magpie's shiny things

Transportation

If you rec­og­nize that these cutouts are more than sad­ly mod­ern abstracts then you can have them on your wall. If you had to look at the descrip­tion to fig­ure out what they are, you would be pos­ing and that’s not cool.

In my house you hear a lot about the mys­ti­cal per­fect Triumph — the Scrambler. Hell for Leather has a peek at a JoMo ver­sion that could make our garage/shop a lit­tle snugger.

The Johnson Motor Company is mak­ing a come back. (See the bike above) The web­site is still pret­ty rough but you can see a lit­tle his­to­ry and click around a bit by start­ing here.

On the oth­er hand you might just want to go for urban com­bat com­muter prac­ti­cal. Kettenkrad. Googling for more info and more pic­tures is left as an amus­ing exer­cise for the reader.

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Society

If you thought the BigMedia copy­right treaty boon­doogling twirps were only mess­ing with the US nego­ti­a­tions of copy­right treaties you were wrong. Leaked docs show EU inter­ests plan­ning to lean on Canada to “upgrade” it’s IP laws. Ugh.

The cost of copy­right infringe­ment fear. 25 episodes of the Jack Benny Show has been locat­ed in the CBS archives. They are old enough to be in the pub­lic domain. There are peo­ple will­ing to pay all the costs of hav­ing them con­vert­ed to dig­i­tal. Because CBS is afraid of being sued by own­ers of some lit­tle bit if music, they will nev­er see the light of day. If you have deep pock­ets you can’t be too careful.

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Science and Tech

Marine worms (and earth worms) do amaz­ing things in the lit­tle shal­low world they inhab­it. Another final project from Dr. Dunn’s lab explores the leg­gy, freaky marine worms and how they may have had a big role in cre­at­ing gyp­sum moun­tains. (Remember the crys­tal caves of Mexico from a cou­ple of weeks ago?) Mute for the first 48 sec­onds to get past a poor­ly cho­sen sound track but don’t skip the video por­tion. (Sound)

There’s a new class of tech­nol­o­gy being pushed at CES this year — the “smart­book”. Yeah, I know, WTF. About the size and capa­bil­i­ty of a net­book with the mobile con­nec­tiv­i­ty of a smart phone. Hence smart-book. Or some­thing. Ars gives us a look at two of the con­tenders. Take away — not quite ready for prime time, but I love the look and idea behind the Entourage Edge Dualbook.

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Art, Images, Concept Art

Hervé Groussin, for the odd­ly attired sharks at the top of the post (and for the machetes.) There’s an image of one of the sharks being lift­ed into a water tank lat­er in the set. Those two images lead to hours of try­ing to put togeth­er the sto­ry that links them.

Again with the sharks in con­cept art. After the last set, the scene here with the shark and fish looks like a pas­toral. Imaginative winged build­ings and bet­ter drag­ons than the usu­al slob­bers as well. Frank F. Hong

Jagged and col­or­ful, two roost­ers book­end a series of paint­ings fea­tur­ing the art of sumo wrestling. The young Italian Fabio Roncato paints like a sculptor.

Leaving you all with this insight­ful por­trait of Che in 1963.

Now wake up get back to work my dar­ling slackers.

Transportation

It’s that time of the year. Icy roads can cut down on your two-wheel com­mute trips. Or not.

Brutally evil look­ing elec­tric bike. Another entry for the TTXGP.

Another cool fast boat. And this one won’t get all smashed up by eco-terrorists. On the oth­er hand — it is in the Navy now. Littoral com­bat ship with a claimed 43 knot turn­ing speed.

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Science

Green Porno — which isn’t real­ly porno. An inter­view with the man who dressed Isabella Rossellini as a starfish and a squid.

The zodi­ac light, an arti­fact of the space dust between Earth and the sun. Photographed in Chile. It’s worth click­ing on the pho­to to enlarge it.

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Art, Images, Design

ROA of Belgium does giant line draw­ings of ani­mals in built and aban­doned envi­ron­ments. His giant birds are espe­cial­ly wonderful.

A dinosaur and his friend con­tem­plate the growth of col­ors. Crayola meets Moore’s law, though the time scale ia a lit­tle longer.

I enjoy look­ing into the process of cre­at­ing. PK of BibliOdyssey made friends with Yuko Shimizu and now he has a page of her draw­ings in var­i­ous stages of com­ple­tion. From pen and ink out­line to col­ored press ready. Fascinating.

Girl and bike. Yep, it’s cool.

Happy It’s Not Monday campers.

Transportation

Some Lomographic pho­tos…of a very nice RD400. Yes, it’s orange.

Don’t you want to meet the guys (and girls) behind this col­lec­tion of
run­ning projects snapped out­side a din­er in Brooklyn last March?

