magpie's shiny things

Short List Day

Transportation

FIAT Yamaha debut total­ly bor­ing new liv­ery this weekend.

Hardy a track can­di­date but very flow­ery.

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Society

Matt Burns mom has her own def­i­n­i­tion for lol. I think I“ll share her mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion. (Hint: read the mes­sages start­ing at the bot­tom right.

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Art and Images

Women have been mak­ing impor­tant (FSVO) art for a lot longer than your high school art his­to­ry class told you. Four Venetian women from the 16th/17th cen­tu­ry are briefly profiled.

You can’t be an illus­tra­tor with­out a flash web­site. Dean MacAdams makes the wait to load a gig­gle. Cheerful and zany. A good way to start the last day of the week.

see you on Monday

Transportation

The new Augusta. Sexiest bike in the world? Maybe. Very nice engine details pix.

Old school sexy. A Guzzi, in rattle-can mat­te black.

More old school. Husky used to make bikes not just chain­saws and
sewing machines.

An entire day wast­ing day’s worth of two (and three) wheeled old
school and amuse­ment. Expect to links to this one in the future.

Oshkosh, not just for cov­er­alls. There’s the new M‑ATV com­plete with
mar­ket­ing video. Photo gallery but no order­ing info.

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Society

Facebook com­men­tary from a car­toon­ist. “all the mun­dane anecdotes,
none of the art!”

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Tech

Very tricky Trojan that steals your bank­ing cre­den­tials and then
hi-jacks your lat­er ses­sions with the bank to cov­er up the frauds.

Craig Burton takes Steve Ballmer to task for micro-managing. Kind of a
well duh moment.

Borders joins Barnes and Noble in offer­ing free wi-fi. Nice move, I’d
switched my cof­fee, mag­a­zine brows­ing, and do a bit of work routine
from Borders to B&N when B&N start­ed offer­ing free wifi. I’ll likely
switch back now. But I driect you to the quote from the PR droid at
Borders about the change. Huh? Is that English?

Ars Technica takes a look at the MSFT Security Essentials that Lee
men­tioned the oth­er day. They are impressed.

Further news on the MSFT Courier “book­let” lots more details and a few
hints at the lim­its of it’s capa­bil­i­ties. Still Want.

Life Magazine Archives comes up with an oth­er win­ner. 30 Dumbest
inven­tions. The light up tires are cool, the girl coy­ly adjust­ing a
stock­ing is a lit­tle racy for my great-grandpa but you all should find
it SFW.

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DIY

I have a chalk board refrig­er­a­tor. Some peo­ple can’t think with­out a
white board, butch­er paper and crayons make eat­ing out pos­si­ble with
sprogs. So how about a table as chalk board. The mat­te black fin­ish is
tres chic as well.

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Art, Images, and Illustration

At $250 for the issue I won’t be buy­ing Visionaire this month. But I’d
love to have this rock­ing col­lec­tion of pop-up art. Video is NSFW
(nudi­ty)

I no longer fol­low the sweet sci­ence (that went out with the ex) but I
enjoyed find­ing this por­trait of Brock Lesnar on Solon’s site.

New car­toon. Witch-knots. Passable so far. I’ll keep an eye on it.

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And Out the Door.

Paging ms rainey. Just a reminder about how dogs think.
http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/092609/chesterlist.gif

liv­ing the vida loco

Transportation

A lit­tle some­thing for my TopGear fan friends. Where’s Waldo got
noth­ing on this.

Fiat Abarth, sigh. One of my first expe­ri­ences with sleep­er was a
lit­tle Fiat 850 that ran like a scald­ed cat. Here’s what they are
doing now. Wanna ral­ly?

More extreme trans­port. In this case mov­ing the 200,000 pound antennas
for the ALMA array in Chile.

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Science

Since I already men­tioned ALMA. Have a look around the offi­cial site.
Extreme astron­o­my. (And a bonus video of the above huge transporters.)

The search for the leg­endary “dark mat­ter” has a new tool. A
scin­til­lat­ing bolome­ter. A weird lit­tle steam-punky look­ing cylinder
with a blue light crys­tal. Obligatory Golden Compass references
pro­vid­ed in the report.

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Society

Premium does­n’t mean much any more. To wit the reac­tions to the feel
and pric­ing of Sony’s PSP Go. John Biggs does a good job of
sum­ma­riz­ing the sit­u­a­tion and choos­es a pre­mi­um pic­ture to illustrate.

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Art, Images, Architecture

Facebook is get­ting new digs in Palo Alto. Can archi­tec­ture be
con­sid­ered child­ish? Ugh.

Lester Young meets William Steig. I will spend the next hour hunt­ing up an mp3 of this album. And then use the art­work as wallpaper.

A fence with the icon­ic image from the first Sci-Fi film La Voyage
dans la Lune. Art, sci­ence, metal!

Weston Teruya draws frag­ment­ed, iso­lat­ed images of, well stuff. Oddly calm­ing.

