Steampunk and the Art of Design

I've always admired craftsmen. The ability to sit down and design something and then to go into a workshop and actually create it seems to me to be an endeavor as fundamental to civilization as any amount of philosophy and high art and I am in awe of those who can do so.

When than craft is turned to the creation of working devises with a steampunk design, my awe transcends itself to become something to which I have no name.

The Steampunk Workshop is a set of step-by-step instructions, with pictures and videos, of how to turn ordinary things into their steampunk analogs. Pictured above is the end result of a flat panel display conversion. My personal favorite, however, is a working telegraph sounder that converts RSS feeds into telegraph clicks and clacks.

Administrivia

If you've been here before, you've probably noticed that I've changed my layout. Instead of that nasty pea green that I basically yanked off of Blogger, I took the time to go through and customize the design to my own aesthetic preferences. I think that the new look is a lot easier on the eyes.

One good thing about doing this is that I've learned a lot about Cascading Style Sheets and have improved my overall understanding of HTML, and it only took a few hours during which I could be heard saying such things as "Where the hell is that damned indent coming from!"

I am certainly not a guru on the subject of web design and will never pretend to be, but I find that it's always good to expand one's sphere of knowledge.