magpie's shiny things

Transportation

Boeing’s Scan Eagle UAV gets put to civil­ian use dur­ing the Alaska
wild fire sea­son. Video of the launch and recov­ery with infra-red fire
spot­ting footage. Verra cool.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/firefighting-uav/

This is the most unfor­tu­nate col­or scheme for a bike I have ever seen.
Even John Deere gets the accent col­or for a green vehi­cle righter than
this. There’s a link for the real™ paint scheme in the blurb if you
need an eye cleanser.
http://www.bikeexif.com/bimota-borsalino

Aaron Hughes designed a sta­tion wag­on for Ford dur­ing a college
intern­ship. It looks sus­pi­cious­ly Volvo like. I like seeing
spec­u­la­tive vehi­cle design that is plau­si­ble. His oth­er sets are good
too.
http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_set.asp?individual_id=72279&set_id=195409

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Design

The pint glass is an endan­gered species. The plas­tic replace­ment is
dread­ed and loathed. Vert Design, work­ing for Fosters, has made a
fair­ly suc­cess­ful ver­sion. Here’s a descrip­tion of the glass and the
think­ing that went into it’s design.
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/design_tales_designing_a_successful_plastic_pint_glass_14428.asp

Transistor radios were the iPods of the day and exhib­it­ed the same
for­ward look­ing design.  This flickr stream has 100s of pho­tos of
tran­sis­tor radios. Awesome.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/transistor_radios/

The Museum of Broken Relationships is a Croatian project documenting
bro­ken rela­tion­ships through arti­facts. It’s weird and not terribly
com­pelling (to me.) But this user inter­face for brows­ing the online
col­lec­tion has me fascinated.
http://www.brokenships.com/user.php?id=367

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Bacon

A Top 10 list of pigs. Contains my two favorites.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/32909

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Images and Illustration

Theodoru has new pic­tures on the front page. Flash makes it impossible
to link to my fav. 7th from the top. This is what cre­ation really
looked like. I’m smiling.
http://theodoru.com/

Ramadan has begun and The Big Picture brings us pho­tographs. Check #33
for a breath­tak­ing shot of the moon. And all the desserts you can
dream of.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/ramadan_2009.html

The waifish fash­ion mod­el is one of our soci­ety’s sick­ness­es. Crystal
Renn was one and now she’s not. She talks about get­ting back to being
her­self in this arti­cle. (Yes, I agree with you all that a size 12 is
not a “plus” size for some­one that tall.)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hmWn-7qRbH26aAmvjlHs_W04ddrwD9ABCDTO0

Just to prove that Crystal Renn is gor­geous here are two pho­to sets. NSWF.

Matt Jones. I’m hav­ing trou­ble find­ing the orig­i­nals of these. NSFW — nudes
http://kier-cs.blogspot.com/2009/03/crystal-renn-by-matt-jones.html

From a Polish? site. The guy/gal has great taste in both women and
pho­tographs. NSFW — nudes.
http://bbw.blox.pl/2009/04/Crystal-Renn.html

I’m out­ta here til Monday. Have a great weekend.

Transport

Did you know that the wheel­ie was invent­ed by some guy on bicy­cle who
was try­ing to fright­en a horse? Okay it’s just a draw­ing but it’s a
giggle.
http://thelittlechimpsociety.com/barrett/the-day-the-wheelie-was-made-by-barrett/

OMG that’s fug­ly. Autotopia cap­tion con­test. And the cap­tions are lame.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/wtf-caption-veritas/

OMG that is *not* fug­ly. Swoon.
http://www.thecoolist.com/the-1937-bmw-r7-restored-to-perfection/

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Objects of Design

There were eight win­ners in the elec­tolux design con­test. The only
three good ones are here. Le Petit Prince is charm­ing and plausible.
The dish­wash­er is cool­er than mine. (Difficult to do.) Bonus dumb
trend chas­ing design included.
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/electrolux_design_lab_2009_finalists_14401.asp

