magpie's shiny things

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.

Transportation

It’s final­ly warm again today but you nev­er know what the rest of the
win­ter may bring. For those of you who insist on rid­ing not matter
what. The next best thing to a Zamboni.

Phil Rudge, writes about rebuild­ing a 1931 Rudge Ulster. Did you know
that EMI once owned a motor­cy­cle man­u­fac­tur­er? I did­n’t. Excellent
Vintagent write up.

More machine video. This time instead of build­ing, it’s unbuilding.
Disassembling a Hyundai. Short and sweet. Light music.

Cars in camo look stu­pid. Except maybe this McLaren decked out for
win­ter test­ing in Sweden. Or maybe I just lust after the car.

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Science and Technology

The steel indus­try is alive and not so well. But not as bad as it was.

Twitter aids sci­ence. Local twit­ter reac­tions to earth­quakes leave
evi­dence for geologists.

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Society

The artists being ripped off by the record com­pa­nies (in Canada) may
find relief and the rest of us may find vin­di­ca­tion. There is talk of
the artists’ using the dam­age awards that RIAA has claimed in
copy­right infringe­ment cas­es as the basis for dam­ages to be claimed in
their fight for pay­ment. Ouch.

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Art, Image, and Design

Holiday cheer — Mr. and Mrs. Cthulhu Claus.

Scrap book­ing brought col­lage to the atten­tion of the mass­es. Here’s a
look at some of the his­to­ry of the form and some of the best
con­tem­po­rary work.

I don’t care for Roger Federer but look fur­ther into Hellovon’s
port­fo­lio for some fresh mono­chrome work.

More book art. This time a set of 3‑D adven­ture sto­ries carved out of pages.

Reg Mobasssa’s work is prob­a­bly famil­iar to many of you. The
Australian painter has been putting out pop images for 30+ years. He
answers ques­tions for Planet Blog and they pro­vide a nice selec­tion of
his work. (Vaguely NSFW — adam and eve)

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Animation

More fun with com­put­er ani­ma­tion soft­ware and Ninjas. Brett sent me
this one and owes me a keyboard.

Happy Tuesday campers,

Transportation

Indonesia born Charles Burki did illus­tra­tions in the 30’s and 40’s.
Vintagent brings us a cou­ple of Norton’s done from mem­o­ry while he was
held in a Japanese prison camp.

There’s a flickr pho­to­stream for every inter­est includ­ing Citroens.
This old van is unla­beled but cool in a rusty old way.

A much nicer old (style) truck is this bike hauler. (Also from Vintagent.)

Total Moto pr0n video. How the MV Agusta Brutale chas­sis goes togeth­er. And
the engine video as well. Say good­bye to your cof­fee break.

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Science

Last week I told you about Google Earth’s new tools for look­ing at
satel­lite pic­tures and track­ing eco­log­i­cal changes. The num­ber of
trees lost isn’t the only thing turn­ing up in the images. An entire
pre­vi­ous­ly unknown ancient civ­i­liza­tion has emerged.

Barbie famous­ly com­plained that “Math is hard” at least she didn’t
have an ele­phant in the class­room to dis­tract her. Giggle.

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Society

Another sal­vo in the war of con­tent own­ers on their customers.
Objections are being raised to treaty terms that would help to
guar­an­tee access to books in alter­nate for­mats for the blind. Claiming
that it would “begin to dis­man­tle the exist­ing glob­al treaty structure
of copy­right law.” The exist­ing struc­ture serves nei­ther cre­ators nor
audi­ence so why would I wor­ry about it’s demise?

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Art, Image and Design

Bakelite was (arguably) the first com­mer­cial plas­tic. Unlike most of
today’s plas­tics Bakelite improves with age. These brooches from the
col­lec­tion of Susan Kelner Freeman are for sale at Bonhams.

Tim Biskup is open­ing anoth­er show in Spain. The poster alone is
wor­thy of wall space.

Salvage sculp­ture takes a new turn when Miguel Rivera guts dead hard
dri­ves for their com­po­nents and cre­ates new objects. The moto is
fea­tured in the sec­ond image.

I am mor­ti­fied at hav­ing to present you with some­thing lodged on a
site called “wed­ding bee pro” but the Moyle sis­ters have the nicest
round up of images from the mid-century team of Alice and Martin
Provensen. (The sis­ters’ design work does­n’t suck either. I’m just a
lit­tle too expe­ri­enced to find wed­ding graph­ics charming.)

Ryan Berkley, a set of prints of anthro­po­mor­phic vil­lage characters.
Very British, very wonderful.

Something a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the usu­al Urban Sketchers style.
Suggestive line work and loose col­or­ing. Views from the bus.

Annie Wu’s the­sis mate­r­i­al, quirky posters for imag­i­nary movies and
prod­ucts. Spaghetti Western meets Trigun with a lit­tle David Lynch
thrown in. Sort of.

Fabulous cut paper illus­tra­tions by Maurizio Santucci.

Get Back to Work is a stream of unat­trib­uted eye can­dy. Tank G’s
ori­gin isn’t eas­i­ly found on the web, but I’m not giv­ing up. There’s
got to be more of this good stuff.

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Video/Game

Turn off the sound. Now go here and build a robot.  You might want to
turn the sound back on when you make your robot dance. The tracks are
cho­sen with a wink.

Get back to work…