The Steampunk Orrery widget provides a daily memorandum function via a truly steampunk interface. Select a date via the calendar ring, click the date shown and you can enter a memo or reminder.
Volume Widget
The steampunk volume widget allows you to control the volume of your Mac/Windows PC via a simple slider and mute button. This widget is also available for the Xwidget engine.
Widget Vault
This widget acts as an 'AppStore' listing all the best steampunk widgets that are available. The information is extracted using RSS feeds and all our steampunk widgets will all be available to download.
Clock Widget
A Steampunk fully working ticking clock/calendar widget which can be moved around your desktop looking very steampunk. It tells the date/time in digital and analogue format with a swinging pendulum
Weather Widget
A steampunk weather desktop widget that displays local air pressure, temperature and humidity, as well as the general weather outlook in hundreds of cities around the world.
Thermionic Widget
Thermionic valves were created in the 1870s and started to find practical application by the early 1900s, it is not too much of a stretch of the imagination to see them in use on Victorian widgetry.
Weird Clock
This is an old-fashioned wood, glass, steel and brass Yahoo Widget designed to appeal to the steampunk mind, I suggest it might be a useful addition to your desktop. Keeps good time!
Earth Widget
I do hope you like the Steampunk Rotating Earth Globe Widget. This Konfabulator/ yahoo widget provides a simple rotating globe that can rotate at two speeds.
Moon Phases
A fully working yahoo widget and it can be moved around your desktop looking very steampunk indeed. It displays a beautiful moon globe that you can resize at will and that will display through the phases according to any date supplied.
Resource Monitor
The Resource Monitor is a Yahoo widget that runs on your desktop behind all your applications so it does not interfere with your day to day computer functionality. It displays cpu, memory, wireless and battery information as well as drive usage.
Under Widget
The Steampunk Underwidget is a 24hr clock that sits on your steampunk desktop looking as if it is part of that desktop. The underwidget is designed to work with the Steampunk Timekeeper Orrery MkII that has a transparent glass middle section.
CPU/GPU Thermometers
This is the Steampunk temperature gauge that monitors your computer's cpu and gpu temperatures, providing alarms and access to utilities that monitor your computers cpu usage and memory. This is a Yahoo widget.
Weathered Clock
This is a lovely old clock, resizable, that sits on your desktop, moveable, slidable and dragable. New version. Tells time in an old-fashioned way. Can be made to perform any o/s command line function. Download and install in the usual way.
Nixie Widget
This is the steampunk thermionic nixie tube Yahoo widget. The widget is a nice bit of steampunk and it will look good on your desktop. The widget is fully resizable for your desktop.
Some more War of the worlds imagery, a render that was not shown here
before: The Thunderchild prior to battle. Complete with music.
Officionados of Jeff Wayne's War of the worlds music will appreciate
this.
I don't think I ever managed to post this version here
before, a reinterpretation of HG Wells/Jeff Wayne's thunderchild. Just a render of a scene
with some animation tools used to make the scene come to life. No real
animation yet of the Tripods nor the ship but some nicely performed
music added to give the scene some depth and emotional appeal.
An image will do as a taster:
The video was a germ of an idea, a low res short period-shot movie based on 2D and 3D models. Note the low quality period-film effect is
deliberate, there are a few errors, long range smoke visibility and the prow of the
steam packet but please ignore these.
We
were originally thinking about a kickstarter to get it off the ground. A
very short film sequence, a couple of minutes long, Pathe-news style,
sound effects, moody music, somewhat similar to the more moody bits in
this Jeff Wayne reinterpretation. What do you think?
Whether or not it will develop is all down to time (and money) It is
quite difficult to make progress on a project unofficially unless it is
all done by one man and that simply takes a lot of time. If it was real
project with defined goals, cash to spend &c it could be done
relatively much quicker.
The idea was that it would start on a
sailor's desktop with orders requiring his immediate return to ship for
sailing, the scene would then zoom into the photo on the desktop and
then it would come alive and open to the scene of the Thunderchild in
action against the Martians.
The
date was to be 1921-25, the time of the second Martian invasion where
they come equipped with the same technology (realising the overwhelming
superiority of their machinery) but fitted with bacteriological filters
allowing them to survive in Earth's germ-laden atmosphere. This time
they come in fewer numbers having almost exhausted their resources in
the first invasion and of course, this time the human defences are
better-prepared. In this timeline we get to see Thunderchild II in
action. Anyhow, that was the vague idea.
