magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: Norton (Page 1 of 3)

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 (Dec 17)

December 17, 2010 /

Transportation

It start­ed with see­ing the pho­to of a team of rac­ers in front of a BA Air Fer­ry on one of the ran­dom bike pic blogs. And went on from there until I came to this full report on the 1967 Zand­voort Sprint. Pho­tos, videos, and lots of words.

Oh if only he had roughed up the front forks. Just a lit­tle. It would be a per­fect rat. Or near enough. XS650.

Ini­tial­ly mis­named but now cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fied. I just like that this Nor­ton looks so hap­py to sit­ting out there wait­ing it’s turn.

Science

My world has just became a sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter place. I now know that it has pale­o­mag­netists in it. Sci­en­tists who study the his­to­ry of the changes of the earth­’s mag­net­ic field. And now they’ve dis­cov­ered some unprece­dent­ed­ly rapid shifts that occurred about 3000 years ago. By study­ing the mag­net­ic sig­na­tures of heaps of slag left over from smelt­ing cop­per in the Mid­dle East.

Order breaks down into dis­or­der in a very order­ly way. Video demon­strat­ing an aspect of non-linear physics.

Art, Images, and Design

Old hard dri­ves. New toys. And then there are the pic­tures of the lit­tle guys tak­ing the machines apart. Joy.

A reminder that the Space Nee­dle was once new, and that graph­ic design in the ear­ly 60’s had some moments of brilliance.

Week­end DIY cam­era rigs for tak­ing high-speed, super close, mul­ti­ple expo­sures, or just look at the amaz­ing pictures. 

…he want­ed to cap­ture fly­ing insects, such as the hon­ey­bee above. “I have a prob­lem with killing them, plus they don’t fly when they’re dead,”

as well as but­ter­fly wing scales and mag­net­ic ferrofluids.

Animation

Team­Cer­f’s Meet Buck illus­trates the exis­ten­tial… um, shows fol­ly as… er, … it’s fun­ny, okay?

Morning Linkage (Nov 29)

November 29, 2010 /

Transportation

Pret­ty girls on bikes. Cather­ine — who does­n’t get a last name here  but you can look it up — had a Nor­ton Com­man­do and a set of red cus­tom leathers in the 1970’s in Paris. And she wrote for La Moto.

I don’t think you’ll ride it far but this CB350 is so per­fect­ly simple.

Anoth­er unrid­able 350. This time a Ducati. But damn, just look at what he did with the exhaust. Inge­nious.

The famous red Lon­don bus­es get redone for the 21st century.

Art, Images, and Design

Basil Wolver­ton. The name sounds like he should be the but­ler in one of Bertie Woost­er’s aun­t’s house. But no, he’s a the cre­ator of some fine sci-fi illus­tra­tions from the 1930’s. And yes, I did read the Mete­or Mor­gan comics shown here.

Mikela Pre­vost’s paint and paper illus­tra­tions look most at home in a chil­dren’s book. The sec­ond page of her port­fo­lio opens with a girl look­ing for some­thing in the back of the pantry and con­tin­ues through sev­er­al more cook­ing adventures.

Night­mare sci-fi fairy tales told with big blocks of col­or. Bun­nies, dogs, cat heads, squir­rels, and oth­er for­mer­ly cute crea­tures inhab­it a cold spiky land­scape. Tali­ta Hoff­man. Brazil.

Animation

Alli­ga­tor, golf ball, deer, alli­ga­tor. That’s it. There’s noth­ing else to ginny+garth’s Pix­el Film:Oo (video 0:27)

Morning Linkage (Nov 12)

November 12, 2010 /

Transportation

Way too much of the report­ing done on Wired’s Auto­topia blog is auto­mo­tive indus­try due dili­gence. Even the writ­ers sound a bit dazed by all the cute lit­tle urban com­muter and eVe­hi­cle fluff late­ly. But once in a while they strike gold. On the occa­sion of what would have been his 100th birth­day they pub­lished this fab air­borne pho­to of  Georg “Schorsch” Meier at the 1939 Isle of Mann TT.

