28th August 2008

Me - My infrequency of updates is in direct correlation to my business. Uuuuurrgggg where to start, if you are considering a new LCD TV, on the face of it the Vistron 26" may look like a bit of a bargain but if you want blacks to be black, don't get one! Despite the huge number of favourable reviews on ebuyer.com, trust me spend the extra £120 and get a Samsung. At least you can see what's going on when there's a night time seen and all the people don't look like umpa lumpas.

Woman - So with that little fiasco out the way, the sending of huge boxes back and forth, my girlfriend has decided to buy a new (well not new, different then) car, as a typical women she wants a blue one……… ok, easily pleased I guess. Oh yeh and a convertible, hmmm in England? Are you serious? Im still waiting for our "summer" like the yeti I haven't seen any evidence of it. Not to be swayed from her idea we are sticking to our guns! After a lot of googling we have chosen a Peugeot 206 cc, French but fair enough. After some research while were waiting for the money to arrive (inheritance) I have narrowed it down to the smaller of the two engines 1.6 rather than the 2.0l, she wont notice the difference and it'll be cheaper on insurance, tax, petrol and running costs, low mileage, something under 40k would be good and the leather interior, essential in our climate for a soft top. If you're driving along and the heavens open its going to take a few minutes to pull over and get the lid on. During this time a cloth interior will have soaked up the water and a few weeks down the line you have mold.

So the money is in and its all systems go, autotrader, ebay and the papers have been scoured with not a lot of success. Not to worry, I say, these things can take time, I say, after all your going to be driving round in it at least twice a day, everyday, its important to get it perfect, its not like buying a lawnmower. The very next day I get an messenger message, "ive bought a car" good grief. Yup you've guessed it wrong engine, wrong interior, squeaky brakes, and a judering clutch, but its blue so its ok. What is it with girls and no patience?

I put the car saga to the back of my mind until the inevitable head unit swap. Fair enough, after much fun and games with wanky multiplex Peugeot wiring we have it working minus the aerial connection, no big deal I say, just need an adapter, I say. I'll get one…….. what now?…… well yes we could…… yes halfrauds might sell one. So off we go. Now Halfords has a use on occasion, I mean where else would you buy a bicycle from nowadays, or get a spark plug at 5pm on a Sunday? On entering the store (gypsy lane, luton - Saturday approx. 11am) its deserted save for 2 customers and a cluster of 6 employees huddled around car shampoo's and polish deep in discussion. Honestly, im surprised the halfords uniform doesn't come with a hoody. I locate said ariel adapter behind an inch of bullet proof glass displaying a price tag of £3.99! I turn to stare at the group of chavs only to be given cursory glances in return. Just as I open my mouth to ball at them my girlie sets off to get one. The smallest and greasiest of the group is elected to assist and collects a huge bundle of keys…….. I can see where this is going. After selecting the correct key he tries 3 times to open the case with no success, checks the key again, no definitely right, and tries again 3 more times. No, checks again……… at this point I started to have an out of body experience, I could see myself grabbing the back of his head and ramming it through the glass, all in slow motion John Woo style, keys and grease flying in all directions and the camera pans back to show my snarling face through a mist of shattered glass and blood……. as I came back to reality and felt my limbs start to twitch I thought this a good time to walk out leaving him to it. Needless to say the adapter was found and ordered in under a minute off the internet for £1.49 delivered, why people still use these shops I don't know.

Work - After all that I have been more than happy to return to the security of my garage, put classic FM on which is relaxing and get on with some work. While not actually making anything for myself I have been commissioned to make one of these:

Well only the little grenade launcher called a "tishina" for an AK47, my effort:

on completion of the first the orders started coming in and I now have a list of 6 people to make them for. I was subbing out the lathe work but that was a pain in the arse so I am now the proud owner of a new piece of equipment!

Awesome, not bad for £300 from axminster.co.uk very good people down there, can't fault them. I am now making everything "in house" So any jobs that need quoting let me know!

