magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: electric motorcycles

Morning Linkage (Jan 11)

January 11, 2011 /

Transportation

1930 Nor­ton CS1 TT, the very best kind of fam­i­ly heir­loom. Mar­cel Schoen inher­it­ed it from his uncle who was a bit of a Nor­ton nut and had pur­chased the bike in 1959 from some­one who was using it a dai­ly com­muter. Lots more details and some nice old­er pho­tos. Note that cur­rent own­er is a sil­ver­smith and there’s a Nor­ton Manx mod­el exe­cut­ed in ster­ling at the bot­tom of the post.

The man who sits next to me at break­fast wants to make one of these for him­self. Any­one caught aid­ing and abet­ting this insan­i­ty will be… um, scolded.

You knew it was just a mat­ter of time. Cops on silent bikes…

Science

I love string, and yarn, and thread, and wire, and … Except when it gets tan­gled. No, that’s not true. I love untan­gling things. Odd but there it is. But I nev­er knew that there were enzymes whose job it is to rush around inside our cells and untan­gle the strands of DNA. Too cool.

Art, Images, and Design

Pho­tog­ra­phy of aban­doned Amer­i­ca cities has made the big time news recent­ly. Mod­ern explor­ers of the urban decay have been fill­ing Flickr with their work. Visu­al News has a nice set of images with links back to the pho­to­streams of the creators.

Hal Ras­mus­son will teach you to draw pret­ty girls. Utter­ly cute and safe for work.

This is here just so I can find it again lat­er when I need it. Amaz­ing pen­cil draw­ing of flow­ers, leaves, and oth­er plant bits. And, oh, and Jacob Dahlstrup drew a skull.

Moving Image

Very ear­ly (1913) stop motion ani­ma­tion. A Christ­mas play about Father Christ­mas and the insects — sur­re­al is the best way to describe it. Nice­ly restored and updat­ed with a soundtrack.

Morning Linkage (Jun 16)

June 16, 2010 /

Trans­porta­tion — Com­ing Attractions

Hand-crafters Mor­gan Motor com­pa­ny will be unveil­ing anoth­er sports car in August at Peb­ble Beach. So far all we have is a over­ly processed pho­to of a sil­hou­ette. The EvaGT. Might want.

Pret­ty girls and motor­cy­cles. In this case a love­ly Swedish builder and the quest to build the fastest elec­tric bike.

Builder’s Corner

Speak­ing of build­ing things. One of the sweet­est tools you can have in any shop that works with met­al is a Bev­er­ly Shear. On the Most Want­ed list of every sil­ver­smith and anoth­er case of the real deal being worth the real dollars.

Art, Images, and Design

Turn of the (last) cen­tu­ry design can feel utter­ly mod­ern even 100 years lat­er. This serv­ing bas­ket by Ger­man sil­ver­smith Josef Hoff­man is a fine example

Seems I’m on a cut the mate­r­i­al to make the design roll so, die-cut but­ter­fly sil­hou­ettes. Black and orange. Very luxe choco­late packaging.

Photographs of Places

From the Big Pic­ture. Argenti­na cel­e­brates her bicen­ten­ni­al. Col­or, motion, pageantry, mem­o­ry. (Yes it’s a lit­tle late but dang — fine images.)

Dry glass plate neg­a­tives. An old fash­ioned, out of date, archa­ic medi­um for cap­tur­ing pho­tographs. And that might be a cry­ing shame. I dare you to click ‘View full size’ below this pho­to­graph of the West­ing­house Air-Brake plant from 1905. Be pre­pared to scroll across your multi-monitor set­up to see all the detail. Dear god, you can count the bricks.

off to be not working

Morning Linage (Apr 28)

April 28, 2010 /

Transportation

Sim­ple and sweet. The RD350 as cafe racer.

Rat scoot­ers. There are a cou­ple of home­ly lit­tle items in this col­lec­tion that I would hap­pi­ly take home and shine up. And a WTF or two.

I remain uncon­vinced, but there are folks who think this clip from a dyno test of the MotoCzysz D1-10 proves that elec­tric bikes will make cool nois­es. I think it sounds like cat­a­stroph­ic bear­ing  fail­ure in the main gen­er­a­tor house at Hoover Dam.

Society and Culture

Fab­u­lous­ly obscene blues song by Lucille Bogan from 1935 proves that mod­ern music has always been degen­er­ate. Shave Em Dry. NSFW

I care very much about the future of comics, car­toons, and ani­ma­tion. The old mod­el of polar oppo­sites (Mar­vel comics vs xerox­ed ‘zines) is giv­ing way to new­er pos­si­bil­i­ties at points in between. Options that allow cre­ators to earn a liv­ing at a small­er scale than was pos­si­ble before. From wikipedia a list of “self-supporting’ web comics. Brave folks tak­ing big risks. And some of them are damned fun­ny too

Art, Images, and Design

I’m not sure what it means when a woman begins to paint her­self as a young boy. The results of Julie Hef­fer­nan’s exper­i­ments are deep, com­plex, and hyp­not­ic. Roman­ti­cism gone wrong. It’s worth spend­ing time with her oth­er paint­ings as well. (NSFW artis­tic nudes)

Mod­ern hero. 38 of your favorite super heroes depict­ed in mod­ern angu­lar glo­ry. Unfor­tu­nate­ly they are no longer avail­able as prints. le freakin’ sigh.

Black and White image of the day. Lyn Fontane and Alfred Lunt — laid back and louche — with a side of wiener dog.

so it goes…

Morning Linkage (Apr 23)

April 23, 2010 /

Transportation

Don’t let the URL fool you. It’s a groovy Nor­ton. For real? Dear lord, that’s way too much flower for me.

Have $10K lying around? You might want to head over to the Duc deal­er and get one of these, and a mocha. 2011 Duc Mon­ster 796. Yum.

Hon­da goes two-wheel elec­tric. Japan only mod­el the EV-neo. Avail­able for lease at the end of the year. A new busi­ness mod­el for the prob­lem of rapid­ly devel­op­ing elec­tric vehi­cle tech mak­ing this year’s mod­el obso­lete before you’ve fin­ished mak­ing the payments.

Science

The role of Asi­a’s some­times mas­sive spring dust storms in the weath­er of the Pacif­ic Northwest.

Dr. Clelia Duel Mosh­er taught at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty at the turn of the last cen­tu­ry. Her work includ­ed in depth stud­ies of wom­en’s sex­u­al atti­tudes in the late 19th cen­tu­ry. Work that remained buried in the Stan­ford archives until 1973.

Art, Images, and Design

21 con­dom ads you won’t see here in the Unit­ed States of Puri­tan. Some of these are damned fun­ny. (Love the water bot­tles — sub­tle and would fit right into a Seat­tle mag­a­zine, what with our ded­i­ca­tion to the sport­ing life.)

Dum­fries Scot­land. A land­scape whose plants are irrel­e­vant. Stone and met­al objects that visu­al­ize the basic tenets of math and physics. Utter­ly nerd cool.

Strong lines and vibrant col­ors makes Julie Oak­ley one of my favorite urban sketchers.

and that’s that…
see you next week.

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