magpie's shiny things

Transportation

Japanese cus­tom mak­er M&M fea­tured this sly cus­tom Kawi W650 in July.
(Site in Japanese)

We’ve all seen the futur­is­tic trans­porta­tion in a sci-fi movie that
has pods join­ing up on the free­way to make “trains.” The assump­tion is
that this sort of con­stant­ly recon­fig­ur­ing con­voy would require
mas­sive infra­struc­ture invest­ment and com­plex con­trol­ling software.
Maybe not. Maybe all it takes is an in-car mod­ule and a professional
driver/conductor in the front vehi­cle. Drafting that semi may actually
prove to be the answer to the traf­fic mess.

Massive time-waster alert. Track marine traf­fic in real time. Like so
many of the best infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing and report­ing efforts this one
is a vol­un­teer col­lab­o­ra­tion. Using exist­ing tech­nol­o­gy and pip­ing the
data to a cen­tral data gath­er­ing and dis­play app is the way to go for
so many track­ing prob­lems. (Weather under­ground is anoth­er brilliant
example.)

The Unitd FWD Time AttackUnlimited Scion tC is arguably the ugli­est
damn race car in the world at the moment. But it’s kin­da fun to cruise
the pic­ture gallery and won­der what we could do with that Datsun
sit­ting out behind Dave’s shop. (It would be nice if these guys to
set­tle on the exact name of the car too.)

For those of you fly­ing this hol­i­day sea­son. Try to book something
through SFO. I had for­got­ten about see­ing this exhib­it of space toys
from the past dur­ing a lay­over in Feb. 30 min­utes of pure nostalgic
joy.

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Society

Ars Technica has a decent sum­ma­ry of the Biliski patent case. (Can a
com­mod­i­ty trad­ing method be patent­ed? No, it fails the transformation
test.) The impli­ca­tions for oth­er none tra­di­tion­al (soft­ware) patents
aren’t entire­ly clear yet but the case bears close fol­low­ing by those
of us who make our liv­ing mov­ing bits from one state to anoth­er. The
fact that the case under con­sid­er­a­tion isn’t about a soft­ware patent
trou­bles me, but it looks to be the start­ing point for the judicial
recon­sid­er­a­tion of what a patent is meant to protect.

Warren Ellis has a bad day and puts an end to the dis­cus­sion of the
aug­ment­ed real­i­ty as the urban dig­i­tal future. One of the finest
snarks ever and he uses the word shou­ti­ness.

I don’t think any of my loy­al read­ers have access to a scanning
elec­tron micro­scope. (I’m prob­a­bly wrong) So if you sim­ply must have
that sam­ple of Barbie Hair exam­ined in great detail, pack it up with
the appro­pri­ate form and send it off to ASPEX. The mak­er of SEMs is
run­ning the clever­est publicity/public ser­vice cam­paign ever. You send
it, they scan it and post it on the web­site. There’s a link below the
exam­ple pic­tures on this page to a cou­ple more.

Another site that focus­es on the very small. University of Utah’s
Genetic Science Learning Center has a wid­get that lets you experience
just how small small can be. Move the slid­er to the right and watch
small (coffe bean) get small­er (bak­er’s yeast) and small­er (‘flu
virus) and final­ly small­est (car­bon atom)

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Art, Images

Underwater pho­tog­ra­phy is cool. Underwater movie mak­ing is awesome.
Here’s a set of pic­tures tak­en by a diver/photographer of the action
at Pinewood Studio’s under­wa­ter tank.

More about the facil­i­ty on the Pinewood site. Click on the Water
Filming link in the left sidebar.

Chanzhi Lee’s Nestcage book is an extreme exam­ple of the
trans­for­ma­tion of text as book into book as object. Whatever that
means. The artist’s own web­site is fun but flash based and unlinkable.

On the Spanish lan­guage blog WIP (work in progress) you can watch the
pro­gres­sion of a page of a com­ic from the rough sketch to the finished
prod­uct. Love it.

more tomor­row my lovelies.

Transportation

Old school, TT, side­cars, and air. Can’t miss picture.

Making cus­tom bikes out of any­thing with a radi­a­tor is a challenge.
this CX500 gets close to perfection.

Wrench mon­kees gets some qual­i­ty dig­i­tal print in the lat­est issue of
El Diablo. Starting on page 11. Warning(s) oth­er por­tions of the El
Diablo issue are NSFW and not every­one likes Duranguense.

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Tech

Necessity is a moth­er, or shrinky-dinks to the res­cue. No, nev­er mind,
save the bud­get and just hit up Micheals the next time you need to
build a bunch of micro-fluidic chips.

