Morning Linkage (Feb 3)

Transportation

Every body loves a top 10. Okay, so how about a top 19? The 19 most com­plex and dan­ger­ous roads in the world. Complex ?= Dangerous.

Tamburini = Brutale ++. That said, there is absolute­ly no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for pro­vid­ing a link to this pro­duc­tiv­i­ty sap­ping pho­to gallery. None.

The best col­lec­tion of WTF moto moments.

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Technology

There is less than 100% agree­ment on what exact­ly Panotpitclick is measuring/revealing but the fal­la­cy of non-identifying infor­ma­tion is tak­ing anoth­er beat­ing. Your brows­er cus­tomiza­tions may make you track­able. My results on Jan 31, 2010. “Your brows­er fin­ger­print appears to be unique among the 443,644 test­ed so far.”

Ancient tech. The old­est known multi-tool. A Roman Army Knife, if you will.

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Art and Design

Tommy Kane (was) a big shot in adver­tis­ing. Now he wants to be an illus­tra­tor again. I’ll start you out with one of his col­ored pen­cil sketch­es. The shop Zen Needlecraft has the mis­for­tune of hav­ing the rather unhap­py look­ing fish logo from the upstairs restau­rant right over the front door.

In 3‑D. Kinekt gear dri­ven rings, for your fin­ger. Watch the video.

Bill Watterson talks about his deci­sion to stop draw­ing Calvin and Hobbes.

English Laundry and Dan and Dave. It’s a bit much trendy for me but the music is good and the card flour­ish­es are just plain cool. (Video — Sound)

Off to be a girly-girl today, expect me to be all pink hearts and flow­ers and lit­tle smi­lies to dot my I’s for a cou­ple of days…

Morning Linkage (Feb 1)

Transportation

Tamyia cat­a­logs of the 80’s and 90’s and 00’s. For the mod­el builders out there.

A hand­ful of the first “offi­cial” pic­tures of the Vyrus. Click for embiggen.

Another Triumph, this time a Rocket III built over by SE Service.
Click through for video with nar­ra­tion in German and not quite enough
actu­al bike footage to make it the fea­tured link.

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History

7 min­utes of video shot on San Fransisco’s Market Street in 1905. The
view toward the Ferry Building as it appeared before the great
earth­quake. (Sound — but nice music)

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Science

National Geographic has pub­lished an elec­tron­ic ver­sion of the
com­plete National Geographic. In addi­tion the edi­tor’s have cho­sen 50
of their favorite cov­ers to fea­ture on the website.

Everybody loves robots. How about a smart phone controllable,
skate­board­ing, danc­ing, shuf­fling robot?

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Art Image and Design

Do you know about the Flickr Commons? A place for the GLAM crowd
(gal­leries, libraries, archives, and muse­ums) to put images for the
use and reuse of the public.

Hairy Green Eyeball brings you William Steig. The quin­tes­sen­tial New
Yorker cartoonist.

These hand blown glass robots are way too friend­ly look­ing to be
threat­en­ing. They have some real­ly cool snail friends lit­tle further
down the page.

Late last year I point­ed to some stills from this wit­ty, meandering,
ani­mat­ed look at some accounts of life on oth­er plan­ets. Mars and
beyond
— Disney 1957. (sound, quick time — worth it)

Take your Monday a few min­utes at a time my dears,

Morning Linakge (Jan 29)

Transportation

A plane mys­tery solved. This (fly­ing?) derelict in Hanoi was iden­ti­fied by the fine folks at Telstar logis­tics. And we get a nice overview of the Antonov AN‑2. It’s wicked on skis.

Sweet, orange, retro, but brand new. French GIMA 125. Do Want.

The news that makes my day! SLS pro­duc­tion has start­ed. Last post until the first ones hit the US mar­ket. Promise (fingers-crossed behind my back.)

The new Icon Variant hel­met. The demo’d graph­ics are pret­ty damned teenage macho but I’m dying for the extra wide eye port and sweat wick­ing interior.

