The Scarab Jerusalem Project

July 18. 2017 - 304 Days to Keycon

Having attended the Society for the Ethical Treatment of the Kraken Tea and Bazaar I found myself wanting to go back and revisit my and my families Steampunk attire. I've had a few ideas rolling around in my head and it seems like a good time to start working out a few new twists on the old bit's and bob's that I have laying around and adding a few new pieces.

And when I finally unpacked some of my boxes I found more of my old stuff which is giving me a chance to get some ideas and start a plan to get to where I want to be.

I've had an idea rattling around in my head for awhile. A Victorian newspaper man based on my favorite of fictional journalists, Spider Jerusalem.

But why not a ancient relative of his?

The final piece was given to me during Natasha Klassen's mummy unwrapping. A Scarab charm come up, offered to a sad, sad, person. As I was a sad, sad, person I eagerly indicated I would like the Scarab. Thus was born the idea for Spider's great, great, great, etc... grandfather Scarab Jerusalem, newspaper man extraordinaire!

There's going to be the necessity of ordering a few pieces. Black pants and a Black vest I think are a must. I found a place, Hats in the Belfry that sells a 'John Bull' style top hat that I like.

The hardest thing I think will be the Steampunk Live Shades (Live Goggles?).

One of the things that fascinated me most about Jerusalem in Transmetropolitan was his sunglasses, the 'Live Shades' which were capable of taking photographs. So of course I wanted a pair.

$100 plus shipping later I ordered a pair of sunglasses with a 1 megapixel on board camera. I wore them and took various pictures with them for a couple of years until tragedy struck and they broke. But, me being me, I kept the pieces thinking I could use them some day.


I've got the ball in motion for getting those made. Today's technology, 3D printing for example, allows all sorts of things to be made as long as you can model it on a computer. Joy of joy's! I know people who are capable of 3D modeling!

It's good to have connections.

It's probably going to be a labour of months to try to get everything together. I still have to check the camera parts to ensure that they still work and see if my computer can read the 2GB flash drive.

Stay tuned. I'll post updates, and maybe some video as I work through the various parts of the costume.

~Corey the Geek

The LEGO! project

July 17, 2017 - 305 Days to Keycon

My parents introduced me to those little interlocking bricks from Denmark that, since the 1960's, has been holding the attention of generations of children, young and old alike. Many of the first sets that I received from my folks were the space sets which were popular at the time.

Flash forward thirty odd years and many of those old pieces are now in the possession of my oldest son Riley. I never got rid of those brick sets. Sure, many pieces have been broken or lost to the ages but I still have much of that old LEGO.

I had the idea, as a bonding experience between Riley and I, to try to recreate - or rather rebuild - at least one of those old sets.

It's going to involve going through the pieces that we have and trying to source out the pieces that are missing.

I'm aiming to rebuild this set. The instructions are available on brickinstructions.com with a link to a parts list on rebrickable.com

picture credit: brick instructions.com

I'll be documenting the build over the course of the coming weeks and maybe months as we tackle this old set and maybe look at what else we have that we can maybe create.

Stay tuned!

~Brother K'Bob