Lego and food. You might see lit­tle 2x2 brick short­bread cook­ies at
the Boxing Day Party this year.
http://shop.lego.com/ByCategory/Product.aspx?p=852530&cn=13&d=443

Pizza rules the world on Saturday nights. Now you can rule your pizza
with chop­per styled piz­za cut­ters. Really. Click images for bigger.
That is a com­mand, not a request. (Attitude baby.)
http://www.frankieflood.com/objects.html

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Technology

Make a vac­u­um flu­o­res­cent dis­play clock. The work­man­ship on the model
for this DIY is enviable.
http://www.ladyada.net/make/icetube/

Early large tele­scopes and some of the images cap­tured through them.
The fact that this is a col­lec­tion of pic­tures with very little
expli­ca­tion lends mystery.
http://butdoesitfloat.com/67562

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Pictures

This one’s espe­cial­ly for myJim.  Kit Karter was a one-off com­ic about
a go kart daffy boy. Ignore the name in the link — the poster admits
to a typo.
http://cosseyedcyclops.blogspot.com/2009/08/comic-kit-karson.html

The cov­er and an inside spread from the chil­dren’s book “Night Cars” I
agree with the poster about the spe­cial­ness of the illustrations.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/26/night-cars-gorgeous.html

Jorge Mascarenha’s por­traits of girls. Haunting. Some dis­turb­ing, some
inspir­ing. All uneasi­ly familiar.
http://jorgemascarenhas.bigcartel.com/

Danboard is a card­board ver­sion of the char­ac­ter Danbo. 365 (more or
less) pho­tographs of the card­board mas­cot doing com­mon and odd things.
http://www.fubiz.net/galleries/set/365-days-of-danboard/

Impossible cool. Cash.
http://theimpossiblecool.tumblr.com/post/171431564/cash

Transportation

The scram­bler is a great idea for a week­end toy. Here Touratech
cre­ates a mod­ern take on the theme using a BMW F800.
http://www.bikeexif.com/bmw-f800scrambler

Texting and dri­ving is a bad idea. How can any­one think that building
traf­fic mashups while on the go is a good idea.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/two-new-iphone-apps-go-beyond-navigation/

———————

Science

Sunspots and solar mag­net­ic changes fas­ci­nate me. That the things that
hap­pen on such a small (rel­a­tive) scale on the sun can have such huge
effects on earth seems improb­a­ble. We may get to have out own little
ice age.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/08/another-little-ice-age-solar-activity-and-climate-change.ars

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Technology

Next time (huh?) I end up with an arm in cast I’m going to demand one
of these. I’m think­ing the pur­ple camo is nice.
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/08/24/exos-arm-brace-has‑c.html

One the eBook front. The race is on and now we all have to live
through a cou­ple of years of com­pet­ing devices and for­mats as well as
the attempts by var­i­ous com­pa­nies to wrest exclu­sive distributing
deals out of pub­lish­ers. Ad nau­se­um. Here’s the latest.

Flat World Knowledge a pub­lish­er of text books just fin­ished up a beta
test of a pro­gram that lets you read that 400 page tome for free
on-line. You can get more portable/useful ver­sions for a price. (Still
below that of the tra­di­tion­al dead-tree ver­sion.) They are striving
for device independence.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/flat-world-schools-textbook-publishers-with-free-web-editions.ars

Two new devices:

Irex will be bring­ing out an e‑reader to go with the new Barnes and
Noble e‑book store.
http://mobilefactor.org/coming-irex-and-barnes-noble-to-launch-new-e-book-reader/

Sony’s newest read­ers launched this morn­ing. Some include wire­less and
one ver­sion has a touch screen. I’m not entire­ly clear on what the
Library Finder does. I’ll let you know when I know. Crunch Gear’s live
cov­er­age of the announcements.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/08/25/sony-announce-the-wireless-daily-edition-ereader/

Now that we have so many choic­es in read­ing devices here’s a list of
sources for free books. Often you get what you pay for but a free copy
of Sherlock Holmes can make an O’Hare lay­over bearable.
http://www.rotorblog.com/2009/03/09/top-25-free-e-books-sites-the-definitive-list/

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Home Ec and Some Silliness.

