magpie's shiny things

Technology and a lit­tle Transportation

Skype is an impor­tant part of the ‘net ecol­o­gy espe­cial­ly in parts of
the world where phone taps are ubiq­ui­tous. Various pro­grams have been
writ­ten to allow inter­cept­ing and record­ing VOIP. Now the programmer
who wrote one of them has released his code to the pub­lic. Interesting
results.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/skype-trojan/

If you are the fam­i­ly IT depart­ment you should book mark this page. It
con­tains about half of the flow charts devel­oped by Morris Rosenthal
for trou­bleshoot­ing PC hard­ware. If your fam­i­ly is par­tic­u­lar­ly hard
on lap­tops or par­tic­u­lar­ly demand­ing you might want to buy the book.
http://www.fonerbooks.com/pcrepair.htm

He’s also got a set for repair­ing cars. All avail­able on line.
http://www.ifitjams.com/

We often make fun of twit­ter and it’s users. But it has become an
impor­tant plat­form for devel­op­ment. Here’s a list of 10 mash-ups.
http://www.inspiredm.com/2009/08/31/the-most-creative-10-websites-and-apps-built-on-top-of-twitter/

The most pleas­ant of the batch is an ani­mat­ed stream search. Enter a
term in the box in the low­er left hand cor­ner. Click on the
magnifier/search icon. Rolling your mouse over the blue birds gets you
the con­tents of the tweet that each is car­ry­ing. (I’ve set the initial
search to moto GP.) Or you can just watch the lit­tle birds flitter
past. It’s kind of restful.
http://toriseye.quodis.com/#moto%20GP

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News and Culture

What ever your opin­ion of Ted Kennedy, the Big Picture’s col­lec­tion of
images from his life and the trib­utes and memo­ri­als to his life is a
visu­al his­to­ry of one of the most pow­er­ful fam­i­lies in America.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/senator_ted_kennedy_19322009.html

I haven’t read an adult/literary nov­el in ages. Writing in the WSJ,
Lev Grossman looks at why I and so many oth­ers are aban­don­ing the
Modern Novel and what we’re read­ing instead.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574377163804387216.html

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Images

Today is water­col­or artist day.

Drawn looks at “The Art of Ponyo.” Hayao Miyazaki’s char­ac­ter studies
are done in watercolor.Miyazaki’s choose of medi­um under­lies the
com­mon look to all of Studio Ghibli’s productions.
http://drawn.ca/2009/08/28/ponyo/

This paint­ing of the Bloor Bridge is just one Herry Afrin’s lovely
urban landscapes.
http://www.herryarifin.com/index_files/Page2313.htm

Howie Tsui’s car­toon­ish take on tra­di­tion­al Japanese paint­ing is both
beau­ti­ful and horrifying.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/31/howie-tsuis-asianwes.html

He’s not using water­col­ors but… Luc Grateau does speed por­traits of
the denizens of the Paris Metro on metro tick­ets. The site includes
exam­ples of his work and a news report on his paint­ing. The video is
in french but you don’t need to under­stand the voice over to enjoy the
story.
http://viacomit.net/2009/08/30/subway-ticket-portraits-by-luc-grateau/

Awesome pic­ture of the day. Space shut­tle lift-off at night.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1458.html

New com­ic that I will be watch­ing. Spacemen, robots, and ger­bils!  (No
feed at the moment — so I’ll put it on my watch list and let you know
when there are new installments.)
http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=comic&id=50969&page=1

Enjoy the day,

Design and Artifacts

From Tokyo, a round up of Good Design 2009 win­ners. The auto­mat­ic meat
fresh­ness indi­ca­tor is clever and use­ful. I want a cou­ple of the lamps
list­ed sec­ond. There’s cute, clever, and head scratch­ing fur­ther on.
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/08/photos-good-design-2009/

I love tea in the morn­ing. The joy of watch­ing this lit­tle shark float
around in my cup would make it even better.
http://designyoutrust.com/2009/08/30/cool-tea-infuser-%E2%80%9Csharky%E2%80%9D/

