magpie's shiny things

Transportation

Every body loves a top 10. Okay, so how about a top 19? The 19 most com­plex and dan­ger­ous roads in the world. Complex ?= Dangerous.

Tamburini = Brutale ++. That said, there is absolute­ly no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for pro­vid­ing a link to this pro­duc­tiv­i­ty sap­ping pho­to gallery. None.

The best col­lec­tion of WTF moto moments.

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Technology

There is less than 100% agree­ment on what exact­ly Panotpitclick is measuring/revealing but the fal­la­cy of non-identifying infor­ma­tion is tak­ing anoth­er beat­ing. Your brows­er cus­tomiza­tions may make you track­able. My results on Jan 31, 2010. “Your brows­er fin­ger­print appears to be unique among the 443,644 test­ed so far.”

Ancient tech. The old­est known multi-tool. A Roman Army Knife, if you will.

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Art and Design

Tommy Kane (was) a big shot in adver­tis­ing. Now he wants to be an illus­tra­tor again. I’ll start you out with one of his col­ored pen­cil sketch­es. The shop Zen Needlecraft has the mis­for­tune of hav­ing the rather unhap­py look­ing fish logo from the upstairs restau­rant right over the front door.

In 3‑D. Kinekt gear dri­ven rings, for your fin­ger. Watch the video.

Bill Watterson talks about his deci­sion to stop draw­ing Calvin and Hobbes.

English Laundry and Dan and Dave. It’s a bit much trendy for me but the music is good and the card flour­ish­es are just plain cool. (Video — Sound)

Off to be a girly-girl today, expect me to be all pink hearts and flow­ers and lit­tle smi­lies to dot my I’s for a cou­ple of days…

Transportation

Tamyia cat­a­logs of the 80’s and 90’s and 00’s. For the mod­el builders out there.

A hand­ful of the first “offi­cial” pic­tures of the Vyrus. Click for embiggen.

Another Triumph, this time a Rocket III built over by SE Service.
Click through for video with nar­ra­tion in German and not quite enough
actu­al bike footage to make it the fea­tured link.

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History

7 min­utes of video shot on San Fransisco’s Market Street in 1905. The
view toward the Ferry Building as it appeared before the great
earth­quake. (Sound — but nice music)

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Science

National Geographic has pub­lished an elec­tron­ic ver­sion of the
com­plete National Geographic. In addi­tion the edi­tor’s have cho­sen 50
of their favorite cov­ers to fea­ture on the website.

Everybody loves robots. How about a smart phone controllable,
skate­board­ing, danc­ing, shuf­fling robot?

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Art Image and Design

Do you know about the Flickr Commons? A place for the GLAM crowd
(gal­leries, libraries, archives, and muse­ums) to put images for the
use and reuse of the public.

Hairy Green Eyeball brings you William Steig. The quin­tes­sen­tial New
Yorker cartoonist.

These hand blown glass robots are way too friend­ly look­ing to be
threat­en­ing. They have some real­ly cool snail friends lit­tle further
down the page.

Late last year I point­ed to some stills from this wit­ty, meandering,
ani­mat­ed look at some accounts of life on oth­er plan­ets. Mars and
beyond — Disney 1957. (sound, quick time — worth it)

Take your Monday a few min­utes at a time my dears,

Transportation

A plane mys­tery solved. This (fly­ing?) derelict in Hanoi was iden­ti­fied by the fine folks at Telstar logis­tics. And we get a nice overview of the Antonov AN‑2. It’s wicked on skis.

Sweet, orange, retro, but brand new. French GIMA 125. Do Want.

The news that makes my day! SLS pro­duc­tion has start­ed. Last post until the first ones hit the US mar­ket. Promise (fingers-crossed behind my back.)

The new Icon Variant hel­met. The demo’d graph­ics are pret­ty damned teenage macho but I’m dying for the extra wide eye port and sweat wick­ing interior.

Free wall­pa­per of the vapor cone cre­at­ed at the moment of son­ic boom envelop­ing and airplane.

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Society

Never miss­ing a chance to be kawaii, these lunch box meals (ben­tos) fea­ture Wall‑E, Mario, and the Linux pen­guin. Some times the for­eign­ness of Japan makes my mind spin.

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Science

Doing sci­ence is nev­er as easy as the tidy pub­lished reports with their pret­ty graphs and charts make it look. These entries in the Round Robin (Cornell Ornithology) show just how arbi­trary the real world can be when you go look­ing for some­thing. The Godwits that Cornell Ph.D. stu­dent Nathan Senner went look­ing for on Chiloé Island, Chile failed to get his save-the-date notice and where off at some oth­er par­ty when he arrived.

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Art, Images, Design

The first of the chil­dren’s books by Jim Flora, the king of bebop illus­tra­tion, to be reprint­ed in decades. I can’t wait to get my own copy of The Day the Cow Sneezed.

New prim­i­tive in style, sly­ly mod­ern in out­look, a Kama Sutra by Barcelona born Adria Fruitos. Absolutely, utter­ly, glo­ri­ous­ly NSFW.
If you need some­thing SFW. Go to Adria’s web­site and click on most any­thing else.

Simplicissimus was a German satir­i­cal week­ly that pub­lished from 1886 through 1944. It has been dig­i­tal­ly archived by the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bilbiothek.  Cheeky, sophis­ti­cat­ed graph­ics fill each issue.For exam­ple this first issue of 1904. Or you can have any oth­er year you’d like by perus­ing the sec­ond link.

Sweet mis­cel­lany of win­ter bird images and illus­tra­tions. You’re bound to find some­thing you like. Maybe a change of desk­top wall­pa­per is in order?

It’s Friday. We need girls on bikes. (all SFW)

that’s it sin­ners just one more day and then you can go back to being saints.

Magpie’s Shiny Things has a new home and it’s very own URL.

Visit:

shinymagpie.net

for a dai­ly dose of mar­velous 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