Ever check out "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"? Not the terrible Sean Connery movie, but the fantastic Alan Moore comic-book series that imagined: What if you had a team of superheroes, but planted them in the steam-powered Victorian Age? Similarly, the steampunk movement in design takes modern-day devices and retools them to look like early-industrial contraptions. This site is maintained by designer Jake von Slatt (who isn't so retro as to abstain from such newfangled concepts as blogging and online video). Click on the "projects" button to see how he turned a typical boring PC into a hilariously retro yet strangely glorious work of art -- one that actually works, too. Modifying the mouse apparently was a problem, however -- or as he puts it in steampunk lingo: "Don't ask me about the pointing device, I cannot speak of it."
TIM CAMPBELL
