magpie's shiny things

Transportation

I seri­ous­ly need this truck. Well, okay, a few of you seri­ous­ly need this truck. Site Commander — the ulti­mate work truck, every­thing you need to run a nuclear pow­er plant build out. And an all ter­rain Segway, with it’s own lit­tle garage. Entries close May 1st.

The Fiat 500 Abarth of my dreams is com­ing to America. But not soon enough.

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Science

Strain spe­cif­ic antibi­ot­ic. More dif­fi­cult, more expen­sive, and quite pos­si­bly safer and more effec­tive than the cur­rent shot­gun approach. If noth­ing else, a fas­ci­nat­ing and reveal­ing look into how bac­te­ria function.

A rather more sane than usu­al pro­pos­al for clar­i­fy­ing copy­right and fair use.

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Art, Images and Design

Remember the mock ups of the “new” cov­ers for the Jules Verne clas­sics? Jim Tierney has fin­ished his project. Four love­ly, mem­o­rable cov­ers for four favorite books. (Video)

Insanely great design­er and builder of wood­en clocks.

Stick bomb­ing, mon­key chains, xylo­ex­plo­sives, call them what you will. Tongue depres­sors, acrylic paint, and an excess amount of free time leads to this.
Directions for build­ing your own.

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii devel­oped a tech­nique for tak­ing and print­ing full col­or pho­to­graph­ic images in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. Involving three glass plates and col­ored fil­ters, the process is com­plex and awk­ward. But the results are love­ly. Images of the Russian Empire just before it’s dis­so­lu­tion. From the Library of Congerss collection.

And “Precisely who thought a Warren Ellis alarm clock was a good idea?”

That’s all for today my freaky darlings.

Transportation

This is right and wrong in so many ways. Live action ani­me with an ice vil­lain and a super hero who trans­forms into a motor­cy­cle. Your patience will be reward­ed at 1:54 but no skip­ping ahead or you’ll miss much of the cheezy good­ness. (Video-Sound)

Why do Honda CBs make the best cus­tom cafe rac­ers? Here’s Whitehouse’s CB750. Click through to the Japanese web­sites for more eye candy.

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Science

There was a time when sci­ence was open to ded­i­cat­ed enthu­si­asts and those who had oth­er oblig­a­tions. Significant con­tri­bu­tions to the study of marine biol­o­gy in Japan were made by the Emperor.

I love cook­ies. You’ll love this huge col­lec­tion of sci­ence themed cook­ies too.

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Art, Images, and Design

Welcoming the Year of the Tiger. A col­lec­tion of pho­tographs from the Big Picture.

And in hon­or of the year of the tiger. The win­ner of the 39th National Wildlife pho­to con­test (mam­mals, ama­teur) is a tiger pho­tographed by Subharghya Das. The com­plete set of winnners in all cat­e­gories is here.

Russian Constructivist N.P. Akimov did many posters for the­aters. This col­lec­tion scanned from a 1963 book shows some of his best work.

Nice Mardi Gras reminder from Stinkfish on a  wall in Bogata.

Using old books are sketch books isn’t new. But I haven’t seen a set that so sen­si­tive­ly incor­po­rates the text block into the sketch before. Simonetta Capecchi from Naples.

Just in case you need even more to look at, WebUrbanist has a round up post of Digital Artists new to them. Nicely diverse. You’re bound to find some­thing you like here.

Transportation

Sponsored by Hess Marine at the time, this very nice Ducati Diana. Click through to the Hess Marine site for a bitchin’ col­lec­tion of their employ­ee’s hob­bies and oth­er spon­sored racers.

Just for the sighs. 1957 Norton Manx.

In the news:

Promo for the TTXGP series, all the tracks, all the dates. Get your tick­ets soon.

Danica goes NASCAR spon­sored by Hot Wheels. Better yet she helped design her very own hot wheels car — the Danicar.

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Science and Tech

Flying drag­ons. Maybe 1/10 scale. Beautiful fairy tale crea­tures in reality.

A new “skin” for hel­mets. Sloppy and mobile it helps to pre­vent twist­ing forces from being trans­ferred from the pave­ment to the hel­met. Kinda cool, but real­ly creepy.

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Art, Images, and Design

Alien Queen. In recy­cled met­al. We’ll need a big­ger din­ing room.

Damien Kamholtz builds dream­like images of chil­dren and their par­tic­u­lar­ly not quite real view of the world with lay­ers of wash and glazes. (PS This is the way to use flash on a port­fo­lio site.)

The fate of comics in the new elec­tron­ic age is a well beat­en dead horse. Here’s what I want to see, the sub­scrip­tion mod­el in a use­ful for­mat. Bizzaro iPhone app.

