magpie's shiny things

Transportation

This Cook Custom caught my eye this morn­ing. It is far more to the
chop­per side of the cus­tom mar­ket than I am usu­al­ly drawn to but good
is good, no mat­ter the genre.

The pho­tog­ra­ph­er respon­si­ble for the above shot is Colleen Swartz at
Digital Magic BigShots. Her Bikes and Builders port­fo­lios are
excel­lent. The Girls port­fo­lio may or may not be NSFW depend­ing on
where you work — no nudes but lots of biki­ni clad women straddling
bikes. (Music warning)

Photos of our fore­fa­thers (and fore­moth­ers) with their bikes are
pre­cious treasures.

VW preps a Tuareg for the Paris-Dakar. Ignore the P‑D as ulti­mate test
of man and machine hyper­bole and just ogle the pics.

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Science

The most beau­ti­ful image of the day comes from the Woods Hole Census
of Marine Life.

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Technology (and Culture)

Ariana rants again. This time explain­ing cogent­ly why the blogs are
not a medi­um for con­ver­sa­tions. Her dig at the
owning-friends/reputation econ­o­my is nice too.

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Photography (and Culture)

The Lives They Left Behind  is an on-line explo­ration of the lives of
9 peo­ple who spent the major­i­ty of their lives insti­tu­tion­al­ized. They
lives are read from the records of the Willard Psychiatric Center in
New York and the con­tents of the suitcase(s) that they brought with
them when they entered. Beautifully pho­tographed and well documented.
Overwhelmingly melancholy.

Early Japanese stere­ograms by T. Enami. Fascinating. (And tons more
vin­tage Japanese images in Okinawa Soba’s photostream.)

To get an idea of what these might look like if you had a proper
view­er you can look at these headache induc­ing sim­u­la­tions.

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Art, Images, and Design

Bonus time-waster Saturday edition.

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Transportation

Go Karts are the ulti­mate form of rac­ing. But grownups look a lit­tle sil­ly squished into their tiny frames. Just ask Schumacher and Piquet.

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The World.

Gawker pull quote of the day. Tina on Lisa and Sarah. (Put the cof­fee down.)

And those tricky Canadians are men­ac­ing our neigh­bor­hoods again.

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Stuff (on my Christmas List)

Lego. Paper. Possibilities.

Not quite the car­niv­o­rous ide­al but baby vam­pire rings? Yup, that’ll do nice­ly. They come as a pair, but who to share with?

Not an Powerbook own­er but I know some­one this stick­er that takes advan­tage of the glow­ing apple would suit. vinylville has oth­er designs as well.

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Culture

Elvis Costello’s Spectacle is one of the fresh­est music shows for old geeks like me. A new sea­son is start­ing up on Dec 9. On the same day you’ll be able to buy a box set of the first sea­son. (Maybe this should have been filed in On my Christmas List?)

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Art, Design, Architecture

Most of these clever stair cas­es would­n’t pass code inspec­tion any­where in Pugetopolis. Yet anoth­er rea­son to be a pirate builder.

Today’s street art begins with a mur­al in Oaxaca by Argentinian Gualicho.

More walls by Gualicho here. (One or two mon­sters may be con­sid­ered NSFW.)

Dan23 has a sten­cil based style that has got­ten him com­mis­sions for wall decor in sev­er­al venues. His por­traits are espe­cial­ly nice.

Shag has a show open­ing at the Corey Herford Gallery. 4 pieces are fea­tured on his web­site. So 50s, so bebop. Yeah, yeah. Mad Men and all that. This is the real deal.

Ty Wilkins has a cou­ple of new illos. This fox looks like a clever fel­low. Spend some time with his more com­mer­cial work as well. (Click ‘Browse’ in the header.)

Urban sketch­ers for this week­end. SF Chinatown described as “the most European” part of the city. Whatever. The black and white scenes sketched at night ring true none-the-less.

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Animation and Video

Live Music is the first “crowd sourced” ani­ma­tion. Very much in the clas­sic Disney style. There’s a brief expla­na­tion of how the process worked and the trail­er for the­atri­cal release of the short. I’ll look for the full ver­sion on-line when it releas­es; chances are not good that I’m not going to pay to see Planet51 just to see this in a theater.

Stop motion and paper craft make this grue­some lit­tle dit­ty. Slightly more real­is­tic than South Park grue­some — there are heads used as soc­cer balls here.

