magpie's shiny things

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…

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.