Where has Mouse gone to?

You like the images of style retro? The Web Steampunk Wallpaper is dedicated to compile screen bottoms whose visual aspect remembers to the steam motors and the old woman gears. An example is this titled image “Old Ideas”, happened in a photo of Paul Garland.

That’s the Babel fish translation of this page, where they mentioned SteampunkWallpaper.com. I find the description amusing.

Sorry to be so AFK; SPW.com is taking a lot of time. I’ve got about 1,500 hits a day, though, which is good for both my ego and my production rate. I may fall flat on my nose, but I’m much less likely to give up if 1,500 people are watching me.

And only one flame so far, which is kinda nifty. I know that these wallpapers I’m doing aren’t Great Works of Art. Half of them I’m ‘meh’ about. A few I outright dislike. But this is a kind of fat camp for my creativity. I haven’t done ANYTHING in so long that my muscles are atrophied. So I push myself. Hopefully I’ll get some more people who want to be featured on the site, and I can ’share’ responsibility. That’d be awesome.

Here’s something I read today on Lifehacker, from Jeff Atwood :

Quantity always trumps quality. That’s why the one bit of advice I always give aspiring bloggers is to pick a schedule and stick with it. It’s the only advice that matters, because until you’ve mentally committed to doing it over and over, you will not improve. You can’t. When it comes to software, the same rule applies. If you aren’t building, you aren’t learning. Rather than agonizing over whether you’re building the right thing, just build it. And if that one doesn’t work, keep building until you get one that does.

This is what I am doing. I am COMMITTED (yes yes, with the paperwork and the comfy white coat) to doing wallpapers, and keep doing them. I’m learning a lot about myself. Part of that is that I’m so lazy I’m surprised I breathe, let alone do one wallpaper a day for the last 36 days. Yup, 36. Go me.

Guh. Well, I have to get up at 5 in the fucking morning to go to work for the next two weeks, so I better get going on tonight’s wallpaper.

Oh, and Dr. Horrible is free again. :: huge grin::

Person Jeff Atwood

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Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog

Until Sunday, July 20th at midnight (pacific, I believe), you can watch all three acts of Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. Mad Scientists, Supervillans, and frozen yogurt. AND IT”S A MUSICAL! Joss Whedon, you’ve done it again. You make things that make me happy. Thank you.

I adored every second about it. It makes me feel good to be alive, and a geek. This is the kind of movie that makes me light up like a juiced filament. I’ll buy the episodes after they go on sale, I’m sure. Go. Watch. Enjoy.

(Now, of course, I want to make some wallapers. Hmmmm…)

Hellboy II, the Golden Army review

I went to see Hellboy II just now, and I’ll make sure I keep anything spoilery under the cut.

The next sentence isn’t spoilery.

OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS MOVIE!

More after the jump. It has spoilers, though. Be ye warned. Spoil, spoiler, spoilerist. There. If you still bitch at me for spoiling you, then I’ll just mock you roundly.

Slams her head repeatedly into her desk

I just deleted almost every comment on this blog. I am so stupid. This is what happens when I’m desperately trying to think of ideas for Steampunkwallpaper.com and I start ‘cleaning up’.

I’ve backed up a TEXT copy of all your kind words, but the comments themselves are gone. DAMNIT!!

Where have all the Wallpapers gone?

Due to the mass amounts of hits I was getting on my steampunk wallpaper page, and due to the fact that editing the HTML every day was driving me batshit insane, I moved the wallpapers to their own blog!

Check it out! SteampunkWallpaper.com

Steampunk Fiveday

Well, it’s the 4th of July, I should do a patriotic one… but I’m just not feeling it right now. The rumble and pop of the fireworks sounds too close to what I hear on the news about all the places in the world that it sucks to be right now. So, instead, I’ll do a Steampunk Fiveday.

Five cool sites about Steampunk. (not counting that link.)

1. The Steampunk Forum at Brass Goggles. Cool blog, and even cooler forum. Friendly and inventive, the gents and ladies therein will assist you with any issue or question you may have. With sub-forums for everything from textual to textural, fiction to fabric, it’s a great place to get your feet wet.
2. Æther Emporium. Wiki-style compendium of links. Nice place to go diving for Steampunkery.
3. The Steampunk Workshop. The home of the rock star of the Steampunk subculture, Jake von Slatt. More about him below, but the workshop is a blog of nifty cool. Many links abound!
4. Steampunk Magizine and forum. I actually buy this zine analog, at Powell’s, but it’s online for free. Stories, interviews, and, amazingly, full patterns and recipes for delectable things such as spats or leather aviator helmets. One issue even had a ‘how to live in the falling down wreckage of your city’ section. It makes me so happy.
5. Dr. Grordborts Infallible Aether Oscillators (pictured), are a line of immensely dangerous yet simple to operate wave oscillation weapons. I want one so badly that my palms sweat looking at them. I can almost feel the cool, textured grip, smell the ozone and the iron… gah.  I swear, if I had an extra 800$ lying around, they would be mine!

