Morning Linkage (May 17)

Transportation

Photographers Guerry and Prat (no web­site yet) are mak­ing very spe­cial por­traits of very spe­cial bikes. This Vincent Rapid is swoon worthy.

Equally black and ele­gant look­ing is this ’68 CB450 K1 also shot by Guerry and Prat.

Rumor has it… and the prices have been announced. Buell race machines from $16,900. Also “Erik Buell Racing is report­ing that is has a few track­day bikes…” for $10,500 get yours now.

Tech and Gadgets

Code Swarm is a soft­ware project visu­al­iza­tion tool. Not a visu­al­iza­tion of the code, but of the team and it’s func­tion­ing as revealed by the activ­i­ty in the source code con­trol system.

It’s a lit­tle bit out of order, but here’s the code swarm view of the ilomi­lo game devel­op­ment project. If you look down in Art, Images, and Design you can find the trail­er for the game.

Art, Images, and Design

Anamorphic pub­lic art isn’t new. But the sim­ple, brush-stroke based lines used to cre­ate these illu­sions are so much less aggres­sive and threat­en­ing that the charm just oozes. Toronto sub­way system.

Ilomilo — a new xbox game for the pas­tel rompers set. But oh my the love­ly graph­ics. I got­ta agree with the gent on boing-boing who said he want­ed the flop­py eared dog fish as a plushy toy. Trailer (Music)

Someones very sassy grand­ma. Vintage sum­mer photo.

hap­py zom­bie day…

Morning Linkage (May 14)

Transportation

Wretched excess, the new Porsche 911.

Would you leave this under­stat­ed beau­ty behind if you were mov­ing over­seas? I think not.

Looking a bit too much like Wolverine in squid­ly guise, hold­ing a white chi­na tea cup, and rat­tling on. Road rac­er Guy Martin gives the BBC an inter­view and you get a snick­er. (There’s a love­ly east­er egg in the video. Check the comments.)

Science

Yeah, we put some sharks in our aquar­i­um. We don’t think they’ll eat a whole lot of the exhib­it. Uh huh. Look at what ate the shark. Ignore the ‘scary’ nar­ra­tion, the images aren’t gross, just fas­ci­nat­ing. (homage to schneier)

Truly ran­dom num­bers are the holy grail of cryp­tog­ra­phy. Quantum physics may be the answer. Isn’t QP the answer to every­thing? So now there are 42 tru­ly ran­dom num­bers. Maybe — or not. IO9 tries to explain how it works and why it mat­ters. Violation of Bell inequal­i­ties… My head hurts.

Art, Images, and Design

These are so sil­ly and so cute. Masaku Hori ‘s lit­tle wait­ing dogs that hold your fruit.

Fab black and white dou­ble por­trait: Joe  Lewis and Josephine Baker.

Animation (Sorta)

Rule 34: If you can think of it there is porn of it on the ‘net. Better than Rule 34: Batman porno. Not the Dark Knight bat­man, the late 60’s campy TV ver­sion. Complete with cheesy car­toons bal­loons that say Pop and Pow. Stunningly, this trail­er is SFW.

… and that’s the end your week with the magpie.

Morning Linkage (May 13)

Transportation

The designs of Chris Vetter — urk, um, well…  Love him or hate him, this one is as extreme as they get. The Mystery KZ1000. (Hint fol­low the link to see what Vetter road to Quail.)

One for my guys. Marissa Miller, Harley-Davidsons, pho­tos and video. She kin­da bab­bles in the vid but no-one is actu­al­ly lis­ten­ing to the audio anyway,

Cloud com­put­ing gone hor­ri­bly awry. Ford’s Tweeting Car Embarks on American Journey 2.0 The killing shot?

“Auto“matic Blog. You knew it would come to this — the car, @AJtheFiesta , will blog  or tweet from the road using info gleaned from var­i­ous vehi­cle data sen­sors and engine com­put­er codes (stuff the car already has any­way). Zipping along a wind­ing road? The car might tweet that it’s hav­ing fun. Slogging through rush-hour traf­fic with the wipers on? The car will let the world know it’s not at all hap­py. “Either way, we want­ed to allow the car to become a blog­ger,” Giuli said.

Yes, I know it’s lazy to use a pull quote, but how could I have pos­si­bly writ­ten any­thing that would top that ?

Science

More clues about the lives and evo­lu­tion of those utter­ly cool feath­ered dinosaurs.

Just a gen­tle reminder from Mother Nature. We humans have no idea what’s going on in the oceans, None. Recently a grey whale was sight­ed off the coast of Israel. There haven’t been grey whales in the Atlantic ocean in over a cen­tu­ry. Or so we thought.

