Is Steampunk Dead?

Victorian costumes, airships, steam engines, bizarre old yet modern weapons, fueled by a little magic or Æther... The awesome Steampunk subculture has been a part of my life since I played my first Myst game on PC and I watched The City of Lost Children wide eyed.

Steampunk movies like Sleepy Hollow, City of Lost Children, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Army of Darkness (although more Dieselpunk) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen have always been some of my favorite movies. I am a member of steampunk groups on SecondLife, I read steampunk books, watch steampunk anime (Steamboy), play steampunk games (Myst / Riven, Thief, Final Fantasy) and now recently I have started making my own weapons, jewelry and costumes (for Halloween this year), (yes, I am a nerd).

The Rumors

Something has been worrying me. I hear rumors that Steampunk is dead. Internet forums, blogs like Gizmodo and other naysayers are announcing the death of steampunk. Their reasons... you can only make so many modified weapons, tea kettles, and "steampunkified" normal everyday gadgets for one lifetime.

But, gadgets are only a small part of the sub-culture. Alternate history, costumes, games, fiction books and writing, and Internet steampunk culture (like groups on SecondLife, blogs, and forums) continue to thrive and inspire new creative works. The most recent being a new book by George Mann called The Affinity Bridge (thanks to my friend Sara for the heads up) which was just released last month (July 9th, 2009).



The Evidence

There are also a few new steampunk style movies that have been released recently. Most notable are the 2007 adaptation of Neil Gaiman's book Stardust, The Golden Compass, the adaptation of Jeanne DuPrau's teen books City of Ember and most recently Focus Feature's "9" in which a group of sapient rag dolls, living a post-apocalyptic existence find one of their own, 9 (Elijah Wood), who displays leadership qualities that may help them to survive.

The uberpopular handmade craft selling site Etsy is also full of steampunk art, jewelry and creations that are very popular and sell on a regular basis. I also see steampunk art seeping into mixed media conventional art pieces, photography and mainstream jewelry.

So to all of you naysayers (I just like that word), I say Nay! Don your goggles, fire up the airship! Steampunk is not dead!

Disagree? Leave me a comment...

The Evolution of the Geek and Nerd T-Shirt

I thought I would show off some of my favorite geek / nerd t-shirts that I have or would like to receive as a gift from someone who cares... :-)

The Evolution of the Nerd Shirt...

The beginnings of collectible t-shirts started with the concert shirts of the 60's and 70's. Bands like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin always had great album art and record companies eventually realized that they could make a little extra money by merchandising these bands at their live concerts with t-shirts that could only be bought at the show. They became collectible because of this reason. During that time, if you had the t-shirt, then you had actually been to that concert. I would say that was something to brag about. Pop groups jumped on the band wagon of merchandising soon after and the industry has always done it since.

The Computer Age Nerd Shirt...

In the early 80's Atari introduced one of the world's first console gaming systems as well as an affordable home computer system. This began the age of computers being introduced into the pop culture scene. Some of the first computer shirts were created for marketing purposes and to create buzz at trade shows by some of the early business computer and software companies like: Apple, Amiga, IBM and business software like Turbo Pascal, Lotus 1-2-3, IBM's OS2. These shirts are extremely rare now but you can get replicas of some of these from online vendors like Wearpower.com's Axis T-shirts. Ebay is also a great place to search for some of these. Be advised, most shirts on Ebay are replicas. A true vintage early computer marketing t-shirt is a great find if you can get your hands on them.

Vintage Toys Shirts

The late 70's and early were ripe with cool new toys that included marketing and promotion with t-shirts for fans that could be purchased. Some examples would be toys like: GI Joe, Transformers, Smurfs, Barbie, and Sci-Fi and horror movie merch like Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Gremlins, Flash Gordon, Friday the 13th, Halloween, and others from the late 70's and early 80's. Originals are true rarities these days and often go for over $50 if in good wearable condition.

Modern Gaming and Comic Shirts

We've all seen these around. Almost every comic book character and video game has their own fleet of shirts. In fact these are so common these days, that you can buy most at your local Wal-Mart and dollar stores. This is an example of saturating the market, making something that could be cool and bringing it close to the "sell out" category. There are some rarities out there. I would consider some games like Myst (replica's here) and some of the early ground breaking games like id software's Doom, or Wolfenstein to be very collectible. These companies didn't have alot of extra money for marketing and promotion early on therefore authentic t-shirts with these logos would be considered rare. (BTW if you find a vintage Myst or Riven t-shirt, send me the link!). A few of the popular designs right now are WOW (World of Warcraft) and Halo.

Sarcastic Geek and Funny Nerd Shirts

This is currently my favorite category right now and includes shirts that you have inside information and you have to know about the topic or be semi-intelligent to understand the humor or message of the shirt. One of the original innovators of the funny geek shirt are open source programs and operating systems like Linux. The Linux penguin and shirts that reference Linux commands or functions are funny to me. For example, the original Sudo Make Me A Sandwich shirt on the left.

I'm liking the new Twitter shirts and any "insider" type funny shirts like those here on X-tremeGeek.com and ThinkGeek.com. There are a plethora of new Twitter and Social Networking shirts out now that are hilarious. Find some on CafePress. So welcome to the world of geek / nerd shirts.