Funny - this is my type of humor http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/shropshire/7585098.stm

25th May 2008

Me - Finally an update! Never seem to be in the mood to type now. Overall mood is good despite everything, my gorgeous pudy cat has gone, she was 18 and just got old bless her, I do miss her terribly but I wont think about that too much now. Thing of it is I can think about it and get upset and be sad as I was for a few days but it doesn't change anything, same with any loss. No matter how much you grieve or think about them its not going to bring them back. No one else knows how you feel so my way of dealing with it is to not think about it and stay as cheerful as I can, I do feel guilty sometimes but me feeling bad isn't going to change the fact she's gone for ever. Time for cat pics!

A good friend of mine is moving down to Cornwall for the time being, not sure if its forever or for a while, not even he knows, but that's Tony for you! Here we are doing what we do best, loafing around drinking tea.

Aside for that it's summer! Well sort of, any time I don't wear a coat I consider summer, I feel far more alive when it's warm, able to go up the garage and work away without having the heater on and freezing my arse off. At the moment im working on this:

That would be the big weapon she's waving. Mine wont be an exact replica but based on, this is to get me back in the engineering mood. It's a target pistol that was also used by Bridget Fonda in "The Assassin"( point of no return in the USA). Website should all be up now, I switched to a new host as I kept going over the bandwidth limit on the last one.

Politics - Thing with switching your website over, you sign up with a new "host" and pay your yearly fee for an amount of space and bandwidth limit etc. Now you'd think that's it? Oh no, attached to my website (www.ukmonsters.co.uk) is the IPS TAG, this is a little thing that says the name of my host. All I need is that changing from ukhost to speedyhost or whatever. Now all web URLs with a .co.uk on the end are owned by Nominet, (a government owned body) and you have to lease it of them. So even www.imwritingmyblog.co.uk , no no no they own it and you have to lease it off them, even your own name.co.uk bit cheeky really. After all it's hardly a physical thing, fair enough if someone already has it, but not to just say we own eeeeeeeverything! Like that wally in America that layed claim to the moon and now sells achres of it off on ebay.

2nd February 2008

Me - Im crap with updates at the moment, I think I have lost my way. Have been busy though, saving money as best I can and building what I can. Finished the DSR-1, behold...

more pictures on the dedicated site (link on the left).

Car is back together, that man Dan and his DA sander have managed to repair and paint the bumper. Leaving me to modify the wing and prep for paint.

Getting back in the turbo after that wanky Mitsubishi was amazing, I didn't realize that I had started to get used to the little colt. This is a car with 94bhp that weighs nearly a ton, my nova weighs less that that and has 3 times the power. The worst thing was the noise, it sounded like every other little anonymous box on the road, that tiny sort of whine as you rev it, like it was disapproving of me being spontaneous and driving erratically. It needed a flashing "Mr Brown wont like this!" on the dashboard to remind me to fit in and not make a fuss. Anyway, back in the Nova now and back to being an individual!

Been a bit off since finishing the gun but I have had a lot of you emailing about jobs that need doing parts that need making and this has been good as it keeps me busy and adds a bit of extra income. Lord knows I need as much as I can get, although the way house prices are I think i'll need a miracle.

Next project might well be a gun to sell and keep me going for now then onto something bigger, was considering the terminator 2 endoskeleton, big job but no one has made one out of metal that I know off.

14th November 2007

Me - Forgive me for I have neglected thee, it has been 4 months since my last update........... the hell have I been playing at!??!? To be honest busy as a busy thing building this latest gun in-between this I have had rather a lot of custom jobs to do for people, making parts out of metal for people. Engineering places/people are reluctant to do one off custom jobs with out a high price tag and very precise plans, where as I tend to do the work and send it back before I agree a price, and as for plans, one piece I made had dimensions written on the back of a paper towel.

