Engine Punk

Many years ago when I was a student and rock regularly went to college, there was an outbreak of new wave synthesiser bands. Some of these pre-programmed their tunes into keyboards and drum machines and the proceeded to stand by their electronic equipment. That was their idea of playing live and would have been disposable pop if had been popular but this phase didn't last. It was just boring and didn't appeal. For a while in my very late teens I thought the synthesiser sound was great but this soon descended into the sort of pretentious rubbish indulged in by the talentless that said "actually, we're more of a studio band." Nowadays, like Stiff Little Fingers, I believe in the power of guitar and drum but Montarg and Krayon - aka Starbase 109 - have got something. I dunno what but it's definitely a something. But Starbase 109 had my feet tapping when they supported The Stranglers at Exeter University on Friday nite. And quite a few people were danci...

Last Saturday me and Andrew (of multiple tractor ownership fame) picked up this Ginetta G26 in Saltash for another mate of mine. It was an ebay bargain and although engineless has all its other vital organs. Originally Pinto powered there is talk of trialling it - it being that time of year - and possibly installing a Cologne V6. I suspect that it maybe a bit front heavy in that form and for trialling purposes you need good traction but that spec would make for quite a quick car because it's such a light car. I know this because I helped push it onto the trailer. Designed and produced by the four Walklett brothers, Ginettas have already featured as Vintage Things (Pete Low's G21 was the first one ever) but I had come to regard the G26 as one the less desirable, partly because it's eclipsed by real beauties like the G4, the G12 and an old favourite of mine the Imp powered G15. So many Vintage Things but so little time. My mate really wanted a G12 but they are wort...

I've had a few problems with uploading the new cover for The Wormton Lamb. First of all I couldn't log into the Lightning Source website. It seems MacAfee didn't recognise it as a secure site and I had to create an exception report to gain entry into the customer area with my log in name and password. As I'd used the Lightning Source site before when uploading files for both The Horsepower Whisperer and The Wormton Lamb so had no qualms about this. When it came to uploading the pdf file for the new cover, the process was interrupted three times. Each repeat attempt completed less of the process, I started at 17% and ended up at 2%. A pop up box gave the following message. "An error has occurred processing your upload: An IO error occurred. Please try again or contact technical support for assistance." So, I'll have to do that tomorrow. This is the first time I've tried uploading a new file with my new computer. The last time I uploade...

The price of unleaded has fallen below ₤1 a litre. According to a net comparison site , it's down to 97.9p a litre around Liskeard. We are told that this price level won’t last because OPEC are cutting production. The low prices will encourage people to fill up. Demand will increase and the economists (who’ve made a mess of everything already) will hike the prices again due to the knicker elasticity of demand. But I remember how a few years ago OPEC were lowering prices because they were worried that consumers might find alternatives to oil. I reckon they now know that people will be switching away from oil and suing hydrogen or bio-fuels. The writing is on the wall for the oil industry even for plastics. At The Stranglers gig at Exeter University drinks were served from wibbly-wobbly glasses made not of plastic but a clear material made from plant starch. So spare a kind though for the men of OPEC. They've only got a few years left so squeeze as much money out o...

Friday saw me in the old Roman town of Exetercester to see The stranglers and they were better form than ever. The fab four work well together after several years as a five piece following the amicable departure of Paul Roberts in 2006. The current tour features all the singles played in order, although the encore has to No More Heroes. Anything else would be just wrong. That bass intro is real body music - you feel it in your chest rather than hear it. After a few health problems, Jet Black is playing with them again. He is 70 after all but you wouldn't know it from his drumming. Apparently, he invented a special bass drum pedal that has brought greater creative freedom and comfort to drummers. On Friday, JJ said Jet Black was back the dead, which was a back handed compliment. there was always something sinister about The Stranglers so a little resurrectionism adds to their mystique. I'm not a die hard fan because some of their stuff is a bit experimental for me but whe...

Tonight I've updated the files at Lightning Source UK with the new book cover design for The Horsepower Whisperer. As the original illustration featured three abreast seating and the new one doesn't, I've amended the text. It occurred to me that the Conformorians would never compromise on which side of the road people should drive on. It would be an either or proposition. Of course, in Anarchadia, they drive on the opposite side of the road on principle. So M Cadvare's personal transportation device now has left hand drive and I've amended the text to suit. I've continued to use Word when it comes to writing my books. When I use Open Office Writer, apostrophes don't come out curly. In Open Office Writer they are just little flat things that look cheap and nasty, especially when quotation marks are curly. So I open the Word document in Open Office Writer and the apostrophes appear as I want them. Amend them in Writer, however, and they straighten...

