I posted this over at the Anachrotech community some time ago, but I liked it so much that I wanted to give it a dusting off again. This entry to a Worth1000.com photoshopping competition was created for the Cybergenics theme – and amidst many cyberpunk styled frogs and parrots, this ‘Borg-Hog’ as it was described, jumped out at me. From the entry:

“Horst Balfour Descartes: born 1805 Strasbourg, died 1874 Paris. 19th century French biologist and mechanical engineer. Considered ‘mad’ by contemporaries for his attempts to create a steam-powered ‘cochon mécanique’ or ‘Borg-Hog’ designed to hunt truffles. However, with the discovery in 2006 of this hand-tinted, collodion wet-plate process, photographic print dated 1868 (see entry for Frederick Scott Archer, 19th century English photographer/inventor: Vol. I, pp. 623-624), researchers now believe Descartes succeeded to some extent. Unfortunately, no evidence exists the so-called Borg-Hog lived for any length of time, or ever found any truffles.”

One wonders where you put the coal, however…

Not much here, just a cute little brass owl I snapped when I was in Japan. It’s got little men climbing over it, and the eyes look rather a lot like big cogs. For a larger picture, see here and for the set of images from my Japan trip, look here. While not very Steampunk, you can see lots of temples, several giant enemy crabs, a few random Japanese’y shots and a photo of my bento box and accessory haul. I should be posting seperately about those on the Firewyre blog. (Though, not right now – I’ve just tagged and described 74 images )

Via Andy_W’s blog again, I was directed to a little game for the PC called Steambrigade. Wonderfully Steampunk, this 2d, side viewed strategy game has airships, engineers, steam-turrets and goggles aplenty. While the page lists a few inspirations, the one that seems most obvious to me is Worms. Here though, you’ve got little soldiers determinedly marching across the undulating land, taking turrets and bunkers.

The demo is free to download, and includes a couple of missions from the main campaign introducing the plot – the main mad scientist enemy, the older engineer buddy and a hoard of crazy evil minions to defeat. I’ll admit that it’s not really my cup of Tesco Finest leaf tea, but I admire it for the setting. I’ve never really gotten into strategy games.

The often amusing and sometimes educational Modern Mechanix page has a scan of a 1940′s issue of Popular Science, where they tell you how to make your own wooden diving goggles.

“Experts consider this type more satisfactory for serious diving and continuous use than the ordinary rubber variety.”

Well, I’m not too sure about that – but I couldn’t pass up the chance to post a link to a retro how-to on goggle making!

So! I’m back (but not properly unpacked and sorted out yet) and was very recently directed to a very generous post by Andy_W with a mass of great Steampunk costuming links. While many of those links are ace (and he’ll be releasing his own Steampunk page in the future too) the link to the prop making company, Kropserkel was by far and away the one that captured this Steampunk-er’s eye the most.

The above is a one of a kind, brass retro-blaster scavenged together from various found parts. I’m lead to believe that some parts of it light up too, which is just delightful. There are other retro-blasters on that page, as well as ‘light sword’ handles described as being the lightsaber that Nemo would have weilded. Beautiful, whimsical, stuff.