It's couture time. I like them all except for the Givenchy, and some of the Gaultier.

See them all at: http://www.style.com/

http://treadly.net/2008/07/07/random-observation-on-bike-design/

Bikes are wonderful machines—simple enough for anyone to understand, complex enough that everyone has an idea on how to design a better one.

Take this video for example. 17bicycle has designed their S17 semi-recumbent to eliminate the need to hold an umbrella while riding—so they design a bike they can put a roof on. Brilliant!

And then there’s this thing, which tom reckons is a pretty cool design. (Not so sure myself—it’s not immediately clear to me what design problem it solves.) But then, why stop at one? Here are 33 excellent bicycle designs.

And that’s a terrific thing about bikes, isn’t it? No one owns the design. It’s not “finished”. And the door is wide open to every designer, inventor and tinkerer to walk through with their bold new idea or incremental innovation.

And I, for one, reckon that’s pretty cool.

Tags: bicycle, design, innovation, invention

Share This

Yesterday: 12663
Today: 14549
WordCount: 1886
correct subscription sent

Rise: There's finally a sign at the Esplanade bus station pointing towards the train station. This makes me happy out of all proportion to anything vaguely relevant. Must now resist the temptation to ask to see Information Desk stats before and after the installation of the sign.

Fall: Lights, lifts and escalators switched off across the city and shopping centres to save power. Actually you could just as easily argue that saving power is a sign of the rise of civilisation rather than its decline, but it feels a bit soviet bleak in some parts of town, particularly in the cold.

I figured since no one has posted anything about a few recent events, I would.

As of Anime Expo (July 4th weekend) quite a few things have been cleared up. Try and stay with me on this, as it's going to get confusing.

Funimation has taken on quite a load for itself. It has taken over the distribution of Geneon products. Almost all of the ones that were up in the air after Geneon shut down. Funimation has stated that they will be releasing almost all of the series as singles, and then as cheaper boxsets in the future

. Mind, Geneon still owns these, Funimation is just taking over distribution and etc. Also, CCS, Trigun, and Sailor Moon are all series's that expired before this all took place, though Funimation has mentioned looking into Trigun and a few other titles not mentioned in the list. Especially since there is a new Trigun movie in the works.
-They said they would be releasing Ouran Host Club as two Boxset collections.

( Geneon List )

As there has been recent ADV trouble, which sped up as Anime Expo drew closer, with "Welcome to the NHK Vol 5" being hard to find on shelves, and "Kanon Vol 6" Never making it's release date, this was a major concern for anime fans. This was cleared up at Expo, by Funimation. Turns out Sojitz stopped their business with ADV, and ADV lost almost all of their licenses from the past 2 years. Sojitz struck a deal with Funimation, and now Funimation is taking over licensing and distribution.

( ADV-Funi )

Funimation has also announced that they are looking into releasing Kodocha Season 2, which was a concern as well, as everyone figured they had dropped the rest of the series. Season 1 part 2 will be available as a boxset (thinpack) in August, and they are thinking of rereleasing the First part as a thinpack as well.

Nozomi/TRSI has continued their licensing streak. Recently, they had accquired
-Maria Watches Over Us (3 boxsets, Subbed)
-Emma: A Victorian Romance (2 Boxsets, Subbed)
-Aria the Animation (1 boxset so far, future seasons?, Subbed)
-Gakuen Alice (1 Boxset, Subbed) Announced at Expo
-Toward the Terra: Movie (Released on DVD)
-They will also be remastering "Irresponsible Captain Tylor" and releasing it as a Thinpack.

Viz announced that they will be releasing
Hunter X Hunter as 4 Boxsets, and Darker than Black as singles. They also announced that they had accquired the rights to Monster. They gave no real word on any future releases of Nana or Honey & Clover except that H&C is being planned for 2009.
12-2-08: Inuyasha Season 6 Box Set (episodes 127-146)
12-9-08: Hunter x Hunter (3-discs, 15 episodes)
11-18-08: Death Note Box Set 1 (episodes 1-20)

Bandai Ent. announced that they had licensed Hayate the Combat Butler and that there would be a Blu-Ray release of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Kadokawa licensed
-Spice and Wolf
-Rental Magica
-H20~Footprints in the Sand

There were others, and if I find any mistakes, or find any more information, I will edit as needed.
All of this information can be found via Wikipedia.org, ANN, AOD, and AN.
Also, does anyone mind if I sometimes do a "weekly anime release" post of anime released each week, just to keep us informed of anime coming out? Or other posts like this? (I'd be taking my release information from a variety of anime sites)

http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=977

And it is:

“Hello! John Scalzi has several very important things he needs to do today before he can come and play with you all, so he told me to tell you that he’ll probably be out for most of the day. He sent me because I’m so adorable that you can’t help but be winsomely amused by whatever I do or say. See how I’m cocking my head? Adorable!

“Anyway, Scalzi says to feel free to talk amongst yourselves and he’ll see you probably later this afternoon. Okay, bye now!

“Oh! And I almost forgot: The reason my head is adorably cocked? I’m looking at that thing you got stuck between your teeth. Really, man. You need to, like, brush or something. Just saying.”

