Drew sends word of a most unusual club/magazine that seems to specialise in telling tales of wild adventurers seeking ancient civilisations, treasures and tribes. The World Explorers Club, also publishes books on the travels of David Hatcher Childress as he searches for lost cities iof the Andes, Atlantis, druidic relics and other downright Indiana Jones-like capers. I can’t really tell if they’re taking themselves seriously or not – but either way, they seem to be carrying on the Victorian Science-Fiction tradition of exploring the corners of the world almost forgotten, and seeking out the things that mainstream science might scoff at. With tea afterwards, I’d hope.

So, I approve – at least in theory. Reading about adventures is fun (while having them yourself is considered shameless, of course) and they seem to have a jolly outlook on it – with little cartoons like the one above creating chuckles to boot.

Now goodness me if that isn’t a mouthful. While the Telecalculograph is possibly my favourite Steampunk PC tower-case mod so far, and the Japanese Steampunk laptop is my favourite laptop based casemod, this casemod by Datamancer most certainly has a great many things going for it! The… well, the…. I’m going to call it the Dynamotronic for short, if you don’t mind, is seen above in a partially completed mockup form, with flat monitor, case (with porthole-fronted DVD drive) and typewriter keyboard in place.

I must thank the generous link submitter, Carrie, for sending the link in – for while the link was originally for a Steampunk cog necklace (which is delightful!) I stumbled across the casemod on the same page too. Though personally, I’d have trumped for a brass chain, instead of a silvered one. chuckles

A Mr Magpie informs me that a new printed magazine is hoping to do a little rebelling and emerge on to the Steampunk world – the aptly named, Steampunk Magazine, is currently seeking submissions of things of a Steampunk nature for its first and subsequent issues. Their plan is to put the punk back into Steampunk, and release a status quo upsetting Creative Commons liscenced printed magazine for free, or as close as they can manage (with a downloadable version available too). A noble endeavour, I must say!

With tentatively themed issues on “Putting the Punk back into SteamPunk”, “Journal of Misapplied Technology” and “Steamypunk”, I don’t imagine that every part of every issue will be quite my cup of tea – but I’m sure there will be some good things and great things there too. I wish them the very best of luck, and hope that they are successful – the more Steampunk (of any flavour or emphasis) the better!

I apologise for the pun, but it really wasn’t my doing! Mr J Hildebrandt (creator of the smoke-stack equipped PC telecalculograph) apparently had parts left over from the creation of that marvelous computer and like a Victorian Science-Fiction version of the A-Team, constructed a tank from spare pieces! As Mr Hildebrandt says in his flickr set description – not bad at all for three hours! Lovely little thing, and puts to shame all of my frittered away spare afternoons. I could have been building tanks instead!

MicroTactix, purveyor of cheap scenery and free RPG engines, has a scenic setting known as Vulture Gulch – a wild west setting with a Steampunk flavour. The evil professor Laddamoore (above) has apparently recently escaped from prison and is now using his nefarious inventions to help him rob banks and stagecoaches! You’ll find the really rather reasonable building pdf’s for Vulture Gulch here (steam train, fort and buildings), along with a link to a download for a free pdf to try – the Steamcoach Cannon!

It looks like a lovely little model, and would be tonnes of fun to print out and colour in for little Steampunk fans – and as it’s printable, what would be cooler than to have a whole battalion of these little steam proto-tanks striking fear into the hearts of interferin’ do gooders in the west. Because lets face it – the evil geniuses always have the coolest toys. (More free downloads from Microtactix – including a mad scientist lab).

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falls off chair  Oh my goodness! I’m not entirely sure how the above mesmerising contraption actually operates, but it’s jaw droppingly beautiful and mind-spinningly Steampunk.  From the glowing steam pillars to the ponderous, elegant rotation to the sleek silent operation (the sound you may hear is the zoom of the camera, it seems) each and every square inch of that machine asserts its craftmanship and beauty.  I don’t so much want one, as I want to live in a world where there are giant versions of such things incorporated into the architecture of revolving offices where I might have a different window view every ten minutes and the brass floor beneath my feet would be ever so slightly warm, and hum faintly with the song of mechanical work being done.

Ahem, sorry.  This page, with many other beautiful engines on it (I had to pick a favourite!) was sent in by the ever generous Mr Huang (Crabfu).  Many many thanks.  While I do not read Dutch, Babelfish had a good try – still tripped over a fair few words, of course.

I went to one of those little Church fairs yesterday, as someone had assured me it was a craft fair (it was not, unless you count wobbly fairy-cakes and amature face painting as crafts) and amidst the tombolas and ‘guess the weight of the Christmas cake’ stalls, was a single secondhand book stall. For the princely sum of 50 British Pence, I got four books – one of which was the lovely a4 sized book above. An absolute bargain, this book contains dozens of pages of copywrite free Victorian typographical flourishes and edgeings. Some of them look stunningly modern and angular, and others reinforce my preconceptions of Victorian meaning swirly and flowery.

I intend to scan in a great many of these pages for my own use at some point in the future, and if others would have use of them, I may post some up here periodically – but if you wish to own the book yourself, it seems that Dover Publishing will sell it to you for $13. Not quite the same bargain as mine, but not far off.

I came across a lovely page today that has free printable paper models of various different things – some of which classify quite happily as Steampunk. From the Land Ironclad (from the prophetic short story by HG Wells) above, to multiple airships models and even hangers and mooring masts! There’s even an airship that was designed, but never built, in 1919 – the Vickers Transoceanic. A massive construction (or would have been) that would have ushered in an era of luxury world cruises at several thousand feet.

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Mr Xeno, in a previous comment, pointed out what he described as the British Empire being a colonial obsession for some in the past – and he proffered links to the page for ALF’s Imperial Army (which is apparently based in New Zealand).

Originally spawned as an equal and opposite reaction to increasingly violent and bloody student organisations, ALF’s Imperial Army invented and followed the Rules of Pacafist Warfare – where flour bombs and paper cutlasses were the order of the day, and FUN was the rule. While the student links have faded somewhat since then, and according to some sources, the fire has faded in ALF, it seems that ALF still stands for combating slovenly attire, upholding mock-Victorian values and going to battle with anyone from nudists, to Cthulu summoners, to KAOS (a student based pretend killing club, I believe). Of course, ALF always wins (even if they lose) – because they write the history. chuckles They certainly look the part, and I’m sure I’d be all for running around and acting the terribly prim and proper fool – I’d be avoiding any political connotations though, were it me.

We’ve had a few Stirling engines posted here, but none quite as excessively brass as this one! Mr Ripefly sent me the link for it, at the quite facinating American Stirling Company‘s site. It is the Van Arsdell Stirling Engine, also listed as the Victorian Look engine. It’s quite lovely – and it would be welcome to grace the desk of any (wealthy) Steampunk engineer, I’m sure!

Now, I admit that I didn’t know much about Stirling Engines, much to my shame, but once again Wikipedia has leapt to my rescue. It’s somehow pleasing to know that it was two Scottish brothers – one technical, and one not – that are credited with it’s creation – and stunning that models (available on the above site) can operate on the temperature difference between the ambient air, and the heat of the palm of your hand. Imagine that – applying your hand to a plate and the mere warmth of your body creates mechanical engine motion!