Now I'm gainfully employed once more I can wear my Steampunk cuff links again. I bought these years ago when Steampunk to me was simply a description used on eBay when the seller was offering broken watch parts.
26/03/2012
Steampunk Watch Movement Cuff Links
Now I'm gainfully employed once more I can wear my Steampunk cuff links again. I bought these years ago when Steampunk to me was simply a description used on eBay when the seller was offering broken watch parts.
19/03/2012
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008 - 2009)
Synopsis
I'm sure everyone heard of the Terminator movies, where Skynet, a computer from the future, attempts to exterminate all human life. A human resistance lead by John Connor fights back. In the first movie Skynet sends a cyborg to the past to kill John Connor's mother Sarah, before he is conceived. The resistance sends Kyle Reese, a resistance soldier to protect her.
In the second movie Skynet sends another Terminator to the past to kill a young John Connor, while future John sends a reprogrammed Terminator identical to the one in the first movie to protect young him. This TV series tells what happened after the events of the second movie. John and Sarah Connor with the help of another reprogrammed Terminator, Cameron Phillips, try to stay under the radar, as they attempt to destroy Skynet before it is created.
13/02/2012
They Live (1988)
Synopsis
A drifter finds a pair of sunglasses which allow him to see subliminal messages behind advertisements. What's more he sees some people are actually aliens in disguise, and they're behind these messages. The aliens also control big business and the media.
10/02/2012
The Thing (1982) vs The Thing (2011)
Three movies were based on the short story Who Goes There? by American science fiction author John W. Campbell Jr. I reviewed the first one earlier, and since the other two are so similar narratively and visually I'll review them together.
Synopsis
1982 version - In the Antarctic a Norwegian helicopter chases and shoots at a sledge dog. They end up near an American science base. The Norwegians are killed before they can give an explanation, so the Americans take in the dog. The Americans go to investigate the Norwegian camp, and discover the Norwegians found something in a block of ice. A creature starts killing and taking on the form of the men at the American science base.
2011 version - The producers of this movie thought the '82 version directed by John Carpenter was perfect, so they decided to make a prequel instead of a remake. This movie tells the story of the Norwegians and how they came in contact with The Thing which assimilates and imitates it's victims.
06/02/2012
The Thing from Another World (1951)
John W. Campbell Jr's short story Who Goes There? has been made into a movie three times. This is the first version. I'll review the other versions from 1982 and 2011 later.
Synopsis
An Air Force captain and a journalist are sent to the North Pole to investigate an explosion and a magnetic disturbance. They find a crashed flying saucer under the ice and a frozen being a few meters away from it. The block of ice containing the creature is cut and taken to a nearby science base, however the creature escapes and starts killing people...
01/02/2012
Flash Forward
Synopsis
The whole world blacks out for exactly 2min 17sec, resulting in accidents and millions of deaths. During the blackout people have visions of their future. This global event is soon taken to be a terrorist attack, and the plot thickens when video footage is found showing a concious person talking on a mobile phone during the blackout.
The story centers around an FBI agent who's vision shows him to be central to the Flash Forward investigaion, and his family and friends.
31/01/2012
Why I Dislike TV Series with Episodic Episodes
Lately I've been watching several TV series, and when I tweet about them or review them I often comment that the episodes feel or don't feel episodic. Here I'll attempt to explain what I mean by this. A series by definition is made up of episodes, but the episodes can cover a series story arc, or they can be stand alone episodes.
23/01/2012
Mini Reviews
Lately I watched several TV series, and while I enjoyed them and wanted to share my thoughts about them, I didn't feel the need to give them full scale reviews. What I ended up doing was tweeting around 7 tweets about each. However tweets end up buried under newer ones, and lost in the vast twitter-verse.
01/01/2012
Top 5 NLG Steampunk Articles 2011
Choosing my blog's Top 5 articles for 2011 wasn't easy. If I ranked them by pageview, recent articles would be at a disadvantage against those that have been published for some time.
In the end I decided to rank them by calculating the average monthly pageviews [(actual pageviews / days published) * 30 days]. As a last step I removed seasonal posts as with my formula they skewed the result. Seasonal posts are articles that might be very popular at the end of the year, but will probably be ignored during the rest of the year. The results in reverse order:
29/12/2011
Top 10 Steampunk Web Articles 2011
Everybody seems to make best of the year lists, so I'm making my own. The rules are they must be related to Steampunk, and not have been linked to elsewhere on my blog. It doesn't matter when they were published, but I must have discovered them during the past 12 months. In reverse order:
17/12/2011
Hugo (2011)
Synopsis
In 1930's Paris, an orphan lives hidden in a train station's walls. He takes care of the station's clocks, and tries to fix an automaton left to him by his late father. Based on Brian Selznick's New York Times best-seller "The Invention of Hugo Cabret".
11/12/2011
Victorian Christmas: Games and Activities
This is Part V of my Victorian Christmas article series. Enjoy!
08/12/2011
Victorian Christmas: Food and Drink
This is Part IV of my Victorian Christmas article series. Enjoy!
05/12/2011
01/12/2011
29/11/2011
Victorian Christmas: Decorations
Some time ago I reviewed a brilliant documentary series, Victorian Farm Christmas. The producers put up some videos about making your own Victorian Christmas, however these were available only to people in the UK. These videos are now up on YouTube, so are available to everyone. Enjoy!
18/11/2011
Veteran Era Cars
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| Roper Steam Car (1863) |
The Veteran Auto Era is part of the Brass Era, and refers to automobiles manufactured before 1905. The latter part of the Brass Era for autos manufactured between 1905 and 1914 is called the Edwardian Auto Era.
At the end of the 19th century, hundreds of manufacturers all over the western world started producing a wide variety of vehicles powered by technologies including steam, electricity, and internal combustion engines. The fuels used varied, from kerosene and coal oil, to petrol and diesel.
09/11/2011
Edwardian Era Cars
This weekend I visited Regent Street, and by chance there was an antique car event. I'm sharing the photos I took of these classic automobiles.
The Edwardian Auto Era is part of the Brass Era, so called because of the brass fittings used for such things as lights and radiators. The Veteran Era is the part of the Brass era before 1905, while the Edwardian era lasted from 1905 through to the beginning of World War I in 1914.
08/11/2011
The British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture and it's exhibits originate from all over the world.
Physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane collected more than 71,000 objects over his lifetime. He wanted them to be preserved intact after his death, so he bequeathed the whole collection to King George II for the nation in return for a payment of £20,000 to his heirs. The gift was accepted and on 7 June 1753, an Act of Parliament established the British Museum.
31/10/2011
St James's Park and Green Park
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| St James's Park |
St James's Park and Green Park together with two other Royal Parks of London, Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens form an almost continuous green area in the centre of London.
In 1532, Henry VIII purchased an area of marshland from Eton College, through which the river Tyburn flowed. On James I's accession to the throne in 1603, he ordered the park drained and landscaped, and kept exotic animals in the park, including camels, crocodiles, and an elephant, as well as aviaries of exotic birds along the south.