magpie's shiny things

Transportation

Zagato. A name that makes you think of per­for­mance or ele­gance. But
this lit­tle gem? Nope. Not at all. Dang cute e‑v though.

Tom Swift is best known around here for lend­ing his name to a vile
word game. But he rode some nifty equip­ment as well. At least
accord­ing to this book cover.

From Australia. A twin cafe rac­er by Deus ex Machina. When you’re done
ogling the beau­ty hov­er over “select a gallery” to find more goodies.
NB Reader’s wives isn’t what you expect. SFW

First it was the pock­et pyrom­e­ter, then the hel­met cam. Now the pock­et
radar. Coming to CES this spring.

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Design

The icon­ic sil­hou­ette of the coca-cola bot­tle is instantly
rec­og­niz­able. Except that there was­n’t just one shape. A his­to­ry of
the con­tain­er. Which one is ‑the- coke bot­tle for you?

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Science (?)

NASA has blogs and pages and inter­ac­tive por­tals to every­thing. But
noth­ing quite as wry as this blog from Maksim Suraev who’s currently
resid­ing on the ISS. This demon­stra­tion of the lat­est interstellar
space weapon­ry… (Translated from the orig­i­nal Russian.)

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Art, Images, Illustration

Side note:
I’m begin­ning to have seri­ous doubts about the use­ful­ness of the web
for dis­play­ing an overview of an artist’s work. I find something
inter­est­ing on an aggre­ga­tor site (like MyModernMet, Designlenta, et
al.), go to artist’s site, and then end­ing up link­ing back to the
refer­ring source because they have cho­sen the best of the artist’s
work and are dis­play­ing it at a view­able size. Giving you all the best
chance to decide if you’d like to click through and nav­i­gate the
haz­ards of the artist’s site to look at more.

Ripo does 10 days of BBC head­lines. More sign painter than graffiti
artist, at least here.

Urban sketch­ers in pas­tels this morn­ing. The High Line park in NYC.
Love the crowd.

More art com­ing from graf­fi­ti and sten­cil work. This is a nice montage
of Eyeone’s work. Click through for more.

Everyone knows that Annie Leibovitz is one of my favorite
pho­tog­ra­phers. For the December issue of Vogue (US) she’s done Hansel
and Gretel. I loved her Alice in Wonderland. I hate this. You?

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Video

Fluorescent Hill did video for NASA (not the space peo­ple, the music
project) Toms Waits, Kool Keith, ani­ma­tion, and an inter­view with the
cre­ators. Wowza.

“Tarboy, cre­at­ed by James Lee and Hania, is a ster­ling exam­ple of
flash ani­ma­tion. A brisk, epic short film, it is a per­fect­ly packaged
cap­sule of awe­some. A fan­tas­tic robot fla­vored, after­noon pick-me-up.”
Because I could not begin to describe this any bet­ter… (Coilhouse)

Transportation

1984 — the movie. Did you real­ize those thought police bikes were Vincents? Additional links to the back sto­ry on Cafe Racer Soc.
http://ottonero.blogspot.com/2009/11/bbiwy.html

Another e‑bike. This one with ped­als. I“m not sure where this more push-bike than moped fits into the hier­ar­chy of vehi­cles but it is sweet looking.

Keeping you up to date on the police cruis­er in the rear view mir­ror game. The Crown Vic will be no more; Ford announces (a few details about) it’s new in 2011 purpose-built police vehi­cle. I’m sure most of us will con­tin­ue to have that auto­mat­ic “am I legal?” reac­tion to the Crown Vic pro­file for decades.

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Tech

Developed as a mil­i­tary tool, Xflex wall rein­force­ment is meant to pro­tect the occu­pants of build­ings from blasts by rein­forc­ing the walls. No doubt it will see mil­i­tary ser­vice but I’m bet­ting they sell a lot to civil­ian ser­vices that need to pro­tect assets from hur­ri­cane and tor­na­do dri­ven debris.

Fitness mon­i­tor­ing is get­ting more com­pact and cheap­er. The Fitbit is the size of a mon­ey clip and only costs $100. PC down­loads and track­ing soft­ware mon­i­tor exer­cise lev­els and sleep pat­terns. Pure curios­i­ty makes it near­ly irresistible.

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Objects

I spend a lot of time think­ing about eggs. Not real­ly, but they are a con­stant part of my life along with the 13 hens that pro­duce them. This 1930s(?) counter top egg hold­er takes up a lit­tle too much space but it charms anyhow.

Slightly less charm­ing but more desir­able. Doris Day Duke’s shoot­ing gallery. Seriously, tak­en from her base­ment, sold for more than 40K. (That’s for the cor­rec­tion Debb!)