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Food

Too bad this did­n’t show up ear­li­er in the sum­mer. Maybe we should
plan to build a piz­za oven next yea r… at Martin and Carol’s house.
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/08/26/howto-build-an-outdo.html

Taco trucks get some atten­tion from a seri­ous food writer.
http://www.sundancechannel.com/sunfiltered/2009/08/eating-los-angeles/

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Infrastructure

I don’t know how seri­ous these guys are about the nam­ing conventions
but the aer­i­al pho­tographs of high­ways inter­changes are great
dizzy-making fun.
http://www.infrastructurist.com/2009/05/18/dont-pluck-the-cloverleaf-a-field-guide-to-highway-interchanges-part‑1/

Fire hydrants are tempt­ing tar­gets for painters.
http://www.infrastructurist.com/2009/08/26/ha-amusingly-defaced-fire-hydrants/

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Culture(?)

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal takes a look at sci­ence reporting.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1623

David W has a go at the RIAA and copy­right mad­ness. The sit­u­a­tion is
so out of hand that the satire is sub­tle. (No, really.)
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2009/08/30/riaa-wins-dmca-case-now-illegal-to-decompose/

As I have men­tioned before, Hello Kitty turns 35 this year. The CNet
Gadgettes (oh gag) had a lit­tle con­test. Hello Cougar.
http://www.cnet.com/2300–12552_1-10001381–1.html?tag=mncol;txt

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Images

I adore Tom and Jerry car­toons. But there is a dis­tinct­ly psychotic
edge that is nev­er far from the sur­face. This  re-rendering of a comic
book cov­er cap­tures it nicely.
http://coveredblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/james-powell-covers-tom-jerry-97.html

Drop dead sexy thighs. On a robot.
http://insomnio.org/post/173169516/robots-for-geeks-photo-by-hunyaga

Three years work in Kingston Jamacia by  Peter Dean Rickards. The
whole book is avail­able on line as a PDF.  The por­traits define a
nation and the land­scapes define a time in that nation. NSFW — one or
two nudes and lots of guns.
http://afflictedyard.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/afflictedyard_2003-2007.pdf

Ending the morn­ing with music by Tom Waits and video typog­ra­phy, no
I’m not kid­ding, by Jackie Lay, And a side of Toast.
http://vimeo.com/3046034

Until tomor­row.

Transportation

Boeing’s Scan Eagle UAV gets put to civil­ian use dur­ing the Alaska
wild fire sea­son. Video of the launch and recov­ery with infra-red fire
spot­ting footage. Verra cool.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/firefighting-uav/

This is the most unfor­tu­nate col­or scheme for a bike I have ever seen.
Even John Deere gets the accent col­or for a green vehi­cle righter than
this. There’s a link for the real™ paint scheme in the blurb if you
need an eye cleanser.
http://www.bikeexif.com/bimota-borsalino

Aaron Hughes designed a sta­tion wag­on for Ford dur­ing a college
intern­ship. It looks sus­pi­cious­ly Volvo like. I like seeing
spec­u­la­tive vehi­cle design that is plau­si­ble. His oth­er sets are good
too.
http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_set.asp?individual_id=72279&set_id=195409

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Design

The pint glass is an endan­gered species. The plas­tic replace­ment is
dread­ed and loathed. Vert Design, work­ing for Fosters, has made a
fair­ly suc­cess­ful ver­sion. Here’s a descrip­tion of the glass and the
think­ing that went into it’s design.
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/design_tales_designing_a_successful_plastic_pint_glass_14428.asp

Transistor radios were the iPods of the day and exhib­it­ed the same
for­ward look­ing design.  This flickr stream has 100s of pho­tos of
tran­sis­tor radios. Awesome.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/transistor_radios/

The Museum of Broken Relationships is a Croatian project documenting
bro­ken rela­tion­ships through arti­facts. It’s weird and not terribly
com­pelling (to me.) But this user inter­face for brows­ing the online
col­lec­tion has me fascinated.
http://www.brokenships.com/user.php?id=367

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Bacon

A Top 10 list of pigs. Contains my two favorites.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/32909

