shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: monsters

Morning Linkage (Nov 2)

Transportation

New nom­i­nee for the ugli­est bike ever. White, chopped to bits, and oh dear god fug­ly.

I often point the moto-heads in my crowd to arti­cles at Hell for Leather. Here Bike­EXIF talks to one half of the Hell for Leather team. Wes Siler. (A lit­tle fluffy, but there you have it.)
http://www.bikeexif.com/wes-siler

I have no idea, but these are the best tin-toy bikes I’ve ever seen.

Yes? No? 1970’s Bon­neville.

Information in Words and Pictures

Visu­al­ly pre­sen­ta­tion of sim­ple facts. Africa is big­ger than the Unit­ed States, India, and Chi­na com­bined. Enough big­ger to have room for France, Spain, Italy, Ger­many, Italy, and most of east­ern Europe and still not full. I was sur­prised to find the Japan is near­ly as big as Italy. I think of Japan as being very small and crowded.

I have, over the years, bought many of the print­ed bound col­lec­tions of the Paris Review’s inter­views with authors. Now you can read all of them. (from the 1950 on) Your favorite author is like­ly to be here some­where and the chances of dis­cov­er­ing an author you’d like to read more of is pret­ty dan­ged high. (via lisa gold)

Art, Images, and Design

I love these Nordic mon­sters drawn on a sim­ple post-it. Espe­cial­ly the rein­deer peo­ple he post­ed on Sept 7th. John Kenn

Oh lordy, more Japan­ese folk­lore mon­sters. This time ghost sto­ries with a more mod­ern feel and paint­ed by Matthew Mey­er. Can’t get enough of this stuff.

Today’s visu­al inspi­ra­tion — vin­tage house­hold prod­ucts pack­ag­ing. What can you make out of teal, mus­tard, and brown? Oh, and ser­ifs. I miss serifs.

Animation

I went from this annoy­ing inter­net meme. (Bat­man and kit­tens ) to the Vimeo port­fo­lio of the cre­ator Pol­ly Guo. and found this. Maybe the guy’s ex-girlfriend had a point about  the sea mon­sters?

Morning Linkage (Aug 24)

Transportation

Save this up for the third week in Sep­tem­ber — you’re gonna need a new desktop/wallpaper and this Ural in the far north will be just the thing.

This one’s gonna be flagged on the score sheet for inap­pro­pri­ate use of Red Bull. Thought he cop­per work is first-rate on this Triumph.

Absolute­ly per­fect. 1965 CA77 Hon­da. So well done, such a charm­ing bike.

Science and Pictures

BBC pro­vides anoth­er set of nice visu­al­iza­tion tools. How big is that? Start here with an image that helps you to under­stand the size of the East­ern Pacif­ic Garbage patch. If it was cen­tered on Seat­tle, the east­ern edge would reach Far­go. Seri­ous­ly. Lots of oth­er places, times, and object to look at.

The Solar Dynam­ic Obser­va­to­ry app on my iPhone is one of my favorite 2‑minute time wasters. SDO now pro­vides this image of the erupt­ing sun with the lines of mag­net­ic force drawn in. Con­fus­ing, swirling, wow.

Sex, drugs, and motos. “The results sug­gest motor­cy­cles ful­fill an appet­i­tive need, acti­vat­ing an impor­tant node in the dopamine reward sys­tem.” Details of the MRI test­ing and words from the inves­ti­ga­tor James Loughead.

Food

It would­n’t be sum­mer with­out cock­tails on the veran­da. But should you go off to some swanky veran­da that has a bar­tender to pre­pare your cock­tails or would you be bet­ter off stay­ing home on your own com­fy lit­tle patch of open air? To hunt prey of the appro­pri­ate species/gender you’ll prob­a­bly need to go to one of those pub­lic spots but if you’ve already got a tro­phy or are sim­ply tired of hunt­ing you could do a lot worse than stay­ing in (out­side). Stay­ing home is cheap­er too. How much cheap­er? Ask the cock­tail cal­cu­la­tor.

Art, Images, and Design

Play­ing with your food. Edi­ble crayons that real­ly col­or. Lush food pho­tog­ra­phy too.

I want some Mon­ster Friends. Posters.

Morning Linkage (Jul 30)

Transportation

I believe that this is a 1960’s Velorex 350. You can get the con­fus­ing trans­lat­ed from the Hun­gar­i­an orig­i­nal here.

Very nice CB360T build out. Link to the build blog included.

Not the Cit­roen Picas­so (a bor­ing com­muter car) but UK custom-car builder Andy Sander’s Picas­so Cit­roen.

Ideas

This may make your brain warp but it’s a look at the state of the think­ing today. Attempt­ing to com­bine quan­tum physics and neu­ro­science in the quest to set­tle the argu­ment between deter­min­ism and free will.

Or if that isn’t your end­less debate of choice, how about who was right about the nature of our future dystopia? Hux­e­ly or Orwell? Recom­bi­nant Records pro­vides the key talk­ing points.