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Art, Images, Animation

Amy C points to Paul Jacoulet’s Japanese inspired wood­cuts. Serene. (NSFW)

Pure tex­ture in photographs.

Image 5 of the slide show of the work of Johanna Velasco. (SFW except for one baby butt.)

Tim Burton delights me. Concept sketch­es from the last 15 years.

Spy. Spanish street artist with a taste for sar­casm and an under­stand­ing of the ephemer­al nature of art.

Wood block like illos of the char­ac­ters of the Western and Chinese Zodiacs. Much good­ness on this site.

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Creativity

Ariana Osborne is one of my heroes. Technology is her play­ground and quirky irony her usu­al fil­ter for look­ing at the world. Yesterday how­ev­er she was hav­ing a cranky day. The start­ing point is her recent pro­duc­tion of a POD book (Sifting Sands) for Warren Ellis. The burr under her sad­dle: whingers who has 19 excus­es for why they can’t make their own book; the chief one being “but I’m not Warren Ellis” Her come­backs are snap­py and point­ed — as in sharp stick. Because all of us need to remind­ed on occa­sion to get off-ass and do something.

More gen­tly there is Elizabeth Gilbert’s Ole at TEDTalks.

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Animation

An oldie, today needs a gen­tle out the door. Cat Man Do.

That’s it my dears. More than half way through the week.

-lara-

Transportation

Because I just could­n’t help myself. I’ll inflict as many pic­tures of this beast on you all as I can find. This one comes with the price tag though. ~le sigh~ Not even after the manda­to­ry “three years for depre­ci­a­tion” wait am I going to be able to afford one.

Slightly more afford­able is this new 2+2 Lotus Evora. And, all of you vehi­cle web­site design­ers out there. This is how you use flashy/silverlighty/interactive media to sell a car. Wicked quick load­ing, clear nav­i­ga­tion points, and NO music. Now if we could just fig­ure out a way to book­mark bits we’d be good to go.

Uh, there are still a few IceHoles among my loy­al read­er­ship? Right? KTM Adventure ICE. Wicked (That’s the same adjec­tive twice in one post — sorry.)

Cross-over item for the day. Mini (Cooper) does anoth­er art project. The Wash-Me book.

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Tech and Gadgets

The Ars Technica hol­i­day gift guide is out.

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Society and Culture

The rush for H1N1 vac­cines is cre­at­ing long lines of irri­ta­ble folks. In Quebec the Minster of Health looked south to Orlando and the Kingdom of the Mouse for help in man­ag­ing the crush.

Over at Boing-Boing Maggie Koerth-Baker sum­ma­rizes Asit Biswas’ speech to last mon­th’s Nobel Conference. Is There Really a Water Shortage? His take on the prob­lem of pro­vid­ing clean drink­ing water to every­one on earth is a vast depar­ture from the usu­al rhetoric of scarci­ty. Yes, drink­able water is scarce but water itself, maybe not. Video of the full pre­sen­ta­tion and the Q&A are linked to at the bottom.

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Images, Art, and Architecture

More water. This time sur­round­ing the restau­rant at Conrad Maldives Rangali Island Hotel in Rangalifinolhu, Maldives. Underwater din­ing.

The Eugene (OR) Science Factory Children’s Museum is get­ting more new art. Alice Feagan pro­vid­ed these charm­ing under­wa­ter scenes. (First five images in the gallery.)

Another ani­mal gig­gle. This one is all over the ‘net this morn­ing. Cutest cream­er ever. I’m only dis­ap­point­ed that this was­n’t the full size milk jug that it looked like in the first pic­tures I saw. There are a lot more chuck­les to be had on Fred and Friends.

Adam Korford, aka Apelad of Laugh-Out-Loud Cats car­toon fame is doing Limericks for Naughty Children. Snicker.

Another best of the day from Urban Sketchers. The strid­ing blue lady rocks me.

Color and pat­tern in paint. Emmett Kerrigan on Colour Lovers.

It was a tossup between this and the pitch­er for the out the door moment today. I’m feel­ing a lit­tle more Lady MacBeth than Emily Litella so here yah go.

Transportation

Nov 1909. World record bro­ken. 200+ km/hr. Really. The Lightning Benz. It’s pret­ty too.

I first found ‘lapin barcelona’ on Urban Sketchers and then again a cou­ple of days ago on Wrench Monkees. Sweet Flickr set of two wheelers.

