We’ve all seen and heard about modding the look of computer peripherals and other present-day machines to fit a person’s personality or simply to follow certain whims (read: too much time on one’s hands).

An interesting, shall we say, genre modders like to do is that of Steampunk. It’s a look based on the type of sci-fi/fantasy/speculative fiction literary genre, Steampunk, where steam is used to power high-tech inventions set in the Victorian era.

I find Steampunk projects particularly interesting because they give an air of class, as well as attention to detail. Think gears, rivets, shiny bronze, rich leather. While it’s very tempting to try it out as a weekend project, it may take longer than that. And since you’ll be dealing with very sturdy metals, you need to be handy with the power tools.

In the meantime, let’s look at what other people have done:

Steampunk Keyboard: A standard keyboard gets completely transformed with old typewriter keys and a bronze frame. See also the brushed aluminum version. They also guarantee you can touch-type with it, and that’s good to know.

Steampunk Mouse: It’s an optical rather than a mechanical mouse, despite the gears in the underside, and connects via USB. It was also made to complement the modder’s Telecalculograph.

Steampunk Laptop: This is hardly a notebook mod but a device built from scratch. They say it actually works! It has typewriter for its keys, a trackball, a morse key, and an LCD screen.

Steampunk RSS Telegraph: Get your daily RSS feeds tapped out to you in morse code. (You might have to learn that first.)

Steampunk News Brews: This device brews a cup of coffee with a varying ratio of different coffee bean variants from different coffee-growing regions. The ratio depends on how frequent the regions were mentioned in the news via RSS feeds.

I’m sure not all of these gadgets are particularly convenient, much less ergonomic, but I’d love to see a store sell hi-tech gadgets in this distinct look.

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