magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: trees

Morning Linkage (Dec 13)

December 13, 2010 /

Transportation

That Enduro XT sure is cute. Well fet­tled too.

I was all set to show you the newest Fat Attack show bike when I acci­den­tal­ly clicked on the pre­vi­ous post link. Thank god. Or we all would have missed this beau­ty. 1928 Moto Guzzi racer.

And here’s that Fat Attack. H&R Erbach­er The One. Just because a flat black hyper-bike is a good fit for a Monday.

Science

Com­plete­ly, utter­ly squee. Red pan­das on live cam spon­sored by Firefox.

Art, Images, and Design

Entry point for Lee Mis­en­heimer’s flickr stream. Curly lines make for both sin­is­ter and amus­ing creatures.

A change of pace from the usu­al water­col­or or pen and ink sketch­es. Quick­ly scrib­bled pas­tels give the col­or and shape of Autumn trees.

This is the nicest wed­ding invi­ta­tion I’ve seen in ages. And at the LeBrea Tar Pits. Could­n’t be more roman­tic.

Ani­ma­tion

I want to see this .… when it’s done. Fan­tas­tic Fly­ing Books of Mr. Mor­ris Lessmore.

Morning Linkage (Jul 8)

July 8, 2010 /

Riding into the sunshine.

Ride the hyper­bole express to a dingy Paris base­ment and col­lec­tion of aston­ish­ing vin­tage bikes.  Click­ing on any one of the links leads to a lust pro­vok­ing gallery of the named bike. Includ­ing a Mod­el 18 Nor­ton, A Sun­beam Mod­el 9, 1926 Ridge Spe­cial, and so many more.

Worse eclec­ti­cism than some of my posts. mish­mash of motos from the guy who climbed the fame lad­der with his 10 most dan­ger­ous roads in the world list.

Auto­topi­a’s list of 12 desir­able sta­tion wag­ons. Lit­tered with mod­ern bland­ness but a few gems - the Vista Cruis­er, the Saab 95, and a fab Chevy Nomad.

… and an addi­tion that could eas­i­ly replace any of the mod­ern lux­u­ry car man­u­fac­tur­er boring-mobiles in the orig­i­nal list. The Cit­roen DS Safari.

Science

Crypto­forestry and the Return of the Repressed. How could you write a bet­ter head­line? As any­one with a lit­tle bit of prop­er­ty can tell you, nature will out and the forests will return — to the odd­est places.

Marine biol­o­gy. Giant crab moves out of a too small shell. Awe­some clip.

Art, Images, and Design

Pianos have been appear­ing ran­dom­ly in NYC. I’m always aston­ished at how many of the peo­ple play but I did­n’t know. Play Me I’m Yours.

Urban Sketch­er Tom­my Kane drew one — of course.

Peski­mo are best known for their vinyl toys. This year they’re doing the poster and sig­nage for the Mozil­la Sum­mit. Dol­lars to donuts these lit­tle direc­tion­al signs dis­ap­pear in an instant.

From Ellis Nadler via Jour­ney Round My Skull to Coil House. The Cards of Wu. (I just want­ed to write some­thing with more words cap­i­tal­ized than low­er case.)

Charm­ing, but to eyes raised on the edi­tions of Tolkein’s books with his own illus­tra­tions  these  illus­tra­tions from the Russ­ian edi­tion of the Hob­bit are off kil­ter. Bonus video at the end of a chil­dren’s show based on the books — you’ll rec­og­nize the scenes. Gol­lum is wicked good.

soakin’ in the heat, lovin’ it.

Morning Linkage (Jul 5)

July 5, 2010 /

Transportation

Mus­cle car mad­ness does­n’t seem to be going away. If you can’t afford the ride of your teenage dreams, maybe this print “Ply­mouth” by Kareem Rizk will make up for it. A little.

What does it mean that the best look­ing cus­tom work on Japan­ese bikes is com­ing out of Europe and the best cus­tom work on Amer­i­can bikes is com­ing out of Japan? Anoth­er great Harley cus­tom, this one from Ace Motor­cy­cles. The details, look at the head­light brack­et, cap­ti­vate me.

