magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Month: July 2010 (Page 2 of 3)

Morning Linkage (Jul 16)

July 16, 2010 /

Transportation

Built as a cus­tom in 1936 this Hen­der­son is Art-Deco in all it’s black, shiny, curvy, swoop­ing glo­ry. Just don’t look at the last shot of the bike being rid­den — it’s actu­al­ly an ungain­ly midget. Le sigh.

For the junior set or aspir­ing moto design­ers and col­orists. The Ducati col­or­ing book. Print and scribble.

Nice bike. Wicked graph­ics. Match­ing hel­met. Roy­al Enfield.

1938 OEC Com­man­der. Today’s looker.

Tools

These lit­tle handy things come up every Christ­mas in the Lee Val­ley tools cat­a­log. A bet­ter pock­et screw­driv­er. No more hop­ing that the dime fits in the slot or that a quar­ter will give you enough grip­ping pow­er for that stub­born bolt.

Food and Design

The idea of a gourmet scoop­ing ketchup is, well, so damned food­ie. And the pack­ag­ing plays just the right note.

It’s fresh fruit and veg­etable time. Most pro­duce now arrives at the gro­cery store in anony­mous, waxed card­board crates, but that was­n’t always so. Ani­malar­i­um gives us a help­ing of the clever­est ani­mal themed labels. Tons more.

Art, Images, and Design

More from Yuko. The illus­tra­tions from The Beau­ti­ful and the Grotesque are enough to make you buy the book. The jack­et back blurb will clinch the deal.

Not sure who or what just yet, but this is fab abstract street art from Italy.

Any­where but here (Hous­ton.)

New images for Edward Gorey’s Ghast­ly Crumb Tinies and a cou­ple of new tinies. (One of these is NSFW if you squint real hard.)

Total Weirdness (and hotness)

Some­how you all seemed to have missed the “hot viral awe­some­ness” of the Old Spice Cam­paign; maybe that’s for the best. That’s okay, I watched a bunch for you. And so did the love­ly dudes and dudettes at TwoWheels. The open­er (with the bike at the end)  and a cou­ple of the bike based call and response replies. Oh, yes I do want to be some­one’s  sen­su­al bike friend of romance.

http://www.bikeexif.com/oec-commander

Morning Linkage (Jul 15)

July 15, 2010 /

Transportation

Acces­si­bil­i­ty. Even to the world of eXtreme sports. Joven De La Vega has designed a high­ly mobile wheel­chair for grind­ing it out at the local skate park. The design­ers full set of images, but no video yet.

Moto Beta 125 from back of the shed to pret­ty darn nice week­end toodler.

Swoon. New Ducati of my dreams.

Tools and Tech

The mushy-sweet pos­si­bil­i­ties of this loca­tion aware bracelet awe­some. Because home is a spe­cial place.

Robots

Of all the animal-like robots that I’ve seen none has cap­ti­vat­ed me with as much charm as this blocky tur­tle. Who knew this much sweet could be made out of black bake­lite cubes.

Art, Images and Design

Pos­si­bly the worst web­site nav­i­ga­tion ever. All because I was hop­ing to find more of these intri­cate­ly carved tire car­cass­es.

The artist is new to me, but who can argue with laugh­ing kites on a wall in Sao Paulo.

A pho­to jour­ney around the dis­ap­pear­ing Amer­i­ca. As always, road trip and pho­tog­ra­phy are meant for each oth­er. Inter­view with pho­tog­ra­ph­er Micheal East­man about his series Van­ish­ing Amer­i­ca.

Ed Ember­ley start­ed so many kids on the road to being illus­tra­tors and car­toon­ists. Now Scion has put togeth­er an exhib­it of his work and the work of some of the many artists who learned to draw from his books. There’s a dar­ling trail­er for the exhi­bi­tion included.

’til tomor­row my dears,

Morning Linkage (Jul 14)

July 14, 2010 /

Transportation

We seem to be on a things-that-drive-themselves kick. But how about a thing that makes dri­ving using non-visual clues possible?

So this guy start­ed out to restore a NX650. But he got side­tracked by the pos­si­bil­i­ties hint­ed at by the naked frame. Love­ly first go at a cus­tom bike. The crowds loved it and the builder post­ed more pho­tos.

If you have milling machines, spare bil­let, and some cre­ative tal­ent you can spend the time you’re not milling back­ing plate adapters build­ing this awe­some toy car. I’d love a set of the knurled tita­ni­um salt and pep­per shak­ers as well.

Science

Cos­mol­o­gy and Cos­mogony are eter­nal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. Both the cur­rent attempts to deter­mine and define the shape of the uni­verse, and the his­to­ry and anthro­pol­o­gy of all mankind’s pre­vi­ous world views. io9 recent­ly fea­tured a love­ly graph­ic of a Jew­ish cos­mol­o­gy cre­at­ed by Micheal Paukn­er and I went explor­ing his flickr stream. Wow. Great graph­ics, inter­est­ing com­men­tary, and *foot­notes*!

Food

Fried avo­ca­do. I can not imag­ine any­thing bet­ter at a late evening sum­mer BBQ with a nice crisp lager.

The fine folks at the Kitch’n found the ulti­mate kitchen island in the tool sec­tion at Cost­co. I already have a kitchen island, but I don’t have an out­door kitchen island. Yet.

Art, Images, and Design

A walk through many years of book cov­er design. Harp­er Lee’s To Kill A Mock­ing Bird is still in print. And has been pub­lished with some love­ly sen­si­tive cov­ers and some real disasters.