We also had an idea of an old stamp album showing this stamp with the following description:
"This
is a stamp created by Eric Gill in 1924 for the British Empire
Exhibition with the emergency overprint "under martian rule" for a set
of stamps which were produced in that portion of the British Isles still
allowed to function - whilst operating under the yoke of the Martian
Empire subsequent to the second Martian invasion in 1925.
Not
many items survive from this period and this is reflected in the
condition of the stamp. The bottom right hand corner is severely burnt
as the stamp was recovered from the remains of Plymouth Post Office
destroyed during the battle for the Tamar Bridge at Saltash. Approximate
value £26 guineas."
In the latest Steampunk Weather Widget, version 1.0.7 the following
changes have been made: main features are full Romanian(!) translation (as an example) the
ability to add ICAO metar codes manually so if you know your own ICAO
location just type in the code. You can increase the size of the widget,
lots of bugs fixed, reskinned the location selection box, added many new graphical elements, reduced the overhead of running the widget, improved the code in general and documented it with full online help.
Newest version,
// .07 location selection background - added cogs and wheels to the underside to make it more 'real'
// .07 corrected the help text on the glass cover
// .07 change the font on the location finder
// .07 moved the location menu from the top of the page (windows) to the top of the pushbutton
// .07 add method for handling language files that aren't handled by the YWE! by default
// .07 create language files for Romanian
// .07 create language files for English
// .07 added language option to preferences
// .07 improve the clarity of the numbers on the mini gauges
// .07 organise and sort the code, remove unwanted functions
// .07 fix the romanian translation bug on tooltips
// .07 sort the % on macs bunching, changed it to a popup
// .07 fix missing resizing of two elements
// .07 added the option to increase the size of the widget
// .07 sort the language text on the prefs
// .07 use an additional input box to select the alternative language file
// .07 sort the language text on the prefs
// .07 rejigged the main context menu to allow translation to occur
// .07 allow meta codes to be typed in directly
// .07 add slider switching from codes to locations
// .07 add final translations
// .07 images on the groups in the preferences
// .07 Added uppercasing to the ICAO code input
// .07 fix the double run of get-metar-data
// .07 add delay to preferences save and restart to help fix mac crash
You can download the new version of the widget here:
Please, if you like the new widget, leave a comment, it is really appreciated.
Instructions for use
The weather indicators and controls of your widget are as shown above.
The widget has a number of graphical controls. You can identify the
function of each working component by hovering the mouse over each. A
pop-up will show giving you a description.
Choosing the Metar data location
When
you select to change your location a pop-up will appear giving you the
option to type your location. Choose a location near to you that will be
providing METAR weather data. For example in the South Coast of the UK
you might choose Gatwick Airport. If you choose a local airport or
aerodrome you are most likely to find a METAR weather feed.
If you know your nearest ICAO code then flick the location/ICAO switch
to allow you to enter the four-letter code manually. Once you are done
click the SET switch to close the location selector.
At last someone has created a version of the Steampunk Orrery for Linux. It wasn't me I am afraid - so I can't claim responsibility for the coding. The developer 'joker' has used my graphics and my design but enhanced the javascript functionality in respect of the planetary movement and the co-ordination of the various components to take adavntage of the increased levels of animation available to plasmoids.
A very good job I say...
The Steampunk Orrery requires the Plasmoids widget engine and the Marble Virtual Globe plugin is required for the widget to function. At the moment the instructions to install and operate are very sparse. Howver, if you are a linux user then you are generally more technically aware than a standard Windows user so hopefully you will be able to make this work for yourself. As I test the new widget (if I am able) I will create some documentation to allow more naive users to attempt the installation. Have a look at the widget instructions here. Download the widget from here.
The video is available to view here now at Vimeo : and at youtube
If any of you are Linux users and use the KDE desktop, please can you
help me test the recently published Steampunk Orrery Plasmoid?
Let
me know how you get on and what you had to do to get the thing
installed. I have not yet been able to test as I am on my hols in the
sunny IoW and when I get back the only machine I have available to test
will be a Linux Mint 1ghz single core laptop. Such Unix/Linux skills
that I have are also very rusty...
