magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: birds

Morning Linkage (Oct 28)

October 28, 2010 /

Transportation

Hel­mut Fath’s mul­ti­ple cham­pi­onship win­ning URS side­car recent­ly sold for more than $150K. Worth it? There cer­tain­ly is enough his­to­ry here to make it interesting.

The log­ic of the pick­ings and place­ments of these 50 best rac­ing liv­er­ies will baf­fle you. Until you real­ize that each place­ment had to had a video. (Not true, a few don’t.) Try the 1988 Porsche rac­ing in the 24 hours of Le Mans — with the fog addled start. Or maybe the 15 sec­onds of pure son­ic joy to had Par­nel­li Jone’s Boss 302.  All the rest are in the box on the right. Just don’t look at #50. Tic tac.

New Nor­ton Commando- ditch the lit­tle idjit screen, and pony up for the wire wheels and the sport­ing exhaust. Then get the hell out­ta my way. (Oh and tell the dude on the video to shut up. m’kay?)

Cute Natural World

Big cats love the post Hal­loween gro­cery clean-up. And who knew that pump­kins float? The tigers loved chas­ing them in the ponds. (2 dif­fer­ent videos.)

Internet Tips and Tricks.

Um, Google now index­es all of the LIFE images. So go to google.com, click Images in the top nav bar and type : “fer­rari source:life” into the search box.. or maybe “duke elling­ton source:life” if you’re in a more laid back kin­da mood.

Art, Images, and Design

A brief overview of the work of Finnish pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nel­li Palo­ma­ki. Por­traits of women and girls sug­gest­ing depths to their life sto­ries that are not revealed causally.

Some­how the croc­o­dile on the side of this bricked up build­ing in Lis­bon looks ter­ri­bly sad about some­thing. Lucy McLauch­lan’s lit­tle birds, how­ev­er, are hav­ing a very good day.

Using up the relics of the WWII. Mak­ing fur­ni­ture and home decor out of naval mines. Yup, that’s gonna look right­eous in my library.

Swing Shift Cin­derel­la — with this Flashy Lassie with the Classy Chas­sis. Um, it’s the lob­by card for an upcom­ing car­toon short from the mid-century. I love it. More ads fea­tur­ing the car­toons here. And a reminder that car­toons were orig­i­nal­ly for the grown-ups. (SFW)

sec­ond times the charm :)

Morning Linkage (Aug 19)

August 19, 2010 /

Transportation

I’m at it again with the tiny cus­toms. This non-NA mod­el Hon­da JX110 impress­es with a hand­made muf­fler.

At the oth­er extreme. large, low and very long. An Indi­an with a nod towards the bicy­cles of the 20’s.

The title says it all. Engine Porn. A well done pho­to of the RD33 engine put into such Sovi­et planes as the MiG29.

Science

The Earth and the moon, togeth­er. As seen look­ing back from the Mes­sen­ger spacecraft.

Audio

What if GMO plants were used to cre­ate some­thing oth­er than food? Artist David Benque pro­pos­es mod­i­fi­ca­tion and selec­tive breed­ing to add cus­tom acoustics to a forest

More arti­fi­cial sounds — what hap­pens when you slow one of those ter­ri­ble songs by the boy phe­nom Justin Bieber by 800? You end up with some­thing that sounds like a Bri­an Eno air­port expe­ri­ence. But it’s weird­ly soothing.

Art, Images, and Design

Por­to. A col­lec­tion of ran­dom images tak­en by Miss K and pub­lished by the street art blog Stick 2 Target.

Animation

Visu­al apho­risms. 3.5 seconds.

Din­ner:  Keep calm and car­ry out

Morning Linkage (May 4)

May 4, 2010 /

Transportation

Tru­ly bizarre build from a CBR1000F. Top notch fab­ri­ca­tion qual­i­ty, stun­ning­ly ugly design, and it’s orange.

Every kids dream — work­ing on the rail­way. Chil­dren’s rail­ways in east­ern Europe.  Fol­low the links for more “I can’t believe I’m too old” envy.