There’s no way Future President Moss can eat enough baby goop to keep
us all in baby food jars for work­shop stor­age. I found this exam­ple of
using those CD spin­dle packs for shop storage.
http://woodworkingextras.blogspot.com/2009/05/good-bye-baby-food-jars.html

Speaking of sprogs. If you’re the one in cubi­cle land with­out an
excuse to leave ear­ly on Friday for junior’s soc­cer game here’s a
solution.
http://www.theofficekid.com/index.html

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Art, Design, and Popular Culture

In Philadelphia 50 walls fac­ing the Market Street Elevated will be
paint­ed with love letters.
Cyanatrendland has a descrip­tion of the project.
http://cyanatrendland.com/2009/08/24/a‑love-letter-for-you-street-art/
The blog fea­tur­ing all of the paint­ings (in progress) is here.
http://www.aloveletterforyou.com/

Just as soon as they come out with the bik­er ver­sion of these little
desk­top friends I’m get­ting one. Maybe more.
http://collect3d.com/news/beit-dudes/

I’m feel­ing gen­er­ous toward my Y enhanced friends this morning.

Mort Kunstler did cov­ers for the men’s adven­ture mag­a­zines in the
60’s. Wicked awe­some and SFW. Though gen­er­al­ly lurid and tacky. Yum.
http://www.americanartarchives.com/kunstler.htm

Almost SFW — depends in whether you could get away with the Stihl
gi’me cal­en­dar. George Petty’s 1947 cal­en­dar girls. Giggle-icious.
http://cyanatrendland.com/2009/08/24/george-petty-curvy-pin-up-from-1947/

And for those of us XXs. A brief arti­cle on the flap­per phe­nom­e­na. The
vin­tage pho­tos are worth a look.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/32657

enjoy!

Technology

Just in case there’s any­one who has­n’t seen this infor­ma­tion on
extend­ing the win7 tri­al period.
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/how-to-use-windows-7-for-free-for-120-days-legally.ars

There’s a new lap­top in my future. I just wish it could be this one. A
built in graph­ic tablet would mean one less piece of hard­ware to try
to find a space for when I’m on the road.
http://www.whitezine.com/en/design/laptop-concept-for-designers-and-illustrators.html

———————–

Transportation

Ilmor is work­ing on a 5 stroke, 3 cylin­der engine. Sort of. I need
time to hunt up videos before I“ll claim to under­stand how this works.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/five-stroke-engine/

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Science

Why hav­ing a cou­ple of drinks with the plan­ning ses­sion won’t help you
meet your goals. I think we all intu­itive­ly know that the things you
say you’re going to do dur­ing the Saturday night bull ses­sion don’t
amount to much on Monday morn­ing but now sci­ence is set­ting out to
prove it.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/vodkagoals/

Tossing a coin is sub­tly not as fair as your old­er broth­er told you it was.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/08/non-randomness.html

An mys­te­ri­ous cloud for­ma­tion in Queensland Australia. Look like rolls
of cot­ton batting.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/morninggloryclouds/

A TV sta­tion in Cleveland man­ages to top our own King5 for heinously
fear mon­ger­ing report­ing. That is until it becomes clear that someone
is pulling off a bril­liant farce. Do you think the news director
caught on to it before the seg­ment hit the air?
http://www.misscellania.com/miss-cellania/2009/8/22/backyard-bear-report.html

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Intellectual Property and Copyright

Nominee for the best worst use of copy­right. How doc­tors (or rather
their rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment lack­eys) are using the DMCA take down
pro­vi­sions to remove bad reviews from rat­ings sites.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090328/1445494290.shtml

A nice sum­ma­ry of the State of Union with respect to the Google Books
set­tle­ment and the many chal­lenges to it. Microsoft and Amazon have
clear motives for their objec­tions but that does­n’t inval­i­date their
point that Google seems to have made a land grab for the rights to
books that are out of print.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/microsoft-amazon-join-opposition-to-google-books-settlement.ars