There were/are so many tal­ent­ed engi­neers behind the illu­sions that
are Disney. Dustin Curtis’s seat mate on day 10 let him in on some of
how the music/ambient sound envi­ron­ment is cre­at­ed. Subtle and
amazing.

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Science

For my fav. mycol­o­gists. ‘Histoire Naturelle des Champignons
Comestibles et Vénéneux’ [The nat­ur­al his­to­ry of edi­ble and poisonous
mush­rooms] by the French phar­ma­cist, Guilliame Sicard. Pretty.

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Images, Illustrations, Art

I remem­ber a few too many of the album cov­ers fea­tured in this
ret­ro­spec­tive of work by Shusei Nagaoka. Enjoy.

Urban Sketchers made the in-flight mag­a­zine of Midwest air­lines. Take
a cruise around the site. It’s the kind of sketch­ing I would do if I
could and the sort of expres­sion I aim for with a camera.

Short and Sweet today my lovelies. (Not at all like me.)

Transportation

From old­est to newest:

Two love­ly ladies set­ting out for a spin.  I think is staged (the bike is lean­ing against a wall and both girls are side-saddle.) None-the-less it’s going into my rota­tion of motor­cy­cle wallpapers.

In hon­or of a lot of things includ­ing a motor­cy­cle, a watch, and one of the Greatest Movies of All Time. A Heuer liv­er­ied Bonneville. It lacks only Steve McQueen to make it the sex­i­est thing I have seen in a decade.

From about the same time, a Dormobile Camper Van. Adorably dorky.

Furturistic. A design for a fuel-cell pow­ered scooter/bike hybrid with car­go capac­i­ty. The trick with the han­dle­bars that con­vert from up-right scoot­er to more lay-down bike pro­file is par­tic­u­lar­ly clever. Cute, but it’ll be  along time before this replaces the Honda Cargo as the intra-urban stuff hauler of the 2nd and 3rd world.

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Science

Another in the series — Geez, We Live on a Pretty Planet. A set of space shots of tiny islands.

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Tech and Society

Google has a new, most­ly unre­port­ed, tool. The Google Dashboard lets you look at all of the ser­vices asso­ci­at­ed with your gmail account. It’s aim is to give you one place to check to see what you are and are not reveal­ing to the world about your use of gmail, picasa, google docs, etc. Check your account. You may dis­cov­er, as I did, that you have accounts with ser­vices that you don’t remem­ber sign­ing up for. (Google docs? I own doc­u­ments on Google Docs? Huh?)

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Images, Design, Animation

You all know that I am all about the shoes. I wish I had had room in my lug­gage on my recent trip to Mexico for  Dia de los Muertos to haul along a pair of the Ladies Muetre Platforms. (Second row, far left). Zombie stom­pers indeed.

The last time I lived in a tru­ly tiny space was in a dorm room in col­lege. We con­served space with jury rigged bunk beds built on top of milk crates stacked to the ceil­ing. The con­vert­ible beds fea­tured here are so much more attrac­tive and prob­a­bly less prone to cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ure under heavy use.

In 2004 a group of artists pro­duced a dig­i­tal loop­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive piece called ZOOMQUILT. It is a ton of fun to play with. Be patient with the load time. It’s worth it.

This year anoth­er group made a sim­i­lar piece called ZOOMQUILTII. The art is of the same high qual­i­ty but the inter­face is god awful. Sigh. Sometimes old-skewl real­ly is best.

Three fine, very dif­fer­ent illus­tra­tors this morning:

Prop4g4nda4 takes a riff on the Soviet Era to pro­duce con­cert  posters. These are so far beyond the stuff stuck to the pow­er poles around town.

Jeff Miracola had dropped off my radar until he post­ed about hav­ing a piece includ­ed in the recent issue of Spectrum. A quick look at the front page of his site remind­ed me why I’d added him to list of artists to keep track of. Also he might get the week­ly award for rea­son­able and attrac­tive use of flash. I love the con­stant­ly chang­ing head­er art.

Flora Chang’s Happy Doodle Land is a good place to spend a cou­ple of min­utes on Monday morning.

Here is a ani­mat­ed teas­er for a French car­toon that is still look­ing for pro­duc­tion and broad­cast deals. Sweet, yes, but so far from sac­cha­rine.  If I owed a pro­duc­tion company…

Here’s hop­ing this is the start of a fab­u­lous week.

Back in the coun­try and ready to serve up linky goodness.

We’re back at boys and girls.

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Transportation

If you dig Marisa Miller, vin­tage pin-ups and H‑D motos then you’re going to have a good morn­ing. Be a men­sch, send the post­card to a sol­dier after you’re done with the drooling.

