magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Archives for June 2010

Morning Linkage (Jun 9)

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Transportation

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

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…

Morning Linkage (Jun 8)

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Transportation

The Sidewinder. Yup, Bar­ris, still wrong. (The site includes all of the Bar­ris designs from your child­hood. The Mun­sters through Gen­er­al Lee. The front page has music.)

There are only two pic­tures here, but it’s not often you get to see an Excel­sior under the sky.

You just know that this cat was the height of cool.

Science

Osedax roseus is a bone bor­ing worm that lives on the picked over remains of a sunken whale car­cass. Adap­ta­tion is stun­ning in it’s vari­ety. And no, it’s not weird to read about a fin­ger sized red worm and repeat­ed­ly exclaim — that is so cool!

Poetry

Two pieces of poet­ry, very dif­fer­ent prove­nances, very sim­i­lar mes­sages.

First, Tom Waits reads the odd­ly hope­ful ‘Laugh­ing Heart’ by Charles Bukows­ki.

Then, Neil Gaiman reads “Instruc­tions” while Charles Vess’ illus­tra­tions and work­ing draw­ing cap­ti­vate your eyes.

Images

Os Gemos from Brazil hit­ting the streets of Italy with some clever visu­als.

I’m not sure about the ham­ster wheel por­tion of this cylin­dri­cal hous­ing solu­tion but the bit that rolls over to change from a desk and chair to a bed is just what I need for my office. Nap-time!

Yuko Shimizu at drawger intro­duces us to anoth­er of her long list of on-line friends. Ben­jamin Gudel (u with umlat) Most of the images in this gallery are from a Carhartt cam­paign. Real­ly.

‘ta my dar­ling read­ers

Morning Linkage (Jun 7)

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Transportation

For any­one who doesn’t already know where the inspi­ra­tion for my hack, Brun­hilde, came from. The clas­sic cream with pin­stripes has always spo­ken to me.

Anoth­er junk bicy­cle and lit­tle gas engine cre­ation. This could get to be a recur­ring fea­ture here.

Oh my, anoth­er Deus. The Blood­nok. Flash based gallery at the source.

Society and Culture

This is one of those finds that is delight­ful­ly dif­fi­cult to cat­e­go­rize. Sukkah City NYC  2010. 12 sukkahs will be built in Union Square next fall. And it will all end up in a book,“Sukkah City: Rad­i­cal­ly Tem­po­rary Archi­tec­ture for the Next Three Thou­sand Years.” But most­ly you have to see how they’ve illus­trat­ed the rules.
“Sukkah City: Rad­i­cal­ly Tem­po­rary Archi­tec­ture for the Next Three Thou­sand Years.”

Images

This is an almost per­fect illu­sion. Day­light stream­ing through a non-existent win­dow.

xiaobaosg is real­ly William Chua. He puts a lot of his work on Thread­less and Designs for Humans. Images like his is one of the rea­sons that the graph­ic T-shirt is mak­ing such a come back. Gor­geous.

Some pic­tures hint at a pos­si­ble nar­ra­tive. Oth­ers drop a sto­ry on your toes and force you to pick it up and pon­der it’s fis­sures.

Morning Linkage (Jun 3)

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Transportation

Ryca CS1 — what your Suzu­ki S40 is going to be when it grows up. Ryca’s own flash encum­bered site.

Pret­ty girls and motor­cy­cles. This time with his­to­ry of Chi­nese cin­e­ma added.

A cut away illo and some pho­tos of the Vin­cent Nero/Super Nero. The naked shot is out­right fright­en­ing.

Tech and Gadgets

The ulti­mate shop door? Well it’s the bitchin’-est hangar door I’ve ever seen. Though it looks more like the local feed store than a house…

Have you ever cal­cu­lat­ed the cost of that week­ly staff meet­ing? Do you know what it costs to let Dave from account­ing blath­er on for an extra 12 min­utes? TIM will do the math for you, in real time.

Art, Images, and Design

I love com­ing across an artist   whose work can make me both very gig­gly hap­py. See the lit­tle bird rock­er about half way down. And fore­head wrin­kling puz­zled. The sheep in NY — um, that’s not even…  Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne.

Extra­or­di­nary images of Venice. Liq­uid and mys­te­ri­ous. Giuseppe Desideri. (Most effec­tive as a slide show.)

Friday Animation

The sur­re­al Zay­atz and Volk. Russ­ian kid­die car­toon­ing from the 70s/80s era. The com­men­tary is almost as whacked as the car­toon.

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did you know that ‘play’ is the one key off on the right hand typo for ‘okay’?

Morning Linkage (Jun 2)

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Transportation

Hell for Leather brings you the Garage Com­pa­ny in it’s new loca­tion. View full screen and scroll right for for tons of pho­tos.

Pissed Off Pete. A log truck con­vert­ed to hot rod and drag rac­er. No account­ing for taste. I just like it.

This is the pret­ti­est restora­tion I’ve seen in a while. ’37 Sun­beam. Bike that is. Enjoy the gallery.

Science

Um, I think I may have been mis­tak­en a cou­ple of weeks ago when I told you about how the moon makes the tides. Kit­teh explains to Pip.

More from Crea­ture Cast. If you hold your breathe when you dive into the deep end of the pool, what does a Nau­tilus do when it dives into the deep end of the ocean? Hold it’s heart like a tur­tle.

Art, Images, and Design

Car­lo Gian­fer­ro takes pho­tographs of domes­tic inte­ri­ors. A unique and pro­found­ly effec­tive form of por­trai­ture. These pic­tures of gyp­sy inte­ri­ors and their inhab­i­tants intro­duced me to a visu­al lan­guage that I have nev­er seen. A chaot­ic mashup of East­ern and West­ern styles. Baroque and super-saturated. I want the red kitchen :-)

The exte­ri­ors of the gyp­sy hous­es are as much of a pas­tiche as the inte­ri­ors.

And now a sim­ple, util­i­tar­i­an design to cleanse the mind palette. A tran­sit pass good for the week of Jun 24, 1939 bear­ing an adver­tise­ment for the Moose Cir­cus. — 20 thrilling acts, too big for roof or tent! — Found in a copy of  Witch Wood by John Buchanan.

The wan­der­ing bear returns today, there may be no link­age tomor­row.