Produced by Chicago Tribal Bellydance Troupe Read my Hips, this show looks like it was a lot of fun! 

I'm really excited that the fashions are not purely neo-Victorian, there is some definite punk in there as well as some middle Eastern influence.

Have a look at pictures from the event here and please note that some are NSFW.  XD

Hi Everyone!  I'm in Seattle now hang'n with rockstars and anarchists for a couple of days of decompression post SteampoweredCon in San Jose.  Steampowered turned out to be a really great event with lots of fascinating people of an even broader spectrum then the already broad spectrum I expected.

My flight was delayed and as a result I was exhausted and a bit shaky when I arrived to give my keynote with only minutes to spare.  The room was at capacity and the crowd quickly made me feel at home. I gave my prepared speech and then unveiled the Wimshurst Machine which I built for an article that will appear in Make Magazine early next year.

Then I brought Jeff VanderMeer up and we announced the fact that on Monday we signed with Artisan Books to write a book on Steampunk!  The book will be highly visual and project oriented and will draw from and highlight all corners of the community.  I'm really excited about this project and really, really happy to be working with Jeff who is a consummate professional and really nice guy.  It was also kind of neat that we shared the announcement, and in fact our first meeting in the flesh, with a thousand or so attendees at the Con!

The following is the complete text of my keynote - it's un-copyedited or proofed so please ignore the typos!

You should also have a look at Alex Soojung-Kim Pang's Reflection on Tinkering from which I borrowed liberally for the speech as it was incredibly relevant to the ideas I wanted to convey that night.

Steampunk Keynote

What sort of future were you promised? When I was young they told me I'd have robotic servants to tend to my every need, cars that would drive themselves while I read the newspaper and vacations in orbiting space hotels. When I was a bit older they promised me ecologically friendly communities where we would all live together in geodesic domes in our white jump suits.

If you are anywhere near the Mass. College of Liberal Arts in North Adams MA, you should definitey consider checking this out as it sounds absolutely wonderful!

Nichoals Fahey writes:

I'm a theater major and have the priviledge of directing a show in november. We're putting on "Deathmachine Andronicus" a spin on Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, set in a mythical roman setting in which the Roman Empire never collapsed but instead flourished to have it's own industrial revolution hundreds of years ahead of our time.

And he goes on the say:

[We're] building a fully funtional steam-powered "Deathmachine" that bakes people into pies. Blood, guts, gore, shakespeare, and steam.

How can that not be awesome!

Click through for a pic of the aforementioned Death Machine!

Only a few more days until the Steam Powered - The California Steampunk Convention!! 

It's been a big week for me already and it's only Monday!  Yesterday I got the propane torches and sound system working on our primary prop for All Hallows E'en.  We're doing "The Wizard of Oz" and I get to be "The Great and Powerful!"  I know you are anxious to see the rig, so I'll try and get some video up tomorrow.  Friday is going to be a blast!  Mwhahahahaa!

Then Saturday morning, likely sometime around 4AM, a car will arrive to whisk me off to the airport and the first California Steampunk Convention.  I'm really excited about this because I'm going to get to see so many of the people I met at Maker Faire again!

I'm also going to get to meet some folks in person for the very first time  including Ann and Jeff VanderMeer the editors of the Steampunk anthology. 

Jeff and I really seem to have hit it off and have been plotting and planning ever since we met online back in April.  A little earlier today we received some sensational news! The details are still in the works, but we will almost certainly have an exciting announcement for you on Saturday at Steam Powered!

I'm still wandering around the country, but on October 18th and 19th I will be wandering somewhere in particular- somewhere awesome.

That place is, of course, Austin, for Maker Faire! 

Maker Faire in San Francisco was full of awesome- stuffed to the mechanical gills with projects, geeks, geeky projects, and of course, a healthy dose of delicious beer. I'm sure Maker Faire: Austin will be the same.

I'm particurally excited about the King Of Fling contest- seriously, there is nothing more awesome, more soul satisfying, and hell, more American- than heaving into the air objects not known to fly just to hear them go crunch as they meet their terrestrial doom. You should come. We'll have fun.

This past Thursday I had the honour of addressing an audience at the Groton Public Library.  I'm afraid I rambled on for a bit at first, but once we got to the question and answer section the questions just kept coming!

I also unveiled a new piece, a piece that I've not quite finished but was designed specifically so anyone could make their own with readily available materials and common tools.  Stay tuned for details on where you'll be able to find the step by step instructions, sometime in the near future.

There are more pictures of the evening here courtesy of photographer Bob Lotz.

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Something about this little inside-out temporally inverted matchbox really really appeals to me - and it will be mine unless you out-bid me!  Actually you should out-bid me, and by a large amount as the procedes from these auctions go to benefit the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center.

[Update: Somebody out bid me!  But I upped my bid and I'm back on top! Mwah hah hah ha!]

It's all the doing of spectulative fiction writer Shira Lipkin who will be:

. . . doing a blogathon this Saturday, July 26 - posting to my LiveJournal every half hour for 24 hours to raise money for the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. This is my sixth year blogathonning, and I write spontaneous short fiction every year. It usually tends to have an urban fantasy bent (as in fantasy in a city, not paranormal romance), but this year, I'm taking a distinctly SF angle on it. For 24 hours, I'll be in character as a xenoarchaeologist, trying to make sense of precollapse Earth... with the help of over 50 artists who donated "artifacts" to this project, including a few SF/F authors themselves. All artifacts are being auctioned, with a story card.

It all goes down here: http://shadesong.livejournal.com
And the auctions are here: http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZshadesong

And there's a lot more info on my LJ about why I do this, and why BARCC.  

I've been booked for the first ever California Steampunk Convention in Sunnyvale, California - October 31 through November 2! 

I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing but there is sufficient time to put together a really bitch'n presentation and/or demo!  I'll also be participating in a discussion panel or two.

In addition, some of The Steampunk Workshop's bestest friends will be there, and by that I mean Ann & Jeff VanderMeer the editors of Steampunk as well as those roguishly appealing pirates: Abney Park!

Discounted tickets are on sale now until June 15 for $50, they will be $60 thereafter.

Abney Park posing aboard the Neverwas Haul at Maker Faire 2008 (Photo - Libby Bulloff)

I am sorely tempted to build an entry for Dr. Erasmus P. Kitty's Great Hand-Car Regatta. There's not much info, but it looks like some great things are already being built. I love the idea of human powered vehicles to put to use some of the vast swaths of abandoned railway in this country.

That, and I can already see myself furiously peddling my creation down the tracks (cackleling!); twirling my moustachio, threatening iminent doom upon a damsel, tied to the tracks, vainly trying to wiggle free her bonds.

I'm sure the event will be fun, too.