magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Year: 2011 (Page 5 of 6)

Morning Linkage (Jan 12)

January 12, 2011 /

Transportation

A Her­mann visu­al from one of the Jere­mi­ah books. Post-apocalyptic moto.

Hacky-sack wheels for a lit­tle moon rover. Too cute.

I should­n’t like this bike. I real­ly should­n’t but… all that elec­tric blue and sense­less pro­por­tions. Yippee. Hon­da 305 Dream.

To make up for that — from the same web­site, the very next entry is this love­ly bob­ber based on the Dan­ish mark Nim­bus.

Science (and Food and Advice)

Final­ly a GMO food that the food­ies can get behind. Engi­neer­ing bet­ter choco­late. Srl­sy.

Good advice at that.

Art, Images, and Design

Fun­ny? Sad? Clever? Visu­al puns of Brett Weber. The moon’s trou­ble with his gold­fish is both the fun­ni­est and the saddest.

I am com­plete­ly enam­ored of the idea of “dis­or­der­ing” the struc­ture of paper, using a tat­too gun.

These huge images cre­at­ed on lay­ered panes of glass are fas­ci­nat­ing but per­haps not in a friend­ly way. Xia Xiaowan draws with col­ored pen­cil on glass plates that are then lay­ered up in floor racks. The chang­ing per­spec­tive as you walk around the piece lends an even creepi­er aura to some already pret­ty dis­turb­ing pieces. (Pos­si­ble NSFW — grotesqueries.)

Animation

From PES — The Deep. Old tools under­sea life. Wait ’til you see the angler fish.

(Much more PES. )

Morning Linkage (Jan 11)

January 11, 2011 /

Transportation

1930 Nor­ton CS1 TT, the very best kind of fam­i­ly heir­loom. Mar­cel Schoen inher­it­ed it from his uncle who was a bit of a Nor­ton nut and had pur­chased the bike in 1959 from some­one who was using it a dai­ly com­muter. Lots more details and some nice old­er pho­tos. Note that cur­rent own­er is a sil­ver­smith and there’s a Nor­ton Manx mod­el exe­cut­ed in ster­ling at the bot­tom of the post.

The man who sits next to me at break­fast wants to make one of these for him­self. Any­one caught aid­ing and abet­ting this insan­i­ty will be… um, scolded.

You knew it was just a mat­ter of time. Cops on silent bikes…

Science

I love string, and yarn, and thread, and wire, and … Except when it gets tan­gled. No, that’s not true. I love untan­gling things. Odd but there it is. But I nev­er knew that there were enzymes whose job it is to rush around inside our cells and untan­gle the strands of DNA. Too cool.

Art, Images, and Design

Pho­tog­ra­phy of aban­doned Amer­i­ca cities has made the big time news recent­ly. Mod­ern explor­ers of the urban decay have been fill­ing Flickr with their work. Visu­al News has a nice set of images with links back to the pho­to­streams of the creators.

Hal Ras­mus­son will teach you to draw pret­ty girls. Utter­ly cute and safe for work.

This is here just so I can find it again lat­er when I need it. Amaz­ing pen­cil draw­ing of flow­ers, leaves, and oth­er plant bits. And, oh, and Jacob Dahlstrup drew a skull.

Moving Image

Very ear­ly (1913) stop motion ani­ma­tion. A Christ­mas play about Father Christ­mas and the insects — sur­re­al is the best way to describe it. Nice­ly restored and updat­ed with a soundtrack.

Morning Linkage (Jan 10)

January 10, 2011 /

Transportation

One of the things I love about the back­yard and small shop bike builders is how will­ing they are to share what they’ve done. A ran­dom pic of an orange bike post­ed on a cafe rac­er site brings the pre­vi­ous­ly anony­mous builder out of the wood­work with some CAD draw­ings and build pic­tures and hints of anoth­er bike in the works. (But damn — all that orange.)
http://www.returnofthecaferacers.com/2010/12/return-of-citrus-cafe-racer.html

A look at the work of Dean Jef­feries and his role in the Hol­ly­wood car cul­ture of the 60’s. For Mus­tang lovers, Jef­feries has a hand in the phan­tom fleet of ear­ly Shelbys.

Science

I did not know that Brazil pro­duces one-third of the cof­fee on the plan­et. Oth­er inter­est­ing cof­fee facts lurk in this graphic.

Cap­puc­ci­no Coast is the name that res­i­dents of Cape Town and envi­rons give to the rare phe­nom­e­na that turns the ocean swells into a thick brown­ish sea foam. This set of pic­tures makes the descrip­tion seem entire­ly right.

Art, Images, and Design

Take the dumpy kid and one of the weird birds from UP add a lit­tle St. George, shake well. Chad King gets the mix right in this quick one-off. Quick? That’s a speed paint­ing? Okay so the rest of us suck just a lit­tle more this morning.

