Morning Linkage (Apr 5)

Transportation

Coal gas had a brief appear­ance on the stage of alter­nate fuels in the
mid ‘teens. Here’s a Campion (British) made bike with it’s gas bag held proud­ly aloft..

The Boeing 787 has flexi-wings. Just how flex­i­ble is demon­strat­ed in
this pic­ture. Take the man’s advice. Click for the full effect.

There’s a slew of news about the Magpul-Ronin in the last week. Rumors
of some sort of lim­it­ed pro­duc­tion run, or maybe a con­ver­sion kit. The
forks are mysterious/kinky and the tank is dull. A cou­ple of nice
gal­leries for your enjoyment.]

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Society, Culture, and Literature

The 2010 Hugo Nominees have been announced. Search for your favorites
or score some new mate­r­i­al for the bed­side table.

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Art, Images, and Design

The fruits of your bar­bar­ic pagan rites of spring. Cutest Easter egg art ever.

Optimus Prime — cre­at­ed from real car parts, and any­thing else they
could find out back. Awesome, ready to rule, and for sale. Fashion
Warning: Pink Leg Warmers.

More found object sculp­ture — par­ty cups and plas­tic eat­ing utensils
cre­ate … a drag­on. (Artist’s oth­er work includes nudes — cau­tion on
click through.)

Really nice work with geom­e­try. Danish jew­el­er Teodor Lulchev.

There is some­one who col­lects pic­tures of every­thing. This collection
of images of the aban­doned bicy­cles of NYC is a small treasure.
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Animation

Excellent stop-motion graf­fi­ti ani­ma­tion by Broken Fingaz. Grey scale
+ red, and mad draw­ing skil­lz.  I enjoyed the music; your cube mates
prob­a­bly won’t. (Sound)

yup, it’s that day again — now get out there and make some mayhem,

?

Morning Linkage (Apr 1)

As a trib­ute to my first read­ers and in thanks for their con­tin­u­ing sup­port for my efforts and brick­bats when I screw up…

The First Anniversary Fools Edition of Morning Linkage

From Susan Lenox’s vin­tage German illus­tra­tion stream. 1924, class act of lady and bike.

There’s some seri­ous war­bling and wob­bling going on here. Ann-Margret — Big Time. It’s a two-fer, an open air video shoot and the stage ver­sion that follows. ;-)

Especially for me! The best of every­thing: motor­bikes and Hello Kitty (Hell)

Our Lady of the Hot Pink Buick Riviera. Color pho­to with awe­some sauce.

Miles of mods. The Honda Chaly gets used, abused, and dressed up to play. Check out the “Ducati” cafe rac­er and the bob­ber with wire bas­ket fenders.

Girls, motor­cy­cles, and cat ears!

Girls, motor­cy­cles, drag­on ball.

More bike (less girl, sor­ry) But, oh my, those Italians know how to shoot a British bike in black and white… um, yeah — more scrambler.

thanks for a great year

Morning Linkage (Mar 31)

Transportation

Oh sweet baby jee­bus. A 1970 Husky 400 Cross all fet­tled up and ready to go… to the 2010 Baja 500? Mucho gory details on the build-out build-up. (The rest of the site will send cer­tain men I know into nos­tal­gia comas for a week.)

KTM’s e‑bike.

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Society and Culture

All pub­lish­ing eyes are on the iPad as the big boys of books wait to see how much fur­ther Apple can push eBook pen­e­tra­tion into the main­stream (of the tech­ni­cal elite.) Some of the self-publishing ser­vices are also prepar­ing for Apple book store publication.

Second in my heart only to car­i­ca­tures of Hello kit­ty are mash-ups of My Little Pony. I bog­gle at the idea that some­one went to  the trou­ble to find 45 of these things. If you have a favorite pop cul­ture trope it’s here.  I’m dis­mayed that the crafts­man­ship dis­played on some of these has­n’t been put to bet­ter use.