 

 

Bonus! Five steampunk names you should know.

 

1. The previously mentioned Jake von Slatt (pictured). Maker of amazing items, such as the Victorian all in one PC,  Steampunk Strat, and tutorials on etching and electroplating. He’s rather shy, but he’s undoubtedly one of the big names in Steampunkery at the moment. And, if he ever sees this, Yes, Jake, you do clean up nice.
2. Datamancer. If you haven’t heard of him, I’m rather surprised you even have read this long into the post! He’s the creator of the amazing keyboards, goddamn fucking beautiful laptop mods, and other awesomeness. And he’s hot. Don’t tell him I said that, though.
3. Abney Park. Steampunk band. Beloved (by more than just me) for their stage persona as well as their music.
4. Dr. Steel. The mad scientist version of Abney park. Think labcoat spattered with rust instead of blood. Oh, and toys. Lots of toys.
5. Agatha Heterodyne. The heroine and title character of the Girl Genius universe. Great webcomic, and analog comic too, come to think of it. I own a amusing card game based on them. Note that the Girl Genius creators don’t consider themselves Steampunk, because of it’s darker connotations. They prefer ‘Gaslamp Romance’.

Steampunk wallpaper a day?

In an effort to make myself create more, I’m going to try to add one thing to my Steampunk Wallpaper page every day. I’ll update the blog maybe once a week with a roundup of the week’s wallpapers…

Here’s yesterdays and today’s, just to get started.

July 2nd
July 3rd (Pipe picture CC by Autowitch)

Steampunk wallpapers.

I’ve added a new page to the site: Steampunk wallpapers.

I’ m always looking for appropriately tan-y and gear-y wallpapers, but I’ve only found a handful. So I made some myself. I’ll be updating that page as I make them.

Dung Beetle truffles!

I made an Instructable! Go me!

Dung Beetle truffles

Yummy, yummy marzipan dung beetle!

Is it possible for your brain to be your arch-nemesis?

I swear my brain is working against me.

I write. I enjoy it. I’ve written a 165,000 word story that was very well received in the circles it traveled in. I’ve written other stories. When people ask me what I am, who I am, my first instinct is to say ‘I’m a writer!’. Yes, sure you are. Just like three-quarters of the world, you’re a writer.

So, you’d think that I’d have been spending this last week off work writing, then, wouldn’t you? Ah, but there’s where you’d be wrong. I’ve done everything I can NOT to write; talked about writing, planned to write, organized my writing area, customized my writing tools, talked about plotting (different than talking about writing, I swear) and now I’m blogging about it. Anything possible to actually avoid writing itself.

Why? Because I’m working on a Big Story.

It’s not some toss off (heh) short story. Its one I’ve been thinking about, working on, for years. I’m finally wrapping my brain around what I’m actually doing in the story… and now I’m scared witless.

While I do tend to write with adult themes, most of the stories I’ve written are light. Not light-hearted, but… shallow. Dealing with only one group of people, or, even more often, one person. Maybe even one person and one event.

Not this one. This story is much larger than any other. Whole nations, even entire empires, have to be accounted for. I have to re-write history, to an extent. Without Steve, I wouldn’t have even been able to plan it this far out. He’s my sounding board, inspirational fount, and angst sponge. I’m using my friend Cole to tackle the more sticky science stuff. He’s smarter than I am by a bunch. I’m sure that I’ll be bouncing this off of all of my friends sooner or later, and they’ll sigh and shake their heads while getting out their collective red pen and marking up what I’ve written. And I’ll sigh, and be resentful (and relieved) when they make me slice off unneeded parts of the story and go back and write things I dodged. I’ll hate them and love them and my fingers will bleed.

But before any of that can happen, I have to start writing. And I can’t seem to. I have all these stupid questions, doubts, clogging up my mind. In two days my ten day break will be up, and I’ve not written one god damn word on this thing.

I’m frustrated. A lot.

Who knew a hard science realistic Steampunk erotica novel could be so darn hard?