magpie's shiny things

Transportation

There’s been no SnowPocalypse in Pugetopolis this year. But don’t get too com­fy with the idea of dry(ish) sun­ny Januaries. In fact, you might want to view this edu­ca­tion­al video from BMW — how to glide grace­ful­ly across the frozen wastes in your BMW X5M — where do I sign up?
http://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/video-bmw-x6m-and-x5m-snow-action-ar84064.html

There are few things sex­i­er than Steve McQueen… Though this recre­ation of his desert rac­er (from the Great Escape) is damned close.

Oh, and just in case you need to spend some time con­tem­plat­ing the orig­i­nal bike and the cru­cial ques­tion on of “did they real­ly make that jump?”, TimesOnline brings you the sto­ry of anoth­er recre­ation — the big jump. (Video has narration.)

A whole lot of black and white good­ness. Tons of moto and moto life pic­tures, this dude loves the Nortons. The Tokyo Rockabilly Club (third down) is mak­ing me smile. (Search for Tokyo Rockers and Tunnel of Love) NSFW — pin­ups in the mix.
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Technology

There are a num­ber of games mak­ing their way around the inter­net played by typ­ing words into the Google search bar and watch­ing the sug­ges­tions that pop up. WebSeer takes it one step fur­ther by allow­ing you to com­pare the sug­ges­tions for sim­i­lar phras­es. (I tried dogs hate and cats hate.)

There are advances in heat­ed gear tech. Carbon fiber in your socks.

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Art, Architecture and Design

Some times art is just fun. What hap­pens when Katie draws chalk foot prints on side­walk in front of her apartment?

Building a hob­bit house in Wales.  Part tim­ber frame, part straw bale, part adobe, part god only knows, but a whole lot of awesome.

Polish poster design. You’ve seen it’s influ­ence in trendy adver­tis­ing and prod­uct pack­ag­ing design.

From Kirov Russia, liv­ing in a fairy tale. Cheerful inte­ri­or design based on chil­dren’s books, by Maria Yasko.

This lit­tle gig­gle — for the job seek­ers out there. A new and very effi­cient pre-screening tech­nique for engi­neers.

keep calm and car­ry on

Transportation

6 used Unicat’s. Because own­ing an RV does­n’t have to mean stick­ing to the inter­states. I’ll take what’s behind door num­ber 3.
http://www.unicatamericas.com/secondhand.html

Latest from Wrenchmonkees. A Kawi rat bike. My kind of awesome.

I’m get­ting tired of eThis and eThat, so eGrandPrix is unlike­ly to make my hit parade. On the oth­er hand rac­ing in the streets of Paris on tri­cy­cles would be enough to attract my atten­tion. TTXGP presents elec­tric cars in the City of Lights. Okay, I’ll set the TIVO.

Buell is dead, long live Buell.  The 1125R is on the pace to become a cult tuner plat­form of choice. Magpul is build­ing one they’ve named the Ronin. Worth following.

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Science

The write up is a bit slop­py but the infor­ma­tion is of very direct and per­son­al inter­est for many of us. Have the sci­en­tists been seri­ous­ly under­es­ti­mat­ing the max­i­mum size of storm waves on the Pacific Northwest Coast?

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(Old) Technology

I’ve nev­er seen this pho­to of an IBM 350 Disk Storage Unit being loaded into an plane, with a fork lift. I appre­ci­ate the fine folks at Telstar Logistics using up Google-fu to ver­i­fy the claim.

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Art, Images, and Design

A while ago I read the sto­ry that Goni Montes made  this cat illus­tra­tion was made for “The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles.” I’m hap­py to see more work by the same artist. (one or two, mild­ly NSFW)

The orig­i­nal sto­ry “The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles.” A sto­ry about hav­ing a sto­ry to tell. Well worth the half hour to read.

An Urban Sketchers two­some this morning.

From Korea, a nice sheet of botan­i­cals and an accom­pa­ny­ing sto­ry about din­ing out on live octopus.

From Paris — love­ly pen­cil and water­col­or por­traits of folks catch­ing a lit­tle rest break.

Certain pic­tures cap­ture the entire­ty of a per­son­al­i­ty. James Dean by Denis Stock. (page down)

Rock your Tuesday m’dears.

Transportation

That plane car you ordered? It’s here.

A box­er will nev­er look quite right as a cafe rac­er to me. OTOH it’s a Bonneville record hold­er. BMW R75/5.

The TTXGP race from last year is gong to be the sub­ject of a doc­u­men­tary film. Here’s the trailer.

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Technology (Cameras)

A sol­id resource for learn­ing about light­ing in pho­tog­ra­phy, most­ly using cam­era mount­ed (mount­able) flash units.

The next thing I want after I get a hold of that 50mm lens­es. A lens­es mount­ed light ring.

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Science

More sea crea­tures. The armored snail has a num­ber of tricks for thwart­ing attacks. Tricks that may make it into bat­tle armor and bike gear.