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Art, Images, and Design

The pic­ture of this spider/tractor hybrid have made the rounds and end­ed up on That Will Buff Out, but here’s what they did­n’t show you. The orig­i­nal CGI footage. Sweet.

Lobby cards adver­tise the cur­rent and up-coming fea­ture films. They’ve been around for ages. And some of them are full of awe­some. Like this col­lec­tion of Mexican film cards.

I hear you can buy your own on-line. Steve Worthington calls out three eBay sources at the bot­tom of this post. No I am not going to admit to look­ing — or buy­ing. (The video is a scream — but NSFW)

This will take you more than a few min­utes to work through but Smashing mag­a­zine’s col­lec­tion of 50 images of India will def­i­nite­ly give you some­thing to day­dream about.

Morning Linkage (Mar 29)

Transportation

Awesome. Okay, it’s Photoshop. I don’t care.

BTW the orig­i­nal bike pics are shiny too. (Ouch — need shades.)

Living here out­side of Seattle, the biggest user of mem­o­ry space in my brain is pot­hole loca­tions. I don’t real­ly dri­ve like a stoned mon­key. I just look like it as I avoid the mul­ti­tude of rim bend­ing chuck­holes.  A clever Italian solu­tion that frees up brain space and let’s strangers in on the wonky dri­ving fun.

What hap­pens when you let an air­plane mechan­ic build a Moto-Guzzi cafe rac­er? Magic.

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Science

Psychopaths are … heavy users of dopamine? Maybe it’s not the lack of inhi­bi­tions or lack of fear of the con­se­quences of buck­ing social norms that prompts their actions, but dif­fer­ences in their reward seek­ing behav­ior. Interesting set of insights.

Very pret­ty sun­set image look­ing away from the sun. The bright star is Mars.

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Society

From the web­site of the British char­i­ty Shelterbox. The con­tents of a sim­ple plas­tic tote box that can pro­vide mid-term shel­ter for up to 10 peo­ple in the after­math of a nat­ur­al or civ­il dis­as­ter. Nicely executed.

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Art, Images, and Design

A lit­tle some­thing from my pas­sion — jew­el­ry. Rings with hous­es, or maybe hous­es with rings. Some com­plete with swim­ming pools or court­yards. Phillipe Tournaire.

More hous­es, but not in pre­cious met­al. This piece is from the senior the­sis exhi­bi­tion of the Kyoto University of Art and Design.

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Animation

Another entry from the Oscar short-list for short ani­ma­tion. “Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty,” Oh my, I may nev­er sleep again. Dark, cack­ling, and well grimm. Disney will nev­er recover.

go get ’em my dears.

Morning Linkage (Mar 26)

Transportation

Eerie silent video of the valves and fir­ing spark plug of an inter­nal com­bus­tion engine. Erudite dis­cus­sion of the cap­ture tech­nol­o­gy in the comments.

Or per­haps you’re more inter­est­ed int he valve action inside the new S1000RR? More dis­cus­sion of the video cap­ture tech.

The late 60’s CB450s had become rats by the time I met my first motor­cy­clist friends in 1979. It’s nice to have a glimpse at what
Eugene’s bike looked like new.

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Science

I knew that nat­ur­al gas was stored under vast corn fields in Iowa but I had no idea that there was a heli­um bub­ble that spanned three states.

Somewhat local to Pugetopolis. Cliff Mass dis­cuss­es the diur­nal vari­a­tions. That is, the changes in tem­per­a­ture, winds, etc that occur in a 24 hour peri­od even when the weath­er is “bor­ing”

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Art, Images, and Design

Cheeky mon­key! Ben Newman’s work always has a sense of humor.

Insane mix­ing of fairy tales: Alien vs. Pooh and there’s some damned mouse in the mid­dle… NSFToddlers

Richard Kirk, spooky, del­i­cate crea­tures. Pen and pen­cil on white.

Dizzie.

And to put you in a mel­low week­end mood. The anoth­er trum­pet genius per­forms La Vie en Rose.

yaz­za.