It’s TT antic­i­pa­tion time. Cafe Racer Society fea­tures the art of John Hancock draw­ing TT leg­ends.

Much more Hancock moto good­ness.

Sweet short graph­ic nov­el sto­ry about a 17 year old rac­ing the TT in 1922. There is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a full length ver­sion. I’ll keep my eye on it.

New favorite office chair. More ves­pa mad­ness.

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Tech

A cou­ple of old school links.

Nerd badges rock. The full stack web devel­op­er badge rec­og­nizes those of you (us) who know how the serv­er works as well as how to make it all look okay in IE 5. Plus break­fast food!

Fascinating his­to­ry of the <IMG> tag. A look into how deci­sions were made in the pre-historic era; I wish it was so sim­ple now.

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Culture

There’s bound to be just the right inspi­ra­tional mes­sage in one of these two posts. (Not for the goody-goody types.)

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Images, Art, Architecture

Information Architecture and the City. ~The~ hot top­ic for con­fer­ences this year. Need a title to hang your pre­sen­ta­tion on? Head on over to the Urban Informatics Speech Title Generator. Did that last talk fall flat? Click the but­ton for anoth­er gig.

I adore the idea of con­vert­ing com­mer­cial build­ings to res­i­dences. How about a gas station?

Another one for the Amazon wish list. Described by Cory Doctrow as “Funny, inspir­ing, wicked-nerdy”, what more can you ask for from a kids’ com­ic about three awk­ward, brainy types in mid­dle school?

Tome Gauld does love­ly pen and ink draw­ings with sin­gle spot col­ors or back­grounds. Much of his work is com­mer­cial pub­li­ca­tion illos. You can’t escape the charm of pieces like ‘emp­ty house’.

Even if your Spanish is full-on dopey you can’t help smil­ing at these car­toons drawn by Juan Berrio. His blog ‘cuader­no de fras­es encoun­tradas’ (note­book of over­heard phras­es) shows pairs and small groups of every­day peo­ple hav­ing every­day conversations.

Today’s ani­mat­ed video: Bave Circus. A boy sits in his tree house dur­ing a rain storm and lets his mind wan­der. It took me a few sec­onds to get over the snails as pets but the ani­ma­tion is love­ly and the rainy day rever­ie is just the thing for a chilly Thursday in Seattle.

Transportation

Grey fog­gy Mondays are a bitch. Here’s a much bet­ter look­ing bitch.

On the elec­tric bike front. The tale of a cou­ple of guys try­ing to get
from Detroit to DC to meet the prez on an Brammo Enertia. Follow their
slow, outlet-to-outlet progress.

Porsche’s fam­i­ly tree in cars and dust. I’m reserv­ing judg­ment on the
Panamera until I’ve seen one in the flesh.

One of the clas­sic Dodge mus­cle car col­ors was ‘that pur­ple’ which it
turns out was called Plum Crazy. Now you can get the new Challenger in
a sim­i­lar paint scheme. Hmmm.

More pur­ple. This time the new Nissan Fairlady. Not only do I love the
name but I think the new car is exact­ly what a new Fairlady should be.

Warren Ellis says nice things about the cam­era work and sound­track on
Top Gear. Then his fans duke it out over the ques­tion of best sound­track
on BBC, Top Gear or Dr. Who. What?!?

Smithsonian Air and Space has put about half of their col­lec­tion of
avi­a­tion posters on line. 600 images of yum­my fly­ing good­ness.

Piaggio makes the icon­ic Ape three-wheel deliv­ery cart. Here are three
cut, fold, paste mod­els with wit­ty col­or schemes and amus­ing cargo.

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Art, Images, Illustration

LAPD made head­lines while inves­ti­gat­ing the theft of Warhol’s athlete
series. They have a large, com­pre­hen­sive web­site. Including a section
devot­ed to the Art Theft Detail.  Here’s all the back­ground on the
theft and dozens more.

Storyboards are an essen­tial tool for the film indus­try. An interview
with Federico D’Allesanro who did many of the boards for Where the
Wild Things Are. Including a walk through of cre­at­ing the sto­ry boards
for the dirt clods scene.

Fauns are tra­di­tion­al­ly depict­ed as male. This girl faun cre­at­ed by
John Malloy for an album cov­er tick­les my fancy.

Milo Manara’s his­to­ry of man dio­ra­ma is over­whelm­ing­ly about who
fought who and who did who. NSFW but worth a cof­fee break out­side to
peer and gig­gle through the ages.

Ben Kehoe’s naive paint­ings (and comics.) Teddy R, buf­fa­lo, and frogs. Uh huh.

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Animation

Stop motion using huge card­board cutouts and urban landscapes.

Impossible Cool. Crosby.

Happy Monday campers.