magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Month: November 2010 (Page 2 of 4)

Morning Linkage (Nov 22)

November 22, 2010 /

Transportation

I will do this man’s TPS reports for noth­ing. Hon­est­ly. Tim Lawrence of Cin­e­ma Vehi­cle Ser­vices.

BMW’s plug-in sports car is due in 2013. I would­n’t even con­sid­er an elec­tric sports car. Unless of course they bring this one out with the high­ly hal­lu­cino­genic camo paint scheme intact.

T‑Shirt of the week. Do good and look cool. Sup­port the Bul­ta­co effort in Dakar. Okay — it’s one crazy Spaniard — all the more rea­son you should give a lit­tle. A bit on the crazy Spaniard.

Total­ly sweet lit­tle Gilera. The whole sto­ry of Mor­ton’s Gilera TS — start to fin­ish with 100s of pic­tures and com­men­tary in at least 3 languages.

Art, Images, and Design

I am charmed and lit­tle sad­dened by this side­ways crea­ture and the dan­de­lion puffs.

Squir­rels kin­da freak me out. They twitch too much and are always scold­ing. But I’m glad I got to see all of these because I was remind­ed of a cou­ple of my favorite illustrators.

A wry detail or two makes these car­toons per­fect. Daan Botlek.

Animation

Old school car­toons still have a mag­ic that the newest all dig­i­tal stuff can’t touch. For exam­ple this great telling of the Shoot­ing of Dan McGrew. Most of the sto­ry is told by the back­grounds. Enjoy the 6 min­utes of high cul­ture and then crawl around the oth­er links to soak up more of Walt Pere­goy’s work.

keep calm and car­ry on (it’s just a lit­tle snow)

Morning Linkage (Nov 18)

November 19, 2010 /

Transportation

Jesse Dixon had a rotary wing take on the fly­ing car. In 1940.

Google may have its rov­ing all-seeing eye to give you a good look at each inter­sec­tion but Microsoft has a bet­ter idea for pro­duc­ing direc­tions. Ask a cab­bie.

Back­wards Porsche, mutant Prius, horned hel­mets, and ‘busa engine in a Nation­al Guard brand­ed three wheel­er.… Auto­topia picks its weird­est of SEMA.

Science and Technology

You’ve seen those pic­tures of the wind­mill farms locat­ed out at sea? Here’s the ship that builds them. Pics, video, and link to one of the crew’s flickr stream. Who said infra­struc­ture is boring?

Art, Images, and Design

Geom­e­try, geog­ra­phy, and celes­tial maps. Eye can­dy from the 17th century.

Kick Start Cal­i­co Bean Sal­ad. A recipe and a fab moto illustration.

Neigh­bor­hoods as swing sets, roller coast­ers, and jun­gle gyms. Amy Casey’s fab­u­lous hous­es.

Moving Images

Are play­er pianos the new clowns? Mark Tuck­er has freaked me out.

And just to share lit­tle more of the creepy that’s inhab­it­ing my brain this week, here’s Dirty Night Clowns… and that fun­ny, floaty way that mar­i­onettes move.  Mak­ing Of bonus material.

…off you go, there’s a week­end just ahead…

Morning Linkage (Nov 16)

November 16, 2010 /

Transportation

This lit­tle cub mod is just too cute to pass up.

A nice col­lec­tion of exam­ples of the art of Pak­istani trucks and bus­es from Ani­mal­ri­um. Sau­di Aram­co World gives us back­ground.

From a Japan­ese Ducati blog. Found object sculp­ture. Small, sim­ple, sweet.

Take a good long look at the pic­ture before you read the arti­cle. Maybe I’m slow but it took me a at least 30 sec­onds to twig to what is so wrong with this Tri­ton.

Science

Lit­tle tiny Big Bangs. I’m just hav­ing trou­ble with the con­cept of atoms melt­ing. More fun from LHC.

Art, Images, and Design

Look very close­ly. Each of these botan­i­cal images is made up of very non-herbaceous mate­r­i­al. Cecelia Web­ber.

