SteamPunk Discoveries

Three weeks ago I made a discovery. First, though, some background.

Computers are my occupation. I create Flash animations for kiosks, websites, banner ads (yes, even the annoying ones) and desktop applications for a business to business company. I am writing this blog on my home computer, where I keep pictures, home movies, and funny PhotoShopped images. When computer components go out on my machine, I know just what part are compatible to the defunct component. I can even manually rid my computer of tenacious destructo-viruses, cleaning up all traces from the registry. I can do all of these things, but the computer is still just a computer; a cold, calculating, detached machine that does exactly what I tell it to do without emotion and without adventure.

Animatronics, on the other hand, are the computer's foil. These mechanical creations seem to have a life of their own, but owe their jerky, sometimes life-like movement to nothing but gears and sprockets. Sometimes they do what you tell them to do. Other times, their temperaments are such that they seem to be defying you on purpose in anger over some imagined slight. Banging on a purely mechanical creation could favor you with a surprising last-minute "burp" of energy, enough to coax that last cog into place. Try banging on your printer sometime; see if it produces that document you sent an hour ago.

Gears fascinate me. Steam engines and magnets are like real-life magic that I can grasp from top to bottom. Computers, I get, but not in the same big-picture kind of way. I get how electricity wants to run down the path of least resistance in circuitry and I get how the electron flow represents "on" or "one" when it is present, but "off" or "zero" when it is not. I took Circuit Analysis I and II when I was still of the mind to be a Computer Engineer. I suppose I wanted to bridge the gap between flowing electrons and creating animated GIFs. I still can not close the hole between electrical subroutines and logical computer-based ones. I can use either one, (I may be a little rusty on the electrical side) but I cannot mentally connect them. While computers assist me with my daily work and home life, I have no special place in my heart for them. The same does not hold true for mechanical gadgetry.

This love for gears, steam, and magnets, has led me to be enamored with movies such as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Wild Wild West (I have not seen it, but still want to in spite of unanimous consent of the atrocity this film is to movie-making), Steamboy Suchîmubôi), Howl's Moving Castle (Hauru no ugoku shiro), Sleepy Hollow, Edward Scissorhands, The Time Machine, The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen, and Back to the Future Part III. I also enjoy Bowler Hats, cloaks and non-modern facial hair. I've had several pocket watches. I have a special place for brass, goggles, pin-stripes, rivets, Victorian-styled images (yes, all of this has relevance!), analog tube-radio machines, and old, dusty bookshelves of dark wood. Gnomes are also my favorite characters to play in World of Warcraft.

Why is all of this significant?

Three weeks ago I made a discovery. All of this fascination can be poured into one container: the sub-genre of SteamPunk. Without going into too much detail (just go to the Wikipedia link if you want to know more) SteamPunk is the sub-genre of speculative fiction that involves 19th century technologies in Victorian England. Much of SteamPunk (particularly the things with which I am enthralled) has to do with advanced versions of those technologies that our past never saw. Steam-powered versions of the individual automobile or a country-wide pneumatic tube transportation system, for examples. I found a name for all the little things with which I have felt a kinship for quite a while.

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I keep up to date with modern occurrences of SteamPunk by reading Blogs such as Brass Goggles and Cabinet of Wonders. Now that I have been soaking in the steam of punkiness for a bit now, I decided to make a contribution back to the community. I spent this last week creating a SteamPunk-themed skin for iGoogle. Here's a picture:


Not much can be gotten from this image, but It is resplendent with SteamPunky goodness. The background is of Victorian wallpaper, there are brass goggles in the Google logo and the gears even move in the background. This skin has gained a great amount in popularity in the short time that it has existed. I have received emails from strangers praising it and it has even appeared in the forum of one of the afore-mentioned blogs. Yea! The web is a wonderful place!

-B. Wally

Current Media:
Movies:
The Brothers Grimm
Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity

Farewell Fat

We had a "Biggest Loser" contest at work to see who can lose the most weight (by percentage) in twelve weeks. It ended on Monday and I came in fourth out of about twelve men (the women had a separate contest). Although I did not win all the prize money ($350) I did lose 32.4 lbs, reducing me by 14.74% of my original weight. At 187.4, I weigh less than I did in my junior year in high school. Not bad for the $25 entry fee!

