Source: AYYA Wear

This morning I awoke to find that one of my bots alerted me that someone at the Wall Street Journal used the word "Steampunk" in an article in the Fashion section. It was only a brief mention:

A chief executive in the tech business may don Gap chinos and a blazer for work, while investment banking chiefs remain loyal to their Zegna suits. Others dress according to the mores of their own personal tribes: If you don't dress steampunk, you may not even know it's a style (think 19th-century mad scientist in leather waistcoat with goggles and a pocket watch).

However, what really caught my eye was the previous paragraph:

Rather than fuss about skirt lengths or the season's silhouette, people now dress the way they see themselves, choosing looks that flatter their bodies and fit their lifestyles. Most of us dress with our social groups or professions, rather than fashion trends, using clothes to flash messages about who we are.  [Read More . . . ]

via Make:Blog

A couple weeks ago I began work on a RepRap machine.  A RepRap is a desktop fabricator or 3D printer that is capable of making all of the parts of itself that are not stock off-the-self items. It's a 2 1/2 axis CNC plastic extruder that fabricates parts by laying down layers of melted plastic, one atop the next. 

RepRap was conceived from the beginning as an Open Source project with the intent that, once self-replication was acheived, a community of "rappers" would allow it to evolve with each contributed improvement being merged back into the machines "DNA." 

Hence the code name "Darwin" for the initial design. 

RepRap acheived self replication in May of 2008 and there are now hundreds of people building and experimenting with this Open Source hardware platform.

More after the cut