magpie's shiny things

Transportation

A plane mys­tery solved. This (fly­ing?) derelict in Hanoi was iden­ti­fied by the fine folks at Telstar logis­tics. And we get a nice overview of the Antonov AN‑2. It’s wicked on skis.

Sweet, orange, retro, but brand new. French GIMA 125. Do Want.

The news that makes my day! SLS pro­duc­tion has start­ed. Last post until the first ones hit the US mar­ket. Promise (fingers-crossed behind my back.)

The new Icon Variant hel­met. The demo’d graph­ics are pret­ty damned teenage macho but I’m dying for the extra wide eye port and sweat wick­ing interior.

Free wall­pa­per of the vapor cone cre­at­ed at the moment of son­ic boom envelop­ing and airplane.

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Society

Never miss­ing a chance to be kawaii, these lunch box meals (ben­tos) fea­ture Wall‑E, Mario, and the Linux pen­guin. Some times the for­eign­ness of Japan makes my mind spin.

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Science

Doing sci­ence is nev­er as easy as the tidy pub­lished reports with their pret­ty graphs and charts make it look. These entries in the Round Robin (Cornell Ornithology) show just how arbi­trary the real world can be when you go look­ing for some­thing. The Godwits that Cornell Ph.D. stu­dent Nathan Senner went look­ing for on Chiloé Island, Chile failed to get his save-the-date notice and where off at some oth­er par­ty when he arrived.

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Art, Images, Design

The first of the chil­dren’s books by Jim Flora, the king of bebop illus­tra­tion, to be reprint­ed in decades. I can’t wait to get my own copy of The Day the Cow Sneezed.

New prim­i­tive in style, sly­ly mod­ern in out­look, a Kama Sutra by Barcelona born Adria Fruitos. Absolutely, utter­ly, glo­ri­ous­ly NSFW.
If you need some­thing SFW. Go to Adria’s web­site and click on most any­thing else.

Simplicissimus was a German satir­i­cal week­ly that pub­lished from 1886 through 1944. It has been dig­i­tal­ly archived by the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bilbiothek.  Cheeky, sophis­ti­cat­ed graph­ics fill each issue.For exam­ple this first issue of 1904. Or you can have any oth­er year you’d like by perus­ing the sec­ond link.

Sweet mis­cel­lany of win­ter bird images and illus­tra­tions. You’re bound to find some­thing you like. Maybe a change of desk­top wall­pa­per is in order?

It’s Friday. We need girls on bikes. (all SFW)

that’s it sin­ners just one more day and then you can go back to being saints.

Magpie’s Shiny Things has a new home and it’s very own URL.

Visit:

shinymagpie.net

for a dai­ly dose of mar­velous things.

Transportation

There’s been no SnowPocalypse in Pugetopolis this year. But don’t get too com­fy with the idea of dry(ish) sun­ny Januaries. In fact, you might want to view this edu­ca­tion­al video from BMW — how to glide grace­ful­ly across the frozen wastes in your BMW X5M — where do I sign up?
http://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/video-bmw-x6m-and-x5m-snow-action-ar84064.html

There are few things sex­i­er than Steve McQueen… Though this recre­ation of his desert rac­er (from the Great Escape) is damned close.

Oh, and just in case you need to spend some time con­tem­plat­ing the orig­i­nal bike and the cru­cial ques­tion on of “did they real­ly make that jump?”, TimesOnline brings you the sto­ry of anoth­er recre­ation — the big jump. (Video has narration.)

A whole lot of black and white good­ness. Tons of moto and moto life pic­tures, this dude loves the Nortons. The Tokyo Rockabilly Club (third down) is mak­ing me smile. (Search for Tokyo Rockers and Tunnel of Love) NSFW — pin­ups in the mix.
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Technology

There are a num­ber of games mak­ing their way around the inter­net played by typ­ing words into the Google search bar and watch­ing the sug­ges­tions that pop up. WebSeer takes it one step fur­ther by allow­ing you to com­pare the sug­ges­tions for sim­i­lar phras­es. (I tried dogs hate and cats hate.)

There are advances in heat­ed gear tech. Carbon fiber in your socks.

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Art, Architecture and Design

Some times art is just fun. What hap­pens when Katie draws chalk foot prints on side­walk in front of her apartment?