I've just completed the Steampunk Volume XWidget and dropped it into my
gallery, submitted it to a few groups. Now time to sit back and see if
anyone likes it. It is a straight conversion from the Yahoo widget code
keeping the two as similar as possible so they can both be
updated/debugged in parallel. The code is remarkably similar and the two
widgets work in a very similar fashion, though the code I have written
is not necessarily the correct way of doing things for a Xwidget.
The
main problem seems to be that the Xwidgets lack any real documentation
so it is a real pain to figure out how to do things. Also a lot of nice
functionality is missing in Xwidgets that I am used to in the Yahoo
Widget Engine/Konfabulator. The GUI for Xwidgets is slick in parts and
bleedin' awful in others. I often found that the GUI simply got in the
way and I ended up using my text editor of choice 'Context' to make the
changes I needed. In my opinion the GUI has a long way to go before it
can be considered usable for serious development of widgets.
These are some things that Xwidget engine currently lacks the ability to do:
In
reality though, I am really impressed with the amount of work that the
two (?) developers have done. The product works - it creates real
desktop widgets and provides an environment in which to create them. The
list of functions that the language supports goes on and on, and you
can use VBscript or Javascript notation in the code. I may have sounded
critical but I am in awe of the quality of the product that they have
delivered. It is usable - it just needs a lot of tidying up.
The
Xwidget engine is under continuing development so it feels nice to be
working with a tool that isn't out-of-date and obsolete for a change.
My only concern with Xwidget development is that the documentation has been created as a an afterthought and due to this there are great big gaps in the user group's knowledge that can only be filled by getting responses from the developers. While the devs are out coding for new platforms they don't always have the time to answer all the many questions on the forums, often leaving us poor users in the lurch when we have questions to be answered... Hopefully things will improve here.
An imagined steampunk desktop. This uses a new image created by my
alter-self Orlok, the image is the Torpedo Ram Thunderchild from HG
Wells' marvellous book "War of the Worlds" plus a few typical desktop
items to create a theme of sorts.
## LIKE THIS ! I SAY CHAPS DO CLICK ON THE FB BUTTON IF YOU LIKE THIS ONE !!! ##
The
protaganist's desktop is covered with items that indicate that he is
about to flee. The necessary money is to hand and reports of the
Martians indicate that their technology is superior - and that they are
winning the War.
The Thunderchild image is taken from a
forthcoming CGI rendered video that will be ready to display soon.
Imagine, if you will, the scene zooming in upon the photograph and the
thunderchild coming to life in the photo frame. Zooming further in we
are transported into the actual battle itself.
By EU law we have to leave this message about cookies - In order to deliver a personalised, responsive service and to improve
the site, it remembers and stores information about how you use it. This
is done using simple text files called cookies which sit on your
computer. These cookies are completely safe and secure and will never
contain any sensitive information. They are used only by Lightquick or
the trusted partners we work with ie. Google. By continuing to use this site you accept the use of these cookies. Remember all sites use these cookies but if you are unhappy with this cookie usage, then unfortunately we have to ask you to leave the site.
RSS feeds listed below - Select the format of feed that you require.
Steampunk Yahoo Widget
How about something special for the weekend sir?
Lightquick have a nice little Yahoo widget for you to download. Click on the image above.
"This
is a stamp created by Eric Gill in 1924 for the British Empire
Exhibition with the emergency overprint "under martian rule" for a set
of stamps which were produced in that portion of the British Isles still
allowed to function - whilst operating under the yoke of the Martian
Empire subsequent to the second Martian invasion in 1925.
Newest version,
The Steampunk Orrery requires the Plasmoids widget engine and the Marble Virtual Globe plugin is required for the widget to function. At the moment the instructions to install and operate are very sparse. Howver, if you are a linux user then you are generally more technically aware than a standard Windows user so hopefully you will be able to make this work for yourself. As I test the new widget (if I am able) I will create some documentation to allow more naive users to attempt the installation. Have a look at the widget instructions 
In
reality though, I am really impressed with the amount of work that the
two (?) developers have done. The product works - it creates real
desktop widgets and provides an environment in which to create them. The
list of functions that the language supports goes on and on, and you
can use VBscript or Javascript notation in the code. I may have sounded
critical but I am in awe of the quality of the product that they have
delivered. It is usable - it just needs a lot of tidying up.