******************************************************
The Chocolate Ride
******************************************************
Saturday 9th August 11am (for 11.15am Start)
Starting at: All Nations Park, Dennis Street Northcote (Mel 30 G7)

Indulge your love of cycling and your love of Chocolate with a ride that
takes all the Chocolate Cafés between Northcote and the City.
This will be a ride at social pace via quiet back streets and off road
paths that takes in Coco Loco (High St Northcote), San Churro (Brunswick
St Fitzroy), Coco Black (Lygon St Carlton), Frau´s (Victoria St North
Melbourne) and Max Brenner (Melbourne Central CBD).

It will be a decadent day that would make Augustus Gloop proud.
And for the truly gluttonous there´s always the option finish up at the
Chocolate Rush Festival at Abbotsford Convent
http://www.chocolaterush.com.au/ (but that costs money to get in.)

http://www.talkingsquid.net/archives/342

http://www.talkingsquid.net/?p=342

Thomas Disch died by his own hand on July 4. He will probably be remembered for Camp Concentration, a complex and disturbing novel about enhancing human intelligence, the short-story “The Brave Little Toaster”, and his critical review The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of. This is not the sum of the man; he won awards and nominations and high praise for many other works besides these.

Via LOCUS Online, Ellen Datlow had this to say:

I’m shocked, saddened, but not very surprised. Tom had been depressed for several years and was especially hit by the death of his longtime partner Charles Naylor. He also was very worried about being evicted from the rent controlled apartment he lived in for decades…

Tom wrote wonderful stories (I only read one or two of his novels but kept meaning to read more) and if you haven’t ever read the collections Getting into Death or Fundamental Disch you need to find and read them.

Such a damned waste.

Hah! No matter what channel nine replace it with Antiques Roadshow still gets higher ratings. I see they've completely given up this week and are now scheduling Roadshow for a whole hour between 5 and 6.

Turning Left Again My new personal canon for the end of Season 4 Dr Who. Spoilers, obviously.

The 3

Thre3e

Hey all. Yes it's last minute but I'm heading to Utopia tonight for dinner at 7pm. Anyone who wishes to join me, it would be great to see you.

:)

I got shortlisted, but I didn't win the award. Just keeping everybody up to date.

http://www.ecovelo.info/2008/07/06/night-moves/

http://www.ecovelo.info/?p=899

Zipping around the neighborhood at dusk… just for fun.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/clear.asp

Warning says that gasoline purchasers who fail to press "Clear" after refueling risk additional charges subsequently appearing on their credit/debit cards.

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/archives.html?m=July&y=2008&d=7

If you missed last Thursday's Daily Illuminator, you missed the upload of GURPS Thaumatology We're putting it up as a PDF, with the intention of correcting all the errata found by the GURPS-heads before we send the book to print.</p>

Yes, this is new for us. No, we aren't making this our standard operating procedure -- we're always looking for new ways to improve quality, and the timing seemed right to try this one.
-- Paul Chapman

Entry 666.6 in the Macquarie Thesaurus is "lust".

The schoolboy in me is easily amused.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20080707

The Girl Genius comic for Monday, July 07, 2008 has been posted.

SF author and critic Tom Disch killed himself. He was a great author, and one of the smartest people in science fiction. But he was not someone who made himself easy to like, either as an author, or, I gather, as a person. Prickly, and too interested in highlighting harsh realities and weaknesses of human nature, pitilessly and without glamour. Witty, sardonic, and merciless. SF has far fewer people that are ferociously smart than it thinks it does, but Disch was one of them, and we are weaker without him.
His book about the influence science fiction has had on the world in general, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, is terrific, interesting and insightful, making arguments and connections that are original, audacious, and convincing (and its very readable, while still being academically rigorous, a hard trick to pull off). If you think you might ever read a non-fiction book about SF, read that one. And his fiction is fine too. I'd never really followed his career as a poet, but reading a few of the poems he posted on his livejournal (tomsdisch) I am convinced that is my loss, and I am touched by the ones in which the sadness that claimed his life shows through, like this one. This one about Steve Irwin shows the more playful side to him.

Thomas M. Disch took his own life on July 4th. He will be remembered as one of the greatest SF writers of the 20th century.

http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=976

As noted, a longer write-up on InConJunction is coming up later, but for now, dig on this:

A sketch of yours truly from Howard Tayler, of Schlock Mercenary fame, who was also a Guest of Honor at the convention this weekend. I especially love that he drew me with hair.

Everyone who looked upon it said “dude, that would make an excellent LiveJournal icon.” I agree, although for clarity, one needs to fiddle with the word bubble:

Expect this to start showing up on my LiveJournal comments soon.

In any event, very cool of Howard to do the sketch. Give him link love and go visit his site, please, if in fact you do not visit it already.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-07-06/bones-studio-addresses-allegedly-leaked-document

President Minami tells ANN: Fullmetal Alchemist 2, Darker than Black 2 are "not decided yet"

http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=975

InConJunction has been lovely, but at some point in the reasonably near future we will depart from Indianapolis and wind our way back toward Ohio and home. I’ll give a full report on the convention later, but for now just know that if you weren’t here, you totally missed out. I hope you had a good weekend anyway.

So this afternoon my girlfriend and I were wandering central Leiden (a lovely little university town between Amsterdam and The Hague) and came across several musical acts doing their (mostly) acoustic things. We stopped upon a 7-person crew who were performing a pseudo-hawaiian melody a cappella and in English. When done, one of the members stepped and said that their next number would be "Tango Masochisme" which they proceeded to perform in Dutch.

Much to my amusement.

I don't recall the name of the group which is a bit sad as they then did a lovely piece in French and given their talent have certainly made a CD.