide angle shots of var­i­ous cock­pits. The black­bird will make your eyes cross and the hydro­gen pow­ered land-speed con­tender is about as sim­ple as it gets.

Visual Geography

Superimposing aer­i­al pho­tographs of the same bit of ground from dif­fer­ent years (or decades) gives fas­ci­nat­ing insights into how we grown into and out of our geog­ra­phy over time. There are some new pho­tographs (1924) and maps avail­able for NYC.

The map­ping appli­ca­tion at NYC’s GIS is some­times over­whelmed but worth return­ing to. Click on the cam­era and then move the slid­er under­neath for a choice of dates.

Some point­ers form the WSJ about things you might want to be on the look out for while you’re cruis­ing the maps.

Visual Physics.

3 videos for the new Lagoa physics mod­el­ing engine. (Sound)

Architecture and Toys

Anyone who has attempt­ed to assem­ble one of the more com­pli­cat­ed Lego mod­els recent­ly will remem­ber curs­ing the hor­ri­ble pic­tures only direc­tions. It need not be so awful as these clever instruc­tions for a build­ing block set show. The text excerpts about edu­ca­tion­al the­o­ries are a bit more inter­est­ing than any­thing you’re like­ly to get to read today as well.

Art, Images, and Design

Somewhere in this col­lec­tion of folk art cats pub­lished by Tara Books (India) is sure to the be the cat of your dreams/nightmares.

Stinkfish. Girl rid­ing a bicy­cle.

–
It’s always something.

Morning Linkage lives at http://shinymagpie.net

Morning Linkage (Jul 16)

Transportation

Built as a cus­tom in 1936 this Henderson is Art-Deco in all it’s black, shiny, curvy, swoop­ing glo­ry. Just don’t look at the last shot of the bike being rid­den — it’s actu­al­ly an ungain­ly midget. Le sigh.

For the junior set or aspir­ing moto design­ers and col­orists. The Ducati col­or­ing book. Print and scribble.

Nice bike. Wicked graph­ics. Matching hel­met. Royal Enfield.

1938 OEC Commander. Today’s looker.

Tools

These lit­tle handy things come up every Christmas in the Lee Valley tools cat­a­log. A bet­ter pock­et screw­driv­er. No more hop­ing that the dime fits in the slot or that a quar­ter will give you enough grip­ping pow­er for that stub­born bolt.

Food and Design

The idea of a gourmet scoop­ing ketchup is, well, so damned food­ie. And the pack­ag­ing plays just the right note.

It’s fresh fruit and veg­etable time. Most pro­duce now arrives at the gro­cery store in anony­mous, waxed card­board crates, but that was­n’t always so. Animalarium gives us a help­ing of the clever­est ani­mal themed labels. Tons more.

Art, Images, and Design

More from Yuko. The illus­tra­tions from The Beautiful and the Grotesque are enough to make you buy the book. The jack­et back blurb will clinch the deal.

Not sure who or what just yet, but this is fab abstract street art from Italy.

Anywhere but here (Houston.)

New images for Edward Gorey’s Ghastly Crumb Tinies and a cou­ple of new tinies. (One of these is NSFW if you squint real hard.)

Total Weirdness (and hotness)

Somehow you all seemed to have missed the “hot viral awe­some­ness” of the Old Spice Campaign; maybe that’s for the best. That’s okay, I watched a bunch for you. And so did the love­ly dudes and dudettes at TwoWheels. The open­er (with the bike at the end)  and a cou­ple of the bike based call and response replies. Oh, yes I do want to be some­one’s  sen­su­al bike friend of romance.

http://www.bikeexif.com/oec-commander

Morning Linkage (Jul 15)

Transportation

Accessibility. Even to the world of eXtreme sports. Joven De La Vega has designed a high­ly mobile wheel­chair for grind­ing it out at the local skate park. The design­ers full set of images, but no video yet.

Moto Beta 125 from back of the shed to pret­ty darn nice week­end toodler.

Swoon. New Ducati of my dreams.

Tools and Tech

The mushy-sweet pos­si­bil­i­ties of this loca­tion aware bracelet awe­some. Because home is a spe­cial place.

Robots

Of all the animal-like robots that I’ve seen none has cap­ti­vat­ed me with as much charm as this blocky tur­tle. Who knew this much sweet could be made out of black bake­lite cubes.

Art, Images and Design

Possibly the worst web­site nav­i­ga­tion ever. All because I was hop­ing to find more of these intri­cate­ly carved tire car­cass­es.

The artist is new to me, but who can argue with laugh­ing kites on a wall in Sao Paulo.

A pho­to jour­ney around the dis­ap­pear­ing America. As always, road trip and pho­tog­ra­phy are meant for each oth­er. Interview with pho­tog­ra­ph­er Micheal Eastman about his series Vanishing America.

Ed Emberley start­ed so many kids on the road to being illus­tra­tors and car­toon­ists. Now Scion has put togeth­er an exhib­it of his work and the work of some of the many artists who learned to draw from his books. There’s a dar­ling trail­er for the exhi­bi­tion included.

’til tomor­row my dears,

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