steampunk – Greg Laden's Blog

Steampunk LEGO

Greg Laden — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 02:13:39 +0000

You know Guy Himber’s work. He worked on special effects for Aien 3, Underworld, Independence Day, Edward Scissorhands, I, Robot, lots of other productions. And now, he is playing around with LEGO.

Steampunk Lego by Guy Himber is subtitled “The illustrated researches of various fantastical devices by Dr. Herbert Jabson, with epistles to the Crown, Her Majesty Queen Victoria; A travelogue in 11 chapters.” The book itself is all steampunky, in fact heavily steampunky, with brown colors, gears and wheels as background images, and victorian techno-objects decorating a faux photographic album motif. Meaning, Himber did not really write a travelogue in 11 chapters because, I assume, a true Victorian Travelogue would be mind numbingly boring. Everything is taped, glued, or in some cases, riveted onto the pages (no actual rivets were used in making this book).

It may not be a Travelogue but it is very Travelish.

By my estimation about half the book involves depictions of things that travel. Lots of trains, boats, some bikes, Zeppelins, other lighter than air craft, other things that fly, and more. There are numerous robots, and a variety of other things. There is even a LEGO moon. All the contrivances are LEGO constructed and then photographed usually but not always using a victorian looking technology.

There is some background on what Steampunk is, which may be necessary for the LEGO-crazed who don’t happen to now much about this genre. Then there is background on the key players in the story, Sir Herbert Jobson and Lt. Penfold.

Then it is trains, monowheels, horseless carriages, automatons, weapons, a “cabinet of Curiosities”, boats, things that fly, clockwork animals, and floating islands. Then there is Space, the final frontier. I mean chapter. The final chapter.

The book is so visual, I think the best way to indicate its qualities is to show a number of spreads from within. With no particular introduction, these (click to see a larger version of the image):

This is a great coffee table present for the holidays. It is not a huge coffee table format, more like 10.5 by 8.5 inches, but somehow it looks bigger.

Best Geek-Friendly Wallpaper for your Computer Desktop

Greg Laden — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 20:00:35 +0000

Fusion Wallpaper

There comes a time in each person’s life when it is time to change the wallpaper. And the drapes, but we’ll focus on wallpaper here. And by wallpaper I mean the picture on your computer screen that is normally covered by icons and open windows. I came across a few neat individual wallpapers, as well as some good sources, and thought you’d like to see them. Since these wallpapers are from sites run by the artists who designed the wallpapers, it is appropriate that you go to those sites to get them, so here I’ll just show a few thumbnails but mainly talk about topics and themes. You’ll need to click through to see the true quality of these pictures, and to obtain them.

Most of these are science or nature themes or themes that would be of interest to geeky people like you, and thus the first one I’d like to mention is YourFather (see photo).

YourFather Wallpaper is available here

How-To Geek has a number of sets of wallpapers that caught my eye, including:

Ocean Waves (totally tubular) here.
Rain Forests here.
World Maps, including some historical ones, here/
Ancient Mayan Ruins here/
Auroras here.
Coral Reefs here.

Steampunk Sci Fi

Two great sources of wallpapers generally, including lost of science and nature stuff, are National Geographic (such as the 2011 best of collection or the space and science collection) and Flickr. National Geographic has mostly nature and science themed, while for Flickr you’ll need to select the right search terms. If you enter words like “space” and “science” you get mostly institutions and buildings related to these topics, which at first seems kind of lame, but then you think, “hey, this is obscure and will thus be very geekily impressive under the right conditions”.

The geekiest wallpaper on the internet might be here at alphacoders. You may not even be able to stand it.

Google Image is your friend. Search terms like “best steampunk wallpaper” and “best laboratory glassware wallpaper” will produce results.

This thing from NASA is apparently real.

And speaking of Steampunk, check here, here, and here as well.

And finally, NASA has wallpaper.

What are the best steampunk goggles for me to wear to SkepchickCON?

Greg Laden — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 17:07:45 +0000

This year’s CONvergence is allegedly more steampunk themed than usual, so we may be required to wear goggles to the various sessions on evolution, skepticism, etc. I need help picking out which ones to wear. So far, these are the choices:

Hobart Welding Goggles:

Harry Potter Quidditch Goggles:

Flip Fronts:

Classic Round Lens Moto Goggles: