Morning Linkage (Jul 6)

Transportation

Oregon race­way park — extreme shifter cart. Though 800 pounds makes it some­thing oth­er than a go-cart IMO.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/palatov-motorsports-dp4/

More extreme. These cars (and bikes) look like car­toon char­ac­ters. In part because they spring from Japans otaku culture.

Examples of boso­zoku bikes are a lit­tle hard­er to find but here’s a cou­ple. (Nice non boso-Morowaki 600RR smack in the mid­dle of the thread.)

And for some­thing sooth­ing. Bernardet pro­duced a very com­mon and suc­cess­ful line of scoot­ers in France in the late 40s and the 50s. But from 1921 until 1940 they pro­duced rac­ing and street side­cars. Scroll down to see some wicked racers.

Science

Science of pret­ty. How do but­ter­fly wings get their color?

More sci­ence of pret­ty. How do fire­flies light up?

A slight­ly dif­fer­ent view on the prob­lem of lag­ging sci­ence inno­va­tion in the US. It’s not the edu­ca­tion it’s the jobs.

Art, Images, and Design

Peter Taylor’s round lit­tle fel­lows with pat­terns and swirly pret­ties. Jolly. (NSFW bare car­toon butts)

Only the shad­ow knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. The rest of us just assumed that the aver­age beach going kid has a bit of mon­ster in their heart.

Edmund Dulac illus­trat­ed many books in the 30’s Here is a set of scans from Treasure Island. Soft clear col­ors and charm­ing images.

Perhaps you could also look at his illus­tra­tion for the Rubaiyat. Much dark­er and lush.

Animation

This is anoth­er one of those “how could I pos­si­bly write a bet­ter intro than Meredith wrote?” items. Czech chil­dren’s film — Kooky’s Return. I can’t. Just watch.

wel­come back to the real™ world

Morning Linkage (Jul 5)

Transportation

Muscle car mad­ness does­n’t seem to be going away. If you can’t afford the ride of your teenage dreams, maybe this print “Plymouth” by Kareem Rizk will make up for it. A little.

What does it mean that the best look­ing cus­tom work on Japanese bikes is com­ing out of Europe and the best cus­tom work on American bikes is com­ing out of Japan? Another great Harley cus­tom, this one from Ace Motorcycles. The details, look at the head­light brack­et, cap­ti­vate me.

A photo-tag Ace Motorcycles on a Japanese site. Ace itself has no web­site but one of their fans has put a bunch of pics on his blog fortyt­wo. and trans­lat­ed…

Science and Technology

Geo-thermal heat­ing — not just for green build­ing. The first users of geot­her­mal heat­ing may have been dinosaurs look­ing for a way to keep very large eggs at a per­fect, con­stant temperature.

You know how you nev­er have enough bowls for that chili par­ty but the next week­end there’s not enough plates for the BBQ? Somehow own­ing 24 set­tings of din­ner­ware just for the occa­sion­al moment when you need that many soups plates, does­n’t seem prac­ti­cal. And where are you going to keep all that chi­na? What if you had 40 flat discs in a cup­board that could turn into what-ever size and shape of dish you need at the moment?

Bug-eyed. 6 macro pho­tos of insect optics. Cool enough for wall-paper or desk­top. It’s nice to see the species iden­ti­fied on pho­tos like these.

I hate bat­ter­ies. I hate putting bat­ter­ies in my gad­gets. I can’t see the dan­ged lit­tle draw­ings that tell me which end to put in first. But now I don’t have to look. Two bat­ter­ies, in any old way, will get the job done. Did some­one say Microsoft does­n’t do hard­ware well?

Art, Images, Illustration (and Food)

Not the most com­plex recipe I’ve seen on They Draw, They Cook. But one of the sweet­est, most sum­mery so far.

A tree muse­um. Really. Using hard­scape ele­ments to high­light the unique attrib­ut­es of spec­i­men trees. Nice pho­to cat­a­log of orna­men­tal trees as well. Too bad Switzerland is so far away.

Black wal­nut and weath­ered met­al make an ele­gant if some­what odd­ly con­struct­ed desk. It’s the com­bi­na­tion of the mate­ri­als that attracts me.

