shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: italy

Morning Linkage (Aug 4)

Transportation

I am tak­en by the smart sim­plic­i­ty of the head­lamp brack­et and the mat­te black on the head­er pipes. Moto Guzzi.

Hell for Leather stops just short of accu­rate­ly describ­ing this lat­est pro­mo video from Tri­umph. Lis­ten to the voice over with­out watch­ing the video. He’s not talk­ing about a bike

As penance for  the pre­vi­ous content-free link, I bring you… Drags and Rac­ing’s all dark Tri­umph Bon­neville. I sat on a Bon­neville last week­end… It fits. Drags and Rac­ing web­site — in Ital­ian,. NSFW nudity.

Girls on bikes. A lit­tle sweet for some of you but I’m charmed and it is a Laverda.

Boys on bikes. Same look and feel but a boy and a Honda.

Science

If lasers cre­ate light in care­ful­ly con­trolled wave­lengths what would an anti-laser do? Absorb light in care­ful­ly con­trolled wave­lengths. Okay, I’m not smart enough to have come up with that but some­one has. And now that the idea has been described there’s a race on to build one and to fig­ure out what it’s use­ful for.

Words and Food

Work­ing Word­smith Alert. New CMoS. Sneak a peak at some of the shiny new rules and learn which of your old favorites they took out back and shot. (Chica­go Man­u­al of Style)

Nora May­nard dis­cuss­es her top picks from the field of new drink­ables offered at Tales of the Cock­tail. I’m think­ing that I’ll have to hunt down a bot­tle of the Coc­chi Amer­i­cano before sum­mer ends.

Art, Images, and Design

- the dreamy sum­mer edition

These are Jim Denevan’s tools. These are his images.

The chil­dren’s book illus­tra­tions of Igor Oleynokov. Flu­id pas­tel worlds. The seascapes are espe­cial­ly enchanting.

Have I told you about Pooh Sticks? Maybe not. But that’s for anoth­er day, when there’s a weak autumn sun and noth­ing much to regret. Mean­while here’s a sum­mer ver­sion of play­ing with bits of wood and water. Lit­tle Drifters. Lenny makes oth­er things out of flot­sam and jet­sam as well.

Beach scene, black and white per­fec­tion. (Mild­ly NSFW)

Morning Linkage (Jul 16)

Transportation

Built as a cus­tom in 1936 this Hen­der­son is Art-Deco in all it’s black, shiny, curvy, swoop­ing glo­ry. Just don’t look at the last shot of the bike being rid­den — it’s actu­al­ly an ungain­ly midget. Le sigh.

For the junior set or aspir­ing moto design­ers and col­orists. The Ducati col­or­ing book. Print and scribble.

Nice bike. Wicked graph­ics. Match­ing hel­met. Roy­al Enfield.

1938 OEC Com­man­der. Today’s looker.

Tools

These lit­tle handy things come up every Christ­mas in the Lee Val­ley tools cat­a­log. A bet­ter pock­et screw­driv­er. No more hop­ing that the dime fits in the slot or that a quar­ter will give you enough grip­ping pow­er for that stub­born bolt.

Food and Design

The idea of a gourmet scoop­ing ketchup is, well, so damned food­ie. And the pack­ag­ing plays just the right note.

It’s fresh fruit and veg­etable time. Most pro­duce now arrives at the gro­cery store in anony­mous, waxed card­board crates, but that was­n’t always so. Ani­malar­i­um gives us a help­ing of the clever­est ani­mal themed labels. Tons more.

Art, Images, and Design

More from Yuko. The illus­tra­tions from The Beau­ti­ful and the Grotesque are enough to make you buy the book. The jack­et back blurb will clinch the deal.

Not sure who or what just yet, but this is fab abstract street art from Italy.

Any­where but here (Hous­ton.)

New images for Edward Gorey’s Ghast­ly Crumb Tinies and a cou­ple of new tinies. (One of these is NSFW if you squint real hard.)

Total Weirdness (and hotness)

Some­how you all seemed to have missed the “hot viral awe­some­ness” of the Old Spice Cam­paign; maybe that’s for the best. That’s okay, I watched a bunch for you. And so did the love­ly dudes and dudettes at TwoWheels. The open­er (with the bike at the end)  and a cou­ple of the bike based call and response replies. Oh, yes I do want to be some­one’s  sen­su­al bike friend of romance.

http://www.bikeexif.com/oec-commander

Morning Linkage (May 27)

Transportation

These guys are con­fused about whether they are pro­duc­ing an elec­tric bicy­cle or a video game trail­er. The M55-EVO‑1 brings mind­less ePR to the fore.

Three nice black and white images of motos in India. Old school, good photography.

I’ve shown you more than one col­lec­tion of pic­tures of the odd things that peo­ple do with the Ruckus. How about a switch of brands for a look at what you can do with Yama­ha Fino.

Anoth­er Julian Dupont hooli­gan video. This time in Jeruse­lam and Tel Aviv. Must be nice to have Red Bull to watch your back while you stunt like a fool. (RB hires some of the best video crews in the busi­ness.) Music.

Society, Culture , and History

Aston­ish­ing things lurk in the files and archive box­es of many nations. Recent­ly a Duke grad stu­dent (USA) found the only known copy of Hait­ian Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence. Orig­i­nal­ly print­ed by the new gov­ern­ment in 1804 there are no copies from the first print­ing in Haiti. Or France, or any­where else as far as schol­ars knew. But Julia Garfield found  one in the col­lec­tion of papers of relat­ing to the colo­nial gov­er­nance of Jamaica held at the British Nation­al Archives.

Images

Yulia Brod­skaya has been fea­tured here before. This new poster for the Stern Grove music fes­ti­val is hap­py, sum­mery, and almost makes the sun come out all on it’s own. Details of the print pro­duc­tion provided.

Otto Nero runs an Ital­ian motor­cy­cle blog. In this post he pro­vides a nice col­lec­tion of street art images fea­tur­ing motos. A cou­ple of clas­sics and one or two sil­ly lit­tle things.

Nice inter­view with Tom Whalen and a selec­tion of his images. Whalen is one of the peo­ple who’s been defin­ing “new mod­ern­ernism” Though I doubt he’d use the words him­self. He thinks more in terms of the com­ic books and super heroes.

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…