Archive for July, 2008

Steampunk, is it Design or just Bad Taste?

I never saw ‘steampunk’ as being anything but a style, never a design aesthetic. Like pinstripes and white wall tires on cars of past. To me the ‘punk’ part of the word denotes a sense of anti establishment that says ‘we will create a computer mouse but we will use an obtuse way of making it work’. I think that ‘steampunk’ in the truest sense of the word goes well beyond adding gears and brass nails to something. A good example would be the guy at crabfu.com and the guy at datamancer.net. Both may call what they create ‘steampunk’ but to me only the steam powered remote controlled vehicles at Crabfu are truly works of ‘steampunk’. The other, with its modded cases,  is of ‘steampunk’ influence. Then again, I’m not a trained art critic.
I personally keep wanting to undertake some form of ‘steampunk’ artistic creation but I just can’t get to the point of coming up with a project that is more than a mere redressing of a modern device. Maybe something like a camphor driven fan or a pencil sharpener powered by a heat engine should be my next muse.
Then again maybe I should just succumb to the obvious and marshal some or my old prop making skills to cobble together a wood/brass/cogwork camera case.
Eh, it might not be ‘steampunk’ but who can tell the difference? To me it’s still art.

Go read Nakamura’s article and see what you think.

[via Mike E.]
Randy Nakamura: Steampunk’d, Or Humbug by Design

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Now You’re Cooking With … USB?

Remembering that your typical USB port delivers 2.5 W doing anything other than lighting up a novelty hub or a clever little tree is about all you can do. Not quite. A clever fellow in Japan set out to prove this wrong. By using six five port USB expansion cards he has upped the thermal output from a wimpy 2.5 W to a respectable 75W! Oh yes, you can see where this is going. This looks like this is his second attempt at computer assisted gastronomy, he tried to cook an egg before. This time he succeeded in frying some beef rib meat (Sukiyaki anyone?) Good thing he has improved his design so we can all follow in his footsteps and … er, well we can imagine that we will follow in his footsteps, and be cooking a tasty dinner while leveling up in WoW.

動く！改造アホ一台
(Japanese version translated by the never sleeping giants at Google)

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