magpie's shiny things

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

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.