00458 Xmas boxes

I sent a load of boxes to a gallery called Cry of the Gulls in Cornwall and forgot to take any pictures of the guys before they went in. Still, they came out alright. The spotlight attachments are awesome, if you're into spotlight attachments.

They'll be on sale and everything!

00457 Family

If you want to see the future, really see the future, then you need to look up a dogs bum.

This only works if you grow up to be a vet.

00456 Airstrips!

Although it might seem unnecessary to provide a runway for seaplanes, I'm nothing if not an innovator. Early testing of the airstrip concept is really working out well, although early reports are suggesting that many of the land-based infrastructure elements that we're developing are bing stone-walled because the aircraft haven't got any engines and are really small.

Needless to say, finding aircrew is also proving problematic.

In other news, the TP 7b finally made it off the line:

It's certainly helped to answer a few questions (though sadly not the most frequent: "how much time do you have on your hands?"

00455 I dream of boxes

And when I wake up in the morning I SEE THEM TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For me there is no escape, even if I shut my eyes, I'm struck by the irony that I'm closing the lids.

So it seems that even if it's the little people who go in the boxes, I'M THE ONE WHO'S REALLY TRAPPED!

00454 Sparebots 2010

Although there haven't been quite so many sightings as there were last year, a demand for books has meant that there's an updated version of last year's publication.

In fact, it's all here - all of it!

00453 Pinholarino

Pinholerooney:

For when sharp images just won't quite cut it.

You will need:

One DSLR
One body cap for above
One drill
One can Guinness
One roll black adhesive tape
One needle
One black sharpie

Method:
Drill hole in body cap
Cut piece of aluminium out of Guinness can - smaller than body cap
Pierce Guinness can with needle (use it as a tiny drill to make a very, very small hole)
Blacken camera side of Guinness can insert with sharpie
Tape to inside of body cap
Stick cap on camera body
Take pictures

(Serves 4)

00452 Ladder jig

Did you ever need to make tiny ladders but they just turned out too damn fiddly and time consuming? Then the Ladderman Pro (TM) is for you!

Ladderman Pro includes all the unique features that we've all come to expect from the Ladderman brand:

• Easy to use
• Nails stuck in a piece of wood
• Quick and easy
• Easy and quick
• Did I say easy?
• Easy

See the results for yourself:

No more crying and banging your fists on the table because you can't make enough tiny ladders and the nasty people are coming to get the ladders that you promised them, but you haven't got them finished yet.

"I used to get so worked up when it took me days to make tiny ladders. Not any more! Now I make them all day" - name withheld by family.

"Probably the best tiny ladder making tool not on the market today" - tiny ladders decenniall.

Don't wait, the Ladderman Pro is a limited edition and this offer (of which there is none) can't last for ever (so much so that it doesn't exist).

Biscuits and tea not included. Terms and conditions apply. Your house may be at risk if you make tiny ladders, lose your mind and get carted away by well intentioned medical practitioners called in by your concerned family who have finally realised that you now pose a danger to them, yourself and society at large.

00451 Eeeking out the last

I've now been to this beach so many times, that I'm finding the same sticks on it and am consequently begging for a huge storm to sweep away the old and bring in the new.

Still, gets me out of the house.

Gets me in the water too.

And the camera.

How long can it survive?

00450 The end of the Summer

The hols anyway.

And with that, there always comes a slightly reduced volume of this:

Probably means there'll be more of this:

My inner geek embraces the coming winter.

00449 And then there was one

An excerpt from "Sailing with midgets":

"It is imperative in the extreme, that the natural balance of things be preserved. To wit: for a camera to be maintained as a working entity one must keep it from the ravages of the elements and for a small boat or group of boats to survive the fury of the sea they should be positioned in such a way so as to avoid the inclemencies that may be set upon them, were they to be put in harms way."

I find myself in need of advice such a this when presented with situations such as this:

... followed closely by inclemencies in the surrounding environment such as this:

... which in turn leave me with a damp camera and one, solitary floating figure, such as this:

I must try that "standing on the shoulders of giants" shit one day. At least then I wouldn't get so wet.

00448 Signature

Although this needs a little work, the idea is sound. A tiny glazed window, with which you can frame any text or image.