Dear heav­ens the boys over at Christies’ cat­a­log depart­ment are hav­ing fun with this bike auc­tion. “…com­plete the trans­for­ma­tion and end up with a cafe-racer ne plus ultra, a gen­uine road-going Manx Nor­ton with lit­er­ary prove­nance…” Hen­ry Man­ning III’s Nor­ton Manx is for sale. (Along with a few oth­er trea­sures from his son’s shed.)

I try, I real­ly try to ele­vate the lev­el of this blog — but some days…  so here it is a fan­ci­ful design for a space going vehi­cle for hon­ey­moon­ers. Sex in space. I know you all want it. (NSFW)

Inexplicable Culture.

The Lying Down Game.

Art, Images, and Design

Total­ly charm­ing. Cut paper sil­hou­ettes of two peo­ple on bicy­cles. Oth­er vehi­cles, ani­mals, map parts, and mus­tach­es too.

Verve. No, not the record com­pa­ny, the mag­a­zine: French 1950’s. Joan Miro — The Dog Bark­ing at the Moon. One of the strangest sil­li­est, most won­der­ful prints ever. In the same issue a Cha­gall (meh), a Matisse col­lage (ooh), and  Leg­er (Leg­er always con­fus­es me.)

Animation

Yes, I’m late with it but I can’t resist show­ing you this love­ly lit­tle snip­pet. The offi­cial ani­ma­tion for Inter­na­tion­al Ani­ma­tion Day. Reminds me of explod­ing­dog cartoons.

In the Begin­ning. Anoth­er look at Gen­e­sis, with a sense of  humor and bet­ter voic­es by Katie Wendt. (NSFW — Adam is naked)

git out­ta here — the week is done.

Morning Linkage (Oct 28)

October 28, 2010 /

Transportation

Hel­mut Fath’s mul­ti­ple cham­pi­onship win­ning URS side­car recent­ly sold for more than $150K. Worth it? There cer­tain­ly is enough his­to­ry here to make it interesting.

The log­ic of the pick­ings and place­ments of these 50 best rac­ing liv­er­ies will baf­fle you. Until you real­ize that each place­ment had to had a video. (Not true, a few don’t.) Try the 1988 Porsche rac­ing in the 24 hours of Le Mans — with the fog addled start. Or maybe the 15 sec­onds of pure son­ic joy to had Par­nel­li Jone’s Boss 302.  All the rest are in the box on the right. Just don’t look at #50. Tic tac.

New Nor­ton Commando- ditch the lit­tle idjit screen, and pony up for the wire wheels and the sport­ing exhaust. Then get the hell out­ta my way. (Oh and tell the dude on the video to shut up. m’kay?)

Cute Natural World

Big cats love the post Hal­loween gro­cery clean-up. And who knew that pump­kins float? The tigers loved chas­ing them in the ponds. (2 dif­fer­ent videos.)

Internet Tips and Tricks.

Um, Google now index­es all of the LIFE images. So go to google.com, click Images in the top nav bar and type : “fer­rari source:life” into the search box.. or maybe “duke elling­ton source:life” if you’re in a more laid back kin­da mood.

Art, Images, and Design

A brief overview of the work of Finnish pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nel­li Palo­ma­ki. Por­traits of women and girls sug­gest­ing depths to their life sto­ries that are not revealed causally.

Some­how the croc­o­dile on the side of this bricked up build­ing in Lis­bon looks ter­ri­bly sad about some­thing. Lucy McLauch­lan’s lit­tle birds, how­ev­er, are hav­ing a very good day.

Using up the relics of the WWII. Mak­ing fur­ni­ture and home decor out of naval mines. Yup, that’s gonna look right­eous in my library.

Swing Shift Cin­derel­la — with this Flashy Lassie with the Classy Chas­sis. Um, it’s the lob­by card for an upcom­ing car­toon short from the mid-century. I love it. More ads fea­tur­ing the car­toons here. And a reminder that car­toons were orig­i­nal­ly for the grown-ups. (SFW)

sec­ond times the charm :)

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