Morning Linkage (May 7)

Transportation

The Friday freaky find. This was spot­ted on eBay and now it lives on pipeburn and per­haps in some­one’s garage. Is it a Norton? A Triumph? An ungod­ly mashup? Twin engine goofy­ness.

You know that I love the work of Wrench Monkees. So do a lot of oth­er folks and now we’re start­ing to see some very nice builds in the same grit­ty style.

Black and white image of an SS750 engine with­out the side case. This pic is big enough for net­book wall paper. Just sayin’

Society and Culture

Abandoned places. A Soviet mis­sile defense instal­la­tion, even allow­ing for the degra­da­tion of aban­don­ment this must have been a grim place to live and work.

Art, Images, and Design

uhu­ru design in Brooklyn has brought out a line of fur­ni­ture fea­tur­ing wood tak­en from the Coney Island board­walk. The lounger design is a swoopy delight.

A cou­ple of days ago I men­tioned Leandro Castelao in a post about rhi­nos. Here’s a look at some more of his work. Robots for T‑shirts.Click around for more goodness.

A sweet Jim Flora illo done for the cov­er of Computer Design some time in the 60s or 70s. Early geek art!

Animation

A dark world and a bright umbrel­la. A well done senior year project from CalArts by philip vose.

week­end ahead, off you go.

Morning Linkage (May 5)

Transportation

If you sim­ply *must*have a Ducati… No, no, please don’t hit me. I only find them and bring them to you. I don’t actu­al­ly cre­ate them.

Eastern Europe is turn­ing out a lot of tal­ent­ed visu­al artists and a cou­ple of odd-ball bike cus­tomiz­ers. Everyone has seen Yuri Shif’s tri-color Monster the DUster, but this bike, mys­te­ri­ous­ly named Gustav Skippone has an creepy charm all it’s own.

Three appar­ent­ly unre­lat­ed pic­tures. I want to make up a sto­ry that accounts for the rac­er, the ad, and Norton. I’ll set­tle for a nice look into the past.

Science, Tech, and Gadgets

In the midst of this col­lec­tion of images from the Museo Virtual del Diseno Creativity (Spain) there is a pho­to­graph a a radio shack belong­ing to EA3DY. Lining the walls are the QSL cards he col­lect­ed from his con­tacts. The cards are also repro­duced here. A bit odd in the mid­dle of a set of images devot­ed to com­mer­cial design in the 30’s but a fas­ci­nat­ing find.

Art, Images, and Design

Wicked, or sil­ly. I can’t decide. This skele­tal arm micro­phone hold­er may be just the thing for a rock­er in need of a mean­ing­ful mike stand. Nah, it’s just very cool.

Very nice met­al work on this clock by Dutch design­ers Niels van Eijk and Mirian van der Lubbe. A reminder that we can choose to have

A col­lec­tion of pic­tures of rhi­nos that should­n’t be as won­der­ful as it is. I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the Leandro Castelao and the Sergo Ruffolo — con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed next to each other .

…and there you have it, the week is half over.

Morning Linkage (May 4)

Transportation

Truly bizarre build from a CBR1000F. Top notch fab­ri­ca­tion qual­i­ty, stun­ning­ly ugly design, and it’s orange.

Every kids dream — work­ing on the rail­way. Children’s rail­ways in east­ern Europe.  Follow the links for more “I can’t believe I’m too old” envy.

Pretty bike — ele­gant, under­stat­ed, and vague­ly sin­is­ter. CB550.

Science and Tech

Well, sci­ence fic­tion actu­al­ly. The most awe­some inven­tion yet. WETA legs — A pair of leg exten­sions that allows the wear­er to have “demon” legs. Kim Grahams invent­ed these in Seattle and is now work­ing on pro­duc­tion mod­els for WETA (the film com­pa­ny) in New Zealand. Tons of video and an exten­sive inter­view. Do Want. but so does every­one else.

Art, Images, and Design

A hand­ful of bird pho­tos — the Winners of the WeLoveBirds.org pho­to con­test. The pair of Great Blue Herons will knock your socks off.

I’m not sure why you’d want a sin­gle flower appear­ing to grow out of your din­ing room table. But if you did this is a quick inge­nious way to have one.

