magpie's shiny things

Transportation

Monday Morning Jump Start. First use of a Lambo to video/chase another
Lambo? Turn it up.

Sweet lit­tle essay on very ear­ly rac­ing. A cou­ple of nice pics too.

Wrench Monkees is teas­ing with peepshow pic­tures of the next cou­ple of
projects.

Very nice retro restora­tion of a Honda CB450.

Book end­ing the black Lamborghini, this CBR900 in black, black, and more black.

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Culture and Fashion

A curat­ed and anno­tat­ed col­lec­tion of 19th Century images of women.
Beauty, Virtue, and Vice.

A 70’s use of the female image to sell gad­gets. Like you thought this
was a new thing. The image is SFW. The CG page men­tions porn sites.
Any links you fol­low from here are like­ly VNSFW.

Zombies offi­cial­ly jumped the shark, maybe sev­er­al sharks, when they
get used as props in a Harper’s Bazaar fash­ion shot.

Today’s shoe link.

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Art and Images

God Dog. Nuff said.

Work done with a palette knife in oils is not grab­bing the attention
of the image and design hunters like it should. These Leonid Afremov’s
will remind you why the tech­nique deserves to be revived.

An ABC of cities drawn from Google street view images. Lesser known
cities are cho­sen so the images may be new to you.

Vania Zouravliov works in ink and pen­cil. Eastern European influences
com­bine with mod­ern graph­ic nov­el sto­ry telling to cre­ate qui­et­ly
seduc­tive images. Some NSFW.

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Definition of Cool.

Newman.

have a decent Monday darlings,

Transportation

The first road cer­ti­fied elec­tric motor­cy­cle. $9,950 will get you the
Zero S or Zero all nice and street legal. There are some nifty tax
breaks as well.

The BMW C1 is back. As an elec­tric. Still laughable.

Concepts cars you’re like­ly to see at the Tokyo motor show this year.
Lots of lit­tle elec­tric urban run-abouts. I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by the
retro-futuristic feel of some of the interiors.

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DIY Halloween Edition

Because its Friday and I know you all are plan­ning on spend­ing the
week­end doing up the home­stead for the upcom­ing festivities.

Autonomous rov­ing pump­kin!

Cheaper than a real one. A paper skull for you mantelpiece.

Ultimate pump­kin chuckin’. Today we bomb Carnation, tomor­row the moon.

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Science

We bombed the moon. This may have been a mis­take. The com­ments are priceless.

Just so you don’t miss it the .wav file of Marvin scold­ing humanity
for it’s aggres­sive attack.

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Art and Images

The man who arguably invent­ed mod­ern fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phy is gone. RIP
Irving Penn.

Jim Flora has a be-bop sen­si­bil­i­ty that I love. I swear the drum­mer on
this cal­en­dar is Krupa.

The LOC has put anoth­er set of dig­i­tized images on-line. World War I
posters from coun­tries on both sides of the con­flict. Detailed
search­ing is avail­able but start­ing here with the select­ed examples
will fill up your morn­ing cof­fee break.

Apropos our favorite cock­tail par­ty/mailing list.

hap­py fri­day darlin’s

Transportation

Tea cer­e­monies are not some­thing we often asso­ciate with cus­tom bikes.
Maybe we should.

Old illus­tra­tions of motor­cy­cle from vin­tage books. I’ve already got
an email in to my fav pur­vey­or of old book pr0n.

On auc­tion at Bonhams. A 1954 BSA motor­ized tan­dem bicycle.

More ped­al bike hot­ness. Belt dri­ve town­ie. Almost enough to make me
move to a nice Kirkland con­do. Almost.

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DIY

Feeling old school today. There was  time when wiring was managed
with­out the help of the plas­tic zip-tie. Linemen and oth­ers created
func­tion­al beau­ty with cable-lacing. I’ll be in my stu­dio lat­er today
try­ing this out.

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Art and Images

More old school. Chrome logos from the past. His ‘spas­tic website’
award is in the mail.

Art Nouveau and hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry go well togeth­er. Really. Jean de
Bosschere does Weird Islands, and a lot of oth­er things.

Silly draw­ings for Marmite ads. Proving that a sense of humor can be
an asset in adver­tis­ing. Scroll to num­ber 3 for the dinosaur. Pretty
please?

