If you like your Steampunk art to take flights of soft-edged fancy, where teapot towns and trumpet space stations sit side by side with steamtrain-blimps and submersible cars, then the work of Glovackij will be right up your curvy cobbled street!  (Where else can you find gear powered space villages, complete with bus?) I fully admit to not understanding a word of the site, but the gallaries give me more than enough to feast my eyes on – though the third gallery on the left is where the Steampunk, if a peculiar whimsical version of Steampunk, really makes its presence felt.  The fourth gallery takes a leaf out of Mr Escher’s selfwriting book, and presents impossible architecture – not Steampunk, but I like it anyway.  Thank you, mystery submitter!

A while ago we looked at a rather impressive Instructable on how to make a mad scientist light – and it looked very fetching indeed! But I where to get appropriate bulbs – a few people made suggestions after that post and I looked into it myself, so we’ve got a couple of places that might take your fancy:

Tube Depot has some rather impressive, but also distressingly pricey antique style bulbs at about $18 a pop.

Signals has a smaller selection that I’ve seen, but the prices range more too – $16 to $28!

And Lightbulbs Direct in the UK will sell a squirrel cage style bulb for approx £11 each.

[Edit - Oops!  Missed one from Mr Adams - Walgreens does some too, though not as pretty, much cheaper at $7]

Thanks to both Mr Bowden and Mr Hildebrandt for finding some of these – if anyone knows other places to find these rather handsome lightgivers, a note in the comments would be most helpful!

I have a weakness; a weakness for both airships and kittens, and while it might sound like quite possibly the most soggy-upper-lipped thing ever, I have an inexplicable desire to see the two united – kittens in airships, truly my dream.

So imagine my complete and perfect astonishment to read about Ms Kiddo, a mascot kitten taken aboard the airship America in 1910 in its historic attempt to cross the Atlantic in an airship! Indeed, the navigator on this most audacious of flights declared that “You must never cross the Atlantic in an airship without a cat.” – proving to be of more use than a barometer in warning against incliment weather!

But alas, the trip did not end well, even with kitten assistance, and after 71 hours of flight (a record holding time in an airship) and after travelling 2200km (1367miles) and with just 760km to go, they were forced to abandon airship, kitten and all, and were rescued by a Royal Mail steamship.  Kiddo and crew were hailed as heroes back in New York despite the shortfall, and Kiddo himself was shown to the public in a department store, with lovely soft cushions to recline on, and a gilded cage.  Kittens and airships – I must have been very well behaved to deserve that.

VGRj0nV-ZVENow, there are others who know far more about this black and white film from 1958, but for those of us for whom this is new, The Fabulous World of Jules Verne is a delightful find.  Reader Zobop sent the link to the trailer, and it just makes me grin from ear to ear – the techniques used within it were apparently called “Mysti-Mation”, and they certainly don’t make them like they used to, that is most apparent.

Thrill, as a brilliant scientist wrestles with powers beyond his ken!

Gasp, as he and his assistant are kidnapped and held against their will!

Smile, as puppet octopi and cardboard cutouts deliver effects that harken back to less CG days.

This, most certainly goes at the top of my ‘desired’ list for DVDs in future.

Mr Christian found a simply marvellous site today!  It’s the webpage (in French, but there are copious images) of a model maker called Nemotechnik – and as you might imagine, there’s a lot of Jules Verne inspired models!  From images of the balloon from “Five Weeks in a Balloon” to the above model from “From the Earth to the Moon” (first and second class available, to multiple models and dioramas based on “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”!  It’s all delightfully Steampunk – with tiny rivets and beautiful craftmanship, right down to the harpoon cable held while trying to jab a mighty sea creature.

This gentleman craftsman has a simply disarming eye for detail, and an obvious love for his country’s Science Fiction father’s work.  Simply stunning.

Mr Tretakoff points out a tiny, but amusing Yahoo Widget that a Mr J Kendall has written called the “Steam Gage“.  It sits apon your desktop and informs you of your CPU usage, but should it get too high, it’ll start to steam and shake most alarmingly!

According to the comments, it’s a bit too small for many, but it sounds like a lovely little thing.  I’m sure it would look not in the slightest bit out of place with some of the computational device modifications that we’ve seen recently.  Thank you, Mr Tretakoff!

Mr Stephen P pointed out that the artist responsible for lovely Christmas cards last year, has this year posted on her Livejournal, the black and white poster that’s she’s drawn for an upcoming event in Austin, Texas with a serious Steampunk theme!

It’s an SXSW music event in on the 12th of March, but I profess to knowing very little about it, or the SXSW (South by South West) event organisers other than what I have gleaned from their content-dense website.  It seems that SXSW do their music industry business during the day in conferences, and party at night.

“Music by David Demaris and White Ghost Shivers. Featuring Austin Robot Group, Bruce Sterling, visual and interactive artists. $15 suggested donation, or $10 for those in steampunk costume.”

New names to me, but it sounds promising!  Interesting enough that the music industry are having a Steampunk event at all.

Maintenance over and done with.  Apologies to anyone who had to suffer the white page of doom while the transfer occurred.  You may notice that we’re now using the address “www.brassgoggles.co.uk” for both the forum and for here at the Brass Goggles blog.  All your old links should still work, however.

Many thanks!

Tinkergirl.

Good evening,

Just to let everyone know that I should be transferring over both the Brass Goggles blog, and The Steampunk Forum, to a new (and far sturdier) server some time in the next twenty-four hours (hopefully at one of the quieter times of the day).

Do not adjust your wireless – if you should find that you catch us, mid move, there’s no cause for alarm. If all goes well, you should notice no change at all at your end.

Many thanks,

Tinkergirl.

I have no inkling whatsoever as to what it does, but I like it. It’s the Kardia Mechanicus (gallery), made by Ejectorhead (caution, some gory images elsewhere on their Livejournal), as a present for a very fortunate companion. (There are several more photographs in the gallery.) I can make out some cogs within the metallic looking heart-shape, there’s definitely some toggle switches, some LEDs and copious amounts of brass – not sure what those cables do, but it’s definitely interesting. Probably not designed with Steampunk in mind, but I can certainly appreciate the Steampunk elements within it. Thank you very much, Ms Vincent – a very good find indeed!

Ok, so I’ve posted about the Nautilus styled screensavers before, but reader Daniel wrote to point out that the previously $15 screensaver can be downloaded for free from Giveaway of the Day, for the next 14hrs and 30minutes (and counting). From what I can see, the only requirement is that you install it before the time limit runs out – no holding on to the .zip for months, alas.

Just a quick alert for those who’d like to grab this while they can.