magpie's shiny things

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.

Special Saturday Edition
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Transportation

Can’t get enough of the big Duc’s iden­ti­ty cri­sis? Now it wants to be
a GS and go out to play in the dirt on Saturday.

Topspeed has un-watermarked copies of the pix in res­o­lu­tions suitable
for your win­ter desk­top wall­pa­per.

Ducati North Beach had a take your pic­ture with the Ducati umbrel­la
girls event a cou­ple of weeks ago. There’s a cou­ple of odd four wheel
vehi­cles in the stream as well.

How not to treat your scoot­er.

What to do with a well worn ves­pa. This is the sec­ond seriously
rockin’ rock­ing horse I’ve shown you all. Maybe I need to do a theme post?

The Honda Ruckus, ide­al plat­form for per­son­al expression.

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Society

Lisa Gold once again pro­vides a round up of the lat­est on the Google
Books set­tle­ment. It’s look­ing more and more like an up-settlement.
Includes a link to the Slate arti­cle “Sergy Brin Blows Smoke Up Your Ass.”

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Technology

Esquire Magazine a look at the Creech Air Force Base home of the remote
fly­ers of the 42nd Attack Squadron. The men and women who remotely
pilot the Reaper and Predator UAVs. The slide into war by joystick
fright­ens me.

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Images

Totally cute hood­ie idea. Mouthman hood­ies that change when you cross your arms.

Contes absur­des, absurd sto­ries. Illustrated in ink and water­col­or by
Lou Beauchesne.

Annie Lebowitz is a tal­ent­ed por­traitist. These adver­tis­ing images for
Disney from 2007–2008 are unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly flat except for the sly irony with
which she casts the celebri­ties as Disney characters.

Sinister. Unsettling.

Lovely pack­ag­ing fea­tur­ing mega-fauna of cof­fee grow­ing regions. (Yes,
I saw the surfer. I’ll stick to my characterization.)

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Math Video

No groan­ing. A clever ani­mat­ed expla­na­tion of some of the cal­cu­la­tions
involv­ing pi.