magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Month: October 2010 (Page 2 of 3)

Morning Linkage (Oct 20)

October 20, 2010 /

Transportation

Fea­tured in the most recent issue of Ital­ian Motor Mag­a­zine (which looks like a very worth­while off-line effort.) John W’s Mk 2 Le Man’s based Guzzi cafe rac­er is one of the finest cus­toms that I’ve seen. Fine enough to over­come my dis­like of the all knees and elbows look of the MG engine. And that’s going a ways.

Just the thing for the rut­ted grav­el path out to the back forty. CT90 in OD and kha­ki. Well sort­ed lit­tle thing.

Four fine old Detroit icons. Pen and water­col­or. The out­line draw­ing of the Pon­ti­ac logo is worth the price of admis­sion. Click for embiggens. Wall­pa­per worthy.

Okay — this is just weird. I think it’s a Fairchild J‑44 jet engined trike built by EJ Pot­ter. Read more about the Michi­gan Mad­man at the Knee Slider.

Science

Remem­ber­ing just how pol­lut­ed out night skies are. Com­par­ing the vis­i­bil­i­ty of night sky objects.

With the goal of cre­at­ing a tiny lit­tle sun inside a ware­house in Liv­er­more, the Nation­al Igni­tion Facil­i­ty on both a macro and micro scale. Bonus pic­ture of the Gov­er­na­tor on tour in 2008.

Art, Images, and Design

One of the nicest let­ter­press adver­tis­ing sets I’ve seen. Cranky Press­man sends out a set of 4 Par­li­ment of Owls designed coast­ers with the charm­ing res­i­dents of an imag­i­nary sea­side town. Meet Edna, Mr. Snog­gle­baum, Ade­laide and her pal Mr. Pis­ta­chio, and Cranky him­self. Now I must con­sid­er exact­ly what I want in the way of cus­tom, die-cut, letter-pressed coast­ers for my next social func­tion, hmmmm.

Lost artists. Jos Albert. Umber and grey. Domes­tic scenes and still-lifes, look­ing as if an under-painting was over­laid with graphite and then aban­doned. A slow­er, calmer world than the one we live in.

Cut-out paper ani­ma­tion. The sto­ry of Star Wars told by lit­tle paper peo­ple. (Video/Music 2:41)

Morning Linkage (Oct 18)

October 18, 2010 /

Transportation

Not near­ly enough infor­ma­tion on this super lit­tle Hon­da. But the brake disks prob­a­bly out­weight the engine by half.

Vin­cent over at South­siders writes about the Shady Dell Vin­tage Trail­er Camp in Bis­bee Ari­zona. Excel­lent­ly pho­tographed and pre­sent­ed. And there’s a “walk around” pre­sen­ta­tion on the Shady Dell site. Click on “Vir­tu­al Tour” in the top nav.

IP and Technology

Anoth­er patent troll — this time claim­ing to own the rollover. Web­ven­tion. Who the heck is… Inter­est­ing choice of price point for “licens­ing” and a real­ly poor choice of well-capitalized tar­get. But most­ly you need to see the troll doll post image cho­sen by the wits at Ars.

Art, Images, and Design

This most awe­some tin-can dog look­ing out the space port-hole is from Denise Van Leeuwen for Plan­et Adven­tures writ­ten by Krista Ize­laar. Many more images from the book.

I’ll save you the cost of pur­chas­ing the Octo­ber Harper’s Bazaar by send­ing you to this Wicked Halo recap of the fab­u­lous exploitation/pulp inspired fall frock lay­out “Mys­tery in the Moon­light.” (Don’t both­er with the music video at the bot­tom. Dullsville.)

More pulp pret­ties. From the first image in the col­lec­tion — lady in a leop­ard print biki­ni accom­pa­nied  by a black pan­ther in a tree — you know that Dave Stevens’ over the top females on pulp cov­ers are going to make your day. (NSFW — sadly)

Video

Music video mash-ups are rarely worth the 3:23 that you put into watch­ing them. Not in this case. “Stayin’ Alive in the Wall” is proof that Terp­si­chore has a sense of humor. (Video/Music 3:23)

Morning Linkage (Oct 8)

October 8, 2010 /

Transportation and Photography

1976 Benel­li 750 SEI. Pure sex appeal.

Real­ly big rock­et engines… and trains. A Soyuz gets to the launch pad.