ITM Power are publicising their development of a domestic hydrogen production system and a converted Ford Focus that could run for up to 30 miles on the hydrogen produced. That sort of distance is a typical daily commute and for longer distances the car can be revert to using unleaded. ITM Power offer this approach as a real world alternative to fuel cell vehicles that generate the electricity themselves. Depending on who you talk to, fuel cell vehicles work but are too expensive. It's the platinum in the fuel cells and the amounts required. There's a big push to reduce the amount of platinum in fuel cells but for the time ITM Power's approach appeals to me. You would still have to have a big pressurised storage tank fitted to your car and that would restrict storage space but how much luggage do you need on the daily commute? ITM Power are also working on Bi-Fuel Diesels, too, so your common rail bus could run on hydrogen or biofuel diesel. You would have a kin...

The Wormton Lamb now looks like this. I came to the conclusion that the original illustration was dominated by the cars in the foreground. Now the lamb is much more prominent and the cars look more dynamic. As well as the 2CV kicking up its heels you can just make out Hob on Nosferatu riding dangerously close to its cloven heels. I have abandoned the use of marker pens - although I'll continue to use them for website drawings - and after flirting briefly with oils and acrylic inks have adopted gouache as my medium. I'd like to experiment with oils more but oils take so long to dry. It's a whole technique, too, but the paint feels fantastic on the brush and I really like the smell (although not enough to dream of eating a tube of cadmium yellow, as owner of my mates did once.) Beck said she liked the graph qualities of the clouds in my original drawing and after a great deal of trial and error I am reasonably content with them. I think they make the Giant Lamb loo...

Here is the new book cover for The Horsepower Whisperer. It's much more colourful and carries a bigger punch, helped in part by Hob's knuckles gripping the steering wheel as he punches M Cadvare's personal transportation module off the page. The gremlin can see trouble up ahead and is doing a hornpipe in his panic. We can see what's ahead, too. If you look really closely you can make out a roadblock and a helicopter in the reflection of Hob's visor. Hob is about to fost through the roadblock, effectively leak into another set of dimensions in a parallel universe, but just before he does the Conformorians will activate the airbag in the steering wheel. For what happens next you'll just have to read the book. It's a big relief to have got to this stage. Time will tell whether this cover design has more shelf appeal than the old one. I still need to upload this image onto Amazon and it will take a few days for books looking like this to be available so ...

This bike belongs to one of Pete Low's mates (sorry, I didn't catch your name) and he brought it along to the Calstock Bike Show (see post for 12th August). He'd only just got it and was very pleased with it, for it had been standing outside a house in London for two years and he paid 800 quid for it. The engine ran well and the only major fettling he had to do was to the brakes, which needed overhauling. Overall, he was delighted with his purchase, which was worth the price for the engine alone. However, he was disappointed with the brakes, which were sourced from a Yamaha XJ900. I have a slight history with Norton Motors in that I was interviewed for an industrial placement during my industrial design sandwich course. I was due to work at the Shenstone factory for a summer when it the engineering training board that was to have subsidised my pay realised that Norton Motors had not been making payments to its scheme. I believe subscriptions to the engineering traini...

I experimented a lot with my cover illustrations but found myself drawn to a couple of artists in particular. Probably my favourite artist of all is Terence Cuneo. He was obviously in love with the steam engine and captured their speed, power and weight with such accuracy he made it look easy. But in reading a book specially purchased as background for my project, I learned how much hard work went into each commission. He was up ladders, on bridges and skulking in tunnels, sketching in all weathers and ignoring threats to life and limb in his determination to capture the essence of the Flying Scotsman or a broken down goods engine. His ellipses are perfect and I find his treatment of midtones and light and shade inspirational. Syd Mead is a very famous industrial designer who worked for Ford before going freelance. He designed the props for Blade Runner when I was a student but before that was well known for beautifully executed conceptual visions of the future. There is no dys...

It's been a long journey bit the new designs for my book covers are nearly ready. I can't show them to you yet. This isn't any attempt at showmanship - it's just that I don't have them in format that Blogger will take as an upload. The Horsepower Whisperer was pretty good out of the box. Beck and I were pretty happy with that one but Beck suggested breaking up the cloudless sky with some, well, clouds. She said she liked the original sky that I'd created because it was more graphic. So I had a go at some clouds and found that clouds are hard. I can't remember drawing or painting clouds realistically before. I feel I've come on some way since the time when I drew the first illustration of The Wormton Lamb. To cut along story short i messed up the original painting with sub-standuard clouds. Fortunately, I subsequent attempt produced clouds that looked more cloudy and Beck, who has the technology, was able to splice my new clouds behind the dancing ...

I've passed this old wreck of a wrecker truck many times but the other Sunday I pulled up in the old Ale Grow (VT No. 23) and had a poke around. I don't think it has much of a future and is fairly well grown in. It lies engineless outside a scrapyard just off the A38 near Doublebois but the scrapyard is a very odd one. Make any enquiries about anything and you'll get a mouthful of abuse and whatever you're interested in will be destroyed before your eyes. I don't know how they stay in business. I'm not really into trucks but old ruins fascinate me and I did all the usual things that small boys do with military vehicles, which is scramble all over them and sit in the drivers seat and make the noises. I didn't know what it was but a little research reveals it to be a Leyland Martian, as immortalised by Dinky Toys. It was no surprise to find out that it was a British Army 6x6 truck but I was fascinated to learn that it would've had a 5.6 litre...

