magpie's shiny things

Transportation

Tea cer­e­monies are not some­thing we often asso­ciate with cus­tom bikes.
Maybe we should.

Old illus­tra­tions of motor­cy­cle from vin­tage books. I’ve already got
an email in to my fav pur­vey­or of old book pr0n.

On auc­tion at Bonhams. A 1954 BSA motor­ized tan­dem bicycle.

More ped­al bike hot­ness. Belt dri­ve town­ie. Almost enough to make me
move to a nice Kirkland con­do. Almost.

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DIY

Feeling old school today. There was  time when wiring was managed
with­out the help of the plas­tic zip-tie. Linemen and oth­ers created
func­tion­al beau­ty with cable-lacing. I’ll be in my stu­dio lat­er today
try­ing this out.

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Art and Images

More old school. Chrome logos from the past. His ‘spas­tic website’
award is in the mail.

Art Nouveau and hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry go well togeth­er. Really. Jean de
Bosschere does Weird Islands, and a lot of oth­er things.

Silly draw­ings for Marmite ads. Proving that a sense of humor can be
an asset in adver­tis­ing. Scroll to num­ber 3 for the dinosaur. Pretty
please?

To hell with Hooters. Titillation is actu­al­ly sexy in these black and
whites of “old” Las Vegas.

that should make the wait for Friday just a lit­tle easier.

Transportation

Sweet CL350. Just because I like pret­ty things.

Sometimes it’s inter­est­ing to look at our sport from the outsider’s
per­spec­tive. Hypermotard is indeed a stu­pid word.

I keep find­ing cool insect based art and artifacts.

A lit­tle help for those dull stripes and such that lit­ter the
road­ways. Somewhat clever.

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Society

I once had a client who spent a lot of mon­ey employ­ing peo­ple in DC to
read the Federal Register to make sure that they did­n’t miss any
impor­tant bits of rule mak­ing. The FR is now xml enhanced and it’s
pos­si­ble to build RSS feeds of the results for spe­cif­ic queries. Do
you need to know every thing your gov­ern­ment has to say about bee hive
inspec­tion sched­ules? Daily updates!

The judi­cia­ry isn’t so open mind­ed about it’s pub­lic records. For
years PACER has been the way to get copies of fed­er­al court records.
At 8 cents/page. There are ongo­ing attempts to cap­ture these records
and move them into pub­licly search­able and free data­bas­es. The FBI
cares. Really.

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Literature

No need to read the lat­est genre fic­tion. A sum­ma­ry of all the
pos­si­ble plots is now avail­able. Chinese menu style plot gen­er­a­tor.
Snork.

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Art, Illustration, Images

Raul Allen’s work is much dif­fer­ent in tone from the loud, simplified
look cur­rent­ly in favor for illus­tra­tion work. This por­trait of a
woman is moody, detailed, and not false.

Watercolor and ink area sub­tle and dif­fi­cult to mas­ter. Charmagne Coe
uses the flow­ing uncon­trol­lable nature of the col­ors to good effect.

Another unlink­able flashy mon­ster. But try to fol­low along. On the
left side, click on the scream­ing girl. When the three books covers
appear, click on the left-most (chuck­ling what’s it) Then click on
Watch the Cartoon at the bot­tom. Wood block car­toon­ing. Very cool.
(audio vol­ume warning)

Robots and Monsters, you sup­ply three words and one of sev­er­al artists
draws you a cus­tom mon­ster. Your dona­tion goes to sup­port a good
cause, cur­rent­ly water.org. The best part is the time you get to spend
com­ing up with the per­fect three words.

Transportation

Apropos recent dis­cus­sions of police iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Here’s a gallery
of pix of the new bogey. Chevy Caprice cop cruis­er. Look closely,
com­mit to memory.

Can’t quite put my fin­ger of the words I’m look­ing for to descripbe
this one. Something about cats or dogs and break­fast. Why does fast
have to be so ugly?

Cute as a bug and with the prop­er num­ber of wheels. (3)

Another gallery. This time of tri­als bikes. Check the fourth image
down. A Guzzi tri­aler? Well I’ll be…

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Design

Heavy on the archi­tec­ture this morning.

I have no idea how this amp sounds. But it looks delicious.

Another phal­lic homage to cor­po­rate ego. The tallest build­ing in
Europe may go up in St.Petersburg cour­tesy of Gazprom’s oil unit OAO
Gazprom Neft. Just plain wrong.

