Steampunk
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RSS telegraph puts the challenge back into reading the news
It would be one thing if the Steampunk Workshop had just salvaged an old telegraph machine and hacked it to translate RSS feeds for kicks, but no, these guys went all out and machined by hand what is at the same time one of the best-looking and most useless projects we're ever seen. Still, modding culture doesn't necessarily place the highest value on functionality, and the detailed instructions and videos provided by SW ensure that you can come up with something just as polished. Anyway, this one looks like it's gonna take you awhile -- especially if you don't have your own band saw -- so take a quick peek at the vid after the break and then get on over to the hardware store post haste; and you do manage to build a working replica, don't forget to do the totally meta thing and send us a vid or MP3 of your creation tap tap tapping this very post out in Morse Code. [Via MAKE:]
Steam Walker steampunk walking robot
There's definitely a good deal of steampunk gear out there, but this little dude can also keep you company -- kinda. Steam Walker, a steam-powered walking robot of Japanese origin, looks as if it walked (at an unbearably slow pace) out from the pages of a romanticized steam-bot storybook, complete with a makeshift exoskeletal hot bod and loud-as-all-hell engine. The site doesn't offer up much info, but we can tell you that Steam Walker operates via a series of components including the head as a boiler / combustion chamber, an engine, steam pipe, gear box, and yes, a funny little water-drawing bucket. [Via Boing Boing]Read - Steam WalkerRead - Video of steampunk bot in "action"
Steampunk IBM keyboard mod
Sick of living in the post-industrial present? Long for an alternate universe where steam trumps electricity? Well, unfortunately, while we can't offer you a complete transfer from the land of "the now" into a steampunk universe, we can show you a way to make it feel like Queen Victoria and the era she represented lasted until the ripe old age of 170. Full instructions for how to convert a 1980s era "clicky" IBM keyboard into an input device that would look at home in a movie adaptation of a Jules Verne novel are available on The Steampunk Workshop: just add a steampunk laptop and you're set. Honestly, if there was one keyboard that could give the Optimus 103 a run for its money in a "coolness" face-off, this would be it. Then again, we always were suckers for mixing retro with modern.[Via Digg]
Steam powered iMac
I spent much of my college days reading Victorian literature, and since I also happen to be a SciFi geek it should shock no one that I enjoy Steampunk (though I would be shocked if many of you even know what Steampunk is). It seems that Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane share my love of melding 21st and 19th century technologies together because they are responsible for the Steam Powered Internet Machine.It makes me so happy to live in a world where a steam powered iMac exists.[via Make]