I bent the car too, some arse didn't want to wait in the traffic and so decided to do a U-turn onto myside of the road....... before a bend...... in the wet...... on a 60mph bit of road. I just couldn't stop it, not too bad. It was a big impact and my first thought was that I had lost the car, turned the engine off straight away and got out to ball at the wally now standing sheepishly in the middle of the road. My "look what you've done to my beautiful car you asshole" must have scared him as he looked about ready to get back in his Fiesta. eeerrrrrgg what fun, still damage not that bad, car started and drove...... and drove well. A call to the insurance set the wheels in motion and I was furnished with the most awful rent-a-box. Albeit brand new (30 miles on it) Misterbushi Colt, good grief, I likened it to eating a digestive biscuit, if you were to eat said biscuit and then someone ask you "so, what was that like?" thats the face I pulled when anyone asked me what the car was like. You feel like your a passenger even though you are driving. I know my car is a bit basic but must new cars have insanely big brake servo's and no feel through this thing they call "power" steering. Anyway my hope was they would bash my car in somewhere and fix it. Oh no, 2 weeks on and no progress to speak of, they have established that none of they're approved places will touch it, its too custom and the parts would require too much fabrication and time. So sick was I of driving the bushi that I told them I could fix it for what my excess is so forget it! Patched it up myself and im now driving it again! yipeeeee, just a bit more battered than before, I have the bits just waiting for my mate to set a date then we can convert my garage into a makeshift spray booth! that'll be fun.

Then just when I started to get back to normality my bloody wisdom tooth starts hurting like you wouldn't believe, still getting the bugger out in 4 days, my dentist seemed a little flippant with his "yes we'll just whip that out no problem" a vision poped into my head of his demur assistant tying a piece of string to my tooth while he ties the other end to the door handle and then slams the door. Its ok, he's a nice guy and the sooner its out the better.

Politics - It seems that even hiding in my little bubble doing my own shit, fingers in ears to the propaganda of the radio and tv, I am still not immune to the "government". It seems now that airsoft is to be illegal after a fashion, that is to say if you want to buy an airsoft gun now you must be a registered skirmisher. If you already own them, fine no problem. This is all in the name of the new VCR bill (violent crime reduction bill) that is clamping down heavily on the sale of imitation fire arms (amongst other things). You may (or probably not) have noticed no replica/toy guns will be for sale in toy shops now unless they are bright pink/blue/green etc. This, the government hopes, in light of the recent shootings among your people, will reduce the amount of gun crime on our streets.................... hmm. They seem to have missed the point that replica guns dont actually kill people. They can be used to hold up banks and post offices, but that wasn't the problem or was it? A recent bank robbery gone wrong ended up with one of the robbers shot dead by police, the robber never fired a shot, this only happened in September but received very little press. Im not saying robbing banks is right and im not entirely sure as to the motives behind this one yet.

6th July 2007

Me - Had a bit of a complicated month what with one thing and another, dramatic one could say. First thing I take the car for an mot, the chap doing it feels the brake pedal creeping down a bit so stands on it and front pipe bursts and the pedal hits the floor! If that had happened when I was on the road, well it could have been the end of me….. and the car, check it out.

My grandfather passed away recently, it was very sudden and a big shock to us all, im trying not to think on it too much because its not going to help, there is nothing I can do about it. Worrying about it is not going to help anyone and only hurt me in the long run by depressing me. If anything it makes me think about making the most of what time I have left, its not good to be complacent and expect a long life. After all it could end quite suddenly.

Again for those of you who enjoy my projects, the dedicated site will be here, book mark it if you like, I will be starting in 3-4 weeks hopefully. Sorry for the delay but I have to be in the correct frame of mind to give it my full attention.

