Engine Punk

Stiff Little Fingers played in Falmouth last Saturday (15th August) and of course we went to see them. As hardcore fan Mr Larcombe says, "It's worth going up to Bristol to see 'em because they're consistently so good." He's right, too, so I met up with the usual suspects of Gary and Dave outside the Princess Pavilion in Falmouth at 2000 hrs. Julie, who has at times expressed a fondness for Cliff Richard, came along, too. Gary has persuaded her that The Stranglers are a great live act and after hearing so much about SLF she had to see what all the fuss was about. As Jake said to us that night, Falmouth is a long way west but I hope the reception they got will see Stiff Little Fingers down this way again soon. Dave was on holiday from Gloucester and looked fit and tanned despite camping in Cornwall for a fortnight. Mr Larcombe and Julie were staying in a guest house across the road and took three minutes to walk to the venue. I had travelled the furthest fro...

I found this chap and his demonstration models of Stirling engines in the model tent at the Boconnoc Steam Fair. I'm afraid I forgot to ask him his name but I had a long chat with him about the Stirling engine and the principles involved. I'd heard of Stirling engines many years ago but had discounted from my sphere of interest because they didn't have any automotive application. Stirling engines operate simply on temperature differentials. Low friction materials have given a new lease of life to this very old concept, named after Rev Dr Robert Stirling who patented the idea in 1816. Boyle's Law states that as the temperature of a gas in a sealed container increases so does its pressure and the Stirling engine exploits this principle by have a heat source and a heat sink, such as air fins. When gas is allowed in contact with the cold and heat alternately, it can move a piston, displacer or diaphragm, which in turn can drive a crankshaft. Stirling engines operate...

I've been a bit under the weather recently. I don't think it was the rain at the Calstock Bike Show because I was in the tents and enjoying the company and facilities. But it was there that I noticed that I hard a sore throat and here I am, a fortnight later, having had some days off work and with the tail end of a persistent cold to get rid of. I have the feeling that I've made the most of the rotten weather. First there was the website re-vamp (indoors work) and more recently there's been the re-design of my book covers (more indoors work). Meanwhile, motorsport events and traction engine rallies have been cancelled and farming friends are going to have to pickle their corn crop with acid because it's so damp has little prospect of drying out. But here's a re-vamp of the cover for The Horsepower Whisperer. The jury is still out on the white space around the illustration but for the moment I like it. The drawing will change but I feel good about th...

Just look at this beauty! As a Vintage Thing it's practically over-qualified. This gorgeous 1000cc JAP v-twin powered, wideline Norton Featherbed won best competition bike at this year's Calstock Bike Show and when they fired it up in the tent there were huge grins all round. It sounded like a racing Morgan trike, which isn't surprising since they use the same engine - really crisp and nothing like the "potato, potato, potato" of a Harley V-twin. These engines also went into Brough Superiors and many Shelsley specials. John Bolster used two of them chained together in Bloody Mary and went on to use no less than four of them in the ultimate Bolster hillclimber. However, the resulting 4-litre eight cylinder monster proved too difficult to start. Without electric starters, bumping it was the only way to do it and if one engine didn't catch it just right, the shocks to the chain transmission system would snap the links easily. As for the frame...

I am a landscape person. I have discovered this during the work on my new book covers. The original drawings were all in landscape format so when I came to incorporate them into my cover designs there was a lot of white space above and below. I started off liking the crisp white space but have realised that the original drawings limited the cover design and didn't make the best use of space. I am now trying to become a portrait person. After years of drawing cars and motorbikes that are longer than they are tall, it's difficult to adapt. I'm also having to get used to the idea that there should be plenty of blank illustration where the text can go. But the text should flow naturally around the illustrated action. Because I don't know where the text is going to go, I don't know where action needs to be and where to put the vacant spaces. It's not a question of the chicken and the egg - it's a re-iterative process until you have the chicken and the...

The Wormton Lamb is even more nearly ready than when I last typed this. After some jiggery pokery when the revised textblock didn't upload onto Lightning Source's site, I now have a corrected proof with the right maps in it - just like the one here. But having sexed up my website I think I need to do the same to my book covers. I like the colour co-ordinated go faster stripes (even if some people call them chav stripes) and they look okay on Amazon as thumbnails. But okay isn't good enough. I want them to leap off the page into the face of the beholder and off the shelf into their hands. They should be irresistible. It's a tall order but I reckon that if I'm happy about them then most other people will be, too. Obviously I'm ignoring Cousin Lisa's advice below. However, our policy here at Anarchadia Publishing is on of continuous improvement so that's what I'm up to. And once I've done the new cover for The Wormton Lamb then there'l...

At the Calstock Bike Show it was so wet underfoot even the pedestrians were aqua-planing. Never mind the bikes doing it - if you proceeded at anything above walking pace and braked injudiciously then you lost all steering and down you went in a great plume of water. And it proved incredibly difficult for the girls and boys of Calstock to stop aqua-planing once they'd got a taste for it. Was this show one of the summer's best kept secrets? Pete Low - he of Ginetta G21S and Armstrong MT500 fame already on this blog - told me about this show last year and now that he's moved up to Essex he was determined to come back for this year's event. Last year he got roped in to do the judging. He knew the organiser Malcolm Wright through the Armstrong Rider's forum and positively raved about what a good event this was. As I hadn't seen him since he'd moved up country and decided to go along and see for myself. Calstock is on the River Tamar just below Gunnislake. ...