Some­times you just need to know a guy. A guy whose grand­fa­ther raced Ital­ian motor­cy­cles in the 20’s and 30’s. A cache of pho­tos from Alfre­do Panel­la’s grand­son.

Pil­ing moun­tains of things on lit­tle wheeled vehi­cles. Brought to an art form in Shanghai.

Animation

Jor­dan Smith cre­ates the trail­er for Bryan Tal­bot’s graph­ic nov­el Grandville Mon Amour. (NSFW — ani­mal char­ac­ters engag­ing in noir violence)

Also noir but much more light-hearted, an addict and his poi­son. Key Lime Pie. Anoth­er cute Death. Blame Coil­house, I do.

and… it’s over, see you all next week,

Morning Linkage (Oct 7)

October 7, 2010 /

Transportation

You *can* go back in time. To your hap­py tod­dler days. With this grownup sized Radio Fly­er.

LIFE’s archives have yield­ed a num­ber of motor­cy­cle themed col­lec­tions. A friend recent­ly remind­ed me of the 1948 Day­tona set you’ve seen here before. There’s a new set of images. All but one of these Hel­l’s Angels images from 1965 were nev­er pub­lished. A reminder of a time when HA was more about bikes, rid­ing, and carous­ing than cor­po­rate struc­ture and meth dis­tri­b­u­tion deals.

New from Deus. Le Moulin Rouge. Sim­plic­i­ty. The front forks intrigue me. 2 gal­leries, use the scroll bar at the bot­tom to view.

Engineering, Construction

Legos. Brick­Con 2010. Pho­to overview. Lov­ing the dinosaurs.

Bldg­blog dis­cuss­es the doc­u­men­tary “The Soli­tary Life of Cranes” by Eva Weber who is also respon­si­ble for “City of Cranes.”  The life and out­look of the men who sit in the lit­tle cab at the top of the tallest objects in our cities — the con­struc­tion cranes.

Art, Images, and Design

Col­or wheels are an ubiq­ui­tous tool for design­ers but they did­n’t always exist. Imprint takes a look at the his­to­ry of illus­trat­ing col­or rela­tion­ships from line charts, to wheels, to spheres, to a fab­u­lous set of umbrel­las. (2 parts)

From Ani­malar­i­um, the most crea­ture like of Jacek Yerka’s soft­ly col­ored, dreamt of ani­mals. And more of his meta­mor­phic land­scapes.

If only my hair was still long enough to braid. The best girl in the world. Pip­pi.

be good to your­selves today,

Morning Linkage (Oct 5)

October 5, 2010 /

Transportation

The most won­der­ful vehi­cle in the world (accord­ing to sev­er­al of my friends) is the VW bus. In this case, the icon­ic split-window ver­sion with com­pa­ny logos and colors.

Nice visu­al wrap up to the Can­non­ball Endurance Ral­ly. (Vin­tage bikes)

Mov­ing a lit­tle faster. This video teach­es you “How to Lean on a BMW S1000RR” The lack of steer­ing head move­ment (except when pulling the clutch) is aston­ish­ing. (Video)

IP

Righthaven, a name that you nev­er want to see on an enve­lope in today’s mail. The single-purpose copy­right enforce­ment law firm has final­ly offered up the per­fect (?) case for the EFF to test the lim­its of fair-use in the web.

Art, Images, and Design

All our stuff. In the 1990’s Peter Men­zel made a series of pho­tographs for a book about all our stuff. 30 fam­i­lies out­side their homes will all their pos­ses­sions around them. Mate­r­i­al World: A Glob­al Fam­i­ly Por­trait. (NPR gives 12 of the orig­i­nal 30 por­traits.) And now two Chi­nese pho­tog­ra­phers have repeat­ed the exer­cise for the diverse regions of China.

High Def isn’t just for TV. Hal­taDefinizione. HAL9000 uses new tech to pro­duce incred­i­bly detailed images of old pic­tures. Stun­ning. Read about the tech­nol­o­gy here. Look at the images here (in Ital­ian — just click on stuff you’ll be fine.)

A1One has been work­ing the streets of Tehran for quite a while now. This lim­it­ed edi­tion of prints com­bines tra­di­tion­al Per­sian cal­lig­ra­phy and his own sig style.  I also admire his recy­cling of used spray cans.

time to fix more borken stuff,

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