magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Morning Linkage (Jan 18)

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Transportation

Eco-driving, the
social­ly accept­able in-car video game, where you do your best to make the lit­tle leaf as green as grass. If stud­ies con­tin­ue to prove that instan­ta­neous dis­play of mileage infor­ma­tion prompts dri­vers to tune their dri­ving style to max­i­mize mpg, you may be see­ing more and more of these dis­plays on your dash. Speak­ing of auto-data
tech­nol­o­gy, the boys at Cult of MAC are clear­ly not gear heads but they kind of get the point of the OBD-II read­er that Grif­fin has announced for the iPhone. I just won­der if the soft­ware (app) will be use­ful to the gear heads or only a dri­ve nice­ly pret­ty please app to make the eco-driving crowd coo.

The Grif­fin site claims that the Car­Trip read­er will allow code check and reset. I’ll be get­ting one to test on the airbag fault light on the Rover. (Grrr.)

To atone for all the geeky green-weenie crap above, I give you: The high­lights of the 2010 British Super Bike Cham­pi­onship. 4 min­utes of thrills, chills, and a cou­ple of spills. (For­give me?)

Science and Society

30 years of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic pic­tures by Bruce Dale. 9 min­utes of video and a ter­ri­ble pun­ning joke.

We as a soci­ety are always rewrit­ing our past. It’s inevitable and in large part uncon­scious. But to what extent can we jus­ti­fy delib­er­ate­ly mess­ing about with the images of the past? Did the USPS real­ly need to remove the cig­a­rette from Robert John­son’s mouth?

Art, Images, and Design

Wal­nut is love­ly. And the dark col­or goes per­fect­ly with cof­fee. Scrap lum­ber becomes some­thing use­ful and beau­ti­ful.

An anony­mous small token of grat­i­tude and gen­eros­i­ty. Com­pli­ments on tear-off tabs. PDF to print. Bring your own sta­ple gun.

Oooh, the roman­tic allure of the aban­doned sub­way sta­tion. The City Hall Sta­tion in NYC was opened in 1904 and closed to use in 1945. Until recent­ly the only way to get a glimpse at what is arguably the pret­ti­est of the NYC sub­way sta­tions was to sneak in. Not any­more. A recent rule change means that you can now sit tight on the Num­ber 6 as it makes it loop through the old sta­tion.

Animation

Megan Tup­per, a recent grad of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wales, has a fine sense of char­ac­ter and the com­ic impli­ca­tions of every­day life. Keys. The truth about cats. (Video 3:26)

Morning Linkage (Jan 17)

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Transportation

Con­tem­plat­ing the changes in the cul­ture of rac­ing and rule mak­ing. Reims in ’54 the return of the Mer­cedes and a grid full of indi­vid­u­al­is­tic machines.

Real­ly I spoil you all. I should be look­ing these bikes up and dol­ing them out one at a time. But what the hel­lz. A bonan­za bou­quet of old (real­ly old) bikes at the Bon­ham’s Las Vegas auc­tion. Munch Mam­mut, an H‑D Peashoot­er from a mine in West­ern Aus­tralia, and my fav the Indi­an Camel­back.

Science

Jog­ging, not just hat­ed exer­cise but per­haps an adap­tive evo­lu­tion­ary advan­tage? Some­thing called endurance hunt­ing may have been an impor­tant fac­tor in the suc­cess of our ances­tors. Oh hell, pass the fries.

I’m going to lose big kar­ma points for post­ing this but… cats con­fused about what’s up and what’s down in weight­less­ness. On video.

Art, Images, and Design

Paper — cut and lay­ered by Brit­te­ny Lee. Her ani­mals always have way too much per­son­al­i­ty.

Impul­sive kiss­es. Giv­en on a street cor­ner. Paint­ed on a street cor­ner. C215 and, prob­a­bly, his girl Alice.

Betray­ing a sense of the del­i­ca­cy of the divide between humans and their fel­lows that is far more sophis­ti­cat­ed than you expect from a 21 year old. Russ­ian artist Eugene Soloviev cre­ates stripped-down float­ing land­scapes.

Animation

Street art, meets stop-motion, meets flip-book. 294 walls, 4 cities, 3000 kilo­me­ters. Think about what that means. Think about how the vid ends. By the Turk­ish group, Sokak Savasa Kar­si.  (Video 1:30 — music)

hap­py Mon­day y’all

Morning Linkage (Nov 15)

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Transportation

North­east Ohio is not a friend­ly envi­ron­ment for out­door stor­age of equip­ment. Weep for this rot­ting col­lec­tion of most­ly mil­i­tary  air­craft. The video is well done. Shot with a Nikon D90.

Old school indeed. GS1150ES.

Mods vs. rock­ers but this time the vio­lence was con­fined to the tug-o-war. Lots of nice pics of clas­sic cafe rac­ers — Tri­tons, Guzzis, Norvin (wtf?)

Science (high-speed photography)

Pop­corn. I can’t watch this with­out think­ing that the pop­corn pop­ping looks like an angel open­ing it’s wings.

Begin­ning with the ques­tion “How do cats drink?” and end­ing with a some­what freaky elephant-trunk based robot arm. A bit of a walk through the lands of sci­ence for the fun of it. Side note, the paper about cat lap­ping may be the first time that a YouTube video has played a role in a pub­lished sci­en­tif­ic paper.

Art, Images, and Design

Inter­ac­tive maps can be so very good. The best jour­neys of fact and fic­tion mapped out with details and high­lights. (And a few low­lights.)

Old globes are pret­ty darned use­less, unless you want to make art out of them. Here are a cou­ple of nice exam­ples and a bonus video of how globes are made.

Animation

Smigly’s life is hard. and noisy.

yeah — it’s kind of Mon­day out here too.

Morning Linkage (Oct 28)

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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 (Jul 29)

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Transportation

Start­ing with a cou­ple of Ducatis.

Sweet Duc 750 Sport.

Joe’s V Cycle cafe rac­ers. A ’66 Duc Mon­za 250 and a ’72 Hon­da CB750.

Ital­ian ref­er­ence, NSU licensed and built Lam­bret­tas. Stub-tailed cat on a scoot­er.

Not Ital­ian at all. moto — extrem­is. I love this bike.

Political Trivia

“Sub­jects” became “cit­i­zens” and the tone of the doc­u­ment changed in a sub­tle and impor­tant way. Jef­fer­son­’s revi­sions of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence.

Art, Images, and Design

This could take all day. Titles, excerpts, and cov­er art for vin­tage tracts and pam­phlets.

They draw — they cook — pas­ta al limone.

Amy show us vin­tage Chi­nese fire­works pack­ag­ing.

I seem to be on a mon­sters kick this week. Fuco Ueda under­stands mon­sters and the mun­dane dis­guis­es they wear. Coil­house gives an overview.  Her site.  The nav is hid­den under shoes.

But now we need some­thing a lit­tle brighter. The Bear turns fifty today. Here’s a lit­tle birth­day par­ty.

off you go,