Dragon V's Ramblings

i am curious! what are you doing with them?

I'm working on a steampunk-ish project... well I think it may be steampunk, but I'm still planning it out so I'm not 100% sure what it's going to want to be when I'm done with it. I may have overdone it a leeeetle bit with the watch parts though. I just couldn't pass up that auction, there are just so many neat bits and pieces in there. It was actually amusing. The guy who sniped this auction also sniped one from me earlier this week for a lot less pieces and he ended up paying just a little less than I did for this auction. I totally felt like thanking him for sniping the previous auction.

Just looking at that stuff makes me kinda giddy. It's been way too long since I got those creative juices flowing. I told my sister I was doing some artistic/crafty type stuff and she looked at me somewhat skeptically (her definition of crafty and mine are probably a bit different). Then again, I suspect there will be some welding and power tools involved before I'm done so it's not entirely out of character ;)

You should definitely chart your progress, if that doesn't bother you from an artistic standpoint. It sounds interesting, and I think there are a few of us that would like to see the progression of your project. (speaking from someone who does not have an artistic bone in her body). If you want.

That's the plan actually.

I was going to do it for instructables. I'm just waiting for parts now.

I actually like photographing my work as it progresses. I don't always remember to do it at discrete intervals, but when I look back at my photos over the years, I always find lots of shots of the projects I was undertaking.

eeeeEEee! not that I need more Stuff and Chaos, but ya know, if you have extras, let me know. ;)

Heh, I can pretty much tell you now, I'm going to have extras. I may have rediscovered my geeky building-random-things side but I seriously doubt I need the parts to 150+ old mechanical watches (plus another smaller batch I bought earlier this week).

I'll take photos once I have things sorted out and see if anything is useful for you.

Whee fun! Can't wait to see what you decide to do with them, too.

Heh, neither can I.

Seeing some of the newest entries, I'm starting to wonder how mine will fare against the pretty ones.

Hopefully it will stand out like whoa. ;)

Here's hoping. I should have most of the pieces by this weekend so I can get my mad scientist geek on :)

(if nothing else, at least it won't look like any of the other entries so far)

I suspect it'll stand up just fine. :) I liked your porch swing writeup, and anything with that many gears is going to be even better than a porch swing. (And I am very fond of porches and swings.)

Thanks for the vote of confidence. Seeing all the stuff people have entered makes me a little worried, but I like my ideas anyways. Now I just have to actually manage to build what I had in mind. Although I figured out some LED stuff recently so that should actually help :).

BTW, the bazillionty bits of old watches arrived yesterday. Unfortunately I have to pick them up from the post office this afternoon, but hopefully I'll be able to show you some photos of all the loot so if you see something you really like, I can send it your way.

I hope med school isn't beating on you too badly :)

So...what did you end up making? Is it posted? I haven't been watching instructables much lately.

I would create HUNDREDS of "steampunk" items and sell them at absurdly high prices to people who are ridiculous enough to pay for what they could build with an equal investment in money, greater investment of care, and that personal touch of doing it oneself. Because if one of 'my' pet genre's is going to get deluged with newcomers and stylists (which I'm not opposed to, even if I grumble on occasion) I'd like to take advantage of it.

Heh, I was into steampunk before it had a name. It just so happens to dovetail nicely into my pet sci-fi genre of alternate realities and such.

If I had more time I'd definitely consider doing the steampunk items for sale.

I was brought into the Genre by a... well, it seemed really awesome at the time–comic by the same name back in high school. It fit my love of anachronism and adventure lark.The recent surge of interest brought a lot of people who only like the fashion, but I'm okay with that because it brought the people who like it so much more deeply together, too. And if we can all play nice, good things might happen :)

But really? _Steampunk_, looking back, was not as good as I remember it XD

For me it was always about the machines. How people put things together and remixed technology to meet their needs in various situations.

That's one reason I love movies like Army of Darkness, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (heh, you say you want steamPUNK? ;), etc... they just have such a cool way of doing things we normally wouldn't imagine with old and new technology and that often becomes a significant element of the story.

FYI, I find auction sniping less offensive than those people who troll by and play around incrementing their bids over a matter of days; damn, people, don't you know what you're willing to spend? Enough already!

I always use a sniping service, and it saves me tons of money because those people (mentioned kindly above) don't get to play against my high bid. If someone else with a known/set max tries to snipe too, no problem - we both have a clear idea of our ceiling, and it's a fair interaction.

Use Rhett's sniper - i'ts pretty sweet. SnipeSwipe

I think that what bugs me about it is that even the sniping service you use, only works by taking into account people's stupid bidding tendencies.

The nice thing about a sniping service is that it lets your bid w/ your absolute max go in at the very last second and that means you beat out someone who is doing the standard "increment by $5 or $10" approach even if their max bid would truly be higher than yours. Since they were incrementing based on the current value, yours comes out on top and they just run out of time.