Of all of 2much’s work these lit­tle sculp­tures made from ping-pong balls while he was try­ing to give up cig­a­rettes are the most inti­mate and heart­felt. More 2much aka Bun­deli Patrik

Painter Vin­cent Hui. Per­haps a lit­tle dif­fi­cult, cer­tain­ly some Bruege­l­ish grotes­queries. More bet­ter but dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate web­site. My favorite, Table.

I have a friend cur­rent­ly engaged in clean­ing out her shed(s). Per­haps I’ll send her this col­lec­tion of ideas for things to make out of the old bicy­cles. There are some win­some gates here.

that’s all for today

Morning Linkage (Nov 15)

November 15, 2010 /

Transportation

North­east Ohio is not a friend­ly envi­ron­ment for out­door stor­age of equip­ment. Weep for this rot­ting col­lec­tion of most­ly mil­i­tary  air­craft. The video is well done. Shot with a Nikon D90.

Old school indeed. GS1150ES.

Mods vs. rock­ers but this time the vio­lence was con­fined to the tug-o-war. Lots of nice pics of clas­sic cafe rac­ers — Tri­tons, Guzzis, Norvin (wtf?)

Science (high-speed photography)

Pop­corn. I can’t watch this with­out think­ing that the pop­corn pop­ping looks like an angel open­ing it’s wings.

Begin­ning with the ques­tion “How do cats drink?” and end­ing with a some­what freaky elephant-trunk based robot arm. A bit of a walk through the lands of sci­ence for the fun of it. Side note, the paper about cat lap­ping may be the first time that a YouTube video has played a role in a pub­lished sci­en­tif­ic paper.

Art, Images, and Design

Inter­ac­tive maps can be so very good. The best jour­neys of fact and fic­tion mapped out with details and high­lights. (And a few lowlights.)

Old globes are pret­ty darned use­less, unless you want to make art out of them. Here are a cou­ple of nice exam­ples and a bonus video of how globes are made.

Animation

Smigly’s life is hard. and noisy.

yeah — it’s kind of Mon­day out here too.

Morning Linkage (Nov 12)

November 12, 2010 /

Transportation

Way too much of the report­ing done on Wired’s Auto­topia blog is auto­mo­tive indus­try due dili­gence. Even the writ­ers sound a bit dazed by all the cute lit­tle urban com­muter and eVe­hi­cle fluff late­ly. But once in a while they strike gold. On the occa­sion of what would have been his 100th birth­day they pub­lished this fab air­borne pho­to of  Georg “Schorsch” Meier at the 1939 Isle of Mann TT.

Dear heav­ens the boys over at Christies’ cat­a­log depart­ment are hav­ing fun with this bike auc­tion. “…com­plete the trans­for­ma­tion and end up with a cafe-racer ne plus ultra, a gen­uine road-going Manx Nor­ton with lit­er­ary prove­nance…” Hen­ry Man­ning III’s Nor­ton Manx is for sale. (Along with a few oth­er trea­sures from his son’s shed.)

I try, I real­ly try to ele­vate the lev­el of this blog — but some days…  so here it is a fan­ci­ful design for a space going vehi­cle for hon­ey­moon­ers. Sex in space. I know you all want it. (NSFW)

Inexplicable Culture.

The Lying Down Game.

Art, Images, and Design

Total­ly charm­ing. Cut paper sil­hou­ettes of two peo­ple on bicy­cles. Oth­er vehi­cles, ani­mals, map parts, and mus­tach­es too.

Verve. No, not the record com­pa­ny, the mag­a­zine: French 1950’s. Joan Miro — The Dog Bark­ing at the Moon. One of the strangest sil­li­est, most won­der­ful prints ever. In the same issue a Cha­gall (meh), a Matisse col­lage (ooh), and  Leg­er (Leg­er always con­fus­es me.)

Animation

Yes, I’m late with it but I can’t resist show­ing you this love­ly lit­tle snip­pet. The offi­cial ani­ma­tion for Inter­na­tion­al Ani­ma­tion Day. Reminds me of explod­ing­dog cartoons.

In the Begin­ning. Anoth­er look at Gen­e­sis, with a sense of  humor and bet­ter voic­es by Katie Wendt. (NSFW — Adam is naked)

git out­ta here — the week is done.

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 magpie's shiny things

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