magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Month: August 2010 (Page 3 of 3)

Morning Linkage (Aug 16)

August 16, 2010 /

Transportation

That gasp you just heard, that was my sweet baboo when he saw this fine Nor­ton in BRG.

Oshkosh Trucks, mak­ers of severe duty firetrucks. 0–50 in 35 sec­onds? That’s slooooow. But it has roof mount­ed water cannons.

H2 resto. If you know what this is you’re gonna be real­ly hap­py. If you don’t, well then ask…

Science and Cooking

If you have any young boys in the room you might want to send them out to play. At least until you fig­ure out a gen­tle way to explain this to them. The heart break­ing news from dino land is that there might not actu­al­ly be a tricer­atops. Uh huh. The three horned sav­age might actu­al­ly be the juve­nile form of the big­ger but some­what dull torosaurus.

O’Reil­ly is often the pub­lish­er of first resort for geek­i­ness. Now they are stretch­ing the bound­ary of what’s geeky. With recipes. A tech-ish review of Jeff Pot­ter’s “Cook­ing for Geeks” by James Kalbach.

Art, Images, and Design

Linked to by sev­er­al friends on Face­book. Ear­ly col­or pho­tographs, many repro­duced from slides. Very effec­tive depic­tions of a time in Amer­i­can his­to­ry that most of us have only seen in black and white.

Look­ing at our­selves. The idea of doing a cou­ple of 50’s “look­ing toward the future” style ads for Face­book et al sounds like a lot of fun. Add in a lit­tle Russ­ian per­spec­tive and you get some of the best sound­ing par­o­dies ever.

This past week­end was a good week­end; camp­ing, cook­ing, mete­or watch­ing, etc. Lawrence Cox has cap­tured the sense of adven­tur­ous free­dom bril­liant­ly in his illus­tra­tion of a run-away dog.

so off you go into your week,

Morning Linkage (Aug 10)

August 10, 2010 /

Transportation

1960’s show cars on post­cards. Start with the Fire­ball 500. Total morn­ing waster on flickr.

Mov­ing more freight, but not on the inter­states. Marine High­ways, inter-modal freight, short sea ship­ping, and RoRos.

The world’s only Muzeti 250. (1983 GSX 250) Sweet lit­tle bike.

Clas­sic of the Day. AJS 18.

Science

Astron­o­my pic­ture. The eclipse shad­ow cone — I’ve nev­er seen this so clear­ly. No date?

Ordi­nary super­pow­ers. First off — I love the image that io9 chose to illus­trate this. Okay, so did you know that you can train your­self to rec­og­nize Haidinger’s Brush. This allows you to detect polar­ized light. Um, I’m not sure how this is actu­al­ly going to be use­ful to any­one, but hey, you nev­er know…

Per­son­al­i­ty isn’t as sim­ple as your high school guid­ance coun­selor told you when she gave the results of you Meyer-Briggs tests and sug­gest­ed that trade school was your best option. And any hope that there might be genet­ic basis for per­son­al­i­ty seems to have been squashed by these find­ings from Australia.

But most­ly the above arti­cle is a link to this piece in the New York­er about Wal­ter Mis­chel. The man behind the one marsh­mal­low now or two marsh­mal­lows lat­er exper­i­ments. And the follow-up work with the kinder­gart­ners who were his first subjects.

Art, Images, and Design

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mark Tuck­er is back from Ten­nessee and work­ing on the lat­est Jack Daniels commercials/ads. He’s pro­vid­ed some very nice pho­tographs and a cou­ple of “mak­ing of” video out­takes. If you watch the first video with the piglets turn the sound down — they squeal some­thing fierce.

Coralie Bickford-Smith is a book design­er for Pen­guins books. She is respon­si­ble for the jack­et and cloth bind­ings of the Pen­guin Clas­sics series. Some of the loveli­est books to be pro­duced late­ly. Be sure to look at her work for the Red Clas­sics Boys’ Adven­tures series as well.

Nice­ly done pic­tures from Tara Hunt’s pho­to stream of the New Zealand farm that served as the loca­tion for Hob­biton in the LoR movies. Door and win­dows are gone but the sheep have a place out of the rain.

Morning Linkage (Aug 9)

August 9, 2010 /

Transportation

Super­im­posed time-lapse pho­tog­ra­phy. Ston­er does the corkscrew. I’m dizzy.
So here’s the thing. We all know about art cars. (and most of them are sht) But what about art bikes? No past­ed on dolls heads or racks of bub­ble machines here. Just an R‑80 with some excel­lent met­al work and a cou­ple of bits of jet­sam that got caught in the backwash.

H‑D. 883. Details are every­thing. Check the heat shields and the mat­te black fin­ish with the glossy black pin­stripes. Rough Craft out of Tai­wan. Spend some time with their blog as well.

The venue is a toy mod­der’s forum. That’s about all I can tell you oth­er than that this moto toy is six kinds of night­mare induc­ing awe­some.

Art, Images, and Design

Japan­ese posters from the 30’s. Show­ing the influ­ence of both west­ern design and west­ern com­mu­nism in mes­sages for the proletariat.
More posters. The movie genre that brought you Reefer Mad­ness pro­duced 100’s more, equal­ly sala­cious, movies in the 40’s and 50’s. Gold­en Age Comics col­lect­ed the lob­by posters for you. Cat women of the Moon, Juve­nile Jun­gle, and Alimo­ny — gasp. (NSFW — squicky)

Clas­si­cal themes and com­po­si­tions Francois-Emile Bar­raud paint­ed in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. An unde­served­ly obscure painter. (NSFW artis­tic nudes)

Book arts and ani­ma­tion. “This is Where We Live” by ATP and Asy­lum Films. Take a walk through a world of books.

