magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Archives for March 2010

Morning Linkage (Mar 8)

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Transportation

Low rent trans­former of now neglect­ed, beloved city mas­cot. This robot built of sovi­et era car parts stands out­side of Odessa.

Love­ly. Thrux­ton based.

Some back­ground on the engine design of the IoM Nor­ton I showed you a week or so ago. The squish com­bus­tion cham­ber was the idea of a jan­i­tor? Not real­ly. Leo Kusmicki’s sto­ry reads like an adven­ture com­ic none-the-less. Read the com­ments for addi­tion­al info.

Inter­est­ing if true, BMW has a firmware rev lim­iter on the new S1000RR. It gets turned off at the 600 mile ser­vice. Is this going too far? Or is BMW jus­ti­fied in try­ing to pro­tect it’s machines from ear­ly life abuse and itself from unrea­son­able war­ran­ty claims.

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Literature and Gadgets

A book design­er talks about the move to eBooks, what the iPad brings to the par­ty, and what the future of the print­ed book looks like. His dis­tinc­tion between form­less and def­i­nite con­tent is a good way of con­sid­er­ing which books deserve to be print­ed and which don’t. Per­haps it is time to rec­og­nize that some books are not worth the paper they are print­ed on.  Excel­lent civ­i­lized dis­cus­sion in the com­ments as well.

Less thought­ful but more imme­di­ate­ly and com­mer­cial­ly rel­e­vant. These two videos fea­tur­ing Pen­guin Books’ CEO John Makin­son talk­ing about the publisher’s move into the dig­i­tal book mar­ket and the upsides and down­sides that they see in the near future.

Low tech, for book lovers. Book plates can aid the return of your pre­cious vol­umes. There are three free designs, I like the one with snakes.

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Art, Images, and Design

Some of the nicest remake/reuse fur­ni­ture exam­ples I’ve seen. Not a bun­ny or flower stick­er in the bunch. Decent hard­ware upgrades too. From Pur­pose Restora­tion.

Flickr is home to the port­fo­lios of some amaz­ing pho­tog­ra­phers. The work of Nicholas Moulin includes lots of wicked cool macro images like this four-eyed spi­der.

Scott Camp­bell of Zom­bie Fair poster fame has new work hang­ing in Lon­don.  Who can resist ambigu­ous wood­land crea­tures and a race car carved out of a boul­der ? Or the Bedrock air­ships?

Cecil­ia Murgel’s jour­nal pages. Each fea­tures an image of two women and a com­men­tary on the activ­i­ties of a day. In Por­tugese but you don’t need to read the entries to know how she’s feel­ing about what’s going on in her life. I haven’t seen mark­ers used so well in ages.

ta ta for now my freaky dar­lings…

Morning Linkage (Mar 4)

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Transportation

Pur­ple Hel­mets, the Isle of Man TT half-time stunt team. Very British
— in a Ben­ny Hill, wellies and slick­ers, kin­da way. (Sound)

Wrench Mon­kees begin build­ing a bit­sa. Where did that pur­ple frame
come from? Updates as they hap­pen.

Desmo dou­ble front-wheel trike. Very bizarre and head­line writ­ers take
note, no way in hell is this an ATV. More pics.

I love the tail treat­ment on this Tri­umph Thun­der­bird. Such a sweet, round butt.

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Society

This is one of the most con­sis­tent­ly beau­ti­ful blogs that I know of.
There’s noth­ing more spe­cial about this post than any of the oth­ers,
but take a cou­ple of min­utes to enjoy the rest­ful images and ideas .
La Tar­tine Gour­mande.

Graph­ic nov­els and comics are, for me, the one com­pelling appli­ca­tion
for the iPad. Here’s an exam­ple of why.

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Images

Bryce Wymer is the Art Direc­to­ry for Dig­i­tal Kitchen. They did a nice
ani­mat­ed mur­al for the 2010 Cen­sus.
You can watch them put the com­mer­cial togeth­er in this video.
He puts also puts huge chunks of his sketch books on his blog.

I want to be the red haired girl in Lynne Naylor’s hap­py wilder­ness pic­tures.

Visu­al, typo­graph­ic pun, with a nod to Mar­ley.

That’s all for today my friend­ly pump­kin won­ders

Morning Linkage (Mar 3)

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Transportation

This is so damned close to a tri­als bike, an under­pow­ered tri­als bike. The wheel size dif­fer­ence is odd. But what the heck. There are girls pic­tured. FX-Mountain Moto.

Google earth now has pic­tures of Pima and the air­plane bone­yard.

Bam­boo ped­al bike frames. Wicked cool mate­r­i­al sci­ence and engi­neer­ing. (Thanks M2)

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Science

Cook­ing made us human? A look at the fos­sil record and what it has to say about the rise of big brains and cooked food.

A bit of back­ground on what an EVA entails and a guess at what it might cost.

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Literature

Project Guten­berg is now putting up a dai­ly RSS feed of new addi­tions. I find it help­ful to have less than the entire­ty of PG to browse when look­ing for some­thing to read. A few days ago I found : La Sor­cière: The Witch of the Mid­dle Ages by Jules Michelet. Lush bor­der­ing in hys­ter­i­cal, when you get to this sen­tence in the intro­duc­tion you just know you’re going to stick around to see the end.

“Witch­es they are by nature.” It is a gift pecu­liar to woman and her
tem­pera­ment. By birth a fay, by the reg­u­lar recur­rence of her ecsta­sy
she becomes a sibyl. By her love she grows into an enchantress. By her
sub­tle­ty, by a rogu­ish­ness often whim­si­cal and benef­i­cent, she becomes
a Witch; she works her spells; does at any rate lull our pains to rest
and beguile them.”