If you have and suggestions or links to other cool and funny shirts that I should add here, leave me a comment...

How Google Maps Saved My Marraige

So, I'm back. Where did I go? Oh, you didn't miss me while I was gone on my honeymoon? That's alright, I didn't forget about you guys... just taking some chill out time with my new wife @Andrea915 now Andrea Self (as soon as she gets her new Social Security card). We had a great time and got to visit all the cool places that I mentioned below (Outer Banks, NC; Washington DC; and Philadelphia). Now we're getting everything moved in and starting to plan for this new "together" thing. Other than the fact that she wants to throw out all my cool posters and collections, I think we're getting along fine.

Thanks to everyone who came to the wedding and contributed to our new life. We got alot of great gifts and got to see alot of friends and family that we hadn't seen in a while.

There was one thing that really saved a lot of fights during our honeymoon. Believe it or not it was a little piece of software from a little company called Google called Google Maps. I used Google Maps every day during our honeymoon to navigate and find our way around the strange an large cities that we were visiting. The version I used was on my Blackberry Curve 8330 and it worked perfectly every time updating in almost real time with the GPS function as to what road we were on. The only time it even tried to flake out for a second was in the rural town of Legget, North Carolina where we stayed at our friend's plantation house called Cedar Lane. (Check out some pics of this awesome historic house on my Flickr page) And I assumed that we only had one tower in the area so it couldn't triangulate my position. I also actually set up Google Latitude on my phone to follow us around so people could see where we were real time during our expeditions around the east coast.

After that, we used Google Maps and my Blackberry to navigate the streets of Philadelphia (isn't that a Bruce Springsteen song?) flawlessly. I looked like I knew where I was going and my wife believed I was an exellent navigator for the week. So, thank you Google. You've saved another marraige (yea, they're in the business of saving marraiges too... didn't you know?).

Geek Gear For A Roadtrip

Well, as most of you know, I'm getting married this week to my fiance Andrea and we are taking a road trip / honeymoon to Washington DC and Philly. So I wanted to share with you guys some essential gadgets and geek gear that I will be taking along with me to stay connected during the trip. Most of these involve my laptops and staying connected to the Internet and Wi-Fi while we're on the road. So essential #1 is:

The Laptop

This is probably the most obvious essential for any trip. A wi-fi enabled laptop can be used at a hotel, coffee shop, and even in the car on the freeway (more on this in a minute). Most hotels offer free wi-fi on the property with a log in password that they give you when you check in. Also while you're out and about, most coffee shops, airports and some restaurants now even offer free wi-fi to their patrons. Some great businesses offering free wi-fi nation wide are:

• Panera Bread Company
  
• McDonalds (not all locations)
  
• Starbucks (must have an AT&T account)
• Buffalo Wild Wings Grill and Bar
• Hooters
• Whole Foods Markets
• Krystal Restaurants has free Wi-Fi in 253 locations.
• Speedway Gas Stations
• McAlister's Deli has many locations nationwide with Free WiFi, use their location finder to check for access.

Power Inverter

This is an essential survival tool for any geek on the road. A power inverter converts your DC power coming out of your car's battery and electrical system to AC power so you can plug in household devices. Some of the things it allows you to do on the road:

• use your laptop for an unlimited time
• recharge your batteries
• power a small TV and DVD player or gaming system on the go
  
• power a small refrigeration device for cold drinks and food on the go
• plug in lighting for camping or emergencies

Smart Phone

To me this is an essential for the road warrior. The new iPhone 3Gs would be the ideal, but any phone with unlimited Internet access will work. You want to have a backup to get your email or access any emergency contact information that you might need over the net. I personally use the Blackberry Curve 8330. Some essential aps that a road warrior should look into:

• Google Mobile Ap - available for almost any brand of smart phone out right now. Check all of your Google "stuff" from the road!
  
• Viggo - available for Blackberry and HTC. Best RSS and news reader for mobile.
  
• Pandora (Mobile) - Pandora is exploding right now. A virtual streaming jukebox for Blackberry, iPhone, PalmPre and WinMo (be sure you have unlimited minutes!)
  
• Google Sync - sync your Google calendar and Gmail address book with your phone. Work in the cloud!
• Facebook Ap - receive and update your status and upload mobile pics from the road... uh yes! essential!
• Twitterberry (or other Twitter ap) - I would consider this an essential (even though my fiance wouldn't) - tweet from the road, plus upload pics and other Twitter essentials.
  

Flip Video Camera
(or other sub-compact HD video camera)

This is another essential for on the go video of your trip that can be easily uploaded to YouTube, your blog or web page so you can easily share your trip with family and friends during and after the trip. See my blog GetAFlip for more info.

A Good Book

After being geeky non-stop, take a second to just chill out with a good book, turn a page, stop worrying about where you can connect and just disconnect. Leave the laptop in the hotel room and turn the smart phone off (but keep it in your pocket for emergencies right?)

Spend time with your family / fiance

Especially if its your honeymoon... nuff said ;-)

I'll see you guys after I get back! Thanks for reading.

