Morning Linage (Apr 28)

Transportation

Simple and sweet. The RD350 as cafe racer.

Rat scoot­ers. There are a cou­ple of home­ly lit­tle items in this col­lec­tion that I would hap­pi­ly take home and shine up. And a WTF or two.

I remain uncon­vinced, but there are folks who think this clip from a dyno test of the MotoCzysz D1-10 proves that elec­tric bikes will make cool nois­es. I think it sounds like cat­a­stroph­ic bear­ing  fail­ure in the main gen­er­a­tor house at Hoover Dam.

Society and Culture

Fabulously obscene blues song by Lucille Bogan from 1935 proves that mod­ern music has always been degen­er­ate. Shave Em Dry. NSFW

I care very much about the future of comics, car­toons, and ani­ma­tion. The old mod­el of polar oppo­sites (Marvel comics vs xerox­ed ‘zines) is giv­ing way to new­er pos­si­bil­i­ties at points in between. Options that allow cre­ators to earn a liv­ing at a small­er scale than was pos­si­ble before. From wikipedia a list of “self-supporting’ web comics. Brave folks tak­ing big risks. And some of them are damned fun­ny too

Art, Images, and Design

I’m not sure what it means when a woman begins to paint her­self as a young boy. The results of Julie Heffernan’s exper­i­ments are deep, com­plex, and hyp­not­ic. Romanticism gone wrong. It’s worth spend­ing time with her oth­er paint­ings as well. (NSFW artis­tic nudes)

Modern hero. 38 of your favorite super heroes depict­ed in mod­ern angu­lar glo­ry. Unfortunately they are no longer avail­able as prints. le freakin’ sigh.

Black and White image of the day. Lyn Fontane and Alfred Lunt — laid back and louche — with a side of wiener dog.

so it goes…

Morning Linkage (Apr 27)

Transportation

Is this real­ly what it says it is? A Vincent drag rac­er? New or old? Dang I love this site for the pics but they have less info than BikeEXIF. Though the loca­tion is ID’d in the comments.

We’ve all seen the city bus­es and the occa­sion­al hum­mer cov­ered in vinyl graph­ics adver­tis­ing some­thing — usu­al­ly an ener­gy drink. But those cus­tom wrap­pers are com­ing to a car near you. Going to be pop­u­lar with the smug-mobile crowd… and the lit­tle urban deliv­ery van folks.

5 great shots of the best play­ing around at desert rac­ing at  Ocotilla Wells, CA. Click to en-biggen.

Science

Wild-life pho­tog­ra­phy gets a new gad­get. Beetlecam - a low to the ground view from Africa. Camera, track dri­ven plat­form (the size of a rab­bit), and a warn­ing about things that might be mis­tak­en for a cat toy.

Money

Using flash on your web­site is often scorned as being inac­ces­si­ble and point­less­ly com­plex for no val­ue, but it can be well done. For exam­ple: The $100 bill is has been redesigned and new ver­sions will begin to cir­cu­late in Feb of 2011. You can check out all of the new fea­tures of the $100 bill in this inter­ac­tive app. (Note the easy to link to URL.)

Art, Images, and Design

Richard Kirk’s work is best summed up by the quote that he uses on his front page. “there is no beau­ty that hath not some strange­ness in the pro­por­tion” Sir Frances Bacon (1625) Thin, ethe­re­al, twig­gy human ‑botan­i­cal cross breeds.

Super sat­u­rat­ed pho­tographs. Vivid col­or­ing that push­es the fall into the dere­lic­tion to the foreground.

Micheal Quigg has a good eye for less beat­en down images as well.  This pho­to of anoth­er pho­tog­ra­ph­er and her grand­child in his cher­ry blos­soms Flicker set warms the heart.

now get moving…

Morning Linkage (Apr 26)

Transportation

There is very lit­tle infor­ma­tion on the bike in this pic­ture but the set­ting — BBQ and the pho­tos are nice. A Ducati cafe rac­er. But which one?  The paint looks real­is­ti­cal­ly, well, rough. But would some­one please aim the headlight?

I’ll make it 2‑fer Guzzi Monday

Moto Guzzi Le Mans — sub­tle silver.

Moto Guzzi Condor — arrest me red.  Mind bog­gling mechanicals.

Science and Pretty Girls

What are we cut­tle­fish? Isabella Rossellini is back with more paper cre­ations and crea­tures to explain the world of sex­u­al repro­duc­tion. Seduce Me sea­son 1 begins with — Cuttlefish.