Unicornfish chas­er. Just what it says — some­thing to cleanse the reti­nas after Videogioco.

And that’s your Saturday after­noon gone.

Transportation

Zagato. A name that makes you think of per­for­mance or ele­gance. But
this lit­tle gem? Nope. Not at all. Dang cute e‑v though.

Tom Swift is best known around here for lend­ing his name to a vile
word game. But he rode some nifty equip­ment as well. At least
accord­ing to this book cover.

From Australia. A twin cafe rac­er by Deus ex Machina. When you’re done
ogling the beau­ty hov­er over “select a gallery” to find more goodies.
NB Reader’s wives isn’t what you expect. SFW

First it was the pock­et pyrom­e­ter, then the hel­met cam. Now the pock­et
radar. Coming to CES this spring.

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Design

The icon­ic sil­hou­ette of the coca-cola bot­tle is instantly
rec­og­niz­able. Except that there was­n’t just one shape. A his­to­ry of
the con­tain­er. Which one is ‑the- coke bot­tle for you?

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Science (?)

NASA has blogs and pages and inter­ac­tive por­tals to every­thing. But
noth­ing quite as wry as this blog from Maksim Suraev who’s currently
resid­ing on the ISS. This demon­stra­tion of the lat­est interstellar
space weapon­ry… (Translated from the orig­i­nal Russian.)

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Art, Images, Illustration

Side note:
I’m begin­ning to have seri­ous doubts about the use­ful­ness of the web
for dis­play­ing an overview of an artist’s work. I find something
inter­est­ing on an aggre­ga­tor site (like MyModernMet, Designlenta, et
al.), go to artist’s site, and then end­ing up link­ing back to the
refer­ring source because they have cho­sen the best of the artist’s
work and are dis­play­ing it at a view­able size. Giving you all the best
chance to decide if you’d like to click through and nav­i­gate the
haz­ards of the artist’s site to look at more.

Ripo does 10 days of BBC head­lines. More sign painter than graffiti
artist, at least here.

Urban sketch­ers in pas­tels this morn­ing. The High Line park in NYC.
Love the crowd.

More art com­ing from graf­fi­ti and sten­cil work. This is a nice montage
of Eyeone’s work. Click through for more.

Everyone knows that Annie Leibovitz is one of my favorite
pho­tog­ra­phers. For the December issue of Vogue (US) she’s done Hansel
and Gretel. I loved her Alice in Wonderland. I hate this. You?

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Video

Fluorescent Hill did video for NASA (not the space peo­ple, the music
project) Toms Waits, Kool Keith, ani­ma­tion, and an inter­view with the
cre­ators. Wowza.

“Tarboy, cre­at­ed by James Lee and Hania, is a ster­ling exam­ple of
flash ani­ma­tion. A brisk, epic short film, it is a per­fect­ly packaged
cap­sule of awe­some. A fan­tas­tic robot fla­vored, after­noon pick-me-up.”
Because I could not begin to describe this any bet­ter… (Coilhouse)

Transportation

1984 — the movie. Did you real­ize those thought police bikes were Vincents? Additional links to the back sto­ry on Cafe Racer Soc.
http://ottonero.blogspot.com/2009/11/bbiwy.html

Another e‑bike. This one with ped­als. I“m not sure where this more push-bike than moped fits into the hier­ar­chy of vehi­cles but it is sweet looking.

Keeping you up to date on the police cruis­er in the rear view mir­ror game. The Crown Vic will be no more; Ford announces (a few details about) it’s new in 2011 purpose-built police vehi­cle. I’m sure most of us will con­tin­ue to have that auto­mat­ic “am I legal?” reac­tion to the Crown Vic pro­file for decades.

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Tech

Developed as a mil­i­tary tool, Xflex wall rein­force­ment is meant to pro­tect the occu­pants of build­ings from blasts by rein­forc­ing the walls. No doubt it will see mil­i­tary ser­vice but I’m bet­ting they sell a lot to civil­ian ser­vices that need to pro­tect assets from hur­ri­cane and tor­na­do dri­ven debris.

Fitness mon­i­tor­ing is get­ting more com­pact and cheap­er. The Fitbit is the size of a mon­ey clip and only costs $100. PC down­loads and track­ing soft­ware mon­i­tor exer­cise lev­els and sleep pat­terns. Pure curios­i­ty makes it near­ly irresistible.