Free wall­pa­per of the vapor cone cre­at­ed at the moment of son­ic boom envelop­ing and airplane.

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Society

Never miss­ing a chance to be kawaii, these lunch box meals (ben­tos) fea­ture Wall‑E, Mario, and the Linux pen­guin. Some times the for­eign­ness of Japan makes my mind spin.

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Science

Doing sci­ence is nev­er as easy as the tidy pub­lished reports with their pret­ty graphs and charts make it look. These entries in the Round Robin (Cornell Ornithology) show just how arbi­trary the real world can be when you go look­ing for some­thing. The Godwits that Cornell Ph.D. stu­dent Nathan Senner went look­ing for on Chiloé Island, Chile failed to get his save-the-date notice and where off at some oth­er par­ty when he arrived.

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Art, Images, Design

The first of the chil­dren’s books by Jim Flora, the king of bebop illus­tra­tion, to be reprint­ed in decades. I can’t wait to get my own copy of The Day the Cow Sneezed.

New prim­i­tive in style, sly­ly mod­ern in out­look, a Kama Sutra by Barcelona born Adria Fruitos. Absolutely, utter­ly, glo­ri­ous­ly NSFW.
If you need some­thing SFW. Go to Adria’s web­site and click on most any­thing else.

Simplicissimus was a German satir­i­cal week­ly that pub­lished from 1886 through 1944. It has been dig­i­tal­ly archived by the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bilbiothek.  Cheeky, sophis­ti­cat­ed graph­ics fill each issue.For exam­ple this first issue of 1904. Or you can have any oth­er year you’d like by perus­ing the sec­ond link.

Sweet mis­cel­lany of win­ter bird images and illus­tra­tions. You’re bound to find some­thing you like. Maybe a change of desk­top wall­pa­per is in order?

It’s Friday. We need girls on bikes. (all SFW)

that’s it sin­ners just one more day and then you can go back to being saints.

Morning Linkage (Jan 27)

Transportation

There’s been no SnowPocalypse in Pugetopolis this year. But don’t get too com­fy with the idea of dry(ish) sun­ny Januaries. In fact, you might want to view this edu­ca­tion­al video from BMW — how to glide grace­ful­ly across the frozen wastes in your BMW X5M — where do I sign up?
http://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/video-bmw-x6m-and-x5m-snow-action-ar84064.html

There are few things sex­i­er than Steve McQueen… Though this recre­ation of his desert rac­er (from the Great Escape) is damned close.

Oh, and just in case you need to spend some time con­tem­plat­ing the orig­i­nal bike and the cru­cial ques­tion on of “did they real­ly make that jump?”, TimesOnline brings you the sto­ry of anoth­er recre­ation — the big jump. (Video has narration.)

A whole lot of black and white good­ness. Tons of moto and moto life pic­tures, this dude loves the Nortons. The Tokyo Rockabilly Club (third down) is mak­ing me smile. (Search for Tokyo Rockers and Tunnel of Love) NSFW — pin­ups in the mix.
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Technology

There are a num­ber of games mak­ing their way around the inter­net played by typ­ing words into the Google search bar and watch­ing the sug­ges­tions that pop up. WebSeer takes it one step fur­ther by allow­ing you to com­pare the sug­ges­tions for sim­i­lar phras­es. (I tried dogs hate and cats hate.)

There are advances in heat­ed gear tech. Carbon fiber in your socks.

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Art, Architecture and Design

Some times art is just fun. What hap­pens when Katie draws chalk foot prints on side­walk in front of her apartment?

Building a hob­bit house in Wales.  Part tim­ber frame, part straw bale, part adobe, part god only knows, but a whole lot of awesome.

Polish poster design. You’ve seen it’s influ­ence in trendy adver­tis­ing and prod­uct pack­ag­ing design.

From Kirov Russia, liv­ing in a fairy tale. Cheerful inte­ri­or design based on chil­dren’s books, by Maria Yasko.

This lit­tle gig­gle — for the job seek­ers out there. A new and very effi­cient pre-screening tech­nique for engi­neers.

keep calm and car­ry on