When Facebook starts nagging you to make another post, it’s a sure sign that you’ve been neglecting your social media obligations. I recently discovered an excellent steampunk site called “Airship Ambassador” and decided I need to work harder at getting cross-links from other blogs. First, however, we needed a new look. My first task was […]
Sometimes problems that seem easy are actually difficult. A perfect example is the generation of random numbers. In the physical world, it’s easy – we can roll dice, draw a card from a deck, or spin a wheel. Electronic circuits play by different rules. We’ve spent decades developing devices that behave consistently, and software that […]
Monument to the Age of Steam: The Eiffel Tower Nothing says “Paris” like the Eiffel Tower. France’s most iconic landmark was officially opened on this day in 1889. The tower is named for Gustav Eiffel, the engineer whose firm designed it for the 1889 World’s Fair. At the time many artists and architects hated it, […]
Technology fads come and go as they vie for the attention of our fickle media. One such fad was nanotechnology, the branch of engineering which operates at or near the molecular scale, around 1-100 nanometers in size. In the 1990’s it was the darling of the science media here in America. When the most outrageous […]
These were the first words spoken over the telephone on March 7, 1876, by inventor Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant Thomas Watson. He originally called it the “harmonic telegraph” as it was the next logical progression from Samuel F. B. Morse’s “dit-dit-dash” communication system. Bell was born on this day in 1847 in Edinburgh, […]
The old saying “You get what you pay for” is not necessarily true. For writers on a budget – as well as those who like to tinker and have things their way – the open-source world offers increasingly powerful FREE software tools for writers. Many writers swear by Scrivener, and I agree that it’s a […]
Today is the 171st birthday of Thomas Alva Edison. At Steampunk Desperado, we celebrate the birthday of Nikola Tesla, so it’s only fair we acknowledge his rival Edison as well. Edison has gotten some bad press in recent years as fans of Tesla have decried his treatment of the Serbian genius. But Edison’s domineering personality […]