I spoke before about bumping into my ex after 6 years. I saw her again a couple of months after that and again a month or so after that. The last time we spoke she said she had split up with her boyfriend of 3 years, obviously very tough and I felt bad for her. I expressed my sympathies but we have only spoken a handful of words in the times we have met, so it was difficult, to show that I was genuine. We have quite a complicated past and neither of us really know what the other is really thinking despite the smiles and how are you's. So me being who I am now and always willing to help people out I contacted her and offered my support. This was tough, although im a different person now, it did still feel like opening a can of worms. She text me soon enough and once established that I wasn't gloating she Apologised for the things she said and did all those years ago. I had to sit down and I don't mind admitting I shed a tear. So long this had been a thorn in my side, something I had just pushed to the back of my mind and decided I would have to live with. To finally be on talking terms again and to know she felt bad about it too, that she still cared after all this time overcame me. I also got to say my sorrys for the way I was and it released me from the guilt I have felt for so long. I still need to say it to her face to face and it seems I may get my chance as we have agreed to go for a drink to catch up when she gets back from holiday. Who knows what that will be like.

23rd May 2007

Me - Been out a bit more recently, all fairly local. On one occasion a friend of mine billed this Friday evening as a night in a club in watford, with a revolving dance floor....... ok I thought, could be good actually. Straight away I have a picture in my head of a packed club, dark, smoke, music, people, etc. Then I see myself, few drinks down the road at the bar collecting drinks and making my way slowly across said dance floor only to find myself getting off it exactly where I got on looking baffled. Never the less it'll be fun. So, off we went, after enduring the tragic and very dangerous watford one way system and (rather stupidly I felt) braving the subway we finally find the dive that is "reflex". An 80's disco with a "revolving dance floor" the gaff was empty, bros and bananarama assaulted my ears as I fixed my gaze on an 8 foot circle in the middle of the room, sitting a full 3 inches off the ground it was a step up to get on top of the slowly moving disk of 5 bar. Perhaps more at home with an LP on it I was looking round for the speed control to at least provide some fun later on. Shows how far off a description can be.

My relationship has taken a rather abrupt turn recently, not through any great wrong doing of my own for once. To be honest its just nice not to be in the wrong! However im not the sort of person to be taken the piss out off, in the same respect I find it hard to "let things go". I have to tie up loose ends, I like closure on things so I can tidy each thing away in to its own little box and pack it away in my head.

I will soon be filling my head with a new project, another gun, the German DSR-1, some design aspects of this make it quite hard to build but never the less I shall attempt it. A lot of you have suggested it as my next project and I quite like the look of it too. Im still thinking it through so the build should start in 4-6 weeks, ish.

Politics - I heard about a documentry on Scientology, you know the one im talking about, it got a lot of press due to another bbc reporter loosing his rag. What interested me was the Scientologists filming the bbc, filming them, to avoid trickery by the bbc, just made me laugh. Needless to say youtube is full of clips and im not surprised after watching the docu. It was the most bias "documentry" I have ever seen. At no point did they say what the scientologists were all about, what their religion teaches or anything about it. I thought the job of a "reporter" was to report and let the people make up their own minds. In this case it seems he (more likely the bbc) have decided for us, so we dont need to worry about their policies, all we need to know are that they are wierd. Especially when you concider all that silly business with aliens and the like, I mean surely no other religion has silly storys in it. Nothing like turning water into wine, or parting the red sea or building an arc and filling it with 2 of every animal. This is obviously just a move by the bbc and/or government to nip this in the bud as they are just starting out in the UK and try to stop it before it becomes to big. If nothing else its seems to have totally back fired and the bbc ended up with egg on there face looking thoroughly un professional, you can bet that if the scientology people were not doing there own recording, that little incident with sweeney loosing his cool would never have been aired.

Im off to ebay now to purchase a copy of dianetics and read for myself what its all about, then I can make a judgement on it.

6th May 2007

Me - The weathers good, which pretty much means im good. Been doing a few custom metal work jobs for people, things like this:

So feel free to email me if you need anything like this that needs making.

I converted a Hot bodies Lightning Pro 2 to brushless Video of it HERE and HERE. Makes about 44mph top speed, should be fun this summer. Now taking a few weeks break before starting a new project, probably another gun, not decided for sure yet though.