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Images and Illustration

Theodoru has new pic­tures on the front page. Flash makes it impossible
to link to my fav. 7th from the top. This is what cre­ation really
looked like. I’m smiling.
http://theodoru.com/

Ramadan has begun and The Big Picture brings us pho­tographs. Check #33
for a breath­tak­ing shot of the moon. And all the desserts you can
dream of.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/ramadan_2009.html

The waifish fash­ion mod­el is one of our soci­ety’s sick­ness­es. Crystal
Renn was one and now she’s not. She talks about get­ting back to being
her­self in this arti­cle. (Yes, I agree with you all that a size 12 is
not a “plus” size for some­one that tall.)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hmWn-7qRbH26aAmvjlHs_W04ddrwD9ABCDTO0

Just to prove that Crystal Renn is gor­geous here are two pho­to sets. NSWF.

Matt Jones. I’m hav­ing trou­ble find­ing the orig­i­nals of these. NSFW — nudes
http://kier-cs.blogspot.com/2009/03/crystal-renn-by-matt-jones.html

From a Polish? site. The guy/gal has great taste in both women and
pho­tographs. NSFW — nudes.
http://bbw.blox.pl/2009/04/Crystal-Renn.html

I’m out­ta here til Monday. Have a great weekend.

Transport

Did you know that the wheel­ie was invent­ed by some guy on bicy­cle who
was try­ing to fright­en a horse? Okay it’s just a draw­ing but it’s a
giggle.
http://thelittlechimpsociety.com/barrett/the-day-the-wheelie-was-made-by-barrett/

OMG that’s fug­ly. Autotopia cap­tion con­test. And the cap­tions are lame.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/wtf-caption-veritas/

OMG that is *not* fug­ly. Swoon.
http://www.thecoolist.com/the-1937-bmw-r7-restored-to-perfection/

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Objects of Design

There were eight win­ners in the elec­tolux design con­test. The only
three good ones are here. Le Petit Prince is charm­ing and plausible.
The dish­wash­er is cool­er than mine. (Difficult to do.) Bonus dumb
trend chas­ing design included.
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/electrolux_design_lab_2009_finalists_14401.asp

Lego and food. You might see lit­tle 2x2 brick short­bread cook­ies at
the Boxing Day Party this year.
http://shop.lego.com/ByCategory/Product.aspx?p=852530&cn=13&d=443

Pizza rules the world on Saturday nights. Now you can rule your pizza
with chop­per styled piz­za cut­ters. Really. Click images for bigger.
That is a com­mand, not a request. (Attitude baby.)
http://www.frankieflood.com/objects.html

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Technology

Make a vac­u­um flu­o­res­cent dis­play clock. The work­man­ship on the model
for this DIY is enviable.
http://www.ladyada.net/make/icetube/

Early large tele­scopes and some of the images cap­tured through them.
The fact that this is a col­lec­tion of pic­tures with very little
expli­ca­tion lends mystery.
http://butdoesitfloat.com/67562

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Pictures

This one’s espe­cial­ly for myJim.  Kit Karter was a one-off com­ic about
a go kart daffy boy. Ignore the name in the link — the poster admits
to a typo.
http://cosseyedcyclops.blogspot.com/2009/08/comic-kit-karson.html

The cov­er and an inside spread from the chil­dren’s book “Night Cars” I
agree with the poster about the spe­cial­ness of the illustrations.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/26/night-cars-gorgeous.html

Jorge Mascarenha’s por­traits of girls. Haunting. Some dis­turb­ing, some
inspir­ing. All uneasi­ly familiar.
http://jorgemascarenhas.bigcartel.com/

Danboard is a card­board ver­sion of the char­ac­ter Danbo. 365 (more or
less) pho­tographs of the card­board mas­cot doing com­mon and odd things.
http://www.fubiz.net/galleries/set/365-days-of-danboard/

Impossible cool. Cash.
http://theimpossiblecool.tumblr.com/post/171431564/cash

Transportation

The scram­bler is a great idea for a week­end toy. Here Touratech
cre­ates a mod­ern take on the theme using a BMW F800.
http://www.bikeexif.com/bmw-f800scrambler