Building a hob­bit house in Wales.  Part tim­ber frame, part straw bale, part adobe, part god only knows, but a whole lot of awesome.

Polish poster design. You’ve seen it’s influ­ence in trendy adver­tis­ing and prod­uct pack­ag­ing design.

From Kirov Russia, liv­ing in a fairy tale. Cheerful inte­ri­or design based on chil­dren’s books, by Maria Yasko.

This lit­tle gig­gle — for the job seek­ers out there. A new and very effi­cient pre-screening tech­nique for engi­neers.

keep calm and car­ry on

Transportation

6 used Unicat’s. Because own­ing an RV does­n’t have to mean stick­ing to the inter­states. I’ll take what’s behind door num­ber 3.
http://www.unicatamericas.com/secondhand.html

Latest from Wrenchmonkees. A Kawi rat bike. My kind of awesome.

I’m get­ting tired of eThis and eThat, so eGrandPrix is unlike­ly to make my hit parade. On the oth­er hand rac­ing in the streets of Paris on tri­cy­cles would be enough to attract my atten­tion. TTXGP presents elec­tric cars in the City of Lights. Okay, I’ll set the TIVO.

Buell is dead, long live Buell.  The 1125R is on the pace to become a cult tuner plat­form of choice. Magpul is build­ing one they’ve named the Ronin. Worth following.

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Science

The write up is a bit slop­py but the infor­ma­tion is of very direct and per­son­al inter­est for many of us. Have the sci­en­tists been seri­ous­ly under­es­ti­mat­ing the max­i­mum size of storm waves on the Pacific Northwest Coast?

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(Old) Technology

I’ve nev­er seen this pho­to of an IBM 350 Disk Storage Unit being loaded into an plane, with a fork lift. I appre­ci­ate the fine folks at Telstar Logistics using up Google-fu to ver­i­fy the claim.

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Art, Images, and Design

A while ago I read the sto­ry that Goni Montes made  this cat illus­tra­tion was made for “The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles.” I’m hap­py to see more work by the same artist. (one or two, mild­ly NSFW)

The orig­i­nal sto­ry “The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles.” A sto­ry about hav­ing a sto­ry to tell. Well worth the half hour to read.

An Urban Sketchers two­some this morning.

From Korea, a nice sheet of botan­i­cals and an accom­pa­ny­ing sto­ry about din­ing out on live octopus.

From Paris — love­ly pen­cil and water­col­or por­traits of folks catch­ing a lit­tle rest break.

Certain pic­tures cap­ture the entire­ty of a per­son­al­i­ty. James Dean by Denis Stock. (page down)

Rock your Tuesday m’dears.

Transportation

That plane car you ordered? It’s here.

A box­er will nev­er look quite right as a cafe rac­er to me. OTOH it’s a Bonneville record hold­er. BMW R75/5.

The TTXGP race from last year is gong to be the sub­ject of a doc­u­men­tary film. Here’s the trailer.

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Technology (Cameras)

A sol­id resource for learn­ing about light­ing in pho­tog­ra­phy, most­ly using cam­era mount­ed (mount­able) flash units.

The next thing I want after I get a hold of that 50mm lens­es. A lens­es mount­ed light ring.

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Science

More sea crea­tures. The armored snail has a num­ber of tricks for thwart­ing attacks. Tricks that may make it into bat­tle armor and bike gear.

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Art, Design,

…And sci­ence — these flash cards are a lit­tle much for a three year old, but an alpha­bet with an atom instead of an apple and bina­ry code instead of a ball appeals to the very best geeky bits of myself. it is good to be an auntie.

Happy stop motion ani­ma­tion star­ring fruit and can­dy and a cork screw from Oz — where it is sum­mer. Sound.

Scenic paint­ings from a Japanese artist. The tex­tures behind the water­col­ors add unusu­al depth. I espe­cial­ly like the third image from the top, of the girls watch­ing a trail of ants in the street. I can tell you noth­ing about the artist, the site is entire­ly in Japanese.

Zombie Fair — looks like some­thing that would appear on the the cov­er of the New Yorker mag­a­zine. Until you click on the lit­tle mag­ni­fy­ing glass, that is…

Warhol, before he became an inten­tion­al car­i­ca­ture of himself.

Happy Monday my freaky darlings,