Yes I was there last year via SecondLife and intend doing the same again – this is a great conference.
So yeah, I’ll be geeking out this weekend 🙂
And good luck to all those who will be in San Francisco for the live events!
Wheeeeee!
Cheers
Jerry
The British Steam Car Challenge aims to break a world steam car record set by a Stanley steamer that has stood for 100 years. But if you thought this is some romantic harking back to an Edwardian world using Victorian technology, think again. This is today’s technology right now. Your plug-in electric car uses it, the internet runs on it and your house is lit by it. The steam turbine lies at the heart of modern electric power stations, whether nuclear or conventionally fueled. And that is a clue.
External combustion engines can use a wider range of fuels than any other technology. So a steam car can run on fossil fuel oils, or biodiesel, or alcohol or old vegetable oil. And the burners run clean. The British steam car challenge car will burn its fuel completely, producing almost no harmful emissions – unlike the internal combustion engine. Its two-stage turbine producing almost 270kw is designed to take this three tonne car to speeds in excess of 270kph powered by LPG.
Eight years in the making, this car is in every way a testament to the dedication of this small team of British enthusiasts. And despite being a purpose-built sprint car, the lessons learnt from demonstrating the practicalities of the steam generators and associated control systems could well be applied in a future steam hybrid car or a worthy successor to the Doble, Stanley and White cars of the past. External combustion could well be one of the green high performance solutions to our current love affair with fossil fuels.
The car will be driven at the Bonneville salt flats during Speed Week this year in August – by Don Wales (grandson of Sir Malcolm Campbell) and Charles Burnett III.
If you stop by their website before 30 July you can donate £1.00 and be part of history in the making, adding your name to the car and contributing to an extraordinary team.
Cheers
Jerry
It’s official. Steampunk is a global phenomenon. This mouse mod which turns the humble computer rodent into a Victorian-style aesthetic masterpiece was made in Russia, where there is apparently a strong modding community.
Steampunk itself is derived from a sub-genre of cyberpunk science fiction that emerged with the likes of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling in the mid 1980s. Steam-punk is a spin-off that postulates an alternative future in which contemporary functionality is produced in a kind of Victorian/Edwardian era. It was given huge impetus by the publication of Gibson and Sterling’s “The Difference Engine” which envisages a world in which Charles Babbage’s programmable mechanical computer develops into a steam driven Victorian version of today’s world.
In keeping with that aesthetic, enthusiasts have shoehorned modern computer equipment into elaborate brass and leather devices which have today’s functionality with the aesthetics of yesteryear – when machines were handcrafted with pride.
I loved this slightly irreverent version of Hamlet – its humour is quite true to the original intent methinks 🙂
Cheers
Jerry
New SecondLife blog Nowhere/Now here is one to keep an eye on. Teal Etzel ranges from a whimsical review of a Greenies sim to in-world tutorials, which will take much of the work out of finding good content in SecondLife.
Cheers
Jerry