To hell with Hooters. Titillation is actu­al­ly sexy in these black and
whites of “old” Las Vegas.

that should make the wait for Friday just a lit­tle easier.

Transportation

Sweet CL350. Just because I like pret­ty things.

Sometimes it’s inter­est­ing to look at our sport from the outsider’s
per­spec­tive. Hypermotard is indeed a stu­pid word.

I keep find­ing cool insect based art and artifacts.

A lit­tle help for those dull stripes and such that lit­ter the
road­ways. Somewhat clever.

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Society

I once had a client who spent a lot of mon­ey employ­ing peo­ple in DC to
read the Federal Register to make sure that they did­n’t miss any
impor­tant bits of rule mak­ing. The FR is now xml enhanced and it’s
pos­si­ble to build RSS feeds of the results for spe­cif­ic queries. Do
you need to know every thing your gov­ern­ment has to say about bee hive
inspec­tion sched­ules? Daily updates!

The judi­cia­ry isn’t so open mind­ed about it’s pub­lic records. For
years PACER has been the way to get copies of fed­er­al court records.
At 8 cents/page. There are ongo­ing attempts to cap­ture these records
and move them into pub­licly search­able and free data­bas­es. The FBI
cares. Really.

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Literature

No need to read the lat­est genre fic­tion. A sum­ma­ry of all the
pos­si­ble plots is now avail­able. Chinese menu style plot gen­er­a­tor.
Snork.

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Art, Illustration, Images

Raul Allen’s work is much dif­fer­ent in tone from the loud, simplified
look cur­rent­ly in favor for illus­tra­tion work. This por­trait of a
woman is moody, detailed, and not false.

Watercolor and ink area sub­tle and dif­fi­cult to mas­ter. Charmagne Coe
uses the flow­ing uncon­trol­lable nature of the col­ors to good effect.

Another unlink­able flashy mon­ster. But try to fol­low along. On the
left side, click on the scream­ing girl. When the three books covers
appear, click on the left-most (chuck­ling what’s it) Then click on
Watch the Cartoon at the bot­tom. Wood block car­toon­ing. Very cool.
(audio vol­ume warning)

Robots and Monsters, you sup­ply three words and one of sev­er­al artists
draws you a cus­tom mon­ster. Your dona­tion goes to sup­port a good
cause, cur­rent­ly water.org. The best part is the time you get to spend
com­ing up with the per­fect three words.

Transportation

Apropos recent dis­cus­sions of police iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Here’s a gallery
of pix of the new bogey. Chevy Caprice cop cruis­er. Look closely,
com­mit to memory.

Can’t quite put my fin­ger of the words I’m look­ing for to descripbe
this one. Something about cats or dogs and break­fast. Why does fast
have to be so ugly?

Cute as a bug and with the prop­er num­ber of wheels. (3)

Another gallery. This time of tri­als bikes. Check the fourth image
down. A Guzzi tri­aler? Well I’ll be…

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Design

Heavy on the archi­tec­ture this morning.

I have no idea how this amp sounds. But it looks delicious.

Another phal­lic homage to cor­po­rate ego. The tallest build­ing in
Europe may go up in St.Petersburg cour­tesy of Gazprom’s oil unit OAO
Gazprom Neft. Just plain wrong.

Unicorn chas­er for the above. A guid­ed tour of St Petersburg on the
occa­sion of it’s 300th anniver­sary. (mod­est music)

And as a salve for the loud, child­ish archi­tec­ture of the new Facebook
digs from last week. This set of offices cre­at­ed out of an old bowl­ing
alley.

More mod­ern archi­tec­ture. Square with cor­ru­gat­ed met­al exte­ri­ors. Soon
we may all be liv­ing in con­vert­ed ship­ping con­tain­ers. This is what we
hope they’ll look like.

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Images

Sexiest SFW you have ever seen. Anyone else want to learn to tan­go?

Lyrically beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions of fly­ing machines, jets, and rockets.

From Terrible Yellow Eyes. Not the first John Coulter piece I’ve
fea­tured. (And yes, it does cause a dou­ble take every time I see his
name.,or maybe our JC has a secret identity?)

Go to Robots and Mosters. Order a cus­tom robot/monster draw­ing.
Support a good cause. Own the coolest pet pic­ture ever.

Happy Monday my darlings.