Saturday 22 August 2009

The Airship song

Original sheet music at http://libraries.mit.edu/music-files/cometakeatrip.pdf
And mpg version so you can singalong at http://libraries.mit.edu/music-files/sound/cometakeatrip.mp3

"Come take a trip in my airship"
by Ren Shields and George Evans

I love a sailor, the sailor loves me,
And sails every night to my home
He's not a sailor that sails oer the sea
or over the wild briny foam
For he owns an airship and sails upon high
He's just like a bird on the wing
And when the shadows of evening draw nigh
He'll sail to my windon and sing

Chorus:
Come take a trip in my airship
Come take a sail 'mong the stars
Come have a ride around Venus
Come have a spin around Mars
No one to watch while we're kissing
No one to see while we spoon
Come take a trip in my airship
And we'll visit the man in the moon


One night while sailing away from the crowds
We passed thought the milky white way
Just idly sailing and watching the clouds
He asked me if I'll name the day
And right near the dipper I gave him my heart
The sun shines on our honeymoon
We swore from each other we never would part
And teach all the babies this tune

Chorus

Dreams of Steam, Edinburgh event











Dreams of steam organised Edinburgh's first ever steampunk event, during the Edinburgh fringe festival. Themed on the arrival of the R1001 airship, the evening was a sell out success, with wonderfully accoutred audience crammed in to hear a fantastic evening of variety entertainment, from the Imperial Broadcasting Service's output to Thomas Truax, Amanda Palmer and others.












Glasgow by Gaslight event







Scotland's first steampunk event was the GUeSS event, Glasgow by Gaslight, in the Britannia Panopticon. A great day of public entertainment, stalls to buy paraphenalia and food. We raised lots of money for the Panopticon's renovation fund and even some for the GUeSS.



Saturday 18 July 2009

As if I had nothing to do, I have now signed up to the Retrofuturist Society's Blog http://forum.retrofuturist.org . Quite small compared to, say Brassgoggles, but of good taste and interest. From there I quickly found myself at a site of amazing fascination which I can reccommend to anyone with an afternoon to spare:
http://davidszondy.com/future/futurepast.htm This site takes us through a host of categories of what the future was predicted to turn out like and compares it with what actually happened. Food for instance was predicted to be generally horribly even more processed than it already is. Some other pages had me weeping with laughter.

Sunday 31 May 2009

Paleofuture

The future that never was - a great blog where the host has lovingly assembled over a century of predictions that fell at the first hurdle.
http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/category/1880s

Loads of great illustrations including many from Albert Robida of whom I had not previously heard but whom I shall seek out forthwith.

Monday 25 May 2009

White Mischief Steampunk event: Journey to the centre of the earth







I went down to London for the White Mischief steampunk event at the Scala, Kings cross. The theme was Vernian again: Journey to the centre of the Earth. I didnt take many pix but there are some other people's pix on Flickr if you search for White Mischief.






Another great event with the usual eclectic mixture of audience and performers. I particularly liked The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing: http://www.myspace.com/blamedfornothing as I had missed seeing their History of British Industry at the Edinburgh festival. They really put the punk into steampunk and also the steam - a great song about the famous Stephenson and Stevenson families and also a funny one about Charles darwin.

Other features were trapeze artists, the Illumini, an escapologist (but not as good as the old guy who used to be at Tower Hill doing such things), some amazingly unerotic burlesquers, and the Correspondents - I dont know how it is possible to dance and sing so fast for so long - surely chemical help must be involved. Costumes of the audience lots of fun as always.

more airships

Here are some great film clips of the Hindenburg: http://www.archive.org/details/SF146 and its terrible disaster: http://www.archive.org/details/hindenberg_explodes

Sunday 10 May 2009

How to build your own airship

Well no. My engineering degree in no way qualifies me to do the above, but I have been enjoying some fun websites on the topic, which I will share with you:
How to build a zeppelin
Card model of the Vickers transoceanic airship
Experimental airship building - many scary warnings
and a Youtube vid on how to actually do it so you can see how hard it is

Tuesday 10 March 2009

Steampunk weekend away



Yippee! Major Tinker is putting on a whole weekend of steampunkery: the UK Steampunk Convivial. It is to be in Lincoln and you too can see more about it at http://steampunk.synthasite.com/ . We are definitely hoping to go as it looks LOADS of fun.






Also came across this extraordinary site http://www.doctorwhen.co.uk/. the adverts are laugh out loud.



Meanwhile very very busy trying to get all ready for the McMADSAT event I am running this coming weekend. Some steampunkers will be there and if you are reading this before 14th March 2009 and know any steampunkers in Scotland please get in touch urgently as the gentlemen of the press are keen to make your acquaintance.

Tuesday 17 February 2009

lovely Russian voltmeter


I was in the Electron Club (Glasgow Geek central) today, collecting up a huge pile of dead keyboards for the projects we will be taking to the Make And Do Show And tell event i am organising, and there was this sweet old voltmeter sat sitting on the window ledge looking out into Sauchiehall Street.


Isnt it great?I did point out to the guys that this really deserved to be better loved.

Sunday 8 February 2009

flying helmet


Today I indulged myself by making a flying helmet to go with my flying goggles.

See it at http://www.instructables.com/id/Steampunk_Flying_Helmet_with_goggles_and_headphone/

sundials nocturlabes and motors

Sundials : I love this french blog http://pagesperso-orange.fr/cadrans.solaires/cadrans/cadran-jean-michel-ansel.html about sundials around the world. There are english subtitles too. I was also very taken with his trip to a sundial park in Britanny and had no idea there were such things as sundial parks: http://pagesperso-orange.fr/cadrans.solaires/cadrans/originaux-parcs-france.html

I am going to make a nocturlabe next as I had not previously come across them and want to try one out next time there is a clear sky

See also this amazing french auctioneers which sells technological wonders, old electric items and so on. http://www.insoliteobjet.com/nouveautes/nouveautes.html


Monday 2 February 2009

The Mechanical Offline Blog goes Online

I took the wonderful Mechanical Offline Blog to the "January Reshuffle" a the Pearce Institute, Govan (Glasgow Scotland) at the weekend and it was in use by adults and children pretty well constantly from noon to 5pm.

Naturally, you have to have been of a certain age to have seen one before and know its ideosyncracies but its appeal seems ageless.

To those who wish to replicate this concept, I will eventually put a retrospective Instructable up but the basics are that you need a beautiful old mechano-movable-type manual printing machine, a very long roll of paper and a frame work to allow the paper to go up and over so the public can see what their friends wrote.

Below are some images of the actual typing and below them I have transcribed the actual texts in the next blog, so you can see the poetry that emerges, both intended and otherwise. Some might almost be a cross between ee cummings and the Scottish Makar Edwin Morgan (If only!!)

Many users were pre-literates, but let that stop no one from expressing themselves visually if not literately.

I cannot help wondering about the prevalence of the jemjems.....

[please excuse the terrible formatting of the pictures below, i cannot seem to get it to do what i want and its terribly late and my bedtime]

























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