magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: puzzles

Morning Linkage (Feb 2)

February 2, 2011 /

Trans­porta­tion

The 2 door sta­tion wag­on (or is that 3 doors?) has always been a bit of an odd fish. But Fer­rari thinks that it’s the answer to the demand for a four seat super-car, the FF. And Pin­in­fa­ri­na can make just about any­thing beau­ti­ful. I think 12 cylin­ders is all the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion it needs. With Ferrari-in-the-snow video good­ness Woot!

I’m a total suck­er for Nick Clements videos. Pre­ten­tious as hell and too hip for their own cool. Still… pret­ty scenery, pret­ty bikes, and gor­geous cin­e­matog­ra­phy. Fea­tur­ing Cro Cus­tom’s BS1.  (Video)

Chopcult  pro­vides a fine set of images and info on the BS1 and the builder, Cro Cus­tom’s, site has a cou­ple of oth­er more typ­i­cal­ly chop­per bikes.

Arty inte­ri­or shots fea­tur­ing motor­cy­cles, and the bikes are for rent to use in your own shoots. The care­ful­ly dis­tressed Cross­bones is, well… actu­al­ly, a real­ly appeal­ing piece of rolling sculp­ture. Gen­try Day­ton is cre­ative direc­tor of EvaGentry.

Art, Images, and Design

Ray Cae­sar is one of the many painters cur­rent­ly doing pal­lid, big-headed girls in per­il. Much of a much­ness, except that once in a while he does some­thing that stops me dead. Like the sleigh and courtier in  Home­com­ing. (Par­don the hell­ish URLs — they are shortened ;)

View the full show, A Gen­tle Kind of Cru­el­ty, at Jonathan Levine Gallery’s web­site. (Some NSFW when zoomed)

Elab­o­rate­ly com­posed pho­tographs can go either way for me. Some are just noise, oth­ers like the first two of these from Simon Proc­tor’s Daystar series cap­ti­vate me. The videos cre­at­ed from the stills and oth­er ele­ments I’m very much on the fence about.

I’ve always loved the Burr puz­zles. Now there’s this… Burr tables!

More about the Burr puz­zles. (oh lordy that’s one seri­ous­ly ugly web­site but it’s all I’ve got…)

Moving Images, and Animation

Did you know that there was a Japan­ese ver­sion of the Flint­stones pro­duced in the 1980s? Nope, nei­ther did I. It’s a giggle.

Danc­ing robots… I said, Danc­ing Robots. New ident spots for (UK) Chan­nel 4’s, T4 pro­gram­ming. (Video and loud music)

Morning Linkage (Jan 4)

January 4, 2011 /

Transportation

KZ400 by Mad Crow in Barcelona. The head­light and tank details make it special.

There are many things to like about this Wrench­mon­kees Ducati 750ss. The frame treat­ment, the col­ors, and the front clip.

I nev­er can quite seem to wrap my mind around the idea of a bike called a Vira­go. But the front end of this XV750 brings me pret­ty close to what I think it should be. On the oth­er hand, no Vira­go I’ve ever met had such a tee­ny inef­fec­tu­al rear end.

Science

What is the evo­lu­tion­ary pur­pose of tick­ling? An incred­i­bly impor­tant ques­tion whose answer remains a mys­tery. (And whose impor­tance is total­ly poo-poo’d by the spoil-sport commenters. )

Art, Images, and Design

The idea of deliv­er­ing teach­ing mate­ri­als as a sec­ondary use of the card­board box the food aid rice came in is … well I don’t know, either inspired or con­de­scend­ing. With some thought and effort this could work very well. More com­mer­cial­ly, Ama­zon should jump on this  — imag­ine a box to ship toys in that turns into a toy.

Scary octo­pus but not in the way you expect. A col­lec­tion of plas­tic bags and oth­er trash takes on new life mean­der­ing through the streets of Slovenia.

The char­ac­ter ani­ma­tions in first per­son shoot­ers make me wince every time I see one. But some of the vehi­cle and weapon designs are first-rate. Like these from Damna­tion. Sev­er­al nice guns and a bonus of a bike and a trike at the end. Win­ter build project anyone?

Animation

Infor­ma­tion is Beau­ti­ful is branch­ing out into ani­ma­tion as a tech­nique for the visu­al dis­play of infor­ma­tion. Here is a Tetris inspired retelling of the world’s spend­ing habits. Deb­tris. This first effort gets an A for being infor­ma­tive and a D for the sound track. Watch, but turn the speak­ers down.

Morning Linkage (Oct 26)

October 26, 2010 /

Transportation

Want a lit­tle mys­tery to pon­der today? How about get­ting to the bot­tom of this MV Augus­ta 60cc Monomo­to Super­leg­gera. Trag­ic Ital­ian opera? Wacky art project? Total BS? Keep looking.

Head­line — 60 Years on Jaguar Sexy C‑Type Still Seduces — and here are the pic­tures to prove it. Hon­est­ly is there any­thing sex­i­er on 4 wheels?

Start in Philade­phia — end up in New Zealand. Plan on about a month of trav­el time. Telas­tar logis­tics will get you start­ed by point­ing you to Justin Wat­t’s con­tain­er ship trav­el FAQ and toss in a cou­ple of pics of the journey.

Puzzles

The old Riv­er Cross­ing Puz­zle giv­en a new set of char­ac­ters and rules that come from a more mod­ern per­spec­tive. Played with life-size pieces and real world rules.  An inter­ac­tive instal­la­tion by Ahmet Ogut.

Art, Images, and Design

There are a hand­ful of excel­lent pho­tographs in this intro­duc­tion to the Fac­ing Change pho­to­graph­ic project. Based on the founders’ desire to cre­ate a pub­lic col­lec­tion of images that illus­trate our times in the man­ner of the FSA (Farm Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion) projects of the 30’s but with­out polit­i­cal ties.

So, is this archi­tec­tures? Sculp­ture? Col­lage? Paper­craft? Don’t know, don’t care. You must spend time with the images and nar­ra­tive descrip­tion of “The Migra­tion of Mel and Judith” a trav­el­ogue built into a “self-enclosed curl­ing world of the lamp­shade”… which … “adds a won­der­ful­ly anti-perspectival, frilly con­cav­i­ty to the cou­ple’s journey.”

And if Mel and Judith was­n’t enough for you, you can move along and explore Thomas Hillier’s more recent work “The Emper­or’s Cas­tle” A vague­ly creepy, organ­i­cal­ly extrav­a­gant, origa­mi inspired pop-up book.

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