A photo-tag Ace Motor­cy­cles on a Japan­ese site. Ace itself has no web­site but one of their fans has put a bunch of pics on his blog fortyt­wo. and trans­lat­ed…

Science and Technology

Geo-thermal heat­ing — not just for green build­ing. The first users of geot­her­mal heat­ing may have been dinosaurs look­ing for a way to keep very large eggs at a per­fect, con­stant temperature.

You know how you nev­er have enough bowls for that chili par­ty but the next week­end there’s not enough plates for the BBQ? Some­how own­ing 24 set­tings of din­ner­ware just for the occa­sion­al moment when you need that many soups plates, does­n’t seem prac­ti­cal. And where are you going to keep all that chi­na? What if you had 40 flat discs in a cup­board that could turn into what-ever size and shape of dish you need at the moment?

Bug-eyed. 6 macro pho­tos of insect optics. Cool enough for wall-paper or desk­top. It’s nice to see the species iden­ti­fied on pho­tos like these.

I hate bat­ter­ies. I hate putting bat­ter­ies in my gad­gets. I can’t see the dan­ged lit­tle draw­ings that tell me which end to put in first. But now I don’t have to look. Two bat­ter­ies, in any old way, will get the job done. Did some­one say Microsoft does­n’t do hard­ware well?

Art, Images, Illustration (and Food)

Not the most com­plex recipe I’ve seen on They Draw, They Cook. But one of the sweet­est, most sum­mery so far.

A tree muse­um. Real­ly. Using hard­scape ele­ments to high­light the unique attrib­ut­es of spec­i­men trees. Nice pho­to cat­a­log of orna­men­tal trees as well. Too bad Switzer­land is so far away.

Black wal­nut and weath­ered met­al make an ele­gant if some­what odd­ly con­struct­ed desk. It’s the com­bi­na­tion of the mate­ri­als that attracts me.

Animation

It’s a three-day-weekend Mon­day so you have no excuse not to sit down and watch each and every one of the the clips pro­vid­ed in this trib­ute to Ray Har­ry­hausen. The genius behind the sum­mer camp, rainy after­noon, enter­tain­ment of my youth.

Now go away and look at some­thing interesting.

Morning Linkage (Apr 8)

April 8, 2010 /

Transportation

I’ve known of cou­ple of bike nuts from Alber­ta. Some­thing about the hor­ri­bly, long , dark win­ters leads to the cre­ation of awe­some bikes to be enjoyed dur­ing the 16 hour sum­mer days. Things like this love­ly Duc.

Oh so old school, oh so cool. A turquoise Indi­an. The details pics of the leaf springs will make you weep.

The Par­tridge Fam­i­ly was a sta­ple of my tween­er life and David Cas­sidy was on the cov­er of every dang issue of Tiger Beat for years. But I’m grown up now and sweet­ened up, hair band singer, wanna-bes do noth­ing for me. That bus they drove, on the oth­er hand, I’d still buy.

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Science

Olive trees show how sex­u­al dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in plants can change over time. And why that change may remain incom­plete. Fas­ci­nat­ing botany and a reminder that gen­der is mutable.

The world’s old­est tree, it’s a some­what con­test­ed title. I mean, what exact­ly is a tree? and how do you mea­sure old? None-the-less, here’s scoop on 12 con­tenders. Includ­ing this tiny spruce in Swe­den named after a geol­o­gist’s dog.

Sci­ence on a larg­er scale. Tides are the result of the moon and the sun mess­ing about with the water float­ing around the Earth. There’s a nice set of expla­na­tions, some ques­tions answered, and sim­ple ani­mat­ed graphics 

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Art, Images, and Design

The Chi­nese have a long tra­di­tion of ges­tur­al land­scape paint­ing. Sail has updat­ed the mate­ri­als and meth­ods but still pro­duces dreamy images of places you’d like to be. A plum tree on a wall in Shang­hai. Done with spray paint.

Bun­nies, bees, a baby rein­deer. Tulips, cher­ry blos­soms, and welling­ton boots. The Big Pic­ture has a round of spring images.  (And there’s a Magpie!)

Shep­ard Fairey brings his sig­na­ture style to a multi-cultural trib­ute on Mel­rose Ave.

the sun is out! the hail will return, no doubt.

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