Engine Punk

Yesterday I went up to Exeter for the Kit Car Show at the Westpoint Showground. This was my first visit after a lapse for a few years and, considering the economic gloom that pervades the UK at the moment and the fact that kit cars must inevitably be funded from disposable income, I found the mood very upbeat. There was a great variety of machinery on show and plenty of people about, too. Previous shows had consisted largely of Lotus Seven variants -- what some of my friends call Locost Caterfields -- or AC Cobra replicas that this year there seem to be more original designs. The standard of construction was also a vast improvement over what I had come to expect. I chatted to several stallholders several aspects of the current kit car scene struck me. I've already mentioned the dramatic increase in the quality of the product. Manufacturers have now realised that well finished cars that result from an easy build reflect well on their brand name they can generate more s...

 Last night, I checked into the customer area on the Lightning Source website to check the status of my uploaded files for The Horsepower Whisperer and The Wormton Lamb. The proof was ready for The Wormton Lamb but today I had a message from my customer rep to tell me that the text file for The Horsepower Whisperer was corrupted on pages 5 and 6. These pages are the ones that feature the maps at the beginning of my books. They consist of layered drawings and if any part of the pdf was likely to become corrupt this was it. However, all my files at home look okay so I can only assume that the CD that went to Lightning Source in the states was damaged in some way. I would've uploaded a new file for The Horsepower Whisperer and ordered a proof for The Wormton Lamb tonight but the Lightning Source website is being maintained at the moment. I regenerated a text file pdf for The Horsepower Whisperer just to make sure there were no problems but notice something odd in the proces...