From We Buy Your Kids. Stills for the up com­ing Moon River music video. I love WBYK’s work, but I don’t like most of the music/musicians they work for. This one I should like.

Daily video. Francoise Mouly, art direc­tor for the New Yorker, dis­cuss­es the process of build­ing the spe­cial three part “multi-cover” for the mon­ey issue.

keep calm and car­ry on,

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Yesterday was the Apocalypse. Today we have a seri­ous problem.

Transportation

Speaking TW200s. Here’s a cute lit­tle run-about with the best farkle yet, a surf­board rack.

Another sweet (not so) lit­tle bike. Must be util­i­tar­i­an Monday around here. CB750.

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Science and Technology

Google is launch­ing anoth­er sal­vo in their pre­emp­tive war on ISPs, this YouTube speed tester. I haven’t been able to find a good enough expla­na­tion of the terms “Your Location” and “Your ISP” to be cer­tain what the num­bers mean for our sad lit­tle rur­al stub of the infor­ma­tion super­high­way. What do your num­bers say?

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Art, Image, and Design

Drainspotting. Infrastructure art. Manhole cov­ers in Japan are not just func­tion­al they are often col­or­ful. A soon to be released book and a com­pan­ion website.

Also from Japan, GreenMarkers. The site is entire­ly in Japanese but you don’t need to be able to read the text to be able to fol­low the path from the image of a field of grass through the pro­to­type to pack­aged prod­uct. Best book­marks yet.

From the 50’s, anoth­er bebop­pin’ illus­tra­tor David Weidman. I’ve added the new ret­ro­spec­tive of his work from Ginko Press to my wish list.

Modifiers, a 12 minute pilot for an ani­mat­ed series from two of the peo­ple behind both Ren&Stimpy and the Powerpuff Girls. Nickelodeon is stu­pid. (Video — Sound)

To infin­i­ty and beyond… meh, maybe just the gym.

Transportation

In hon­or of the Iceholes hav­ing * all * made it across the bor­der. Piaggio Ape rac­ing. The mad­ness nev­er stops.

The 1955 Ariel offer­ing. “The only four cylin­der motor­cy­cle you can buy in America.” Moto jour­nal­ist hyper­bole is not new.  Click to en-biggen.

Industry news, changes in own­er­ship and man­age­ment at KTM and Mission Motors. I’m impressed that the lessons of the auto indus­try fail­ure are being heed­ed. Whether these new direc­tions are the best choic­es or not remains to be seen but at least they’re not repeat­ing the mis­takes of others.

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Society and Culture

This Recording is a source of good mid-afternoon reads. Literary and social obser­va­tions. Here the Italian poet and thinker Cesare Pavese’s diary entries for the year 1950. He’s not an opti­mist, but he observes closely.

The head­line “Kirkus Gets a New Owner — from the NBA” sent chills down my librar­i­an spine. The long stand­ing pub­li­ca­tion which pre­views upcom­ing book releas­es had failed and was up for sale. It’s pur­chase by a bas­ket­ball team own­er was a fright­en­ing prospect. Until you read the arti­cle and the quotes from Mr. Simon and his cho­sen chief exec­u­tive Mr. Winkleman. There is hope for the world of letters.

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Technology, Architecture

Air brakes and oth­er pas­sive safe­ty mech­a­nisms are explained. And the intrigu­ing ques­tion is asked. Can pas­sive safe­ty be a use­ful par­a­digm for soft­ware design? Discuss.

Wickedly cool pre­fab hous­ing that is dis­as­ter resis­tant and goes up in two days. The ulti­mate coastal storm watch­ing outpost?

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Art, Images, and Design

Prints avail­able from MotoClassique. Including the won­der­ful Geo Ham “At Speed” of  Farnsworth’s speed attempt on his Brough-Superior.

Astonishing paper sculp­tures by Anna-Wili Highfield. Raggedy birds in flight.

Mythic crea­tures from Seattle based Stacey Rozich. She is hang­ing her work at Dolce Vita right now. Opening tomor­row night. Perhaps a lit­tle sup­port for local art is in the future. (I’m not out of walls yet!)

Beautiful recon­tex­tu­al­iza­tion of clas­sic art on the walls of Paris. Zilda once again pro­vides an argu­ment against blan­ket graf­fi­ti erad­i­ca­tion pro­grams. (NSFW clas­sic nudes)

Martin Whitford’s series of paint­ings “Tempest”. Is this the new vision of the chaos of the end of times?

and that’s it for this week. see you on Monday.