magpie's shiny things

Transportation

First up, the odd­ly sen­su­al Bennett’s cus­tom drag bike. Am I the only one who does­n’t think Maine pine tree green is a col­or that belongs on a bike?

I was going to show you the Cyclone Board Track rac­er on Bike EXIF but then I found anoth­er pic­ture of it hang­ing about in fab­u­lous com­pa­ny. 20 vin­tage bikes auc­tioned in the last few years. These pics would make an ide­al desktop/background slide show.

Silly Top Gear crap. Always amus­ing. The Ariel Atom is high­ly desir­able, fast, stu­pid fun, and cool look­ing — for some­thing on four wheels. The first minute or so of the video and the expla­na­tion of the haz­ards of mid­dle aged sport­bike own­er­ship is either tacky as hell or scream­ing­ly fun­ny. Depends on your rela­tion­ship to mid­dle age. (And just when did 35 become mid­dle aged?)

Underwater trans­port, the largest sub­ma­rine in the world. The now decom­mis­sioned Typhoon/Shark. Pages and pages of excel­lent photographs.

I don’t know if you’ll be offered the same video ad on English Russia that I was but just in case you weren’t… Spend a cou­ple of min­utes with my lat­est bark­ing mad obses­sion the SLS.

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Science and Technology

Another cool crea­ture explained by the won­der­ful folks at Dr. Casey Dunn’s lab. The flamin­go tongue snail.

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Art, Images, and Illustration

More old school, low tech medi­um. Painters.

Concept art is made before the animation/game/movie to give the team a sense of the look and feel of the project. Much of this work is still done in acrylics on boards or dig­i­tal­ly to sim­u­late paint. Here’s a hand­ful from The Fabulous Mr. Fox. Contains today’s bonus bike.

Vincent Hui’s grotesques bring Bruegel into the 21st century.

Lovecraftian pin-ups. Seriously cute with ten­ta­cles. NSFW — pin­ups, no nudity/

New to me, Finnish painter Samuli Heimonen. If you click through to the Galleria Heino, nav­i­gate to:  past exhibits > 2009 > Samuli Heimonen.It’s worth the trip.

Take care of your­selves my darlings.

Transportation

The Sunbeam S7 is a dandy bike. The pho­to is bet­ter than dandy.

On my ToDo list for this week: Figure out why the dweebs at TopSpeed
can’t even tell me where they got the lit­tle bit of info they have
about this twist­ed YZ450 to cafe rac­er conversion.

I always thought own­ing an Airstream trail­er would be kin­da cool. I
was wrong, own­ing one of these Victorinox Special Editions or a
Serenity mod­el would be awesome.

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Literature

Fairy-tales are not nice. At least they weren’t nice before the a
bunch of nan­nies took all the good bits out. The excerpt here is
mild­ly NSFW. (Innuendo — no pictures)

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Architecture

NYC has way too many peo­ple, with way too much mon­ey, liv­ing in way
too lit­tle space. Hence these five exam­ples of rooftop hous­es. Click
along to the flickr stream men­tioned at the end of the post for more
(unfil­tered) rooftop follies.

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Art, Images, Animation

One of the best artists work­ing in cut paper today. Peter Callesen can
show you fields of flow­ers in a sheet of A‑4 white bond.

Snow globes are so roman­tic; unless you look close­ly. Dastardly deeds
in Winter Wonderlands.

The lit­tle peo­ple are out again. London, Grottaglie (it’s in Italy)
and fine gut­ters near you.

Lisa D sent along the link to this nice exam­ple of new style flip-book
ani­ma­tion. Sweetness.

Happy Tuesday campers.

I’m flex­ing my fin­gers this morn­ing, get­ting back into the swing for you all.

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Transportation

I love the lit­tle Piaggio Ape. Here’s a brochure for the 1979 ver­sion. (In Italian on a Japanese site.)

The Pacific Northwest tri­als sea­son start­ed yes­ter­day with the Plastered Purple Penguin in Marysville. This ear­ly tri­aler , a Bulldog, looks noth­ing like the Sherco in the shop. It’s a sweet piece of equip­ment nonetheless.

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Science

Lovely video of the north­ern lights. The World at Night has a ton of oth­er amaz­ing videos and photos.

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Images, Art, and Design

University of Nevada has many inter­est­ing dig­i­tal archives. This one is ded­i­cat­ed to comics pro­duced for the gov­ern­ment. There’s lots from Archie and Jughead, and some Cap’n America, even a Charles Schultz or two.

It’s in Portuguese but this is the best of the “Images of the Decade” col­lec­tions I’ve seen. The South American per­spec­tive helps.

And anoth­er year-ender. 342 movies in 7 min­utes. The sound track is awe­some.  (SFW/Music)

Happy First Monday my lovelies.

Transportation

Henrik Toth is weird. His hack is awe­some.

Shiny, blocky, inter­est­ing sur­face treat­ments. Yeah the Batman mention
is unavoid­able, but it’s bad ass none the less. Lamborghini Ankonian
con­cept car.

Chopper wiring dia­gram. Because we all need a lit­tle help with
remem­ber­ing where the coil goes in the cir­cuit. (Page down — stupid
big header.)

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Tech

Maybe the can­dy bar (rec­tan­gu­lar) cell phone is not the best shape
for our portable data devices in the future. Sweet mock up of the UI
as well.

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Society

“Before the fan­ny packs and Andrea Bocelli con­certs, your par­ents (and
grand­par­ents) were once free-wheeling, fashion-forward, and super
awe­some.” Sweet tum­blr of old pho­tos. My Parents Were Awesome. Video
inter­views and com­men­tary in the side bar.

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Art, Image, and Design

Another cream pitch­er that’s a nice visu­al chuck­le.

Boots!

Stephan Doitschinoff’s take on reli­gious mot­tos and icons. I love this
St. Thomas. (there are more)

Ben Roberts pho­tographs peo­ple in places. I sug­gest you spend time
with Over Dark Waters (ice fish­ing in Ont) and Superpit (min­ing in
Australia)

Morning Linkage is going on win­ter break. See you all in 2010.

Transportation

My pur­chase of an iPhone is now ful­ly jus­ti­fied. Volkswagen has
released an app for fol­low­ing the Dakar 2010 ral­ly. Link at the
bot­tom. Woot!

You’ve seen the sneak pre­view shots of the Chanel bike. Now here’s the
real deal. Bonus shot of the creepi­est guy in fashion.
http://thevintagent.blogspot.com/search/label/Chanel

Water Buffalo. Love it or hate.

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Society (and Policy)

Laugh at Bob Hope’s bad jokes and make a point about what ‘pub­lic
archive’ should mean.

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Science

A look behind the scenes of one of the seg­ments of BBC’s How the Earth
Made Us. (Recommended) Paul Williams describes film­ing inside Cueva de
los Cristales of Mexico. One of the nas­ti­est and most beau­ti­ful places
on earth.

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Art, Image, and Design

Hello Kitty and Balzac? I have no idea.

Tying threads. Nice work from a Portland firm. (Cephalopod)

Xeni Jardin is in Guatemala and sends pic­tures of altars constructed
for Fiesta de la Virgen de Guadalupe.

Playing with food is fun. And there’s an entire blog devot­ed to
pic­tures of cute food. Start with this trop­i­cal beach cabana canape.

A wish list item for Industrial Designers. A new series from Phaidon
that high lights the best in ID from the 20th Century. A nice
selec­tion of images to whet your appetite.

I can’t find this par­tic­u­lar image in the pho­tog­ra­pher’s flickr
stream. It’s worth look­ing around.