Unicorn chas­er for the above. A guid­ed tour of St Petersburg on the
occa­sion of it’s 300th anniver­sary. (mod­est music)

And as a salve for the loud, child­ish archi­tec­ture of the new Facebook
digs from last week. This set of offices cre­at­ed out of an old bowl­ing
alley.

More mod­ern archi­tec­ture. Square with cor­ru­gat­ed met­al exte­ri­ors. Soon
we may all be liv­ing in con­vert­ed ship­ping con­tain­ers. This is what we
hope they’ll look like.

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Images

Sexiest SFW you have ever seen. Anyone else want to learn to tan­go?

Lyrically beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions of fly­ing machines, jets, and rockets.

From Terrible Yellow Eyes. Not the first John Coulter piece I’ve
fea­tured. (And yes, it does cause a dou­ble take every time I see his
name.,or maybe our JC has a secret identity?)

Go to Robots and Mosters. Order a cus­tom robot/monster draw­ing.
Support a good cause. Own the coolest pet pic­ture ever.

Happy Monday my darlings.

Short List Day

Transportation

FIAT Yamaha debut total­ly bor­ing new liv­ery this weekend.

Hardy a track can­di­date but very flow­ery.

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Society

Matt Burns mom has her own def­i­n­i­tion for lol. I think I“ll share her mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion. (Hint: read the mes­sages start­ing at the bot­tom right.

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Art and Images

Women have been mak­ing impor­tant (FSVO) art for a lot longer than your high school art his­to­ry class told you. Four Venetian women from the 16th/17th cen­tu­ry are briefly profiled.

You can’t be an illus­tra­tor with­out a flash web­site. Dean MacAdams makes the wait to load a gig­gle. Cheerful and zany. A good way to start the last day of the week.

see you on Monday

Transportation

The new Augusta. Sexiest bike in the world? Maybe. Very nice engine details pix.

Old school sexy. A Guzzi, in rattle-can mat­te black.

More old school. Husky used to make bikes not just chain­saws and
sewing machines.

An entire day wast­ing day’s worth of two (and three) wheeled old
school and amuse­ment. Expect to links to this one in the future.

Oshkosh, not just for cov­er­alls. There’s the new M‑ATV com­plete with
mar­ket­ing video. Photo gallery but no order­ing info.

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Society

Facebook com­men­tary from a car­toon­ist. “all the mun­dane anecdotes,
none of the art!”

—————-

Tech

Very tricky Trojan that steals your bank­ing cre­den­tials and then
hi-jacks your lat­er ses­sions with the bank to cov­er up the frauds.

Craig Burton takes Steve Ballmer to task for micro-managing. Kind of a
well duh moment.

Borders joins Barnes and Noble in offer­ing free wi-fi. Nice move, I’d
switched my cof­fee, mag­a­zine brows­ing, and do a bit of work routine
from Borders to B&N when B&N start­ed offer­ing free wifi. I’ll likely
switch back now. But I driect you to the quote from the PR droid at
Borders about the change. Huh? Is that English?

Ars Technica takes a look at the MSFT Security Essentials that Lee
men­tioned the oth­er day. They are impressed.

Further news on the MSFT Courier “book­let” lots more details and a few
hints at the lim­its of it’s capa­bil­i­ties. Still Want.

Life Magazine Archives comes up with an oth­er win­ner. 30 Dumbest
inven­tions. The light up tires are cool, the girl coy­ly adjust­ing a
stock­ing is a lit­tle racy for my great-grandpa but you all should find
it SFW.

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DIY

I have a chalk board refrig­er­a­tor. Some peo­ple can’t think with­out a
white board, butch­er paper and crayons make eat­ing out pos­si­ble with
sprogs. So how about a table as chalk board. The mat­te black fin­ish is
tres chic as well.

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Art, Images, and Illustration

At $250 for the issue I won’t be buy­ing Visionaire this month. But I’d
love to have this rock­ing col­lec­tion of pop-up art. Video is NSFW
(nudi­ty)

I no longer fol­low the sweet sci­ence (that went out with the ex) but I
enjoyed find­ing this por­trait of Brock Lesnar on Solon’s site.

New car­toon. Witch-knots. Passable so far. I’ll keep an eye on it.

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And Out the Door.

Paging ms rainey. Just a reminder about how dogs think.
http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/092609/chesterlist.gif

liv­ing the vida loco