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Art, Design,

…And sci­ence — these flash cards are a lit­tle much for a three year old, but an alpha­bet with an atom instead of an apple and bina­ry code instead of a ball appeals to the very best geeky bits of myself. it is good to be an auntie.

Happy stop motion ani­ma­tion star­ring fruit and can­dy and a cork screw from Oz — where it is sum­mer. Sound.

Scenic paint­ings from a Japanese artist. The tex­tures behind the water­col­ors add unusu­al depth. I espe­cial­ly like the third image from the top, of the girls watch­ing a trail of ants in the street. I can tell you noth­ing about the artist, the site is entire­ly in Japanese.

Zombie Fair — looks like some­thing that would appear on the the cov­er of the New Yorker mag­a­zine. Until you click on the lit­tle mag­ni­fy­ing glass, that is…

Warhol, before he became an inten­tion­al car­i­ca­ture of himself.

Happy Monday my freaky darlings,

Transportation

What is it about bikes with squared off bits and pieces? Looking like some­thing made out of expen­sive can­dy box­es, the Mars.

Top Speed is either in on the joke or plen­ty dumb. This steam motor­cy­cle with a Piaggo look­ing front end is rad. (Note the Worth100 watermark.)

Bio-diesel motor­cy­cle with inter­est­ing stream­lin­er styling. Click on Metalback.

Who wants a jet pack? Not me. I want a Puffin, NASA’s sin­gle per­son flight pod. I like the expla­na­tion of the name as well.

Failing that I’ll look back in time and take this. Amphibious side­car?

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Science

Oceans of liq­uid dia­monds, with sol­id dia­mond ice bergs? Best pos­si­ble sci­ence fic­tion world award win­ner for sure. Except that it could be very real.

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Culture and Society

I know that a num­ber of you saw the Burlesque Nutcracker this year, or watched “A Wink and A Smile”, the doc­u­men­tary about the Seattle bur­lesque scene. (Streamable on Netflix)  The New York scene is high­light­ed in this Coilhouse arti­cle that touch­es on the past, present and future of bur­lesque. NSFW

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Art, Image, Design

Not exact­ly a zom­bie proof shel­ter but it does deal with mon­sters wear­ing sheets. A demo of the Daily Shelter. 5 year olds aren’t the only ones who will want one.

Many of us are book fiends. Susan B. for­ward­ed me a link to this book about books. Or more pre­cise­ly a book about how peo­ple store their books. The idea of hang­ing about in a bosun’s chair while brows­ing my library is very appealing.

From Coronet mag­a­zine, Sept 1949. Beautiful black and white por­traits of Americans. The cap­tions are cringe wor­thy and the pho­tog­ra­phers uncred­it­ed but the images are pre­cious. Nothing is perfect.

Gustaf Tenggren worked first for Disney but left to pur­sue his own path. His illus­tra­tions of fairy tales helped set the tone for pic­ture books of the 30’s and 40’s. There are tons of exam­ples here, as well as a thought­ful com­men­tary on his devel­op­ing his own style after leav­ing Disney.

TGIF dar­lings.

Transportation

Interesting take on how the TARP funds for trans­porta­tion should be spent. The groups spon­sor­ing the report have an ax to grind but the log­ic is good. More mon­ey for bus­es, less mon­ey for asphalt may equal more, bet­ter, longer last­ing jobs. Hmmm.

It’s Blue, it’s French, that’s enough for me.

There’s that mag­ic word ‘scram­bler’ again. This time with an Italian accent. A pro­duc­tion cus­tom (what­ev­er that is sup­posed to mean) based on the Triumph Bonneville. (Click through for the orig­i­nal site — in Italian — with good music)

I could include a Vintagent post every day. Another TT repli­ca heads up the sto­ry behind the orig­i­nal. Duzmo Levack TT Replica.

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Science

Proving my point with­out me hav­ing to do a damned thing. Should the results of research paid for with gov­ern­ment (tax-payer) mon­ey be required to be pub­licly acces­si­ble?

Picky females. Energy sav­ing strate­gies to insure that her repro­duc­tive efforts (eggs) don’t go to waste. Creature cast #11. NSFW — car­toon ani­mal genitalia.

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Tech, Tools and Mayhem

Air pow­ered under­wa­ter chain­saw. ‘Nuf said.

Creating anoth­er kind of may­hem, Amazon fires the first shot in the next round of the eBook wars. If eReaders are now com­mod­i­ty devices the bat­tle field shifts to con­tent. Amazon sweet­ens the pot for authors but with a few strings.

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Art, Images, Design

Spiral stair case/slide — epic win.

WWIII — the cyber­war. Okay, maybe we need a bet­ter name for the inter­net war but we’ll have great posters.

Art stu­dent Jim Tierney, designs new cov­ers for Jules Verne clas­sics. I love jazz the feel of these.

Small Victories. Found pho­tographs with odd, cap­ti­vat­ing sub­ti­tles. Not ter­ri­bly optimistic.

Now where did I put those ray gun plans…