Photo by Major Clanger / Flickr

Riding The Next Google Wave

Last week Google previewed the next step in interactive social media communication called Google Wave. Wave will be a combination of:

• - cloud document and media sharing
• - email / threaded email (like Gmail)
  
• - instant messaging

But what Wave will add to the mix will be features like:

• Twitter / social media site search and posting collaboration
• real time media insertion into blogs and web pages
• real time typing for all those on a Wave
• "playback" feature to rewind or forward to see what changes or comments were added in the past.
• live collaboration wiki style
• drag and drop files and media into a wave
• open source API
• Wave applications like Twave (for integration with Twitter) and other apps being developed later
• real time spell and grammar checker using the context of the sentence
  

This could be the first step from just the information age to the interactive information age. It really looks like Google has combined the quasi-real time features of Twitter and Friendfeed with cloud collaboration and added the real time interactivity into it. With many individuals and even families now choosing to leave the "land line" behind and rely on cell phones and their computers for all communication, tools like Wave will become more and more useful and important as we leave old technologies behind.

Old technologies that required us to use multiple steps and to switch between a myriad of different programs are being combined into one with new platforms like Wave. For example:

The old way:

1. You want to share a picture with your friends
2. you email you picture as an attachment to your friend
3. they decide to post the picture on Facebook
4. your friend Tweets about the picture
   
5. another friend emails you asking if they can post the picture to their blog
6. you email them back telling them its fine...
7. the picture has to be manually uploaded to the blog and formatted
8. someone wants to comment on the blog picture but isn't registered with the blog
9. that someone flame spams your comments because he is the ex-boyfriend of the girl in the picture
10. etc...

The new way:

1. You decide to share a picture with your friends
2. You start a Wave with any friend that has a Google account and post the picture for everyone's approval
   
3. You add Twave, Facebook app, and the Bloggy apps to the wave.
4. people on the Wave comment, delete, or add information in real time
   
5. you post the Wave to the Internet (which gets posted to Twitter, FB and your Blog all at the same time in real time.
6. The other people on the wave can keep the wave moving on by adding more people to the Wave and encouraging more interactivity.
   

Where we had to use 4 or 5 different tools before (email client, twitter client, FB, FTP or uploader) we now just use Wave to share and collaborate with anyone on the Wave.

The only problem I see with it is that Wave will make the tsunami (pun intended) of information overload that RSS and Twitter have brought to us look a ripple in the pond. Get your surf board waxed up, its gonna be a gnarly ride dude!

Its The Final Countdown! (to our wedding)

Some of you may have been wondering why its been so quiet this month. Well, I don't want to give you some lame excuses, but there have been some other things on my plate this month, the biggest one being my soon to be up and coming wedding on June 27th 2009 to my best friend Andrea. I'll refer you to my earlier post about us if you want to read up a little.

So, I've been working on wedding stuff with her. I designed my own wedding invitations, RSVP's (see above) and programs, planned and booked our honeymoon roadtrip and helped her in any way I could (without getting in the way). So, we're in the last stages of doing that stuff and trying to finish up the little things that are left.
Things we still need to do:

• new springy looking engagement pics (this Sunday)
• final catering order
• get fitted for tux
• get a haircut
• get marriage license

I'm sure there's more stuff that she has to do but she seems to have it handled. I'm just gonna sit back now and... (yea right!)
I've gotta say, Andrea has done a great job organizing and putting together this wedding. We sent out over 150 invites and have gotten almost 90 RSVPs back. Right now we are looking at a little over 100 peeps coming to our little shindig and we are still waiting on about 50 RSVPs.

Its just been exhausting emotionally, worrying about all these little things we need to do. We both can't wait until June 28th and we head out on our roadtrip to have some fun. Oh, yea, and I know your curious about our honeymoon plans so here's where we are going:

1. Tutwieler Hotel (Birmingham, AL): historic hotel in Birmingham, on wedding night (I don't know whats going to be happening then... probably watch some TV and order room service ;-)
2. Outer Banks / Nags Head (North Carolina): Checking out the Wright Brothers memorial and the best beaches on the East Coast.
3. Washington DC: staying in Arlington, VA actually, which is right across the river, I want to see the National Archives and Library of Congress, she wants to see the boring monuments (JK!)
4. Philadelphia, PA: staying in another historic hotel in Center City (about 5 blocks from Independence Hall), checking out the Franklin Institute, Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, eating some Geno's cheese steaks, fancy dinners and doing our own M. Night Shyamalan film location tour (a film geek idea I came up with that she reluctantly agreed to). Then we're gonna go see a Phillies game. The grand finale will be our last day (July 4th), so we'll be downtown for the festivals, parades and fireworks over the museum and then head out at about 8 or 9pm and drive till we're tired back to Bama.

So, you can see, I've been working like a maniac trying to save up some money for this trip. So, please forgive if you don't hear from The Horse for a few more weeks. Thanks for reading guys and I'll be back real soon with more fun geek info for ya!

My friend Natalie provided me with the title to my blog today (and got that dang song stuck in my head! Thanks Natalie!)