Morning Linkage (Aug 6)

August 6, 2010 /

Transportation

Watch­ing moto-cop drill teams is always a hoot. Please note that this team is lit­tle extra spe­cial. *Tokyo* motor police and all women. 2 videos, a bunch of stills.

Givin’ away the goods. Visu­al grat­i­fi­ca­tion is a reli­able source of good-looking and good to look at bikes. It also has a “com­mu­ni­ty” page fea­tur­ing oth­er bike blogs. Here’s a run down of some of the best of the bunch. Along with sam­ple pics from each.

Again from Visu­al Grat. Over the top details of the Con­fed­er­ate P120 as revealed in a spe­cial email to subscribers.

More fine details. This time on a XJR 1200. Triples, fork brace, and blue on the calipers.

From huge to tiny. The Suzu­ki EN125 pop­u­lates S.E. Asia like fruit flies on old bananas. And some­times gets used to cre­ate nifty lit­tle buzz-bombs like this one.

Tech and Science

Again with the hack­ers, def­con, and the sup­posed high secu­ri­ty locks. Always a good sto­ry and always a good reminder that secu­ri­ty is more than a bet­ter lock.

Goby. With a name like that it’s got­ta be a weird fish — and it is. Trash-eater.

Art, Images, and Design

I did­n’t know that those vicious­ly ugly con­crete build­ing of the 50’s and 60’s (and their even worse revival in 70’s aca­d­e­m­ic set­tings) had a style name. Bru­tal­ism. Per­fect fit. Andy Spain is not so dis­mis­sive as I am. His black and white pho­tographs bring as much beau­ty to these build­ings as any­one ever will be able to.

Day dream­ers hide-away. I can’t find the orig­i­nal image but this is too won­der­ful to pass up.

Pho­to­shop is the most overused tool in the uni­verse. Some­days. And then oth­er days you see it put to use to reveal the world in a new light.  The ghosts of WWII merge with the present in these dual image pho­tographs cre­at­ed by Sergey Larenkov.

Nice lit­tle joke with your morn­ing cof­fee if you slop a bit over the edge of the cup.

Friday Animation

A three­some. All with some con­nec­tion to Goo­by Herms.

El Kabong — done for Car­toon Net­work. A horse, some more hors­es, and a bad guy.  Mex­i­can cin­e­ma lam­poon. Look for the Nation­al Steel near the end. (1:57)

5 words that sound dirty but aren’t. For Chick­lets. I’m all over the gum and ink draw­ing style. (0:15)

Love­ly and lyric, ani­mat­ed intro for a doc­u­men­tary film about danc­ing in PR. Bom­ba y ple­na. (1:30)

now go play out­side if you’re to make all that racket.

Morning Linkage (Aug 4)

August 4, 2010 /

Transportation

I am tak­en by the smart sim­plic­i­ty of the head­lamp brack­et and the mat­te black on the head­er pipes. Moto Guzzi.

Hell for Leather stops just short of accu­rate­ly describ­ing this lat­est pro­mo video from Tri­umph. Lis­ten to the voice over with­out watch­ing the video. He’s not talk­ing about a bike…

As penance for  the pre­vi­ous content-free link, I bring you… Drags and Rac­ing’s all dark Tri­umph Bon­neville. I sat on a Bon­neville last week­end… It fits. Drags and Rac­ing web­site — in Ital­ian,. NSFW nudity.

Girls on bikes. A lit­tle sweet for some of you but I’m charmed and it is a Laverda.

Boys on bikes. Same look and feel but a boy and a Honda.

Science

If lasers cre­ate light in care­ful­ly con­trolled wave­lengths what would an anti-laser do? Absorb light in care­ful­ly con­trolled wave­lengths. Okay, I’m not smart enough to have come up with that but some­one has. And now that the idea has been described there’s a race on to build one and to fig­ure out what it’s use­ful for.

Words and Food

Work­ing Word­smith Alert. New CMoS. Sneak a peak at some of the shiny new rules and learn which of your old favorites they took out back and shot. (Chica­go Man­u­al of Style)

Nora May­nard dis­cuss­es her top picks from the field of new drink­ables offered at Tales of the Cock­tail. I’m think­ing that I’ll have to hunt down a bot­tle of the Coc­chi Amer­i­cano before sum­mer ends.

Art, Images, and Design

- the dreamy sum­mer edition

These are Jim Denevan’s tools. These are his images.

The chil­dren’s book illus­tra­tions of Igor Oleynokov. Flu­id pas­tel worlds. The seascapes are espe­cial­ly enchanting.

Have I told you about Pooh Sticks? Maybe not. But that’s for anoth­er day, when there’s a weak autumn sun and noth­ing much to regret. Mean­while here’s a sum­mer ver­sion of play­ing with bits of wood and water. Lit­tle Drifters. Lenny makes oth­er things out of flot­sam and jet­sam as well.

Beach scene, black and white per­fec­tion. (Mild­ly NSFW)

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