Inside the Ferrari Museum

For all of us who haven't been lucky enough to have visited the museum in Maranello.

Galleria Ferrari Part 1 from Mattia Santino Merli on Vimeo.

Corbin Bridge

Corbin Covered bridge in Newport, NH. I used to take it all the time to get from my hometown to the closest movie theater in Claremont, NH. There was of course a faster route on the main road, but the bridge was worth taking the long road there. Constructed in approximately 1845, it was almost torn down in early 80's due to the cost of upkeep, but luckily it was saved by the combined forces of the Historical Preservation Society and the National Parks fund. It then unfortunately burnt down in 93', the fire was later attributed to arson. Amazingly funding was given to rebuild the bridge in 94' along with a small park nearby. Covered bridges are something to be appreciated. Most of them are one lane, and too small or rated too low for trucks to get through. Most of the reaming covered bridges are on back roads with little traffic, which is exactly the kind of place I like to be. There are a couple other bridges near by, some on roads the others on abandoned rail road tracks that are now used for hiking and snowmobiling.

Mike Amann - Turkey Days

Kentucky gallery BLDG and artist Mike Amann have teamed up to pay homage to the local flavor of Kentucky. That flavor being bourbon of course, Wild Turkey to be exact. The print they have produced uses actual Wild Turkey bourbon in all of the colors, giving the piece an authentic, boozy, scent. Its coming out in an edition of 40 pieces at the surprisingly low price of $35. Grab them tomorrow when they go on sale at 1 pm.

Here is a video about the scene chosen for the poster, where the liquor used for the print was actually purchased. Bonus props to BLDG for using Scott H. Biram as the soundtrack.

The Sword- Warp Riders

Austin metal band The Sword have their 3rd full length Warp Riders due out shortly. The whole albums is sci-fi themed which is totally fine by me because I've been on a Bladerunner/William Gibson/Neil Stevenson kick as of late. They may not be the most innovative band out there right now, but I am always up for some blatant Sabbath worship. Love the cover art for the new album by artist Dan McPharlin, who probably deserves his own post one of these days. Two part tack below.

Never Lost

The tools of Dead Reckoning. No batteries required.

Dash n' Dive

Summers almost over. Gotta get busy.

Time Ball

Growing up spending a lot of time on boats I learned to appreciate the art of navigation from a young age. Today with GPS its almost laughably easy to get an extremely accurate reading for your current position. The amount of technology that developed from the quest for accurate navigation is amazing. The development of the modern chronometer(clock) came from the quest to measure longitude. I will post more on the first chronometers later, but while reading up about them I came upon the time ball.

The time ball is a large wooden or metal ball located on the top of a building, often in a cities center. At a specified time each day the ball drops so that sailors can synchronize their marine chronometers. The first ball was built in Portsmouth 1829, its inventor was a captain in the Royal Navy by the name of Robert Wauchope. Soon time balls were constructed in all of the major UK ports and the idea eventually spread globally. As radio bases began to expand in the late 1920's the Time ball became obsolete and many have since been taken down. Today around 60 of them still stand.

Sydney Observatory

Quebec Citadel

Point Gellibrand, Victoria

Lyttelton, NZ

Greenwich UK

Deal, Kent UK

US Naval Observatory

Harlem at Night

This has been making its rounds through some of the nerdier blogs. Its a night club map of Harlem drawn by Elmer Simms Campbell, one the first African American cartoonists to be published nationally. The map was drawn in 1932 at the tail end of the Harlem Renaissance, which resulted in the first real burst of african american art and media within the U.S. The detail of the map is amazing, definitely worth a good look.

"The only omission is the location of speakeasies, but since there are about 500 you wont have much trouble."

Olly Moss for Alamo Draft House Roadshow

I feel like everything that gets created for the Alamo Draft House is almost always flawless. Artist Olly Moss has helped to add another perfect set of posters to their already amazing collection. The posters were created for the Draft House's Rolling Roadshow,which Levi's is sponsoring. The tour is pretty interesting because the movies are being shown in the towns they take place in. The movie selection is definitely spot on, although I am a little disappointed it will not be making its way up to Boston. The posters is below. Dirty Harry and Rocky are definitely my favorites, might be time to do some eBay hunting to try and pick one of them up.

Catboat

There are few sailboat styles that are more elegant than a cat-rigged vessel. They may not point worth a damn, and they may get quite fussy in heavy winds, but they certainly look good doing it. The wide hull, flat bow, and rounded sterns give one visions of the classic days of sailing. The sail almost looks to be to big for the vessel, and some days it certainly does feel like it. Historically used for fishing and transport, catboats soon gained popularity as a pleasure craft. The catboat makes perfect sense as a leisure vessel, they are simple to sail with only one sheet to take care of. They are very wide by design for transport, which when combined with the fact that all of the rigging is pushed to the bow, makes them easy to accommodate many passengers even on a shorter vessel. The boats draw very little water, allowing them to be sailed in shallow areas. One of the biggest positives to catboat designs is that even modern ones maintain the old world styling. Unlike other styles of sailboat, catboats never really modernized. This means there are very few in sharp and edgy 80's design, or in horrid 90's colors.

Pack up the Wagon

One of the types of cars I've always lusted after are high performance wagons. I cant imagine a better day then packing up an S4 Avant with snowboard gear and tearing up to the mountains. There is something I love about the idea of being able to blow past almsot any car in what most people asume is a lame family vehicle. A nice wagon would make one of the best road trip cars around, plenty of room for luggage and a place to sleep if need be. European companies may refer to them as avants, touring edition, or estate models but to me they will always be station wagons, and there is nothing wrong with a station wagon.