magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Month: March 2010 (Page 2 of 3)

Morning Linkage (Mar 23)

March 23, 2010 /

Transportation

Re the TTXGP shift to trust/co-op struc­ture for the sanc­tion­ing body.
Giv­ing the teams own­er­ship of the series. Bril­liant or bound to fail?

HD to return to pri­vate own­er­ship with the help of pri­vate equi­ty firm
KKR? More than a week lat­er HOG stock prices are still enjoy­ing the
rumor based bounce.

Mean­while, in Italy Ducati and Piag­gio are rumored to be think­ing about
join­ing forces.

Doing up an old bike, Montes­sa Scor­pi­on. Late 60s.

The newest Ford Police Inter­cep­tor comes at you in 2011/2012. Nice illo of
the front light pat­tern. Com­mit this to mem­o­ry. There will be a quiz.

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Science and Tech

New col­or cod­ed image shows where all the space dust lives. The
resem­blance to cir­rus clouds is amaz­ing.  Pure space pr0n.

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Tools and Gadgets

Most of the met­al I work with is non-ferrous. But if you spend a lot
of time fish­ing for small bits and parts while wrench­ing, you might
want one of  these handy mag­net­ic wrist bands.

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Art, Images, and Design

Seri­ous­ly, which movie/TV ver­sions of com­ic book char­ac­ters have had
the best inter­pre­ta­tions of the heroes cos­tumes? Do *not* skip the
comments.

A nice bio/obit of the illus­tra­tor Robert McCall whose images of space
and the future you’ve all seen. He cre­at­ed posters for 2001: A Space
Odyssey.

Yuko Shimizu drew a cov­er for the ‘Now Hear This’ free­bie CD each month
for The Word mag­a­zine. the assign­ment recent­ly end­ed and she’s posted
a good hand­ful of her favorites. Girls with musi­cal imple­ments. I love
the play lists.

Thanks for wait­ing so patient­ly for Morn­ing Link­age to resume.

Morning Linakge (Mar 12)

March 12, 2010 /

Transportation

A par­tic­u­lar­ly nice ver­sion of the battery/electric ped­al bike. Charges on the flat as well as down hill. Also nice look­ing, I would­n’t be embar­rassed to ride this to town.

I had the Inter­na­tion­al Scout II for a while. I’d pay (some­thing) to have one of these now. The Inter­na­tion­al Wag­on­mas­ter. Alas I was too late.

Ren­der­ing from Luca Bar. One of the guys who does those neat‑o con­cept pic­tures that the bike mags use to illus­trate their rumor filled, we have noth­ing sub­stan­tial to report, pre­views of the next year’s bikes. This Moto Mori­ni Cor­saro Veloce is a fine exam­ple. Spend time look­ing under the projects tab.

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Science and Technology

Plant galls. Um, er, not real­ly vil­lain­ous but then again, at the very least alien. Many excel­lent images to give night­mares to the gar­den­ers in the audience.

Organ­ism pro­duced bio­fu­el. A real step for­ward by Nip­pon and Hitachi using a sin­gle celled organ­ism that lives in ponds. Uh huh, Jet A fuel from pond scum.

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Food

What the world eats in a week. This is what glut­tony and par­si­mo­ny look like. In a cou­ple of cas­es the ratio of pack­aged vs. fresh food will sur­prise you. Also the vari­abil­i­ty in the costs. From the book “Hun­gry Plan­et” As much as I find the food inter­est­ing, the fam­i­lies are com­pelling ele­ment that keeps you looking.

Fuller ver­sions from Time. Part I and Part II fam­i­lies and their gro­ceries. Part III: mar­kets and cooking.

What did you have for break­fast? The first meal of the day, with­out tableware.

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Art, Images, and Design

Ball­point pen, pen­cil, water­col­or. Huge, grue­some, Grimm fairy­tale, del­i­cate, and detailed all at once. Your myths and night­mares are served up by Caitlin Hack­ett.

Sick. Got­ta love the gen­tle wood­land crea­tures. Grick­le. (Music — but that’s the point.)

Paper­war, Papierkrieg. Start­ing with a cou­ple of paper air­planes and end­ing with, well, I won’t spoil the sur­prise. A broth­er and sis­ter engage in an arms race in fold­ed paper. I know almost noth­ing about the cre­ators except that one of them is named Mat­tias and he wants to go to film school. (Yelling)

Won­der­ing what is going to hap­pen next. (SFW)

and that ends this week’s thrill ride

Morning Linkage (Mar 11)

March 11, 2010 /

Transportation

You’ve seen the pic­tures of the hacked togeth­er ones but here’s the real deal. Motor­cy­cle side-car based cam­era mount. The fab­ri­ca­tion qual­i­ty blows me away. Based on a 6 cylin­der 1500cc what? Seats 4.

