Morning Linkage (Mar 10)

Transportation

Plywood pad­dler for the junior set. Funny how much the logo looks like Harley Davidson from a dis­tance. Cute though.

1923 BMW fac­to­ry floor. Lots more vin­tage in the Vintage Motorbikes Flickr pool but beware of bad cap­tions, and wild ass guess­es as to makes and models.

Scroll down once for hot girl in short skirt on a real rock­et of a bike. And I love how the cape stays ful­ly extend­ed while she’s sit­ting still on the desk. Yeah — it’s a Japanese super­hero toy. (SFW)

1937 Harley bob­ber. Another fab Danish builder, Customs from Jamesville.

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Science and Technology

A look at what’s under Niagara Falls. In 1969 the Army Corps of Engineers stopped the water flow over the falls in order to be able to inspect and but­tress up, if nec­es­sary, the rock face. In the com­ments look for Blatanville he’s got more info. Bitchin’ pics.

If you’ve got a stream with decent flow (7.5 ft/sec) you can have 500 watts of elec­tric­i­ty from a device that weights 25 pounds. Very use­ful. (7.5 ft/sec is about 8 miles/hour — which is pret­ty fast for a big riv­er but not so fast for a creek or stream.)

Testing struc­tures and new designs for resis­tance to earth­quakes at UNC’s Constructed Facilities Lab. Cruise the gallery for a look at cur­rent reasearch and projects. Lots of big (red) machines.

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Art. Images, and Design

Creepy lit­tle hand-made char­ac­ter dolls. In that quaint Dickensian night­mare vein.

I’m claim­ing this is art. Scanning micro­scope images of the grooves in an LP. Images 2 and 3 look like the geog­ra­phy of memory.

These are hys­ter­i­cal. Old pho­tos with mod­ern goofy, think Cartoon Channel kid’s show, char­ac­ters pho­to­shopped in. Rellano de Mono from Chile. (His per­son­al web­site is down. Not sur­pris­ing. I hope he is safe.)

A friend­ly reminder that it’s not about the gear or the jar­gon or even the tech­ni­cal prowess, but the see­ing. A medi­a­tion on what it means to be a pro­fes­sion­al (pho­tog­ra­ph­er) or an ama­teur. Applies to all artists.

that is all

Morning Linkage (Mar 9)

Transportation

I love the tail treat­ment on this Triumph. Such a sweet, round butt.

The post title says it all “Enjoy Some Gratuitous Classic Lotus Porn.” Pics from the Lotus archives. (SFW)

A bad jump start once cost me a ECU/BCU pair for a Mercedes. If the surge sup­pres­sor in these smart jumper cables works I’d be will­ing to pay a whole lot more than $35.

Just a note — TopSpeed has been removed from my read­er. Their refusal to include links to sources and the web­sites of orga­ni­za­tions they report on has final­ly dri­ven me over the edge. Nominations for good sources of motor indus­try news sought. I’d like some­thing that cov­ers cars and bikes, busi­ness, and cur­rent prod­ucts rather than vin­tage and custom.

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Science

Creature Cast update.  Dr. Phil Pugh talks about the first time he got to see siphonophores from a sub­ma­rine. He had stud­ied these fas­ci­nat­ing, clone-based organ­isms for years with­out hav­ing the chance to see one intact. Mesmerizing video too. (Audio Narration)

Huge data sets and mas­sive com­put­ing pow­er seem like they should allow sci­en­tists to find more and more sig­nif­i­cant cor­re­la­tions and depen­den­cies. The oppo­site may be true. More data and more ways of slic­ing it increas­es the chance that results are noth­ing more than ran­dom noise.

More data to play with, Google brings more data sets to Public Data Explorer. Let’s all try to remem­ber that the plur­al of sta­tis­tics is not information.

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Art, Images, and Design

The 50’s are often con­sid­ered the gold­en age of com­mer­cial illus­tra­tion. From the time the author first noticed a hand­ful of images with the sig­na­ture Lucia to a cor­re­spon­dence with one of her col­leagues, this look at Lucia Lerner’s career in Chicago is a won­der­ful intro­duc­tion to this world and a rather unusu­al member.
Olaf Hajek. I don’t know what these images were made to sell but this series of five “the new secret lan­guage of sym­bols” sells me.(mildly NSFW)

Another excel­lent pho­tog­ra­ph­er with a huge Flickr stream. Batintherain is Andrea de Poda of Pesaro, Italy. A gen­tle­man with a fab­u­lous eye for architecture.

I put this here most­ly so that you can share my won­der at Cory’s descrip­tion of the hulk­ing naval(?) object in the photo.

good luck with that…

Morning Linkage (Mar 8)

Transportation

Low rent trans­former of now neglect­ed, beloved city mas­cot. This robot built of sovi­et era car parts stands out­side of Odessa.

Lovely. Thruxton based.

Some back­ground on the engine design of the IoM Norton I showed you a week or so ago. The squish com­bus­tion cham­ber was the idea of a jan­i­tor? Not real­ly. Leo Kusmicki’s sto­ry reads like an adven­ture com­ic none-the-less. Read the com­ments for addi­tion­al info.

Interesting if true, BMW has a firmware rev lim­iter on the new S1000RR. It gets turned off at the 600 mile ser­vice. Is this going too far? Or is BMW jus­ti­fied in try­ing to pro­tect it’s machines from ear­ly life abuse and itself from unrea­son­able war­ran­ty claims.