Crows are very smart. Sam here is going to prove it to you. Using a tool, to get a tool, to get anoth­er tool, in order to pry the treat out of the box.

Art, Images, and Design

The answer to the ques­tion “Why do all those cute Japanese car­toon girls wear pink?” is in this dia­gram. As well the notion that blue is asso­ci­at­ed with trou­ble in Native America cul­tures and South America. Kinda explains my eye color…

Ric Ocasek — yes of the Cars — had his first ever gallery show of his draw­ings last month. Teahead Scraps presents 22 col­or­ful, doo­d­e­ly sketch pad won­ders. Prints available.

Another stun­ning set of images from the NYT Lensblog. Little known to mod­ern pho­tog­ra­phy lovers, Fredrick W, Glasier doc­u­ment­ed the world of the cir­cus in the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry. View the slide show on a full screen. Well worth get­ting a fresh cup of cof­fee for.

onward and upwards my dears

Morning Linkage (May 12)

Transportation

A new direc­tion in elec­tric motor­cy­cles, look­ing back to the 50’s. Hammarhead builds the Volta, a retro look­ing bat­tery pow­ered machines on a mod­ern frame. If you can call the Enfield Bullet modern…

In case you saw today’s BikeEXIF, the Falcon Kestral, and want­ed the back ground. Here’s the press release and bunch of links, as well as the pics. I am unmoved but I know some of you all will love it.

Paul Van Denton is a recent grad of the Royal College of Art. He does some pret­ty out­landish cafe racer/futuro con­cept bikes. Pipeburn col­lect­ed some of his best images. PVD also has a love of rods and drag rac­ers so some of the pho­tos on his blog are worth a look. The link is in the story.

Science, Tech, Gadgets

You sim­ply can­not fail to appre­ci­ate that we live on a plan­et that has a mas­sive crys­tal struc­ture at its core. Really — it’s like some­thing out of a movie. It’s also why seis­mic waves move faster when going along the merid­i­ans than the latitudes.

Society and Culture

David Weinberger is a info geek. He reads wide­ly and recent­ly he read through a cou­ple of issues of Game Developer mag­a­zine. His reflec­tions on the roles of moral­i­ty in gam­ing and games reminds us that the real world is rarely sim­ple enough for good/bad choic­es. And that moral choic­es some­times have fuzzy con­se­quences. Perhaps this is a good thing. Binary nar­ra­tives are boring.

Art, Images, Design

I have no clue why the first image is upside down. Not that it makes the pic­ture any stranger. Characters who just won’t stay in their books.

OMG-level awe­some: Jud Turner’s GreedEater. An assem­blage of parts.  Follow it up with Internal Combustion #2 — Bone Machine.

and that’s the mid-week review…

Morning Linkage (May 11)

Transportation

I am devel­op­ing a the­o­ry that green bikes are always chal­leng­ing. Take for exam­ple this ‘83 R80ST bob­ber. It is fas­ci­nat­ing; in a train wreck of a gas tank sort of way. Points for brav­ery though.

This Tiger 100 fea­tured at Quail is the def­i­n­i­tion of col­lectible. A one-off pro­duced in 1940 for Rody Rodenburg. Never restored and doc­u­ment­ed all ways to hell. This one should be parked in the liv­ing room.

Another bike seen at Quail. The Mule Motorcycles “Streetmaster” a Bonneville based street track­er. Build details and plans for a lim­it­ed pro­duc­tion run. 70+ hp in 300 pounds. Oh my,

Society and Culture

The LA Times pro­vides a brief look inside Disneyland after hours. 600 busy peo­ple make the Magic Kingdom sparkling new every night.
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All that eco-responsible toi­let paper you buy? You might want to start hord­ing. Too much recy­cled paper in the world means too lit­tle high qual­i­ty paper for mak­ing that cushy bum stuff.

Art, Images, and Design

Designers are now social engi­neers and cre­ators of solu­tions. At California College of Arts the design stu­dents were giv­en a brief to design prod­ucts that fall (rough­ly) into the cat­e­go­ry of health and fit­ness. Some are prag­mat­i­cal, some are sil­ly, and few are out right good. Like the smack down dolls of Sam Freeman and the eas­i­er to grip wine glass of Aaron McKenzie.

I love shoes. I have tons of friends who love choco­late. I think I’ve found the per­fect gift for all occa­sions . Something that clear­ly reflects my pas­sion and their crav­ing. What could be bet­ter than choco­late shoes?

Hidden behind the easy, pas­tel  japan-kitsch there is some­thing painful­ly hon­est in Zain7’s depic­tions of ado­les­cence.

Her blog is NSFW (nudi­ty)