Roland Sands, meh. Nice cam­era work, awe­some sound track, sil­ly bike
stunts, yay! (Sound)

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Science

Having views of Earth from space is one of the defin­ing differences
between the late 20th cen­tu­ry and all that went before in how we
per­ceive our place on the plan­et. This col­lec­tion high­lights sand
dunes. Particularly inter­est­ing is this image of Lake Eyre in
Australia. The nor­mal­ly dry and dune filled lake bed is partially
refilled with water due to heavy rains in May of last year.

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Tech and Design

The only thing cool­er than this stain­less steel hose is the
real­iza­tion of it’s true pur­pose.

The eReader will have slipped firm­ly in the cat­e­go­ry of commodity
hard­ware by sum­mer of 2010, pre­dicts Ars. Here’s what’s around the
cor­ner for the rest of the year.

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Art, Images, Illustration

Cut paper.

Three masks by Flurry and Salk. Lion, Owl, Cockatiel.

Yuken Teruya’s cut paper projects use every­day items like fast food
bags and toi­let paper rolls to build del­i­cate forests. This is the bag
project, among the oth­er bests are Corner Forest and Free Fish. (links
at the top of the gallery page.)
Another user of toi­let paper rolls, Anatassia Elias creates
sil­hou­et­ted scenes from a nos­tal­gic past

Not paper. Cut steel. Cal Lane makes lace with indus­tri­al dis­cards and
a plas­ma torch. (NSFW nudi­ty and sex­u­al pos­es in doillies)

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Transportation

MotoIQ does up a Ruckus right. It han­dles, it brakes, it goes 50 mph with­out a steep hill or a tail wind. (Sucky pre­sen­ta­tion of the series though. Start at the bot­tom of the page, le sigh.)

A hand­ful of vin­tage (1960) motor­cy­cle and acces­so­ry ads. The clean cut prep­pies in the Harley ads are a bit of a brain twister.

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Science

Finding things is the moment of oooh shiny in arche­ol­o­gy. Sometimes what comes about years lat­er as the found objects are slow­ly mapped out in a lab is even more incred­i­ble. The mys­te­ri­ous and mys­te­ri­ous­ly com­plex Antikythera Mechanism has giv­en up new infor­ma­tion. A mechan­i­cal cal­en­dar of unri­valed com­plex­i­ty. Read more about it and fol­low the links to a 2 part video.

The line between ani­mal and plant is get­ting a lit­tle blur­ri­er as biol­o­gists exam­ine the green sea slug and it’s use, and per­haps pro­duc­tion, of chlorophyll.

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Literature

Seen on the WL list last week, it deserves to put into the record on Shiny. The map of lit­er­a­ture. Enter an author, see the rub­ber band map of style relat­ed authors. No idea what the data under­ly­ing the map looks like.

Shelfari was also list­ed as a resource for find­ing new books and authors when your lit­er­ary cup­board is bare.

And the near­est thing to heav­en for book­ish peep­ing toms: LibraryThing. Personal, pub­lic, and his­toric libraries from around the world. Is there a WL group yet?

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Art, Images, Illustration

These monster-ific wall vinyls by Alberto Cerriteño are among the best kid’s room decor I’ve seen. Maybe my office needs a make over? (UK shop)

In fact I am total­ly in love with all of Alberto Cerriteño’s work. Portfolio here:

People put the odd­est things in the dark cor­ners of their web­sites. Page down twice for a col­lec­tion of opti­cal illu­sions that cre­ate the image of a skull out of an ordi­nary scene.

In 1937 the orig­i­nal Kamikaze (Mitsubishi Ki-15) made the first Tokyo to Europe flight. These sim­ple col­or­ful post cards where print­ed lat­er that year to cel­e­brate that achievement.

Keep float­ing my lovelies.

Transportation

A lit­tle bas­tard. CB160. omg cute.

On the oth­er hand — this is awe­some­ness smack. Fast Kitty Superbike Showdown. (Animation — Sound)
More here — and t‑shirts:

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Architecture, Design

I try to stay away from the kitchen pr0n. Too many cooks, too few HGTV addicts here­abouts. But these mas­sive kitchens sinks in cute coun­try kitchens… Well, what can I say? Everyone Wants.

Further thoughts on archi­tec­ture, and the futil­i­ty of space and motion. My
<cough> pretentious</cough> descrip­tion of a puz­zling construction.

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Art, Images, Illustration

Only two links today — but hours of eye stim. Koi, Koi, Koi’s round ups of Street Art for 2009.

The South American edi­tion. I par­tic­u­lar­ly love the Mexican masks of Zime – Neuzz, and the Brazilian drag­on of Ignoto Semente.

The European ver­sion. Fars – Mouse – Varna ‘s bathers under the bridge in Bulgaria pust loca­tion to good use. Aec cre­ates a whim­si­cal sci-fi mys­tery on a drive-way gate in the Ukraine.

Have a good day campers.