Pub­lic trans­porta­tion com­muters, bed­time read­ers, and gym-rats alike should know about longform.org. An archive of the best essay length mate­r­i­al pub­lished in the past decade. There are sev­er­al ways to access and read the mate­r­i­al. I use Instapa­per on my  iPreciouses.

Art, Images, and Design

Some real­ly love­ly posters from the Empire Mar­ket­ing Board (1936–1933) and a pon­der­ing of the trou­bling images in these efforts to mar­ket the prod­ucts of the British empire to the sub­jects of the British empire. The com­plete col­lec­tion is avail­able at Man­ches­ter Galleries.

Crow on a wall in Spain. I love the blur­ry feath­er work.

Card­board mon­ster arms.

Animation

Good illus­tra­tor, good ani­ma­tion Shaun Tan’s illus­trat­ed novel­las have made me smile. Now his The Lost Thing is being ani­mat­ed. If you have some patience left over from your week you’ll enjoy the trail­er more if you get it from the offi­cial Lost Thing but it’s a flash site and takes approx 15 sec­onds to load.

Okay, we made it to Fri­day. Now to make it through the day,

Morning Linkage (Jul 28)

Transportation

I don’t think I’d name any bike “Chick­en Sal­ad” but it’ll have to do for this nice, short xs650 custom.

A longer xs650. Not at all a salad.

Bob­bers come from all over. Hon­da Hawk. Srsly.

Even cuter. Hon­da Rebel Cus­tom.

Art, Images, and Design

So many chil­dren’s book seem best designed to give chil­dren night­mares. The whole cat in the hat thing weird­ed me out for months. But real­ly — noth­ing com­pared to these draw­ings done by Gojin Ishi­hara for Japan­ese chil­dren’s books. Japan has the best mon­sters under the bed (or com­ing out of the ceiling)

I’m not sure I’m going to buy the idea of a lux­u­ry Sharpie but this new stain­less steel mod­el *is* pret­ty fly.

The Urban Sketch­ers will be con­ven­ing in Port­land this week­end for their first inter­na­tion­al meet up. Sat­ur­day July 31st is the 28th annu­al world-wide sketch crawl. And in case you’ve for­got­ten why you should be on the look­out, here’s a quick cou­ple of water­col­ors of the CA coast line from Marc Holm.

Mar­co Zamo­ra. Pen and ink wash­es with win­dows of col­or. Urban scenes through a prism.

Dive. James Jean made the image and pres­sureprint­ing did the intaglio prints. The walk through of what it takes to make a 36 x 23 print will explain the $2000 price tag.

Animation

Boy wants to meet girl. Girl is ignor­ing boy. Boy gets a lit­tle help from the fel­low down the street. Thing is, boy is a graf­fi­ti. A lit­tle live action, a lit­tle stop motion, a whole lot of Greek charm.

Morning Linkage (Jul 7)

The Art/Science of Getting There

The quad goes ful­ly enclosed to make a high­ly mobile fire­fight­ing plat­form. The Ama­toya is con­sid­er­ably big­ger than you’re going to assume when you first look at the pic­tures. Lots of inter­est­ing tech employed, like aero­gel insu­lat­ed win­dows.  (thx toucan)
http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/11/26/the-story-of-amatoya/

Mitch Boehm holds forth on Bike­EXIF on the Yama­ha DT‑1. For many of you this is a nice reminder of the excite­ment the DT‑1 caused when it was released. For oth­ers it will be a look at might arguably be the ori­gin of the dual pur­pose bike and the sport of adven­ture touring.

The offi­cial pro­mo for 2011 Dakar.

Culture and Living

50’s Kab­ul — not what you think it will be like.

Air-delivered city in a crate, the prod­uct of the merg­er of two vast­ly dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es: expe­di­tion orga­niz­ing and con­struct. So many pos­si­bil­i­ties for com­merce and human­i­tar­i­an aid.

Technology

Archival stor­age of dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion is ham­pered by the short lifes­pan of most record­ing tech­nolo­gies. Tamper-proof col­lec­tion and stor­age of dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion is fraught with pit­falls. These WORM SD cards are a big step in solv­ing both prob­lems. Also a sim­pler answer to the Iron Butt no more Polaroid dilem­ma than the cur­rent dance of the SD cards. WORM — Write Once Read Many

Art, Images, and Design

Very ornate french chest, but yeah, I’d find a place for this in my house.

Card­board steam punk. A card­board col­lec­tion of gears and levers. It does­n’t do much but it does it nicely.

Pret­ty, creepy. Pret­ty creepy. Japan­ese sur­re­al­ist painter Tet­suya Ishi­da makes the claus­tro­pho­bic side of Japan­ese cul­ture visible.

Japan­ese mon­sters. I’ve done some­thing like this before? Worth hav­ing a look at some more then.

Animation

Ani­mat­ed paint chips. Com­mer­cials for Sher­win Williams use paint chips to make lit­tle scenes and inspire you to get out the brush­es and rollers.

keep calm and car­ry on,

-lara-


It’s always something.

Morn­ing Link­age lives at http://shinymagpie.net