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Technology

There’s no way to make a sim­ple moral judg­men­tal about the use of cell phone tech­nol­o­gy as a tool to help ille­gal immi­grants cross the US-Mexico bor­der. That said, lives will be saved and there are so many oth­er places that this sim­ple cell phone based, GPS, com­pass, ser­vice loca­tion set­up could be used… (Follow the link at the bot­tom of the Boing-Boing arti­cle to learn more about the cre­ator and his long stand­ing role in “elec­tron­ic civ­il disobedience”)

A year ago the plug was pulled on the moth­er of spam gen­er­a­tors —  McColo. What it took to make it hap­pen and what some of the con­se­quences have been are dis­cussed by Brian Krebs. I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigued by the cre­ation of “IP ghet­tos” as a result of IP blacklisting.

The fight to pre­serve a trade­mark is a game of chick­en. Too lax and you’ll find your­self accused of hav­ing aban­doned your trade­mark and you’ll lose it. Too zeal­ous and you’ll get swat­ted with counter-suits and drown in legal fees. Or you could just end up look­ing down the bar­rel of the clown can­non. Edge Games (UK) has been aggres­sive­ly — and most­ly suc­cess­ful­ly — going after any oth­er game that uses the term ‘edge’ in it’s title. It all went most­ly their way until they went after indie game mak­er Mobigame, get­ting Apple to remove their wild­ly pop­u­lar EDGE game from the App Store. Oh dear, those are some pissed off clowns…

Google crows about it’s new Locking SafeSearch.“Even from across the room, the col­ored balls give par­ents and teach­ers a clear visu­al cue that SafeSearch is still locked. And if you don’t see them, it’s quick and easy to ver­i­fy and re-lock SafeSearch.” I esti­mate that it will take exact­ly 48 sec­onds for some tyke with a screen cap­ture and paint pro­gram to fix that.

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Art Images and Design

The short­list for the 2009 Digital Camera Photographer of the Year award have been announced (and post­ed.) 10 Categories.

Alice picks 30 of the above.

1920s Chicago. The CTA com­mis­sioned a series of posters high­light­ing the places you could go on Chicago Transit. Deco images, lush col­ors, nos­tal­gic locations.

Locally, Roq La Rue has Brian Despain paint­ings hang­ing. Mostly sold — sigh.

Ryohei Hase paints in Tokyo. Weird, sur­re­al, night­mar­ish and total­ly fas­ci­nat­ing.

Considerably less fright­en­ing are the mon­sters of Bobby Chui of Imaginism Studios

I have no idea what is going to hap­pen with the charm­ing char­ac­ter designs by Jaime Anderson. Something about the chil­drens and YA mar­ket. I was­n’t read­ing the words, just look­ing at the people.

Video of the day. Balancing a tow­er of toys and then send­ing in the windups to knock it over. Because he can, why else?

Happy Monday my lovelies.

Transportation

A love­ly trio of two and three wheel toys. There’s some­thing about the
dreamy 50’s pas­tel style that I like so much.

Not quite toys but wicked fun look­ing lit­tle bikes. Why don’t we get
these sorts of things in the USA? And who writes KTM’s press releases?
Not good.

A world speed record hold­ing boat has been bought by Sea Shepherd for
use “against” the Japanese whal­ing fleet this sea­son. Whatever your
opin­ion of Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd group this boat is just
plain cool. (Too bad it’s going to get smashed to lit­tle bits.)

The use of video in recre­at­ing acci­dents has come a long way since the
ear­ly toy cars and paint­ed lines era. This (one of sev­er­al) video
recre­ation of the events of Flight 1549 is jaw dropping.

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Science

The sci­ence of fore­cast­ing is fraught. BBC takes a look at the
sim­i­lar­i­ties between weath­er fore­cast­ing and epidemiological
fore­cast­ing. You can get the jist from the write up. (Can some­one find
a link to the full length TV report?)

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Society

I’m includ­ing this shal­low lit­tle piece from Autopia sole­ly for the
pur­pose of intro­duc­ing a new term/concept. Dog-Whistle Taste. Snort.

A case study in the ques­tion of causal­i­ty vs. cor­re­la­tion vs
coin­ci­dence. The pro­duc­tion of  good rock and roll leads the
pro­duc­tion of oil.

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Images

Cartography in ser­vice of roller coast­er thrills. Boin- Boing points
to a site full of maps of theme parks. Some of them are love­ly. The
site index isn’t much to look at but ran­dom click­ing is fun.

Anyone who’s spent much time in the world of man­ga knows what hentai
means but few casu­al users ful­ly under­stand the icong­ra­phy and slang
that is used in the Japanese ver­sions and just how hen­tai much of the
seem­ing­ly inno­cent work passed around is. Hush (artist) is open­ing a
show in London this week­end that explores the issue.

You can get a look at more of his sub­ver­sive work on:

Very sil­ly Discovery Channel spot “The World is Just Awesome” part 2. Yay!

A spe­cial birth­day today. Grace Kelly. Class all the way.

is it Thursday already?