magpie's shiny things

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.

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.