magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: rat bikes

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 (Sep 27)

September 27, 2010 /

Transportation

Begin­ning with a bit of a mys­tery. Search­ing for infor­ma­tion on this sub­tly won­der­ful BWM custom.

No mys­tery to this inten­tion­al­ly not per­fect TX650. Keep­ing the orig­i­nal tank and head­light buck­et as the design touch­stones for a rat bike I’d give shop space.

For a gig­gle, 52 Rossi hel­met graph­ics. In his next life he’s going to be an art direc­tor for DC Comics. Clearly.

Science (more or less)

“hydro­dy­nam­i­cal­ly silent feed­ing cur­rent” Or how the comb jel­ly, which as you know is my favorite marine odd­i­ty, eats well. Read the com­ments they are as enlight­en­ing as the article.

Dark Roast Blends brings you Man Eat­ing Plants. Okay — insect eat­ing plants. (Fol­low­ing the image cred­its will sup­ply an after­noon of visu­al bliss.)

Art, Images, and Design

From the pier side. A lit­tle guy goes div­ing. Like the com­menter says — pos­si­bly Os Gemeos, but I can’t find a sol­id attribution.

An unusu­al look for They Draw, They Cook. Tatiana Dorokhi­na’s recipe for a hot kicked-up cider. The con­tin­u­a­tion of the direc­tions in the guy’s trib­al tat­too is sweet.

Ms. Dorokhi­na’s illus­tra­tion blog is worth a look as well. (Occas­sion­al­ly NSFW)

Amer­i­can made and so damned beau­ti­ful. The RGM Penn­syl­va­nia Tour­bil­lon. Watch pr0n at it’s most beguil­ing. It’s the sec­ond video you want to spend time with.

El Mac — hagio­graph­ic por­trai­ture. The time-lapse vids are good. Nice­ly curat­ed by koikoikoi.  (IC)

Vaca­tion is over and it’s time to get back to work. Hap­py Mon­day y’all

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…

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