magpie's shiny things

Friday Video Edition

Wicked RC plane fly­ing (some­one needs to give this kid an iPod and
some decent tunes.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLbJjqqOqkg

More fly­ing — slow motion hum­ming birds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJf-AQhDTz4

Mid 80’s ad cam­paign for Honda’s City. English rock and roll meets tiny car.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAYd2AK53P8

Parkour from Brazil. Visually stun­ning film. Watch this full screen is
you can. Unless you’re afraid­of heights. Then you might want to watch
the lit­tle screen ver­sion. Gulp.
http://vimeo.com/3183877

VS Ramachandran presents an excel­lent TED talk on how the brain and
the mind are con­nect­ed. Start your code com­pil­ing and spend half an
hour dis­cov­er­ing how your head based com­put­er works.
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/184

more Monday

Two on mate­ri­als science

A promis­ing sub­sti­tute for BPA. It’s being mar­ket­ed in baby bot­tles so
be sure to watch for the ‘no it’s not safe’ back­lash with­in 2 weeks of
release.
http://www.core77.com/blog/materials/materials_a_substitute_for_harmful_bpa_coming_to_you_in_a_baby_bottle_13871.asp

Sand’s unusu­al flow properites have physi­cists won­der­ing about matter
states. Old school B&W sci­ence videos!
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/sandgrains/

Science cre­at­ing art, maybe but light­ning in a cube is cool. The
web­site is fug­ly — what’s with that?
http://www.capturedlightning.com/frames/frameindex.html

Hearse made from a prius. I will haunt you from the great bey­ound. Srsly.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/27003

Watch Shepard Fairey (of oba­ma poster fame) do his art with a spray
can thing. Excellent process video.
http://vimeo.com/5148749

NSA bait. Seed bombs. Guerrilla gardening.
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-a-Seed-Bomb/

more tomor­row

breath tak­ing:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/onnder/sets/72157620170399757/

-lara- off to play with met­al and ham­mers (and maybe fire)

All things Alice (in Wonderland) the first pub­lic­i­ty bar­rage is up and running.

pan and scan and zoom in on three views of the wonderland.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2009–06-22-wonderland-art_N.htm

Character Stills
http://movies.yahoo.com/photos/movie-stills/gallery/1864/alice-in-wonderland-stills#photo0

Two char­ac­ter stills added.
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=56475

Another end of an era in pho­tog­ra­phy post. First the Polaroid and now
Kodachrome.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/23/kodachrome-finally‑t.html

A cou­ple of image/story makers:

Jens Claessens puts togeth­er the mate­ri­als that go into mak­ing an
illus­trat­ed story.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/23/kodachrome-finally‑t.html

Matthieu Fornichon does charm­ing and occa­sion­al­ly wry illustrations.
(Site in French — it does­n’t matter)
http://forichon.blogspot.com/

Irony from Glue Society, of a sort — but most­ly I like the picture.
(The Glue Society’s own web page is annoy­ing in the extreme.)
http://www.hifructose.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=367&Itemid=56

11 Train Stations — now gone. Fabulous American Empire architecture.
http://www.infrastructurist.com/2009/06/22/11-beautiful-train-stations-that-fell-to-the-wrecking-ball/

1 Space Port — we can only hope it meets the same fate as the above
train sta­tions — a lot more quick­ly. (Dang that’s ugly)
http://www.core77.com/blog/news/first_us_spaceport_going_up_13834.asp

In case of emer­gency — build a wi-fi sig­nal grab­ber with common
kitchen uten­sils. (You know you’re gonna need this when the zombies
come.)
http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com/2009/06/ikea-strainer-wi-fi-antenna.html

I can’t believe I am link­ing to yet more fur­ni­ture that becomes a coffin.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/06/22/japanese-company-sells-cabinet-that-converts-into-a-coffin/

The hot item of the moment — the Gay Marriage Debate as a graph­ic — I
don’t think it’s a very good bit of graph­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion but everyone
is  talk­ing about it so you may as well judge for yourself.
http://www.geocities.com/patrick_farley/gayMarriageChart-large.png

mean­while back at the ranch — there are things that want to be fed.
more on Thursday,

Mostly art edition.

Photography and Photos of stuff:

a new favorite pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Trixie Bedlam
http://www.flickr.com/photos/trixiepix/

A sin­gle pho­to­graph and a short quote about the no pho­tos bs.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/19/rosie-hardy-photogra.html

Hope for all pho­tog­ra­phers plan­ning to attend the Olympic Games in
Vancouver (not me)
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/17/vancouver-cops-affir.html

It’s ‘only’ a mod­el. day’am — on all counts.
http://www.bikeexif.com/deubelhorner-bmw-sidecar

Two impor­tant Ars Technica arti­cles on the fate of the writ­ten word in
the elec­tron­ic age.

What does the release of the kin­dle source code real­ly mean: (not a whole lot)
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/06/amazon-code-release-irrelevant-kindle-is-still-closed.ars

What is up with the Google book project.
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/06/google-books-infused-with-new-embedding-browsing-features.ars

Cory Doctorow explains why these are important.
http://www.internetevolution.com/document.asp?doc_id=178058

More art. Gorgeous and some­times fright­en­ing images — homage to Where
the Wild Things Are.
http://www.terribleyelloweyes.com/

more on Monday.