shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: cafe racer

Morning Linkage (Jan 10)

Transportation

One of the things I love about the back­yard and small shop bike builders is how will­ing they are to share what they’ve done. A ran­dom pic of an orange bike post­ed on a cafe rac­er site brings the pre­vi­ous­ly anony­mous builder out of the wood­work with some CAD draw­ings and build pic­tures and hints of anoth­er bike in the works. (But damn — all that orange.)
http://www.returnofthecaferacers.com/2010/12/return-of-citrus-cafe-racer.html

A look at the work of Dean Jef­feries and his role in the Hol­ly­wood car cul­ture of the 60’s. For Mus­tang lovers, Jef­feries has a hand in the phan­tom fleet of ear­ly Shelbys.

Science

I did not know that Brazil pro­duces one-third of the cof­fee on the plan­et. Oth­er inter­est­ing cof­fee facts lurk in this graphic.

Cap­puc­ci­no Coast is the name that res­i­dents of Cape Town and envi­rons give to the rare phe­nom­e­na that turns the ocean swells into a thick brown­ish sea foam. This set of pic­tures makes the descrip­tion seem entire­ly right.

Art, Images, and Design

Take the dumpy kid and one of the weird birds from UP add a lit­tle St. George, shake well. Chad King gets the mix right in this quick one-off. Quick? That’s a speed paint­ing? Okay so the rest of us suck just a lit­tle more this morning.

His “real” work is smoother and tighter, and pleas­ing­ly puz­zling.

Imaginary Transportation

Fairy tale trans­porta­tion for girls. Inspi­ra­tion.

Fur­ther inspi­ra­tion for fly­ing girls.

Animation

Lego live action/stop motion short. The cheesi­est mus­tache ever and a won­der­ful wall of lit­tle doors into oth­er peo­ple’s lives. Gig­gly fun.

out the door and knock ’em dead

Morning Linakge (Oct 4)

Transportation

Over at WebUr­ban­ist, Steve Lev­en­stein gives us a heav­i­ly illus­trat­ed overview of the con­stant­ly chang­ing art on the cars at the Cadil­lac Ranch. I did­n’t know just how inten­tion­al the invi­ta­tion to pass­ing graf­fi­ti artists was.

Dis­cov­ery­HD brings us a 2 part doc­u­men­tary on the Cafe Rac­er sub-culture. Air­ing Oct 13 and 14. Fire up the Beta­max Ethel.

For all I know this web page is adver­tis­ing bogus “like a tiger” nos­trums. It’s in Japan­ese, I don’t feel like deal­ing with the trans­la­tor. I just want you to see the pic­ture of the 70’s era wall of death rid­ers.

Okay I lied, I did trans­late it and it’s the web page for Din Tai Fung Speed Stunt Troupe. There’s a few more pic­tures here.

Science

The total­ly awe­some adven­ture of two guys, a lit­tle video cam­era, and a heli­um filled weath­er bal­loon. Not quite to infin­i­ty and beyond, but to the edge of space and back.  The footage from the flight will make you feel both small com­pared to the vast­ness just out of our reach and proud to be a mem­ber of such a curi­ous species.

Some­what spe­cial­ized and tech­ni­cal, but of inter­est to the pho­tog­ra­phers and web geeks in the group. Google has pro­posed, demo’d, and open sourced for pub­lic use, the exper­i­men­tal new image com­pres­sion tech­nique WebP as an alter­na­tive to the com­mon­ly used jpeg com­pres­sion tech­niques. Your opin­ion on the qual­i­ty of the com­pressed images?

Art, Images, and Design

A new wall por­trait by Vhils for the Nuart show in Nor­way. Cre­at­ed by cut­ting, (drilling, punch­ing, and pound­ing) into the lay­ers of fin­ish on a wall. More infor­ma­tion on Alexan­dre Far­to (aka Vhils) and more walls.

Object of desire — but unavail­able at this moment. Pint Size has a water bot­tle. Pint size appears — inex­plic­a­bly — in the com­ic Ques­tion­able Content.

Practicality-stretching design exer­cis­es are all over the inter­net. Beds that do origa­mi to hide away dur­ing the day, cof­fee tables with inter­est­ing shapes but no place to put a cup or a mag­a­zine, it’s goes on and on. Most of these exist only in ren­der­ing files but once in a while… A swing set like din­ing table and chairs. Um, no drink­ing at this din­ner par­ty, okay?