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Art, Design, Architecture, and Images

Hydro-floors. How to have a pool and a yoga stu­dio in one space. It’s vast­ly cool.

A bit of a snick­er here. The com­mon milk cre­ate is essen­tial to camp­ing, even if you’re trav­el­ing by space cap­sule.

Charles Harp­er was a pro­lif­ic mid-century illus­tra­tor whose style you will rec­og­nize. In a nice mix of two of my favorite things, his  illus­tra­tions for the Bet­ty Crock­er Din­ner for Two Cook­book. Scans on Flickr. I agree with Matt from Drawn, this one should be rewrit­ten and reis­sued with the orig­i­nal illos.

Tilt-shift video. Yes, video. A day in the life of NYC. Sam O’Hare. (Music)

I’m run­ning late, le sigh.

Morning Linkage (Mar 2)

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Transportation

The F1 safe­ty car. M-B SLS AMG. My very favorite alpha­bet soup car. The rear light­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly styl­ish.

Vin­ta­gent pro­vides anoth­er fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry from yes­ter­year. A 1967 “pro­duc­tion” bike class at the Isle of Man TT led to the cre­ation of a spe­cial Velo­cette Thrux­ton. Tales of it’s suc­cess­es and fail­ures.

Lover­ly. In-car and side-of-the-road video of a prac­tice dri­ve for the 100 Acre Wood ral­ly. This is why they do it.

Fun­ny British “Watch for Motor­cy­clists” ad. Humor and a reminder. Plus per­haps the ulti­mate hel­met acces­so­ry, neon.

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Tools

A nice vari­a­tion on the multi-tool. I like rounder shapes for pock­et objects.

I love my rotary cut­ters for cut­ting both fab­ric and paper. I have sev­er­al includ­ing a cou­ple of the pret­ty flower pat­terned spe­cial edi­tions. Now the rotary cut­ter prin­ci­ple has been applied to emer­gency equip­ment. A bet­ter way to cut through lay­er of den­im, tex­tile, or leather.

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Science

A real­is­tic recon­struc­tion of a snake prey­ing on a rep­tile. Unre­mark­able except for the fact that the snake is 11 feet long and the rep­tile is an infant Titanosaur. Nice pho­tos of the orig­i­nals fos­sils as well as the recon­struc­tion.

Tiny-saurs. Build-it-yourself mini mod­els, less than $20 for the deluxe kits.They also do cus­tom work if any­one is look­ing for the ulti­mate trade show swag.

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Art, Images and Design

Ani­ma­tion — sort of. Aard­man presents Home Sheep Home. Infu­ri­at­ing­ly sim­ple brows­er based game for lovers of Shaun the Sheep. Hate, hate, hate. I suck at video games.

Flickr user A Jour­ney Around My Skull is always a good source for new things to look at. These illus­tra­tions from Iran­ian children’s books are at the same time famil­iar and alien. Many seem to be folk­tales. This image of two rich­ly dressed char­ac­ters with flow­ers for heads sets the tone. There are many equal­ly fine images through out the set.

These are scary and weird and full of vague­ly obscene pigs pro­vid­ing moral guid­ance(?). In oth­er words, ter­rif­ic. Scott Has­sell.  Most­ly pen and ink. (NSFW)

Bird obsessed Jungil Hong was trained in ceram­ics at RISD but is best known for her col­lages.

More tomor­row…

Morning Linkage (Mar 1)

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Transportation

Nim­bus, a Dan­ish motor­cy­cle designed by a vac­u­um clean­er mogul. The
strap steel frame is unique and a lot pret­ti­er than you’d think.
Here’s a nice­ly restored exam­ple by Soren.

Chum­ming the waters. Two sets of num­bers com­par­ing the cur­rent batch
big dual-purpose tour­ers. Let the debates begin, erm con­tin­ue. One
orga­nized by bike, one orga­nized by fea­ture.

LED head­light trim has become an indi­ca­tor of cool on cars. Audi’s got
some cute ones that look like (under) eye­brows. Here’s the same look
on a bike. Sor­ry, I don’t believe they are actu­al­ly avail­able, yet.

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Society and Culture

Could Wal-mart be the answer to reviv­ing local agri­cul­ture? Or is this
just anoth­er exam­ple of putting green spin on the cor­po­rate good? From
Atlantic mag­a­zine, a look into Wal-mart’s new Her­itage Agri­cul­ture
pro­gram.

A new drink­ing game. Describe the list­ed spe­cials at Miss Knicker’s
Gar­den of Delights. Ink dipped quill? (SFW)

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Art, Images, and Design

Fur­nish­ing for the very small house. Scroll down for two of the
coolest bunk bed designs ever.

Wood cut illus­tra­tions by a self-professed anar­chist illus­tra­tor.
Cool, calm, col­lect­ed feel­ing, espe­cial­ly the Guardian Poet­ry  series.
Click on Illus­tra­tions in the head­er.

Two pho­tographs of a young Russ­ian boy wear­ing radio head­phones. One
with his kit­ten. Wist­ful, haunt­ing. (SFW)

Jonathan Bartlett. Recent work is translu­cent water­col­or wash­es on
yel­low­ing paper. slight­ly off-kilter sur­re­al sto­ries. Be care­ful, the
CGU­nit web site can have vague­ly nsfw images in the side­bars. J.
Bartlett’s site is safe. (NSFW)

Black ink brush work and cal­lig­ra­phy on a ledger page. Paris cof­fee
house Le Select, book read­ing patron.

Dog’s love cars. Eager­ly wait­ing for a ride to the beach. Click for big­ger.

Start­ing the week right