His “real” work is smoother and tighter, and pleas­ing­ly puz­zling.

Imaginary Transportation

Fairy tale trans­porta­tion for girls. Inspi­ra­tion.

Fur­ther inspi­ra­tion for fly­ing girls.

Animation

Lego live action/stop motion short. The cheesi­est mus­tache ever and a won­der­ful wall of lit­tle doors into oth­er peo­ple’s lives. Gig­gly fun.

out the door and knock ’em dead

Morning Linkage (Jan 7)

January 7, 2011 /

Transportation

The title of the post is more than suf­fi­cient. KLR 650 Cafe Rac­er. Just because, I suppose.

A lit­tle Cub done up by AFS Cus­tom with a bird deflec­tor? Real­ly? And well, anoth­er lit­tle Cub. I think. The orig­i­nal reports are in Chi­nese. I don’t real­ly care, I just love the bare met­al details of the “Indi­an”

Look through duck­tail and ratfinkbik­er’s flickr sets to see more awe­some bikes from the RIDEFREE show.

Anoth­er nice bike from the East. Boni­ta Apple­bum. A find from the Deus build-off. From eBay wreck­er to sweet lit­tle cafe bike. CB450 , of course. Nice inter­view with the builder, Pepe Luque.

Chic, funky, retro. There are a ton of words I can use but you’ll just have to look for your­self. A scat­ter­ing of vin­tage train cars are remade into a series of warm hap­py hotel rooms.

Art, Images, and Design

Mak­ing soda-pop at home just got a lot more appeal­ing. That is if you can still get Galaxy syrups in these cool robot shaped bot­tles.

Hopes, fears, and the con­sis­ten­cy of the human con­di­tion. All in black and white engrav­ings by Win­sor McCay.

Every­day scenes unlay­ered with anatom­i­cal details. Blue ink lay­ers over the black and white draw­ings to intro­duce the first hint of unre­al­i­ty. Then the artist peels back lay­ers of the sub­jects to reveal details of anato­my. Grace­ful and chal­leng­ing. (NSFW — nudes and bones) Michael Reedy (artist’s site also NSFW)

Animation

Okay, Ran­go, yet anoth­er CGI ani­mals doing clas­sic film clichés big stu­dio ani­ma­tion. Slat­ed for March release and no doubt going to be yet anoth­er ani­mat­ed jug­ger­naut and yet anoth­er nail in the cof­fin of the real, actu­al, human actor. Or not… The ani­ma­tors are using video of the (voice) actors as the ref­er­ence mate­r­i­al, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the emo­tion­al nuances of body pos­ture and facial expres­sions. A great new twist in the ongo­ing inte­gra­tion of CGI and live actors. Or you can just watch it for the shots of John­ny Depp doing some­thing fun­ny that is not Kei­th Richards.

have a great week­end, see you all Monday

Morning Linkage (Jan 6)

January 6, 2011 /

Transportation

Clas­sic Gulf rac­ing liv­ery has always been one of my favorites. And a bob­ber isn’t a bad thing. So here we have an H‑D bob­ber in a very nice ren­di­tion of the Gulf liv­ery. Yeah, I’ll give that one shop space.

Some dear friends are of a cer­tain age, and this Kawasa­ki Z1 cus­tom will bring sighs of recog­ni­tion. And then awe, this is every­thing the Z1 could have been if mod­ern forks and brakes, as well as mod­ern man­u­fac­tur­ing stan­dards had been avail­able then.

The fun of pho­tograph­ing a 1951 Coop­er Mk V, and a bit of the his­to­ry of the demon. Like so many oth­er rac­ers — it’s a string of bitza pro­to­types more than an actu­al “mod­el.” It’s also way too cute.

Science

I’ve seen these micro­scope images of snow flakes in a cou­ple of places. But nowhere are they as neat­ly tied to the uni­verse as here on Aki­ra the Don’s site where they are intro­duced with “Every lit­tle girl has got the galaxy inside her/ fun­ny how we always told the very same tales.”

Tools

Things I did­n’t know… A box scraper real­ly was orig­i­nal­ly used to scrape box­es or rather to scrape the labels off of box­es so that they could be reused.

Art, Images, and Design

Bright, bold, and um, gooey? Matt Mignanel­li. Way bet­ter than any of the “psy­che­del­ic” album cov­ers of our youth.

Thieves. More bikes and rid­ers done by the excel­lent French graph­ic artists at Silence TV. Clean lines, telling tonal val­ues, and miss­ing pieces.

Flat faced, elon­gat­ed crea­tures with scaly exte­ri­ors draw in black and white, Phlegm does a cou­ple of walls in Sheffield.

Hap­py mak­ing stor­age sys­tem. Bird hous­es on a pole for your kids room, erm, front hall.

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