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Objects

I spend a lot of time think­ing about eggs. Not real­ly, but they are a con­stant part of my life along with the 13 hens that pro­duce them. This 1930s(?) counter top egg hold­er takes up a lit­tle too much space but it charms anyhow.

Slightly less charm­ing but more desir­able. Doris Day Duke’s shoot­ing gallery. Seriously, tak­en from her base­ment, sold for more than 40K. (That’s for the cor­rec­tion Debb!)

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Art, Images, Animation

Amy C points to Paul Jacoulet’s Japanese inspired wood­cuts. Serene. (NSFW)

Pure tex­ture in photographs.

Image 5 of the slide show of the work of Johanna Velasco. (SFW except for one baby butt.)

Tim Burton delights me. Concept sketch­es from the last 15 years.

Spy. Spanish street artist with a taste for sar­casm and an under­stand­ing of the ephemer­al nature of art.

Wood block like illos of the char­ac­ters of the Western and Chinese Zodiacs. Much good­ness on this site.

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Creativity

Ariana Osborne is one of my heroes. Technology is her play­ground and quirky irony her usu­al fil­ter for look­ing at the world. Yesterday how­ev­er she was hav­ing a cranky day. The start­ing point is her recent pro­duc­tion of a POD book (Sifting Sands) for Warren Ellis. The burr under her sad­dle: whingers who has 19 excus­es for why they can’t make their own book; the chief one being “but I’m not Warren Ellis” Her come­backs are snap­py and point­ed — as in sharp stick. Because all of us need to remind­ed on occa­sion to get off-ass and do something.

More gen­tly there is Elizabeth Gilbert’s Ole at TEDTalks.

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Animation

An oldie, today needs a gen­tle out the door. Cat Man Do.

That’s it my dears. More than half way through the week.

-lara-

Transportation

Because I just could­n’t help myself. I’ll inflict as many pic­tures of this beast on you all as I can find. This one comes with the price tag though. ~le sigh~ Not even after the manda­to­ry “three years for depre­ci­a­tion” wait am I going to be able to afford one.

Slightly more afford­able is this new 2+2 Lotus Evora. And, all of you vehi­cle web­site design­ers out there. This is how you use flashy/silverlighty/interactive media to sell a car. Wicked quick load­ing, clear nav­i­ga­tion points, and NO music. Now if we could just fig­ure out a way to book­mark bits we’d be good to go.

Uh, there are still a few IceHoles among my loy­al read­er­ship? Right? KTM Adventure ICE. Wicked (That’s the same adjec­tive twice in one post — sorry.)

Cross-over item for the day. Mini (Cooper) does anoth­er art project. The Wash-Me book.

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Tech and Gadgets

The Ars Technica hol­i­day gift guide is out.

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Society and Culture

The rush for H1N1 vac­cines is cre­at­ing long lines of irri­ta­ble folks. In Quebec the Minster of Health looked south to Orlando and the Kingdom of the Mouse for help in man­ag­ing the crush.

Over at Boing-Boing Maggie Koerth-Baker sum­ma­rizes Asit Biswas’ speech to last mon­th’s Nobel Conference. Is There Really a Water Shortage? His take on the prob­lem of pro­vid­ing clean drink­ing water to every­one on earth is a vast depar­ture from the usu­al rhetoric of scarci­ty. Yes, drink­able water is scarce but water itself, maybe not. Video of the full pre­sen­ta­tion and the Q&A are linked to at the bottom.

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Images, Art, and Architecture

More water. This time sur­round­ing the restau­rant at Conrad Maldives Rangali Island Hotel in Rangalifinolhu, Maldives. Underwater din­ing.

The Eugene (OR) Science Factory Children’s Museum is get­ting more new art. Alice Feagan pro­vid­ed these charm­ing under­wa­ter scenes. (First five images in the gallery.)

Another ani­mal gig­gle. This one is all over the ‘net this morn­ing. Cutest cream­er ever. I’m only dis­ap­point­ed that this was­n’t the full size milk jug that it looked like in the first pic­tures I saw. There are a lot more chuck­les to be had on Fred and Friends.

Adam Korford, aka Apelad of Laugh-Out-Loud Cats car­toon fame is doing Limericks for Naughty Children. Snicker.

Another best of the day from Urban Sketchers. The strid­ing blue lady rocks me.

Color and pat­tern in paint. Emmett Kerrigan on Colour Lovers.

It was a tossup between this and the pitch­er for the out the door moment today. I’m feel­ing a lit­tle more Lady MacBeth than Emily Litella so here yah go.