Two min­utes of Mon­day humor. If it’s rain­ing on you too this morn­ing I hope you find a big guy with an umbrel­la.  Man­fred. (Ani­ma­tion — 2:00)

keep calm and car­ry on,

Morning Linkage (Jun 15)

(Confused) Transportation Options

A Smart Car mon­ster truck. If any­one ever asks you to define the term twee oxy­moron — show them this pic­ture. Srl­sy. And there’s video. More hap­pi­ly there’s a post over at Men’s Men­tore about race car trans­porters from the 50’s. Lord, are these fab­u­lous look­ing. An El Camino car­ry­ing an open wheel rac­er and a swoopy round haunched Mer­cedes with a fro­mu­la car on the back. Swoon. I need­ed a moto pic­ture for this morn­ing’s links so I went to the big buck­et of trans­porta­tion RSS feeds and there this was — right on the top

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Literature and Culture.

It’s sum­mer — we all need some­thing to read at the beach. But how to choose a sum­mer win­ner? Um, maybe ask the writer who penned your favorite book? William Gib­son weighs in on sci-fi and Peter Cary gives you his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, along with 4 oth­ers. Pro­pa­gan­da mate­r­i­al of the ages is a rich source of visu­al inspi­ra­tion. Meant to grab and jerk the view­er from a dis­tance with­out much con­sid­er­a­tion for sub­tle­ty. Smash­ing gives us a look at 100 years of his­to­ry and some of the best and worst exam­ples. Judg­ing the images and their effec­tive­ness with­out con­sid­er­ing the mes­sages is an try­ing exer­cise in design mind.

Art, Images, and Design

Sci­ence Tele­vi­sion is Gian­mar­co Mag­nani. A design­er and print mak­er. His two cur­rent series of prints, Vil­lains and Rid­ers, and  For­got­ten Monar­chy bring spot col­or and line work to the fore. Vague­ly ani­me inspired, girls and motos. Can’t miss. Paper and paint mixed with bits of toy-train set world-building goods. Land­scape through the eyes of Gre­go­ry Euclide. Dan­ny St. (saint) takes pic­tures in Sin­ga­pore. Street pic­tures that pro­vide por­traits of the peo­ple and place. This gallery gives some of the hun­dreds of won­der­ful images.

Animation

Group ther­a­py for naughty lit­tle un-deads. Okay, it’s called Nos­fer­atu Over The Cuck­oo’s Nest. You fig­ure it out.

Noisy, Smoky, Generally Bad

Bejamin Gudel (from a cou­ple of days ago) has a nice new web­site.  But you have got to seri­ous­ly admire a guy who includes a link to this animated/audio-ated mess of a 2007 web­site. Healthy sense of humor, or mor­bid self fla­gel­la­tion. You make the call. (Mov­ing parts, noise, and an obscene tat­too) NSFW

Tea drunk, links up, next … plumb­ing — urk.

Morning Linkage (May 12)

Transportation

A new direc­tion in elec­tric motor­cy­cles, look­ing back to the 50’s. Ham­mar­head builds the Vol­ta, a retro look­ing bat­tery pow­ered machines on a mod­ern frame. If you can call the Enfield Bul­let modern…

In case you saw today’s Bike­EXIF, the Fal­con Kestral, and want­ed the back ground. Here’s the press release and bunch of links, as well as the pics. I am unmoved but I know some of you all will love it.

Paul Van Den­ton is a recent grad of the Roy­al Col­lege of Art. He does some pret­ty out­landish cafe racer/futuro con­cept bikes. Pipeburn col­lect­ed some of his best images. PVD also has a love of rods and drag rac­ers so some of the pho­tos on his blog are worth a look. The link is in the story.

Science, Tech, Gadgets

You sim­ply can­not fail to appre­ci­ate that we live on a plan­et that has a mas­sive crys­tal struc­ture at its core. Real­ly — it’s like some­thing out of a movie. It’s also why seis­mic waves move faster when going along the merid­i­ans than the latitudes.

Society and Culture

David Wein­berg­er is a info geek. He reads wide­ly and recent­ly he read through a cou­ple of issues of Game Devel­op­er mag­a­zine. His reflec­tions on the roles of moral­i­ty in gam­ing and games reminds us that the real world is rarely sim­ple enough for good/bad choic­es. And that moral choic­es some­times have fuzzy con­se­quences. Per­haps this is a good thing. Bina­ry nar­ra­tives are boring.

Art, Images, Design

I have no clue why the first image is upside down. Not that it makes the pic­ture any stranger. Char­ac­ters who just won’t stay in their books.

OMG-level awe­some: Jud Turn­er’s GreedEater. An assem­blage of parts.  Fol­low it up with Inter­nal Com­bus­tion #2 — Bone Machine.

and that’s the mid-week review…

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…