magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Archives for July 2010

Morning Linkage (Jul 8)

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Riding into the sunshine.

Ride the hyper­bole express to a dingy Paris base­ment and col­lec­tion of aston­ish­ing vin­tage bikes.  Click­ing on any one of the links leads to a lust pro­vok­ing gallery of the named bike. Includ­ing a Mod­el 18 Nor­ton, A Sun­beam Mod­el 9, 1926 Ridge Spe­cial, and so many more.

Worse eclec­ti­cism than some of my posts. mish­mash of motos from the guy who climbed the fame lad­der with his 10 most dan­ger­ous roads in the world list.

Autotopia’s list of 12 desir­able sta­tion wag­ons. Lit­tered with mod­ern bland­ness but a few gems - the Vista Cruis­er, the Saab 95, and a fab Chevy Nomad.

… and an addi­tion that could eas­i­ly replace any of the mod­ern lux­u­ry car man­u­fac­tur­er boring-mobiles in the orig­i­nal list. The Cit­roen DS Safari.

Science

Crypto­forestry and the Return of the Repressed. How could you write a bet­ter head­line? As any­one with a lit­tle bit of prop­er­ty can tell you, nature will out and the forests will return — to the odd­est places.

Marine biol­o­gy. Giant crab moves out of a too small shell. Awe­some clip.

Art, Images, and Design

Pianos have been appear­ing ran­dom­ly in NYC. I’m always aston­ished at how many of the peo­ple play but I didn’t know. Play Me I’m Yours.

Urban Sketch­er Tom­my Kane drew one — of course.

Peski­mo are best known for their vinyl toys. This year they’re doing the poster and sig­nage for the Mozil­la Sum­mit. Dol­lars to donuts these lit­tle direc­tion­al signs dis­ap­pear in an instant.

From Ellis Nadler via Jour­ney Round My Skull to Coil House. The Cards of Wu. (I just want­ed to write some­thing with more words cap­i­tal­ized than low­er case.)

Charm­ing, but to eyes raised on the edi­tions of Tolkein’s books with his own illus­tra­tions  these  illus­tra­tions from the Russ­ian edi­tion of the Hob­bit are off kil­ter. Bonus video at the end of a children’s show based on the books — you’ll rec­og­nize the scenes. Gol­lum is wicked good.

soakin’ in the heat, lovin’ it.

Morning Linkage (Jul 7)

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The Art/Science of Getting There

The quad goes ful­ly enclosed to make a high­ly mobile fire­fight­ing plat­form. The Ama­toya is con­sid­er­ably big­ger than you’re going to assume when you first look at the pic­tures. Lots of inter­est­ing tech employed, like aero­gel insu­lat­ed win­dows.  (thx tou­can)
http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/11/26/the-story-of-amatoya/

Mitch Boehm holds forth on Bike­EXIF on the Yama­ha DT-1. For many of you this is a nice reminder of the excite­ment the DT-1 caused when it was released. For oth­ers it will be a look at might arguably be the ori­gin of the dual pur­pose bike and the sport of adven­ture tour­ing.

The offi­cial pro­mo for 2011 Dakar.

Culture and Living

50’s Kab­ul — not what you think it will be like.

Air-delivered city in a crate, the prod­uct of the merg­er of two vast­ly dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es: expe­di­tion orga­niz­ing and con­struct. So many pos­si­bil­i­ties for com­merce and human­i­tar­i­an aid.

Technology

Archival stor­age of dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion is ham­pered by the short lifes­pan of most record­ing tech­nolo­gies. Tamper-proof col­lec­tion and stor­age of dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion is fraught with pit­falls. These WORM SD cards are a big step in solv­ing both prob­lems. Also a sim­pler answer to the Iron Butt no more Polaroid dilem­ma than the cur­rent dance of the SD cards. WORM — Write Once Read Many

Art, Images, and Design

Very ornate french chest, but yeah, I’d find a place for this in my house.

Card­board steam punk. A card­board col­lec­tion of gears and levers. It doesn’t do much but it does it nice­ly.

Pret­ty, creepy. Pret­ty creepy. Japan­ese sur­re­al­ist painter Tet­suya Ishi­da makes the claus­tro­pho­bic side of Japan­ese cul­ture vis­i­ble.

Japan­ese mon­sters. I’ve done some­thing like this before? Worth hav­ing a look at some more then.

Animation

Ani­mat­ed paint chips. Com­mer­cials for Sher­win Williams use paint chips to make lit­tle scenes and inspire you to get out the brush­es and rollers.

keep calm and car­ry on,

-lara-

–
It’s always some­thing.

