shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: triumph (Page 2 of 4)

Morning Linkage (Nov 4)

Transportation

I am utter­ly uncon­vinced that I want to see Green Hor­net in Jan­u­ary. The trail­ers made me cringe. On the oth­er hand this video extolling the won­ders of Black Beau­ty, the Crown Vic based auto­mo­tive star of the film may change my mind. Bonus is that there’s footage of the art of film­ing chase scenes here. (video — loud music. 2:51)

Church of Chop­pers brings us pic­tures of a Sun­day of dirt/mud rac­ing spon­sored by the Black­heads MC in Fin­land. Prov­ing that bikes and mud are fun on any con­ti­nent. (anoth­er tip-off from one of the fab mag­pie spotters.)

One for the orange kool-aid crowd. Cyril Despres rides the new KTM 450 on his pri­vate test track in the Pyre­nees moun­tains. The man has his own test track in the moun­tains. Good god.

I like this BMW R60 striped back to the essentials.

Sweet lit­tle Triumph.

Technology and Science

Real time video manip­u­la­tion. It’s now pos­si­ble to make some­thing dis­ap­pear from the CCTV mon­i­tor are it’s hap­pen­ing. Cool…and a lit­tle frightening.

I apol­o­gize in advance for the num­ber of point­less Lego posts. But damn, frog dis­sec­tion.

Soooo geeky. Here’s a PDF of the “Space Shut­tle Weath­er Launch Com­mit Cri­te­ria and KSC End of Mis­sion Weath­er Land­ing Cri­te­ria” Yup, exact­ly what it sounds like. Fas­ci­nat­ing look into the minu­tia of get­ting big things off the ground and into space. (BTW NASA has sev­er­al inter­est­ing twit­ter accounts. Things like this show up.)

Art, Images, and Design

This quick pen­cil sketch that been fol­low­ing me around all day.

Arche­ol­o­gy meets street-art. Um, no that’s not quite right. The arche­o­log­i­cal inter­est is decades away. Street-art meets pop-up gallery? Nope. Pop-ups are tem­po­rary. An aban­doned sub­way project is hard­ly tem­po­rary. Well any­way, under New York there’s a big space that has been filled with the work of many of the best street artists. Under­bel­ly. It was opened to a select few recent­ly. And now has been closed up again.

I’m an ani­ma­tion fan. I spend a lot of time crawl­ing around the web look­ing for rare bits and pieces. A lot of what I like and find isn’t pro­duced in the US. I get a lot of leads to links that serve up to a notice read­ing “This video is not avail­able in your region.” How far behind the real­i­ty of glob­al cul­ture are we here? And is it only going to get worse?

Animation

A month or so ago I wrote a note to myself about a link: “Some­one has got to stop these peo­ple. Once again a fab­u­lous piece of ani­ma­tion might nev­er see the light of day because it was cre­at­ed with­out obtain­ing the rights to the music. Enjoy this trail­er for the imag­i­na­tive Hen­drix inspired The Expe­ri­ence and hope that the cre­ators can come up with the scratch to license Voodoo Child so that we can see the rest.” But today when I want­ed to post the item I rechecked the link and it seems that they did secure rights. So I’m a lit­tle slow to get this post­ed and you reap the ben­e­fit of see­ing the full video of the roller coast­er trib­ute to the man. (Video. Music. 8:06)

Go do some­thing sur­pris­ing, it will make me happy.

Morning Linkage (Sep 8)

Transportation

Stun­ning indeed. I love the red cra­dle frame and the squat mush­roomy tank. Tri­umph.

You will, no doubt, have an opin­ion. I think the mechan­i­cals are inter­est­ing and the paint abominable.

Some­times a sim­ple clean up and sort a few details job turns into a real remake/remodel. Espe­cial­ly when the “run­ning” part of the advert was, well, opti­mistic. Some­times that remake turns out to be way more spe­cial than a sim­ple spruc­ing up could ever have been. A 1957 BSA B31 becomes a Club­man Gold­star Replica.

Unset­tling views of a beam that need­ed repair on the Taco­ma Nar­rows Bridge. I hat­ed dri­ving over it before. I may nev­er cross is again. (WS-DOT con­tin­ues to pub­lish inter­est­ing stuff on its blog and on flickr .)

Science

Sunspots are the celes­tial weath­er machines that dri­ve our atmos­phere (hyper­bole alert.) The Big Bear Solar Obser­va­to­ry cap­tured the best-so-far real light image of a sunspot recent­ly. It’s like a black hole in the sun. Very cool. There’s more inter­est­ing stuff at the obser­va­to­ry’s web­site includ­ing lots of raw data. I haven’t a clue what to do with the data but I want to applaud that it’s there, freely avail­able to any­one who cares to use it.

Art, Images, and Design

Anoth­er delight­ful lit­tle build­ing. This one per­fect for a bib­lio­phile with a tiny bit of a back yard. The Read­ing Nest would have been a per­fect hide away for the 13-year-old me. The Read­ing Nest is pre­fab and you can see pho­tos of one being trucked in and placed on site on the web­site of the architects.

Good­ly Crea­ture by Leah Palmer Preiss. A vin­tage feel and form but a mod­ern imag­i­nary ani­mal. Details of the Good­ly Crea­ture’s cre­ation on her blog, Curi­ous Art Lab.

Pop-ups, fairy tales, and an ani­mat­ed trail­er for a book. What could be bet­ter? Il Etait Une Fois, to be pub­lished in Novem­ber, illus­trates a hand­ful of fairy tales with com­plex pop-ups of cru­cial scenes. I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the play­ing card army from Alice in Won­der­land. Leave the sound on while watch­ing the video if you can. (Video)

it’s mid-week dar­lings, hang in there,

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 (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 (Jun 9)

Transportation

It’s all about the life style right? Tri­umph for your body. The Spring 2010 col­lec­tion. Video. (NSFWunder­wear)

A motor­car­ri­er is one of those three wheeled things with a car­go bed held up over two wheels in the front and a sin­gle dri­ven wheel behind the ‘rid­er’ in the back. Very agri­cul­tur­al, and of course it can be raced. Hel­mets do not appear to be required.

There are sev­er­al day’s worth of motor­car­ri­er rac­ing videos on YouTube is you need more bad ideas. The Dutch are bored, real­ly bored.

Lover­ly Ariel with enclosed side­car. (Thanks EdW.)

Tech and Gadgets

Very good news for the Pacif­ic North­west weath­er geeks. We’re get­ting our radar a year early!!

Toys that teach lan­guage are a favorite gift from the aun­tie. These kan­ji char­ac­ters trans­form into the ani­mal named. Maybe the next sproglet needs to learn Japanese.

Art, Images, and Design

I work stand­ing up so I would­n’t have the prob­lem of sand inter­fer­ing with the cast­ers on my chair. Eter­nal beach.

I don’t think I can rec­om­mend this website/blog as a great exam­ple of infor­ma­tion trans­fer but I love the way it looks. The RSS feed makes it pos­si­ble to actu­al­ly read what the own­er actu­al­ly has to say.(Matt Mul­len­weg is one of the mavens of WordPress.)

Styl­ized por­traits of the roy­als and their retain­ers from the Mughal empire. How can such visu­al­ly busy pic­tures be so serene?

keep it going…

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