For those of you who want to know the secret, I am happy to report that it is neither complicated nor difficult. I use an elliptical machine every other morning (I go a little over 4.5 miles and burn almost 450 calories in 25 minutes) and eat reduced portions while passively watching my fat intake (like not eating ice cream every night).

Oh, and Happy Birthday Tara and Joe!

-B. Wally

Current Media:
Books:
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Feet First, First Time

Welcome to Fortnight Fiction. As the introductory post to this blog, I feel obligated to set expectations (both mine and yours) so that miscommunication and confusion is minimized. In a dynamic and ever-changing world I would like this blog to be a haven of combobulation. I will start off by going into further detail on the subtext of this blog:

Author B. Walter Schuler creates fiction on this blog at least once every two weeks. These works bookend updates on his other projects and general insights on all manner of subjects.

By "Author," I simply mean "one who writes." I am not published (yet) and I certainly do not want to get things started on the wrong foot by misleading you. In the future I may be published and, rest assured, you will know it when I am (with much pomp and fanfare, I imagine).

"B. Walter Schuler" sounds much more like an author than "Ben W. Schuler" so I am using it. I do not hate my name by any stretch of the imagination. If you meet me in public, feel free to call me Ben with the assurance that I will respond to it. Thank you T. Catherine for the idea. I hope you do not mind my stealing it!

As far as the short literary piece delivered at least once every two weeks (suddenly "Fortnight Fiction" makes sense), it will serve several functions. The primary function is to keep me writing. I claim to love to write, but I do surprisingly little of it. What I do love to do is create ideas and the turns of phrase that convey them to a degree that is (at the very least) accurate and appropriate and (at the very most) artful and enjoyable. Unfortunately this all happens in my head. This self-asserted demand that I must produce timely short fiction helps me to realize those thoughts in written form.

Here is where you come in. I would like your comments. I want to see your compliments, your criticism (constructive or non, if you must) and your jests. I do not mind at all going into grammar minutiae. For example, I would have liked someone to point out my error had I written "farther detail" and not "further detail" at the end of the first paragraph of this post. If you do this for me I shall endeavor to live up to three principles in my writing.

1) I promise to listen. There are few things that irritate me more than people who ask for advice and then do not listen to it. I do not mind it if they listen and then do not heed the advice (I will be doing that at times, I am sure), but it irks me to no end when they simply do not listen. After all, if I had not listened to my father, old boss, T. Catherine and a work peer, I would still be pronouncing Schuyler "Shu'-ee-ler," Cerberus "Seh'-reh-bus," Seamus "See'-mus," and Fresnel "Fres'-nel," respectively.

2) I promise to try to write complete passages for you. This means more work for me, but it will serve us both better in the end. The work will be more enjoyable for you and, as a consequence, you will comment. After all, you will read more, having not deleted my blog off of your bookmark list and RSS feeder.

3) I promise not to write filler. It will be tempting at times to want to just hurry up and write something, anything, that way I can keep up my writing streak. This does not bode well for quality and readership will slip, and neither of us wants that (see previous pledge). The thing to do is be honest, tell you nothing worthwhile was written, send you an interesting link (I am The Broom Master, by the way), and let the guilt propel me into an early start for next time.

Finally, the last little bit of this blog's subtext states that there will be project updates and insights between the fiction. I feel this will be very organic and I am willing, if you are, to see into what it grows given a little time. I anticipate an example of a project update might be something like an update to the online version of the ZOMBIES!!! table-top game by Twilight Creations Inc. that I am creating with some help from a friend. I imagine I will be posting works-in-progress, code samples and posing interface questions. Examples of general insights I might post include anything from which way the toilet paper should hang to I lost over 11% of my body-weight in a weight-loss competition at work. You can skip those posts if you want, but I am going to try my best to make them entertaining, so you may miss something.

This post went a little long, I do not expect others to do the same. Enjoy the rest of the posts. Feel free to give me a swift kick if these posts are not updated often. I will thank you. Probably.

-B. Wally

Current Media:
Books
Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (Book-Clubbers, you can read it for free. Project Gutenberg is awesome)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Song of Suzanna by Stephan King
Movies
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
1408
Four Rooms