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Visual Arts

Not the same as the Google land grab but a col­lec­tion of old map based
games and puz­zles. By old I mean the first was pub­lished in 1680.
http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2009/08/puzzle-and-game-maps.html

A recent dis­cus­sion of low­er prices wines on this list yield­ed several
rec­om­men­da­tions for the “the label is pret­ty” school of wine shopping.
Here’s a selec­tion of wine labels and pack­ages that would qualify.
http://www.thecoolist.com/amazing-wine-labels-30-creative-and-unique-wine-label-designs

A love­ly gold­fish paint­ing. Click on the fishy for bigness.
http://thejasminedragon.deviantart.com/art/a‑fish-a-fish-a-fishy-oo-98009668

I don’t real­ly dig the pic­ture but the fact that it was cre­at­ed on an
iPhone kind of makes the iPhone look like less of a sil­ly idea.
http://insomnio.org/post/170004968/a‑walk-in-the-park-created-on-an-iphone-using

I love the soft old school look of these illus­tra­tions by the Russian
Dmitry Ligay.
http://www.evasion.cc/blog/comments/illustration-dmitry-ligay/

Last night Elvis Costello made a Sean Connery joke. Almost too easy, I
admit. As an anti­dote here’s a clas­sic Connery pic.
http://theimpossiblecool.tumblr.com/post/168151304/connery

Until tomor­row campers,

Tech and Design

These solar pan­els make alien flower art at night. Austin, what you
been drinkin’?
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/sunflower_leeds_14354.asp

Seattle has a cou­ple of aban­doned big box stores. Other parts of the
coun­try have more. Many of them have clear or translu­cent roofs.
Here’s a pro­pos­al to reuse those spaces for food pro­duc­tion. Instead
of buy­ing con­sumer goods made in China we would be able to buy food
grown locally.
http://www.re-burbia.com/2009/08/01/a‑new-business-model-a-productive-suburb/

I think I like the pic­ture of the lit­tle girl with her bug catcher
pen­dant more than the object itself. I know sev­er­al sprogs who would
love one of these portable biol­o­gy labs though.
http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2009/08/how-to_bug_catcher_necklace.html?CMP=OTC-5JF307375954

Silly is a good thing ear­ly in the morn­ing. I don’t drink bagged tea
but I’d fall off my chair gig­gling if one of these dec­o­rat­ed tea bags
appeared in my cup.
http://www.holycool.net/2009/08/tea-party-series-from-donkey-products.html

——————–
Images

A mixed up set of pic­tures today.

From Shanghai, Maleonn cre­ates elab­o­rate sets and cos­tumes for his, I
like the term used in the blurb, fables. This series of circus
per­form­ers car­ries an almost cin­e­mat­ic over­tone. Click through to his
web­site for much more.
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/crazy-chinese-circus-maleonn

From Russia, more gen­tle, apocalyptic-cartoon illus­tra­tion. Anton Semenov.
http://designlenta.com/2009/08/19/anton-semenov-gloom82/

Brandon Bloomaert (Germany) builds crea­tures from waste paper and then
stages scenes that remind one of old vaca­tion snaps.
http://www.diskursdisko.de/2009/08/brandon-blommaert-ecostation/

A very dif­fer­ent look­ing almost sten­ci­lesque set of illus­tra­tions from
the French design­er Maloo. A cou­ple are NSFW.
http://www.pixelelement.com/pretty-cool-illustrations-by-maloo/

A series of stills from the movie Metropolis along with a nice summary
of the movie’s style cues.
http://butdoesitfloat.com/60098

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Misc Cultural Bits

Too sweet. Life size Candyland game being built in Lombard St.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/19/life-size-candyland.html

The impos­si­ble Cool brings us Bud Ekins. The guy who jumped the bike
in the Great Escape. (look him up in wikipedia)
http://theimpossiblecool.tumblr.com/post/165764519/ekins

Finally, why can’t my school trips have end­ed with all the nasty girls
get­ting eat­en by a croc­o­dile? Revenge by paper automaton.
http://www.cool4cats.biz/page16.htm