Tagged as Lowbrow/Comic Surrealism. Eh?

Real (dead) bugs + small machine parts = awe­some­ness. Check out the
small won­ders at Insect Labs.

Or, on a larg­er scale, the awe­some­ness of giant bal­loon creature
cos­tumes. Mediocre time-lapse mak­ing of video. Turn off your speakers.

don’t get eat­en by the troll under the bridge.

Transportation

I go away for a cou­ple of days and the world pops out all these amaz­ing bikes.

WrenchMonkees has been fea­tured here a bunch recent­ly. Danish design
is not gen­er­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with fab bikes — but here you are:

Cute SR500 by Speed Junkie. (Caution this is SFW, oth­er things on this
site are NSFW — you have been warned.)

On a mar­ket­ing blog. Delivery piz­za by bike — with a count­down timer
on the top box.

From Bike EXIF. A good game of name that bike. A nice look­ing ride.
(The URL gives it away — sorry.)

A new two-wheel land speed record. I’ll post addi­tion­al info as it shows up.

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Technology

Apple makes me cranky again. The Apple Software Updater puts weird
stuff on my Windows machine. Nice to know I was­n’t imag­in­ing it.

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Art and Images

Esquire Magazine had some incred­i­ble tal­ent work­ing for it from the
30s through the 60s. Here’s a col­lec­tion of cov­ers that dis­play a
range of styles and tech­niques. SFW

Take a card­board box. Unfold it. Make a char­ac­ter out of the shapes
you find. Fast and offhand.

Typography geek alert. An exam­i­na­tion of the dif­fer­ences in letter
form between Helvetica and Arial. To get you think­ing about the
sub­tleties of shape.

Art based on the Missed Connections cat­e­go­ry on Craig’s List. This
time sweet pas­tel draw­ings of imag­ined scenarios.

Old books and illus­tra­tions used to make sym­bol­ic birds that become
kites. A series of 100. I like Sputnik. You may pre­fer one of the
oth­ers. Charming.

off to the salt mines, the lot of you.

hap­py Monday

Transportation

Going fast a long time ago… A 1912 Bugatti rac­er is up for auction.

Going fast today — on two wheels. Information about Denis Manning’s
next attempt to recap­ture the 2‑wheel pis­ton pow­ered speed record.
With bonus cov­er­age of his son’s bike that may just take the 50cc two
wheel record.

Playing fast (and loose) in anoth­er way. Out gub­ber­mint is “lend­ing”
Fisker half a bil­lion to make a sporty elec­tric. Because we have to
play fair and Tesla already got it’s birth­day prezzie. Why aren’t we
loan­ing mon­ey to the mak­er of a mini-van or a sprint­er style delivery
van?
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Science

The Big Picture brings us 26 pho­tos of the awe inspir­ing red dust
storm in Sydney. Oz has always been a lit­tle strange but this is
otherworldly.

Stick fig­ure guide to AES. Just what it says. Clear, amus­ing, and educational.

“Some damned print­er car­tridge” com­pa­ny put out a series of graphics
that claim to show you what it would take to print the Internet.
Accuracy — I have no idea. Graphics — rockin’

If you don’t want to waste the reams of paper that it would take to
print the inter­net, how about these one page cook­books? The chinese
menu — 1 from col­umn a, 1 from col­umn b, 1 from col­umn c idea applied
to a vari­ety of dish­es. Mostly Indian. Very tasty. (His advice on high
alti­tude pres­sure cook­ing for groups is worth a book­mark as well.)

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Technology

SGI ris­es like a phoenix… Oh nev­er mind — here’s a mas­sive amount of
com­put­ing pow­er in a desk­top box for under 10K. Do Want.

I’m not sure why Gizmodo has got a lock on the MSFT Courier news but
here’s the first install­ment in the descrip­tion of the “book­let”
portable device from the depths of Redmond. So this is what Mr. Allard
has been up to. Do Want, even more than the SGI loot above.

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Art, Images, Illustration

Who needs world trav­el to make love­ly land­scape art? Bill Guffey sits
at home and roams the world via Google Maps Street View. A naive and
unaf­fect­ed style make these lit­tle gems.

Making a lit­tle land­scape at the base­board lev­el. Or fright­en­ing the
cat. 100+ sticky-backed ant sil­hou­ettes. Lordy do I have to say it
again today? Do Want.

If you’ve always won­dered what hap­pens to all those hub­caps left
for­lorn­ly by the side of the road, won­der no longer. The best of them
end up in the hands of Ptolemy Elrington and get made into these
fab­u­lous crea­tures. Ultimate garage art. (Jay Leno type clean and tidy
garage.)

Pub signs are cool. The Murphy house needs a pub sign. Here are some
ideas to get the cre­ative types started.

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Out the Door

We’re enjoy­ing the last glo­ri­ous hot days of sum­mer. Here’s to the CBs!

hap­py humpday