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