On Saturday May 3, Cap'n Robert of Abney Park, Libby Bulloff of SteamPunk Magazine and I will be on  The Heather Gold Show which will be streamed live from the main stage at Maker Faire.  From Heather's site:

I've been thinking about what this whole Steampunk thing is and I still haven't gotten a handle on it.  But anything that brings together such a wide range of artists, makers, and fans has got to be good.  Is there any other hobby that will bring you email from HAM radio operators, Bay Area sculptors, European train buffs, Seattle musicians, media reporters, alternative energy tinkerers, clockmakers, goth fashion designers, literary agents, telegraphers, Scottish printmakers, LA fashion photographers, British narrow boat dwellers, and so many more?  I think not!

One such email arrived this morning from Suzanne R Forbes, a Berkeley artist who has created a work that embodies three of my most favorite memes!  In addition the painting (and Suzanne!) will be at Maker Faire next week and will ultimately be auctioned off to benefit one of those favorites, the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  The exercise of determining the other two favorites is left to the reader.

Prints are currently on sale at her Etsy store and $10 of each sale goes to benefit the EFF. Be sure to look for Suzanne, the EFF and the rest of us SteamPunks at Maker Faire next week!

The inexorable march of technology has rendered my 4:3 aspect ratio 19" LCD mod and my pump-less water cooled PC obsolete, so when I saw a 24" wide screen monitor on sale for $299.00 I grabbed it with the intent on making a Steampunk All-in-One PC.

Publishing house Tachyon Publications and editors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer have agreed to make their new fiction anthology, Steampunk, available for pre-order at a discounted price!  This volume, priced at $14.95, is being offered at $12.00, including free shipping within the United States. Shipping outside the United States will be by Global Priority Mail: $9.50 to Canada and $11.00 to our friends in Europe and Australia.

Click Here for the Detals

In addition, books ordered through this offer will arrive signed by the editors. Signed and personalized…they will even draw little zeppelins!

So you probably all saw Merlin Mann's Steampunk DIY video blog monologue on Boing Boing yesterday, well I thought he was being a little bit mean and I happen to know a couple of things about the future of SteamPunk . . .

Work on the Steampunk car continues.  Here I remove the rotted seats and mildewed interior. Rebuild and rewire the dash as well as replace the VW tail lights with reproduction Model A lamps.

Guest artist Molly porkshanks Friedrich shows us how to update a pair of vintage headphones for use with an iPod or MP3 player.

[Editor's Note: Welcome to our first Guest Artist project, a new feature that I hope will become a standard here at The Steampunk Workshop. If you'd be interested in doing a guest spot with us pitch me your idea! In addition to the notoriety you'll receive we'll be offering a small honorarium. Write me for details at jake@vonslatt.com. - Jake ]

In 1982 I was a sophomore at a small college in the Midwest. It was the beginning of second term and I was again standing in line at the on-campus book store waiting to pay for a too-heavy stack of text books. The line was not moving at all so I put my books down on the floor and started flipping through the coffee table books on display. The book I chose to pick up first was titled Rolling Homes - Handmade House on Wheels by Jane Lidz. Thus the seed was planted.

This project was first published on vonslatt.com but I recently put together this video so I thought I'd collect some of the best images from the original build log and re-publish it here since was really the first  steampunkish project I did.

Here is a brief summary of the construction of my school bus RV. Most of this images were originally publish at www.vonslatt.com.

Late in 2007 I spotted this car on eBay with a "Buy it Now" price of $1500 and, well, bought it then.  Its a 1929 Mercedes Gazelle SSK replica made by Classic Motor Carriages. CMC made these cars in the late '70s and early '80s. In fact,

I remember seeing advertisements for the kits in the back of Popular Science magazine when I was younger and thinking they looked pretty cool. I later came to realize their intrinsic cheesiness; but that makes them all the more hackable as I won't be getting email from all over hell-and-gone telling me I've ruined a collectible car!