magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Archives for August 2010

Morning Linkage (Aug 23)

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Transportation

Gaze Long­ing­ly at These Buicks of Yore. Well at the first three or four any­way. Clas­sic designs. After the 60’s Wild­cat it all goes down hill.

The Zae­ta 530. Now (or soon) avail­able in street legal two-up trim. There’s a nice video that fea­tures arty footage of hors­es, fol­lowed by the Zae­ta and a Porsche doing some seri­ous drift­ing in the dirt.

The Wil­son II. Extreme and prob­a­bly unrid­able but omg the pipes…

Notable espe­cial­ly for its ori­gins. Mohammed Shojaie’s Ostoure (‘Leg­end’ in Per­sian) con­cept bike.  Much of the artist’s oth­er work is includ­ed in Bloom, an Iran­ian on-line rac­ing game.

Science

Jack Horkheimer — the Star Gaz­er — passed away late last week.  For some back­ground and a taste of his humor have a look at this Pro­file col­umn from the Jan 06 edi­tion of Astron­o­my. (PDF)

Look­ing back at earth from space. Wired Sci­ence presents a gallery of images of algal blooms. Damn we live on a beau­ti­ful plan­et.

Art, Images, and Design

Only one artist this morn­ing. But this overview of Alex Varanese’s work includ­ing the won­der­ful Alt1977 retro-futurism project will give you a good start to your week.

off you go kid­dies.

Morning Linkage (Aug 20)

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Transportation

Cher­ry picked from the var­i­ous flickr tags and a cou­ple of col­lec­tor web­sites. Dark Roast Blend brings you Clas­sic Trash Trucks. Includ­ing a Dempsey Dump­mas­ter seen all over West­ern PA dur­ing my child­hood and ori­gin of the term Dempsey Dump­ster for a drop box. I didn’t know they had any oth­er name until I was in my 20s.

“If the H1 were a lad, it would be the sort of boy you des­per­ate­ly hoped your daugh­ter wouldn’t bring home. Fast, noisy, dan­ger­ous — and such bril­liant fun to be with.” A nice write up about one of the first hooli­gan bikes. A pleas­ant stroll down mem­o­ry lane for one or two of my fav boys.

Rumors, teasers, pho­to gal­leries. It’s all here. Now if KTM would just give us a date and a price for the lit­tle 125 stunter we’d all be hap­py.

Ancient Cultures and Archeology

We’re so used to the view of clas­si­cal Greece as a white mar­ble par­adise that we build our own great mon­u­ments to look like them. Um, not so fast. The Wash­ing­ton Post exam­ines the ori­gin of the clas­si­cal look …

… and Colour Lovers gives us a look at what those cold clas­si­cal fig­ures actu­al­ly looked like in glo­ri­ous col­or. (Oh my eyes)

Art, Images, and Design

The take away from this col­lec­tion of Japan­ese sub­way posters is — don’t take up more than your fair share of space, remem­ber your umbrel­la, and don’t drop your chew­ing gum on the floor. M’kay? I love the graph­ics.

I enjoy the dai­ly image or two from Cov­ered, a blog that posts clas­sic com­ic book cov­ers re-drawn by con­tem­po­rary artists. Some days they’re nice but unre­mark­able. Some days you get this won­der­ful rework­ing of a Tin-Tin cov­er.

Hours and hours of look­ing and dream­ing. Over 100 maps, new, old, and some­times incom­pre­hen­si­ble.

Black & white Hong Kong. Pho­tographs by Fan Ho. I am par­tic­u­lar­ly tak­en by the images col­lect­ed in “The Liv­ing The­ater”

move along now, you have things to do.

Morning Linkage (Aug 19)

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Transportation

I’m at it again with the tiny cus­toms. This non-NA mod­el Hon­da JX110 impress­es with a hand­made muf­fler.

At the oth­er extreme. large, low and very long. An Indi­an with a nod towards the bicy­cles of the 20’s.