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Literature and Gadgets

A book design­er talks about the move to eBooks, what the iPad brings to the par­ty, and what the future of the print­ed book looks like. His dis­tinc­tion between form­less and def­i­nite con­tent is a good way of con­sid­er­ing which books deserve to be print­ed and which don’t. Perhaps it is time to rec­og­nize that some books are not worth the paper they are print­ed on.  Excellent civ­i­lized dis­cus­sion in the com­ments as well.

Less thought­ful but more imme­di­ate­ly and com­mer­cial­ly rel­e­vant. These two videos fea­tur­ing Penguin Books’ CEO John Makinson talk­ing about the pub­lish­er’s move into the dig­i­tal book mar­ket and the upsides and down­sides that they see in the near future.

Low tech, for book lovers. Book plates can aid the return of your pre­cious vol­umes. There are three free designs, I like the one with snakes.

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Art, Images, and Design

Some of the nicest remake/reuse fur­ni­ture exam­ples I’ve seen. Not a bun­ny or flower stick­er in the bunch. Decent hard­ware upgrades too. From Purpose Restoration.

Flickr is home to the port­fo­lios of some amaz­ing pho­tog­ra­phers. The work of Nicholas Moulin includes lots of wicked cool macro images like this four-eyed spi­der.

Scott Campbell of Zombie Fair poster fame has new work hang­ing in London.  Who can resist ambigu­ous wood­land crea­tures and a race car carved out of a boul­der ? Or the Bedrock air­ships?

Cecilia Murgel’s jour­nal pages. Each fea­tures an image of two women and a com­men­tary on the activ­i­ties of a day. In Portugese but you don’t need to read the entries to know how she’s feel­ing about what’s going on in her life. I haven’t seen mark­ers used so well in ages.

ta ta for now my freaky darlings…

Morning Linkage (Mar 4)

Transportation

Purple Helmets, the Isle of Man TT half-time stunt team. Very British
— in a Benny Hill, wellies and slick­ers, kin­da way. (Sound)

Wrench Monkees begin build­ing a bit­sa. Where did that pur­ple frame
come from? Updates as they happen.

Desmo dou­ble front-wheel trike. Very bizarre and head­line writ­ers take
note, no way in hell is this an ATV. More pics.

I love the tail treat­ment on this Triumph Thunderbird. Such a sweet, round butt.

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Society

This is one of the most con­sis­tent­ly beau­ti­ful blogs that I know of.
There’s noth­ing more spe­cial about this post than any of the others,
but take a cou­ple of min­utes to enjoy the rest­ful images and ideas .
La Tartine Gourmande.

Graphic nov­els and comics are, for me, the one com­pelling application
for the iPad. Here’s an exam­ple of why.

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Images

Bryce Wymer is the Art Directory for Digital Kitchen. They did a nice
ani­mat­ed mur­al for the 2010 Census.
You can watch them put the com­mer­cial togeth­er in this video.
He puts also puts huge chunks of his sketch books on his blog.

I want to be the red haired girl in Lynne Naylor’s hap­py wilder­ness pic­tures.

Visual, typo­graph­ic pun, with a nod to Marley.

That’s all for today my friend­ly pump­kin wonders

Morning Linkage (Mar 3)

Transportation

This is so damned close to a tri­als bike, an under­pow­ered tri­als bike. The wheel size dif­fer­ence is odd. But what the heck. There are girls pic­tured. FX-Mountain Moto.

Google earth now has pic­tures of Pima and the air­plane bone­yard.

Bamboo ped­al bike frames. Wicked cool mate­r­i­al sci­ence and engi­neer­ing. (Thanks M2)

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Science

Cooking made us human? A look at the fos­sil record and what it has to say about the rise of big brains and cooked food.

A bit of back­ground on what an EVA entails and a guess at what it might cost.

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Literature

Project Gutenberg is now putting up a dai­ly RSS feed of new addi­tions. I find it help­ful to have less than the entire­ty of PG to browse when look­ing for some­thing to read. A few days ago I found : La Sorcière: The Witch of the Middle Ages by Jules Michelet. Lush bor­der­ing in hys­ter­i­cal, when you get to this sen­tence in the intro­duc­tion you just know you’re going to stick around to see the end.

“Witches they are by nature.” It is a gift pecu­liar to woman and her
tem­pera­ment. By birth a fay, by the reg­u­lar recur­rence of her ecstasy
she becomes a sibyl. By her love she grows into an enchantress. By her
sub­tle­ty, by a rogu­ish­ness often whim­si­cal and benef­i­cent, she becomes
a Witch; she works her spells; does at any rate lull our pains to rest
and beguile them.”

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Art, Design, Architecture, and Images

Hydro-floors. How to have a pool and a yoga stu­dio in one space. It’s vast­ly cool.

A bit of a snick­er here. The com­mon milk cre­ate is essen­tial to camp­ing, even if you’re trav­el­ing by space capsule.

Charles Harper was a pro­lif­ic mid-century illus­tra­tor whose style you will rec­og­nize. In a nice mix of two of my favorite things, his  illus­tra­tions for the Betty Crocker Dinner for Two Cookbook. Scans on Flickr. I agree with Matt from Drawn, this one should be rewrit­ten and reis­sued with the orig­i­nal illos.

Tilt-shift video. Yes, video. A day in the life of NYC. Sam O’Hare. (Music)

I’m run­ning late, le sigh.