Food

How to eat a cup­cake. I know you think you don’t need instruc­tions. You need these instructions.

More cup­cakes. Cupcakes, cup­cakes, cup­cakes. Been done to death so what can I pos­si­bly have come up with that would jus­ti­fy anoth­er post on cup­cakes? Muppet wed­ding cake — that’s what.

Art, Images, and Design

Any of you that have been involved in the com­mer­cial design world will remem­ber, fond­ly or not, crits. Well, here’s one you might have enjoyed par­tic­i­pat­ing in. The sum­ma­ry of couch forts as archi­tec­ture.

John Burge makes inti­mate por­traits in either water­col­or or oil. Old school paint­ing. Just like life, some images are NSFW.

Yuko Shimizu is draw­ing for Vertigo (DC Comics) again, anoth­er cov­er for Unwritten. This stand­alone edi­tion deliv­ers a fairy-tale world with a dark preda­tor. As usu­al her post has lots of in process scans of the work, some edi­to­r­i­al changes, and snaps of her visu­al ref­er­ence material.

march­ing on…

Morning Linkage (Apr 23)

Transportation

Don’t let the URL fool you. It’s a groovy Norton. For real? Dear lord, that’s way too much flower for me.

Have $10K lying around? You might want to head over to the Duc deal­er and get one of these, and a mocha. 2011 Duc Monster 796. Yum.

Honda goes two-wheel elec­tric. Japan only mod­el the EV-neo. Available for lease at the end of the year. A new busi­ness mod­el for the prob­lem of rapid­ly devel­op­ing elec­tric vehi­cle tech mak­ing this year’s mod­el obso­lete before you’ve fin­ished mak­ing the payments.

Science

The role of Asia’s some­times mas­sive spring dust storms in the weath­er of the Pacific Northwest.

Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher taught at Stanford University at the turn of the last cen­tu­ry. Her work includ­ed in depth stud­ies of wom­en’s sex­u­al atti­tudes in the late 19th cen­tu­ry. Work that remained buried in the Stanford archives until 1973.

Art, Images, and Design

21 con­dom ads you won’t see here in the United States of Puritan. Some of these are damned fun­ny. (Love the water bot­tles — sub­tle and would fit right into a Seattle mag­a­zine, what with our ded­i­ca­tion to the sport­ing life.)

Dumfries Scotland. A land­scape whose plants are irrel­e­vant. Stone and met­al objects that visu­al­ize the basic tenets of math and physics. Utterly nerd cool.

Strong lines and vibrant col­ors makes Julie Oakley one of my favorite urban sketchers.

and that’s that…
see you next week.

Morning Linkage (Apr 22)

Transportation

Hello Kitty tank — is there noth­ing that can not be made more
ridicu­lous with the addi­tion of pink paint and that evil feline?

I have a soft spot for Scramblers. Maybe I’m just old school that way.
This one belongs to some guy named Mike — he’s work­ing his way through
his ’06 doing the lit­tle mods that make a good bike great.

BikeEXIF gets it wrong again. And BikeEXIF’s read­ers do the spade work to iden­ti­fy the “Triumph” as most like­ly a BSA and the name of the cus­tom shop that built this chal­leng­ing­ly shiny bobber.

For those of you in the mar­ket for a new desk­top wall paper, there’s a Turkish KTM ad here might do. Depending on your office culture ;-)

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Literature

Japan is awash in the pulp paper ver­sions of man­ga. Here’s a wry use of the result­ing waste stream. I don’t think this farm­ing tech­nique will scale but the idea of putting seeds into the detri­tus of imag­i­na­tion pleas­es me.

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Science

We’ve all been oohing and aahing over the pho­tos of the erup­tion of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland. But there are storms right here at home (well Kansas and Nebraska) that offer equal­ly stun­ning photo-ops. This gallery from 2004 is par­tic­u­lar­ly choice.

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Art, Images, and Design

Bansksy’s movie “Exit Through the Gift Shop” gets a big­ger open­ing soon. Pieces of his art are show­ing up in LA.
This park­ing sign and this cop with a use­less K‑9 unit in an aban­doned park­ing garage. (video has music but not awful music) but then this hap­pened:

Exit Through the Gift Shop trail­er here.  Opens April 23 in Seattle.

and that my dears is anoth­er day…