Sexy enough to make me con­sid­er a elec­tric car. Almost. Or I could buy one and put a real engine in it. Porsche 918 Spy­der.

A lyric piece of descrip­tion. The destruc­tion of a medi­an strip is care­ful­ly watched from it’s seem­ing­ly innocu­ous begin­nings with a few dusty foot prints to it’s take over a a cross­ing point for auto-rickshaws. (New Del­hi, but it would be under the Viaduct here in Seattle.)

A few pages from the cat­a­log of the 1930 Ear­l’s Court Bicy­cle and Motor­cy­cle Show. Love Smith’s gauges.

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Technology

In Afghanistan there are peo­ple work­ing hard with lit­tle more than trash to bring some con­nec­tion to the mod­ern world. Wi-fi points and repeaters made from stuff scrounged out of the garbage — lit­er­al­ly. Great inge­nu­ity and dri­ve. And so much of the same-same has­sles, pet­ty pol­i­tics, and inter­per­son­al fail­ures of rela­tion­ships that affect any tech project. As Amy says, it’s fun­ny but it’s not.

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Literature

Good Night Moon has dri­ven par­ents bonkers since 1947. Now there’s a Star Wars based update called Good Night For­est Moon. Bet­ter yet it’s a down­load and bind your­self project with excel­lent instruc­tions. Craft time to bed time.

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Art, Images, and Design

Best iPhone stand ever. What is this gad­get hold­er doing in Art, Image and Design? — It’s great found object sculp­ture. Fork over.

Also an iPhone/iPod acces­so­ry. The ammo box speak­er set, per­fect dis­guise. Do Want.

More cross-over stuff. Why won’t the world stay nice­ly sort­ed in to my cat­e­gories? The title of this recent­ly released book says it all — Go Faster: The Graph­ic Design of Rac­ing Cars

A lit­tle cool for my day today. Here’s Ms. Loren from the Impos­si­ble Cool.

onward and upward, or at least out the door.

Morning Linkage (Mar 10)

March 10, 2010 /

Transportation

Ply­wood pad­dler for the junior set. Fun­ny how much the logo looks like Harley David­son from a dis­tance. Cute though.

1923 BMW fac­to­ry floor. Lots more vin­tage in the Vin­tage Motor­bikes Flickr pool but beware of bad cap­tions, and wild ass guess­es as to makes and models.

Scroll down once for hot girl in short skirt on a real rock­et of a bike. And I love how the cape stays ful­ly extend­ed while she’s sit­ting still on the desk. Yeah — it’s a Japan­ese super­hero toy. (SFW)

1937 Harley bob­ber. Anoth­er fab Dan­ish builder, Cus­toms from Jamesville.

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Science and Technology

A look at what’s under Nia­gara Falls. In 1969 the Army Corps of Engi­neers stopped the water flow over the falls in order to be able to inspect and but­tress up, if nec­es­sary, the rock face. In the com­ments look for Bla­tanville he’s got more info. Bitchin’ pics.

If you’ve got a stream with decent flow (7.5 ft/sec) you can have 500 watts of elec­tric­i­ty from a device that weights 25 pounds. Very use­ful. (7.5 ft/sec is about 8 miles/hour — which is pret­ty fast for a big riv­er but not so fast for a creek or stream.)

Test­ing struc­tures and new designs for resis­tance to earth­quakes at UNC’s Con­struct­ed Facil­i­ties Lab. Cruise the gallery for a look at cur­rent reasearch and projects. Lots of big (red) machines.

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Art. Images, and Design

Creepy lit­tle hand-made char­ac­ter dolls. In that quaint Dick­en­sian night­mare vein.

I’m claim­ing this is art. Scan­ning micro­scope images of the grooves in an LP. Images 2 and 3 look like the geog­ra­phy of memory.

These are hys­ter­i­cal. Old pho­tos with mod­ern goofy, think Car­toon Chan­nel kid’s show, char­ac­ters pho­to­shopped in. Rel­lano de Mono from Chile. (His per­son­al web­site is down. Not sur­pris­ing. I hope he is safe.)

A friend­ly reminder that it’s not about the gear or the jar­gon or even the tech­ni­cal prowess, but the see­ing. A medi­a­tion on what it means to be a pro­fes­sion­al (pho­tog­ra­ph­er) or an ama­teur. Applies to all artists.

that is all

Morning Linkage (Mar 9)

March 9, 2010 /

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…

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