It's taken years but Dobwalls is now by-passed. Visitors to south-east Cornwall during high summer probably don't have very good memories of Dobwalls. It's a village that straddles the A38 just west of Liskeard and due to its position at the western end of the Liskeard bypass it became a bottle neck to avoid. And the residents of Dobwalls certainly didn't appreciate being prisoners in their own homes. From Easter to late September, Saturday is known as change over day. One lot of visitors leaves and another lot arrives and gridlock often ensues. Landlords of B&Bs and self-catering barn conversions are reluctant to let their properties for part weeks during the season so the ritual of change over day and manic chambermaids cleaning rooms and changing bed linen seems to be here to stay. Only by camping can this lemming like ritual be avoided. Cornwall relies on an effective road system otherwise those that support its main industry will stay away. Effective...

Where have all the good reads gone? More books are being published than ever before but it seems more difficult for me to find books I really like. It's old conundrum - I want something original but a bit like something else, an imitation of The Hobbitt or Terry Pratchett. (Yeah, I know Terry Pratchett's an imitator but in a good way with real jokes.) As a writer I am also a reader and at risk of sounding arrogant it was the lack of something worthy of my attention that often motivated to write my own stories. Nowadays it's so rare to read something original that you discover by accident and then come to re-visit. It's hard enough to find something when your looking for it. Occasionally, I've found something brilliant without really trying like The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, as translated brilliantly by Lucia Graves. That's the problem with reading. How do we find something we like without searching for ages and ultimately giving up? ...

This caught my eye the other day. Dodge says its Zeo concept sport wagon shown at the Paris Show is "designed for driving enthusiasts and tree-huggers alike". That’s me! It's a four-passenger sport wagon, powered by a single 268-horsepower electric motor with a lithium-ion battery. With rear wheel drive it can do 0-60 in 5.7 seconds and go 250 miles (400 km) between charges - once the technology is perfected. So long as the technology works, I can fix it and afford it (economically and environmentally) I'll have one. But I can't have one now because the technology is not tried and tested. The Chrysler Corporation is working with "multiple suppliers" on developing batteries that deliver a 300 mile range. The favourite power source seems to be lithium-ion batteries like that in my cordless Dremel although they'll probably be a bit bigger. And take longer to re-charge. In other words the Dodge Zeo doesn't actually go yet. And when it d...

The Paris Show this week was marked by financial and economic gloom. European car manufacturers have been unable to escape tough targets on emissions for new cars and the credit crunch means fewer customers. They are pleading with us to buy their new models and are gearing up to sell us little cars to suit our shallower pockets. Life style vehicles such as SUVs, 4x4s and cross over vehicles – I’ve never really understood this term – are falling rapidly and interest is now in small cheap cars that don’t pollute. The aspirational Chelsea tractors of the noughties “said something about you as a person”, such as like you’re such a lard arse you can’t get out of a car with a seat height lower than your hips and that you want to look adventurous when the only reason you drive a 4x4 is because you’re too fat to walk anywhere and had to drive there. I see this as a good thing. The conspicuous consumption that was spoken of just before the internet bubble burst (remember that?) happe...

I had a good graphic design session with Rebecca Morton at Red Snapper last night. You'll have heard of Beck before on this blog. Dammit - you'll have eaten yoghurt from the pots she designed for Rachel's Organic Yoghurt and seen her work on the Milk Marque lorries. Here she is in action, pointing out something important I hadn't spotted. Of course, as soon as she'd shown me what was wrong it was obvious. She also showed me the amazing things the full verison of Photoshop can do. Well, some of them anyway. "Look how easily I can get rid of the blemishes," she said. "What blemishes?" I replied. I'd been really careful not to get oily fingerprints on my work but there they were. And then there they were - gone. In the hands of an expert like Beck the results were frankly mind blowing - and so quick to make! We've experimented with a couple of ideas but the favourite so far seems to be a refined version of that mugged togethe...

Here's the new cover illustrations for The Horsepower Whisperer . As with any picture on this blog or the one known as Engine Punk if you click on the image you'll see a large image. I was happy enough with the earlier cover design for some time but as soon as I'd revamped my website it looked a little staid. I realized I could do better and ever since then my publishing adventure has been on hold while I embarked on a remembering-how-to-paint trip. I donned blinkers and stopped doing many of the other things I enjoy like writing and welding in my determination to add as much pizzazz as I could to my covers. It became an obsession and I entered that dark tunnel where you strive for perfection knowing that it is really an impossible dream. I never really know what keeps me going during these times for there are no travelling companions but at last I have emerged, blinking in the sunlight, reconciled to the lack of perfection but reasonably happy with the result. It’s be...