Morn­ing Link­age lives at http://shinymagpie.net

Morning Linkage (Jul 6)

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Transportation

Ore­gon race­way park — extreme shifter cart. Though 800 pounds makes it some­thing oth­er than a go-cart IMO.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/palatov-motorsports-dp4/

More extreme. These cars (and bikes) look like car­toon char­ac­ters. In part because they spring from Japans otaku cul­ture.

Exam­ples of boso­zoku bikes are a lit­tle hard­er to find but here’s a cou­ple. (Nice non boso-Morowaki 600RR smack in the mid­dle of the thread.)

And for some­thing sooth­ing. Bernardet pro­duced a very com­mon and suc­cess­ful line of scoot­ers in France in the late 40s and the 50s. But from 1921 until 1940 they pro­duced rac­ing and street side­cars. Scroll down to see some wicked rac­ers.

Science

Sci­ence of pret­ty. How do but­ter­fly wings get their col­or?

More sci­ence of pret­ty. How do fire­flies light up?

A slight­ly dif­fer­ent view on the prob­lem of lag­ging sci­ence inno­va­tion in the US. It’s not the edu­ca­tion it’s the jobs.

Art, Images, and Design

Peter Taylor’s round lit­tle fel­lows with pat­terns and swirly pret­ties. Jol­ly. (NSFW bare car­toon butts)

Only the shad­ow knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. The rest of us just assumed that the aver­age beach going kid has a bit of mon­ster in their heart.

Edmund Dulac illus­trat­ed many books in the 30’s Here is a set of scans from Trea­sure Island. Soft clear col­ors and charm­ing images.

Per­haps you could also look at his illus­tra­tion for the Rubaiy­at. Much dark­er and lush.

Animation

This is anoth­er one of those “how could I pos­si­bly write a bet­ter intro than Mered­ith wrote?” items. Czech children’s film — Kooky’s Return. I can’t. Just watch.

wel­come back to the real™ world

Morning Linkage (Jul 5)

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Transportation

Mus­cle car mad­ness doesn’t seem to be going away. If you can’t afford the ride of your teenage dreams, maybe this print “Ply­mouth” by Kareem Rizk will make up for it. A lit­tle.

What does it mean that the best look­ing cus­tom work on Japan­ese bikes is com­ing out of Europe and the best cus­tom work on Amer­i­can bikes is com­ing out of Japan? Anoth­er great Harley cus­tom, this one from Ace Motor­cy­cles. The details, look at the head­light brack­et, cap­ti­vate me.

A photo-tag Ace Motor­cy­cles on a Japan­ese site. Ace itself has no web­site but one of their fans has put a bunch of pics on his blog fortyt­wo. and trans­lat­ed…

Science and Technology

Geo-thermal heat­ing — not just for green build­ing. The first users of geot­her­mal heat­ing may have been dinosaurs look­ing for a way to keep very large eggs at a per­fect, con­stant tem­per­a­ture.

You know how you nev­er have enough bowls for that chili par­ty but the next week­end there’s not enough plates for the BBQ? Some­how own­ing 24 set­tings of din­ner­ware just for the occa­sion­al moment when you need that many soups plates, doesn’t seem prac­ti­cal. And where are you going to keep all that chi­na? What if you had 40 flat discs in a cup­board that could turn into what-ever size and shape of dish you need at the moment?

Bug-eyed. 6 macro pho­tos of insect optics. Cool enough for wall-paper or desk­top. It’s nice to see the species iden­ti­fied on pho­tos like these.

I hate bat­ter­ies. I hate putting bat­ter­ies in my gad­gets. I can’t see the dan­ged lit­tle draw­ings that tell me which end to put in first. But now I don’t have to look. Two bat­ter­ies, in any old way, will get the job done. Did some­one say Microsoft doesn’t do hard­ware well?

Art, Images, Illustration (and Food)

Not the most com­plex recipe I’ve seen on They Draw, They Cook. But one of the sweet­est, most sum­mery so far.

A tree muse­um. Real­ly. Using hard­scape ele­ments to high­light the unique attrib­ut­es of spec­i­men trees. Nice pho­to cat­a­log of orna­men­tal trees as well. Too bad Switzer­land is so far away.

Black wal­nut and weath­ered met­al make an ele­gant if some­what odd­ly con­struct­ed desk. It’s the com­bi­na­tion of the mate­ri­als that attracts me.

Animation

It’s a three-day-weekend Mon­day so you have no excuse not to sit down and watch each and every one of the the clips pro­vid­ed in this trib­ute to Ray Har­ry­hausen. The genius behind the sum­mer camp, rainy after­noon, enter­tain­ment of my youth.

Now go away and look at some­thing inter­est­ing.