The title says it all. Engine Porn. A well done pho­to of the RD33 engine put into such Sovi­et planes as the MiG29.

Science

The Earth and the moon, togeth­er. As seen look­ing back from the Mes­sen­ger space­craft.

Audio

What if GMO plants were used to cre­ate some­thing oth­er than food? Artist David Benque pro­pos­es mod­i­fi­ca­tion and selec­tive breed­ing to add cus­tom acoustics to a for­est

More arti­fi­cial sounds — what hap­pens when you slow one of those ter­ri­ble songs by the boy phe­nom Justin Bieber by 800? You end up with some­thing that sounds like a Bri­an Eno air­port expe­ri­ence. But it’s weird­ly sooth­ing.

Art, Images, and Design

Por­to. A col­lec­tion of ran­dom images tak­en by Miss K and pub­lished by the street art blog Stick 2 Tar­get.

Animation

Visu­al apho­risms. 3.5 sec­onds.

Din­ner:  Keep calm and car­ry out

Morning Linkage (Aug 18)

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- the messed up glass­es edi­tion -

Transportation

First thing in the feed read­er this morn­ing was this beau­ty. I almost stopped there and called it a day. CB550, build direct­ed by Jeff Stephens.

Art, Images, and Design

A few brief com­ments on the book design of the sem­i­nal Design for the Real World. Aside from the funky 70’s cov­er, it might be time to revis­it this clas­sic.

Chris­t­ian Trib­a­s­tone hung 6 of his sketch­es of Jamestown, NY on or near the places he had drawn. Excel­lent images in black and white on brown paper. He won­ders what will hap­pen to the draw­ings he left behind, so do I.

Sweet new print from Casey Roberts. Hap­pi­ness.

that’s all I can see for now.

Morning Linkage (Aug 17)

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Transportation

My dreams of roman­tic, retro get-aways always include a fly­ing boat. I thought I was SOL for this life­time. I am not. Dornier is bring­ing the fly­ing boat back into pro­duc­tion.

Wood on a bicy­cle. Very nice set of han­dle­bars.

South­east Asia and tiny bikes. The new world order in cus­toms. So many of the bikes fea­tured here begin with CB, but they rarely go on to fin­ish up with 100.

“Or Glo­ry: 21st Cen­tu­ry Rock­ers” a book of pho­tographs by Horst A. Friedrichs of mod­ern Rock­ers. (Pub­lish­es in Sep­tem­ber; avail­able for pre-order on Ama­zon now)

Science

Tidal tur­bines. Like wind­mills for gen­er­at­ing elec­tric­i­ty from the con­tin­u­ous motion of water. I’m sor­ry for link­ing to the NYT; the com­ments are so dull.

Culture

In 1974, Philippe Petit and a few com­pa­tri­ots slung a wire between the World Trade Cen­ters and M. Petit walked it.  That sort of bal­ance and focus is unimag­in­able to most of us. Or is it? You can sign up for a work­shop to learn to walk on wire from the mas­ter. Details on your next oppor­tu­ni­ty when I can find them.

Art, Images, and Design

From Retro Age Vin­tage Fab­rics. Uphol­stery fab­ric fea­tur­ing a design by Picas­so of a lady on a horse. I can’t quite see­ing doing my sofa in this print… or maybe I can.

BTW if you like the aes­thet­ic of the pho­to­graph of the wood­en han­dle­bars on the bicy­cle there’s an entire tum­bler full of sim­i­lar­ly airy images.  Is this the pho­tog­ra­ph­er him/herself? Or some­one with a very good eye for a style curat­ing the net for us?

Chas Labor­de was a French illus­tra­tor of the 1920’s and 1930’s. The blog Adven­tures in the Print Trade takes the oppor­tu­ni­ty of a new book about him to show a few of his illus­tra­tions of every­day life. I keep think­ing that I want to see a graph­ic nov­el of some­thing by Fitzger­ald done this way.