Texting and dri­ving is a bad idea. How can any­one think that building
traf­fic mashups while on the go is a good idea.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/two-new-iphone-apps-go-beyond-navigation/

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Science

Sunspots and solar mag­net­ic changes fas­ci­nate me. That the things that
hap­pen on such a small (rel­a­tive) scale on the sun can have such huge
effects on earth seems improb­a­ble. We may get to have out own little
ice age.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/08/another-little-ice-age-solar-activity-and-climate-change.ars

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Technology

Next time (huh?) I end up with an arm in cast I’m going to demand one
of these. I’m think­ing the pur­ple camo is nice.
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/08/24/exos-arm-brace-has‑c.html

One the eBook front. The race is on and now we all have to live
through a cou­ple of years of com­pet­ing devices and for­mats as well as
the attempts by var­i­ous com­pa­nies to wrest exclu­sive distributing
deals out of pub­lish­ers. Ad nau­se­um. Here’s the latest.

Flat World Knowledge a pub­lish­er of text books just fin­ished up a beta
test of a pro­gram that lets you read that 400 page tome for free
on-line. You can get more portable/useful ver­sions for a price. (Still
below that of the tra­di­tion­al dead-tree ver­sion.) They are striving
for device independence.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/flat-world-schools-textbook-publishers-with-free-web-editions.ars

Two new devices:

Irex will be bring­ing out an e‑reader to go with the new Barnes and
Noble e‑book store.
http://mobilefactor.org/coming-irex-and-barnes-noble-to-launch-new-e-book-reader/

Sony’s newest read­ers launched this morn­ing. Some include wire­less and
one ver­sion has a touch screen. I’m not entire­ly clear on what the
Library Finder does. I’ll let you know when I know. Crunch Gear’s live
cov­er­age of the announcements.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/08/25/sony-announce-the-wireless-daily-edition-ereader/

Now that we have so many choic­es in read­ing devices here’s a list of
sources for free books. Often you get what you pay for but a free copy
of Sherlock Holmes can make an O’Hare lay­over bearable.
http://www.rotorblog.com/2009/03/09/top-25-free-e-books-sites-the-definitive-list/

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Home Ec and Some Silliness.

There’s no way Future President Moss can eat enough baby goop to keep
us all in baby food jars for work­shop stor­age. I found this exam­ple of
using those CD spin­dle packs for shop storage.
http://woodworkingextras.blogspot.com/2009/05/good-bye-baby-food-jars.html

Speaking of sprogs. If you’re the one in cubi­cle land with­out an
excuse to leave ear­ly on Friday for junior’s soc­cer game here’s a
solution.
http://www.theofficekid.com/index.html

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Art, Design, and Popular Culture

In Philadelphia 50 walls fac­ing the Market Street Elevated will be
paint­ed with love letters.
Cyanatrendland has a descrip­tion of the project.
http://cyanatrendland.com/2009/08/24/a‑love-letter-for-you-street-art/
The blog fea­tur­ing all of the paint­ings (in progress) is here.
http://www.aloveletterforyou.com/

Just as soon as they come out with the bik­er ver­sion of these little
desk­top friends I’m get­ting one. Maybe more.
http://collect3d.com/news/beit-dudes/

I’m feel­ing gen­er­ous toward my Y enhanced friends this morning.

Mort Kunstler did cov­ers for the men’s adven­ture mag­a­zines in the
60’s. Wicked awe­some and SFW. Though gen­er­al­ly lurid and tacky. Yum.
http://www.americanartarchives.com/kunstler.htm

Almost SFW — depends in whether you could get away with the Stihl
gi’me cal­en­dar. George Petty’s 1947 cal­en­dar girls. Giggle-icious.
http://cyanatrendland.com/2009/08/24/george-petty-curvy-pin-up-from-1947/

And for those of us XXs. A brief arti­cle on the flap­per phe­nom­e­na. The
vin­tage pho­tos are worth a look.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/32657

enjoy!