Pret­ty bike — ele­gant, under­stat­ed, and vague­ly sin­is­ter. CB550.

Science and Tech

Well, sci­ence fic­tion actu­al­ly. The most awe­some inven­tion yet. WETA legs — A pair of leg exten­sions that allows the wear­er to have “demon” legs. Kim Gra­hams invent­ed these in Seat­tle and is now work­ing on pro­duc­tion mod­els for WETA (the film com­pa­ny) in New Zealand. Tons of video and an exten­sive inter­view. Do Want. but so does every­one else.

Art, Images, and Design

A hand­ful of bird pho­tos — the Win­ners of the WeLoveBirds.org pho­to con­test. The pair of Great Blue Herons will knock your socks off.

I’m not sure why you’d want a sin­gle flower appear­ing to grow out of your din­ing room table. But if you did this is a quick inge­nious way to have one.

Ali­son Wright has been pho­tograph­ing Tibet since 1988. The NYT Lens blog brings us 19 of her pic­tures of the nomads. Tra­di­tion­al horse­men are rapid­ly tak­ing to the motor­cy­cle as a means of transportation.

Animation

I know you’ll remem­ber the work of Al Jarnow. You may not know his name but if you grew up on Pub­lic tele­vi­sion in the gold­en age you’ve seen his work. Look at this trail­er for the DVD com­pi­la­tion Celes­tial Nav­i­ga­tions.

anoth­er day, anoth­er cup of coffee

Morning Linkage (Mar 2)

March 2, 2010 /

Transportation

The F1 safe­ty car. M‑B SLS AMG. My very favorite alpha­bet soup car. The rear light­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly stylish.

Vin­ta­gent pro­vides anoth­er fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry from yes­ter­year. A 1967 “pro­duc­tion” bike class at the Isle of Man TT led to the cre­ation of a spe­cial Velo­cette Thrux­ton. Tales of it’s suc­cess­es and failures.

Lover­ly. In-car and side-of-the-road video of a prac­tice dri­ve for the 100 Acre Wood ral­ly. This is why they do it.

Fun­ny British “Watch for Motor­cy­clists” ad. Humor and a reminder. Plus per­haps the ulti­mate hel­met acces­so­ry, neon.

—————

Tools

A nice vari­a­tion on the multi-tool. I like rounder shapes for pock­et objects.

I love my rotary cut­ters for cut­ting both fab­ric and paper. I have sev­er­al includ­ing a cou­ple of the pret­ty flower pat­terned spe­cial edi­tions. Now the rotary cut­ter prin­ci­ple has been applied to emer­gency equip­ment. A bet­ter way to cut through lay­er of den­im, tex­tile, or leather.

———————–

Science

A real­is­tic recon­struc­tion of a snake prey­ing on a rep­tile. Unre­mark­able except for the fact that the snake is 11 feet long and the rep­tile is an infant Titanosaur. Nice pho­tos of the orig­i­nals fos­sils as well as the reconstruction.

Tiny-saurs. Build-it-yourself mini mod­els, less than $20 for the deluxe kits.They also do cus­tom work if any­one is look­ing for the ulti­mate trade show swag.

——————

Art, Images and Design

Ani­ma­tion — sort of. Aard­man presents Home Sheep Home. Infu­ri­at­ing­ly sim­ple brows­er based game for lovers of Shaun the Sheep. Hate, hate, hate. I suck at video games.

Flickr user A Jour­ney Around My Skull is always a good source for new things to look at. These illus­tra­tions from Iran­ian chil­dren’s books are at the same time famil­iar and alien. Many seem to be folk­tales. This image of two rich­ly dressed char­ac­ters with flow­ers for heads sets the tone. There are many equal­ly fine images through out the set.

These are scary and weird and full of vague­ly obscene pigs pro­vid­ing moral guid­ance(?). In oth­er words, ter­rif­ic. Scott Has­sell.  Most­ly pen and ink. (NSFW)

Bird obsessed Jungil Hong was trained in ceram­ics at RISD but is best known for her collages.

More tomor­row…

© 2023 magpie's shiny things

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