Animation

It’s a three-day-weekend Monday so you have no excuse not to sit down and watch each and every one of the the clips pro­vid­ed in this trib­ute to Ray Harryhausen. The genius behind the sum­mer camp, rainy after­noon, enter­tain­ment of my youth.

Now go away and look at some­thing interesting.

Morning Linkage (Jun 30)

Transportation and Engineering

Some of these future of trans­porta­tion ideas from Japan, pub­lished in 1936, are nov­el riffs on the com­mon themes. But the two-color illus­tra­tions fea­tur­ing red and a love­ly inky blue-black and spiffy, speedy white wisps are so won­der­ful.

The cru­cial dif­fer­ence between math and engi­neer­ing is decibels.

Art, Design and Architecture

A nifty beer bot­tle meant to have a sec­ond life as build­ing material.

Playing with your food has nev­er been quite this sat­is­fy­ing. John Baldessari has built a dig­i­tal DIY still life kit using the ele­ments of Abraham van Beyeren’s orig­i­nal 17th cen­tu­ry paint­ing. Originally an instal­la­tion at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the expe­ri­ence is now avail­able on the web (or your iPhone)

Animation

Clay-mation,  sort of  — the title char­ac­ter is a blob of blue clay. Answering the age-old ques­tion what’s the dif­fer­ence between a bank pres­i­dent and a porn star. For all it’s blob­by­ness this is (NSFW.)

What this is doing on a site ded­i­cat­ed to nature pho­tos I do not know. But it’s a total­ly clever ani­mat­ed com­bi­na­tion of memes. Tetris, park­our, duck hunt­ing, and that weird build­ing game. (SFW)

Okay — time to rebuild the office fur­ni­ture (again)

Morning Linkage (Jun 28)

Transportation

One of the nec­es­sary but con­fus­ing parts of trav­el­ing is fig­ur­ing out the taxi sys­tem in var­i­ous coun­tries. How do I hail a taxi? Do I nego­ti­ate? Do I tip? Is it safe for sin­gle females? What the heck does a taxi look like any­way? In Japan they might just have one of these cute lit­tle signs on top. (Photo gallery nav­i­ga­tion challenge.)

Custom scoot­er. No clue. No com­ment. Well, okay, maybe that he should trim the tie-ties. Equally bizarre trans­la­tion of the web­site by Google here.

Previously men­tioned here for a video of a cus­tom bike arriv­ing at a tea cer­e­mo­ny (seri­ous­ly.) This new vid of cus­tom builder Shinya Kimura cap­tures the mood and atti­tude of the builder and his bikes. Pure Monday morn­ing inspi­ra­tion. My favorite of his bikes, for the moment. The Barracuda.

Maps

Thinking about air­space and air­space reg­u­la­tions. The  ref­er­enced arti­cle is good. The pro­posed “muse­um” is intriguing.

Mapping the degree of touristy. No, I did­n’t make that word up, some­one else did. Heat map of photo-tag fre­quen­cy gives you an idea how many cam­era tot­ing dweebs you are like­ly to encounter.

Art, Images, and Design

Tim Flach high­lights the exag­ger­at­ed, almost freak­ish, per­fec­tion of his sub­jects — show dogs, bats, and oth­er ani­mals. Watch the dog walk across the screen and then click on Portfolio. NSFW after image #38.

Cathy Gatland gives a quick look at the World Cup fever sweep­ing SA with a cou­ple of street cor­ner por­traits.

Animation

A nice set of black and white inter­fer­ence illu­sions. Soothing music.

Not real­ly ani­ma­tion but pup­pets. The coarse­ly vio­lent ori­gins of the mup­pets; Henson did ads for Wilkin’s Coffee. Poor Wontkins gets done-in in amaz­ing ways.

Off you go now…

Morning Linkage (Jun 23)

Sort of -

Linkage is on hia­tus while I deal with life, the uni­verse, and my back (again) But I haven’t for­got­ten you all entire­ly. Here are two nice, hap­py links for hump-day.

Another install­ment in the Smashing Magazine series on let­ter forms and cal­lig­ra­phy — this one fea­tur­ing Hebrew, Armenia, Mongolian, and Inuit among others.

I grew up with the work of Jim Flora, from the jazz album cov­ers that were a part of my child­hood to this friend­ly lit­tle car­toon. Mexican fire­works are the best!