Alison Wright has been pho­tograph­ing Tibet since 1988. The NYT Lens blog brings us 19 of her pic­tures of the nomads. Traditional horse­men are rapid­ly tak­ing to the motor­cy­cle as a means of transportation.

Animation

I know you’ll remem­ber the work of Al Jarnow. You may not know his name but if you grew up on Public tele­vi­sion in the gold­en age you’ve seen his work. Look at this trail­er for the DVD com­pi­la­tion Celestial Navigations.

anoth­er day, anoth­er cup of coffee

Morning Linkage (May 3)

Transportation

Apparently things are lit­tle dif­fer­ent in GT rac­ing in Japan. Anime fran­chis­es spon­sor cars paint­ed like space ships, dri­vers wear suits pat­terned after offi­cers uni­forms and the ‘race queens’ look like cos-players. Evangelion gets the treatment.

It’s not all Evangelion and Gundams. Run’a did Toy Story. (It’s worth run­ning this through Google trans­late of Babble Fish. The dri­ver is a fun­ny guy.

Speaking of car­toons: Are you cool enough for the Dark Knight? Yup, they’re back — for a lim­it­ed time you can get your very own, per­son­al, cus­tom craft­ed, bat­man moto gear.

Closer to home and bit more real: A nice, very cus­tom, Harley flat-tracker. Lots of build info too.

Society, Culture, and Literature

There’s a new esti­mate of the dol­lar val­ue of fair use: $4.7 tril­lion. Google’s pol­i­cy blog sum­ma­rizes and points to the full PDF. I’ve been wait­ing for the con­tent car­tels to pro­vide some counter points argu­ing against the num­bers giv­en here. I haven’t seen them. Hmmm.

Art, Images, and Design

Shoes and fan­ta­sy pho­tog­ra­phy No, it’s not what you think it is. These are images cre­at­ed by Khuong Nguyen for Louboutin’s Fall-Winter 2010 fash­ion mag­a­zine ads.

Free-form blocks, in bright col­ors and pat­terns. Alberto Garcia makes com­mer­i­cal illos in Spain. Check out the Red Hot Chili Peppers CD art.

Paper quilling is an old fash­ioned art. Something for maid­en aunts to do in the kitchen on week­nights. Or the young Russian, Yulia Brodskaya, to cre­ate for Starbucks and Nokia to use in some very cheery and col­or­ful adver­tise­ments.

Animation

You might want to turn the sound off after the first minute of so — the music does­n’t get any bet­ter — but def­i­nite­ly watch the video all the way through. Yes, your print­er is haunt­ed :-) (Sound)

Morning Linkage (Apr 29)

Transporation

A col­lec­tion of SR400 and SR500 videos. These high­ly mod­i­fi­able sin­gles are the start­ing point for tons of cus­toms in Japan. Now in addi­tion a to the work on the bike — it seems that you have to make a rid­ing video. Kick start bike, cruise the neigh­bor­hood, hit the under­pass, have your bud­dy take lots of shaky close­ups of your pants pock­ets :-D But you real­ly want to spend time with the SR500 built by trouthunter. It’s the nicest build doc­u­men­tary I’ve seen. (Video #4 — Music)

Amir Glinik draws CGI bikes that you can hear rum­bling in your brows­er. Swear to God.  This ‘45 Harley can be had in either red or white. Luscious.

The fel­lows at Jamesville (that’d be James) have moved a lit­tle out of the cus­tom bike field to work on a 1936 Ford Coupe. Maybe I read too many R. Crumb car­toons as teenag­er but these always give the gig­gles. It’s a beau­ti­ful job.

Science

Very nifty opti­cal illu­sion. You’ll see a spi­ral but it’s not there. I’m not sure how it’s done, some­thing about the background.
There are a ton more exam­ples here. and some explanations.

Art, Images, and Design

Insects and dew. Macro pho­tos of the bejew­eled denizens of a world we over­look every morning.

I’m not sure where to go with these, a mutant bio­log­i­cal dystopia. Line and sim­ple col­ors cre­ate charm­ing night­mares. (Fernando Hereñú (AKA Pulpo)

Similarly, not-quite human char­ac­ters but full of whim­sy and bright col­ors. Happy robots liv­ing in a hap­py world drawn by lit­tle kong.

keep calm and car­ry on…