If this was on your walk to work every morn­ing you prob­a­bly would­n’t notice it for the first cou­ple of days. But every day after that these lit­tle peo­ple would make you smile. Even in the rain

Animation

From Shas­ta W. Very fun­ny ani­mat­ed Dutch retail web­site. Prob­a­bly not going to be a repeat buy­er though. (music and crash­ing noises)

alright then my dears, off you go

Morning Linkage (Jul 13)

July 13, 2010 /

Transportation

Destroy­ing land­mines before they destroy you. Intro­duc­ing the Assault Breach­er Vehi­cle.  Video at the bot­tom. (Typ­i­cal­ly trag­ic choice of sound tracks.)

The VFR1200F. Any review that starts with the Ohlins tech at the track laughing…

I“m bet­ting that a num­ber of you will feel a lit­tle wisp of nos­tal­gia when you look at this shiny restored Hodaka.

Air­port shut­tle, moto park­ing comes to France. Gear lock­ers, dis­count­ed price, and a ride to the ter­mi­nal. Any­one in Seat­tle got a chunk of land near Sea-Tac? Okay — maybe a bet­ter idea in LA.

Science

Under­sea crea­tures fas­ci­nate me. I have no idea why and I don’t think I want your opin­ions on the mat­ter either. Some more portraits.

Food

Sal­sa verde the way I’ve seen it made in Mex­i­co. Yum­my recipe and presentation.

Art, Images, and Design

Once used to trun­dle those ter­ri­ble, not real­ly food meals down the aisles of air­planes, these trol­leys are refur­bished and cov­er­ing in decals to make hip stor­age objects.

Food stored in draw­ers with elec­tron­ic wiz­ardry. It’s kinds cool to think that draw­ers might be bet­ter than cup­boards for food. (Even if this is just a reefer concept.)

From Coil­house — a new take on the Japan­ese Float­ing Worlds tra­di­tion of paint­ing. This is what re-visioning of old­er forms should look like.

Just because I’ve already done ten­ta­cles this morn­ing; I think I’ll add this col­lec­tion of squid images from Animalarium.

Paul Lung’s por­traits are mas­ter works of per­cep­tion. You want to meet each one of the peo­ple he’s drawn. (Done with a.5mm mechan­i­cal pen­cil — I can’t find a ref­er­ence to the hard­ness of the lead he uses.)

James Dean. Because it’s that kind of day and I’m feel­ing the girl­friend love.

Morning Linkage (Jul 9)

July 9, 2010 /

It’s been a good week on the inter­net and there are just too many things still to share with you all. So dig in for a good hour or two.

Transportation

A recent con­ver­sa­tion with the moto-heads of my acquain­tance ques­tioned the nature of some of Ducati’s recent crop of “spe­cial edi­tion bikes.” Here’s a look at one of the real™ clas­sics.

I don’t know whether to be offend­ed, amused, or heart­ened by this look at the role of women in the design of auto­mo­biles. I dis­agree with the state­ment that you don’t need to be a gear-head to be good, but only if you allow for gear-head to cov­er more ground than just a fas­ci­na­tion with  cylin­der head shape and  rebound cal­cu­la­tions. I hes­i­tate to admit that the most appeal­ing image in the sto­ry is the “Damsels of Design” lined up with Harley Earl. Oh, and the head­line writer should be pelt­ed with pow­der puffs.

You can go look up the his­to­ry and all that if you’d like. I’ll just sit qui­et­ly and look. Mego­la.

Unclassifiable

Oh you’re a div­er, how cool is that? Um, maybe not so cool if you are Car­los Bar­rios Orta and your job is to keep the sew­ers of Mex­i­co City flowing.

… and the nation­al geo­graph­ic video here (not safe for lunch)

Science

Freez­ing tis­sue sam­ples at the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry. The Ambrose Mon­ell Cryo Col­lec­tion. Bet you did­n’t know that AMNH had so many kinds of collections.

Remem­ber the Giant Spi­der Crab shed­ding it’s shell from the oth­er day? Here’s a nice Nat Geo gallery fea­tur­ing him and some of his deep ocean liv­ing bud­dies. Start­ing with the apt­ly named Fang Tooth Fish. OMG, and there’s a Vam­pire Squid. The usu­al Nat Geo high qual­i­ty photography.

Food

Can­dy specif­i­cal­ly designed to be shared.

A brief look at the process of hand rais­ing apples in Japan. We’ve all mar­veled at the per­fect­ly pre­sent­ed ide­al fruit in Japan­ese gro­ceries, these bas­kets and trays are meant for giv­ing as a gift. Jane Alden has pho­tographed the farm­ers and their orchards.

Art, Images, and Design

Jane Alden’s own web­site fea­tures a less peace­ful but utter­ly com­pelling essay World War I on the Tears of Stone.

A cou­ple of point­ers to the art of Kodomo no kuni, a Japan­ese chil­dren’s mag­a­zine pub­lished in the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. From the gallery of illus­tra­tions I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the work of Takei Takeo and Onchi Koshi­ro. (Click on the list icon under the pic­tures to see a list of all the illus­tra­tors.) Some gen­er­al infor­ma­tion about the mag­a­zine is also given.

Sum­mer arrived quite sud­den­ly a cou­ple of days ago and I want this instant Pop­si­cle mak­er. Now where did I see that cit­rus cool­er pop recipe? The one with the vod­ka in it?

Video

Helen Mir­ren with a sniper rifle. If you don’t want to see this… I’m going to won­der about your taste in vio­lence. RED the trail­er is up.

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