Gauges, Gears, Iron Airships! Oh my!

The Amazing Leslie and I found a little Australian movie on Brassgoggles. It's called The Mysterious Geographical Explorations of Jasper Morello. (It can be Netflixed here.) Done mostly in silhouettes. It is amazing. With so many airships that I was still drooling over the previous one when a new one would appear. Steampunktastic! Along with gauges and dirigibles, I find myself now infatuated with wrought-iron railings and other iron work. Here is the first 9:37. UPDATE-I now have my own complete copy I can lend.

Along these lines it occurs to me that we're going to need a lot more gauges and valves. Let's keep our eyes open for cheap stuff (or free) especially at garage sales and fleas markets.

Yay Area Steampunk Event

The Steampunk Treehouse camp of 07 Burners is having a fundraiser event on June 9

The treehouse project details are so tantalizing. We will need to make this a stop on the perambulator tour and maybe, if schedules permit, have an excursion to the fundraiser together.

The Apothecary is open for business

Here's a few examples of those bottles that I've been messing around with. Thrown in for effect are some old coins and a bag I picked up at 826 Valencia. A pirate store. Steampunk skypirate coins, of course.

And if you're in the market for a new digital camera, here's one that is both damn cool, and will fit our theme pretty well:

Spy photos from the workshop

We had another productive day at the workshop yesterday. AP came by and worked on the design for the rear of the carriage. He got crazy with the polyurethane glue. The dowels were salvaged from the dump. The end result is quite an interesting detail. We all agreed it looks like a pipe organ.I worked on the design for the new front end. Since the new rear used up both halves of the coffee table I had to look elsewhere for inspiration. And I found it in the form of a broken pedestal fan I had in the garage. (hoarding 1, minimalism 0) Using smaller steel that I scavenged from some salvaged fencing I set to work. I created the curves with a conduit bender and a lot of trial and error. I was making things up as I went along. I plan to take all of my ideas and put them into a model tonight to try and figure out the whole front design. I imagine a curving, almost bullet shaped front. We'll see.
Here's a shot of the work from the front. It shows the fan blades that I'd like to use. The idea is to put the blade back in it's normal place, line the grill with fabric and then light the slow-moving blade from behind. Should be a neat effect at night.

Steampunk Captain costumes

I found a neat sight that had a drawing contest to create a Steampunk captain. There's lots of great ideas for costumes here if this is your interest. It certainly is mine. Here's my favorite.

Navigational Equipment Secured

So I was tooling around this flea market in Johannesburg, South Africa, and I came across this fellow's stall who was selling "antique" navigational equipment (made in India). He had real sextants and the like - but given that our devices may not make it back from BM alive, I opted for the equally showy, but less functional, cheaper version. Above is the sextant (including nifty wooden storage box), a compass, and a sundial (it uses a compass and some other fancy stuff that I didn't really understand to tell time! Honest!). The sundial comes with a leather case, and all are shiny brass. Steam punk GPS.

Strange missive from Africa...

photos may follow, if the technology gods favor me...

The Green Fairy

Greetings from the un-Africa: I have a free day in this opulent hotel in an upscale neighborhood of Johannesburg, South Africa, which feels more like Pacific Heights than the Africa I know. Rather than venturing out to explore the wilderness that is the Rosebank Shopping Mall, I figure I would try the painfully slow internet and attempt my first blog entry.

Since we didn’t get around to trying Absinthe at our last get together, let’s go over the drink, and its ritual. Wikipedia has taught me much, and I shall break it down for y’all.

A brief history of the booze:
Absinthe is an anise-flavored liquor (think black licorice) that is made using flowers and leaves from Artemisia absinthium or wormwood. The first clear references to Absinthe as a drink with fennel and wormwood are dated from the 18th century, but there are records of wormwood and wormwood extracts as medicinal products as early as 1550 BC and was used by the ancient Egyptians and the Greeks. Apparently Absinthe was given to French foreign legion troops in the 1840s as a fever preventative, and when they came home, its popularity took off. By the turn of the century, it had become a very French beverage. However the move was already underway to ban the beverage (banned as early as 1898 in the Belgian Congo)!

Absinthe had been blamed on numerous murders throughout Europe, and this was attributed to the chemical thujone found in wormwood (interestingly, there is also a lot of thujone in sage and sage oil). Though hypothesized to act on the same receptors in the brain that THC uses, this was later found to be false, and the concentrations of thujone in absinthe are far too low to have this affect (pity!) – even in recipes of absinthe from the 19th century. Slowly folks came around, and since the 1990s, there has been quite a renaissance of the drink.

How’s it drunk?
Absinthe, or ‘the green fairy’ as it’s known by some, has a little ritual attached to drinking the stuff. By itself, it’s very strong (both in terms of alcohol and the various oils in it that give it its characteristic pale green color). Pour yourself a modest shot in a glass, leaving plenty of room (1). Place an absinthe (slotted) spoon over the glass, and put a sugar cube on top (2). Pour water over the sugar cube, allowing it to dissolve and melt into the glass (3). Add enough water to dilute the absinthe from 3 to 5:1. The drink should be cloudy (4), and is now ready to drink.