8th April 2007

Me - Well it has been a while, since the last post I have had a birthday, been to a wedding, took a week off and finished the gun!

Quite happy with it, all done, had afew enquiries about purchasing it but I dont think I can bring myself to part with it. Even for a few thousand I think in years to come I would regret it.

I finally upgraded my aging Athlon 2400+ to a core 2 duo E4300 @ 2.4, nice and quiet still, just ahell of a lot quicker. Im fairly mellow at the moment so everything else is rolling off me like water off a ducks back, girls and politics, the two things most likey to irritate me are but mere voices in the distance...... muffled, like ive locked them in a car with the windows up.

This wont last long of course, this is why its imperative I keep busy, fourtunatly my new found airsoft fame has led me to do a lot of odd jobs for people, custom metal work mainly, this will tide me over (and provide some money) till I decide what to make next, any ideas, shoot me an email.

6th February 2007

Interesting - Found this on the net, it is amazing, im sure up close it lacks some detail but bloody hell it looks impressive, cheapest I could find one for was £3000. A bit excessive, besides where would I put it!

Me - Working hard on the gun, 8 weeks in, not long to go now before its finished.

Politics - I dont watch "tv" anymore, not in the broad sense I mean main stream tv. I watch eurosport almost exclusively now, only if the tennis or kickboxing is on. Aside from that I don't have it on, the stream of propaganda from the media that I used to be able to avoid seems to have spilled over into the adverts so there really is no escaping it. The powers that be seem to be able to manipulate the "people" into doing and thinking things and this is something I don't want to be influenced by. The internet has some advantages, for the most part forums seem to be government free for now and the only place it seems you can get an honest opinion on things as delicate as war and racism. No doubt in time these places will also be policed.

At work I am subjected to Radio 1 which for the most part is light and fun, the news bulletins however are bizarre in their spin and exaggeration. I don't want to go on about this for too long but I feel I have to mention a couple of examples. Firstly (most recent) they report on the turkey bird flu outbreak, they say there is no risk of infection and no infected birds were processed, etc etc, not a thing to worry about. Problem is it was obviously a slow news day as they had nothing better to do than go and find a local supermarket and stop people on their way in and out to ask them if they were going to avoid buying turkey because of the bird flu outbreak. Am I the only one who sees this as trying to scare the shit out of people for no reason? Trying to make a story out of nothing, influence the people into doing something they normally wouldn't do. Imagine you went to Tesco for some milk and outside some newsreporter/ scumbag from BBC asked you if you were concerned about the anthrax outbreak at the local milk depot, you'd all of a sudden be a bit concerned/worried. The fact they are there in the first place is the worry, danger or not.
Im not even gonna go on about racism and the big brother thing, talk about mountain over a mole hill, not even that a non-existent mole hill! But that's enough on that, far too many column inches already wasted im sure.
Lastly just a bit on Iraq, im sorry I just cant help it. Can anyone tell me why exactly we are in their country/ killing them/ telling them what to do and stealing there oil? Anyone? Please? Bin laden is long gone (or back working for the CIA) sadam is dead, as are most of his "crew". Then we come to the terrorists, this word is now being used to describe anyone who doesn't like the USA and owns a gun. Have a look at this video. In light of that video, imagine for a second the boot is on the other foot, imagine that for one instant Iraq had more guns than the USA and UK, AND THIS IS ALL IT COMES DOWN TO. They would then be "in charge" they could come over here if we happened to be sitting on a resource they wanted (like oil), drive down the road in a H2 punt you out the way and have no one to answer to. Wouldn't you get a bit cheesed off? To the point of voicing your opinion? How long before the people with guns got together and tried to defend their country?

What do you know about the war that you HAVN'T seen on the tv or read in the paper? This is the propaganda, the wool that has been pulled over your eyes, they have to report it like that, they are told to but we dont have to believe it. Next time you see Blair in his suit, smiling and explaining that he wants there to be peace in the middle east, ask yourself who exactly is doing all the fighting and killing?