If you think adding this optional step may help to get you laid, try this: put the slotted spoon and sugar cube over an empty glass and pour the absinthe over it. Light the now-soaked sugar cube on fire. As the sugar cube begins to caramelize and brown, begin to pour water over it, as in step (3). Make sure her drink is a lot stronger than yours.

Bottoms up and à ta santé

Third Group Meeting-Rundown

For those that weren't able to attend here's a brief rundown.
Aristotle made a great veggie pesto lasagne. LG and TBone made a sushi salad and Mr. Alchemystic, true to his name, concocted a butternut squash pasta. But enough about the menu.
Many ideas were put on the table. We talked about the shade structure, Mr. Alchemystic said he'd like to help with that. We talked about the shower and gray water, Mr A said he'd help with that too. LG and Aristotle talked about the food, to which Mr. A agreed to assist as well. He also expressed and interest in the Perambulator. Wheew! My A. is going to be busy.
We talked a lot about different designs for different aspects of camp. No final decisions were made but some headway definitely was. We brainstormed on ideas for a camp name. We came up with "Pooh and Strawberries" or something with "luft" in it. We should work a little more on this. We also talked about handing out shrinky-dink necklaces, rubber stamping people and iconographic wristbands that would identify a person's sin preferences (Sin Rings? Sin Strap?). Mr. A even talked about henna tattooing. Tbone talked about his cyclorama painting idea and the preponderance of penises in casual art. Professor Fate (that's me) talked more about his Perambulator idea. There was even a model of it. Many suggestions were made. LG agreed to get us all on a group calendar and spreadsheet through google to keep track of people's availability and what items they had to contribute to the camp.
What we didn't talk about was the date for next meeting. The Baroness of Less and Baron of All were Soarely missed and will be expected to have extra cool stuff to talk about at the next meeting. The Great (and fabulous) Leslie will have much to talk about as well (like how Prof. Fate won't stop talking about the Perambulator).
And remember to collect green and clear plastic containers for the stained-glass panel and corks for the curtain!

I am, how you say, blog

wow, computers sure can do a lot of shit. this is my first blog ever. i am so excited.

i love this Art from Garbage idea. That is one of my greatest passions in life, creating art from what would otherwise be garbage. one man's ceiling... or what's that saying?

my brother learned, while working at a science summer camp, that you can make, yes make, shrinky-dinks using plastic to-go containers. well specifically, clear plastic recyclable #7, or was it #6? i'll find out. basically, you cut out the shape you want, color with sharpies, and bake in the oven for about 10 seconds. voila, garbage-charms. this could go a long way with the panel or curtain wall of whatever this stained-glass-mosaic-garbage-wall materializes as. yes, i'm very excited to see where we can take this idea. i'm in.

till next time,
i am
mr. alchemystic
the psuedo scientist.

Making art out of trash

We (the Baron and Baroness, Fate and I) were sitting around riffing some more on art for the burn last Sunday. We thought it might be cool to create a large stained-glass-like piece of art of The Green Man using clear plastic from packages that you would normally throw away. Like the obnoxious trays that Trader Joe's packages all of their fruit and veggies into. Or soda bottles. There are cool shapes everywhere!


We haven't figured out how we would assemble the pieces together, or how we would color the clear plastic, or much more than this, but that'll get figured out. It would be a curtain or wall for the camp. Fate and I have started collecting plastic items already. It's amazing how much trash our family of four generates.

I've also got my co-workers in on it. This could get out of hand...

The Green Man

Being inspired by T-Bone's painting and wanting to learn more about the theme for Burning Man this year, I did some reading and poking around on the web. I had assumed that the theme "The Green Man" was merely a play on words and was a way of giving this years event a more environmentally friendly bent. The official BM site discusses how the carbon imprint of the burn will be offset. It also explores the deeper, less obvious meaning of The Green Man - how the story is an allegory for our relationship with the earth. I read up on The Green Man on Wikipedia and learned a few things: there is never a green woman, The Green man is a popular name for British Public Houses (that's a pub to you and me) and it is a pagan and mystical symbol of rebirth and spring. All very cool. No wonder T-Bone has been riffing.

Here are some images of The Green Man that I think are interesting.





So now I'm ruminating on how to tie-in this theme with our steampunk motif. Perhaps we could carve a figurehead of the Green Man to go on the perambulator, with brass leaves that extend around the ship as railings or some sort of decoration...


This was my favorite image out of all of them (aside from the fairly obnoxious greenery where his pubic hair should be)...a Green Man on the outside of an old custard factory in Birmingham, England.

Cyborg Overture

Have I mentioned that I'm excited about the 'Green Man' theme? I've begun riffing on the nature/human thing in this painting - and there will be more to come.

I'll also be building up the 'Burning Man' gallery on my website.