I'm thinking of selling the idea to T&C, who asked for a board to be made for them with their initials on it.

It's so awesome when it's sanded back level with the wood that it's inset into.

00447 !

WIP - for the "sparebots banger/landmine sound activated flash" arrangement that I've been working on for five seconds.

It's a well beaten path, but you've got to start somewhere.

00446 The X4

As part of the "beige ops" program begun by the former administration, the X4 begun life as just a single, unique cylinder of raw material, found only in one place on earth. Within five months that material had been extensively processed and she had become the figurehead project behind a general move towards miniaturisation. The design team poured everything they had into her, until one day in September of 2010, when the news broke that the plug had been pulled. Someone high up had gotten wind of the operation and demanded to see the detailed specs. It wasn’t long before they figured out that the X4, with all its groundbreaking developments, was smaller than a mini Leatherman.

The funding for the development was cut off immediately and marked “Bollocks”.

Notes:

This information has been taken directly from a corrupted report gleaned from the archives.

It is possible that “months” may have been written as “minutes”.

“One place on earth” may have been recorded as ”behind a rock”.

“Raw material” may have originally appeared as “a stick”.

00445 Sometimes it all just comes together

And then we leave it on the beach to be taken apart again.

00444 The TP 1x

A short excerpt from Ben Gingernut's new book "Penknives and Cockpits":


'In 1957 Geoff "Yaegermeister" Benton was searching for inspiration to drive forward a project code named "TP-1x". As he drove home one dusky spring evening, he passed a local school where two of the kids were playing with a stick, pretending it was a plane and throwing it from one to the other. Like a bolt of lightning striking him in the cerebellum, he knew what he had to do. He raced home and, without even answering his wife Brenda's greetings, he set to work in his study, slaving feverishly through he night, and well into the next day, ignoring calls from his office when he failed to show for work. He returned to work later on that afternoon rushing straight into his supervisor's glass fronted cubicle and waving aside his superior's anger at his late arrival. Ignoring the room's other occupants, his boss's 4 o'clock, he announced his breakthrough to an increasingly open-mouthed audience. When he was finished, everyone was silent. No one could quite take in the depth of his new discovery or the implications of what it would hold for he future of aviation. Work started almost immediately and within two months the prototype TP-1x rolled off the production line.

The euphoria didn't last long.

The paint wasn't even dry when the news came in. Everyone was devastated. No one could quite believe that they could have raised their expectations so high, only to have them dashed so brutally. In their excitement to go ahead with the project, especially in light of Geoff's ground-breaking discovery, they had overlooked one vital element in the complexity of the development. It turned out that the TP-1x, which on paper had seemed like the answer to all their prayers, was in fact only 4 inches long and made of sticks.

Geoff was inconsolable and two weeks after the discovery, he left his wife and drove off into the night. No one ever saw him again, but the next day his Brenda found his mini-leatherman lying on the sofa with a note. It read simply,

"Bollocks"'

Riiiiiiiiiide!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"I follow a pretty simple philosophy - there's just me and the board and the road, and we're, like, together. If you can imagine a stream of being where everything (like, the physical and the spiritual) are combined in harmony, it's kinda like that. And if you can just dip your hand in that stream you become part of it and it becomes part of you. But mainly, it's about the ride. Just the ride."

"Oh, did I not mention that I'm made up? That's the other part of the philosophy."

00442 Towering over smaller things

Back in the day, if you were bad, they'd put you in a tower. If you'd been really, really bad, they'd put you in this tower.

Details are sketchy, but it kind of looks like you'd have to be blended and then some of you would get poured in through the top. Only a bit, mind. So the rest of you would probably just get thrown away. A pretty comprehensive punishment, but also an awesome deterrent.

(They probably didn't have blenders back then, so it was most likely just a pestle and mortar job).

00441 West Show

Table space at the West Show allowed me to see for myself how the public react to something that they quite literally can't comprehend.

Although, perhaps they were all looking at me and I've just tried to shut it out of my mind.

00440 Boats and life are, like, the same and stuff

Sometimes these small boats made simply from sticks found on a windswept beach can seem so much like life.

Our bodies, our genetic makeup (and one could argue perhaps even our very consciousness) made up of parts found on the beaches of time and pieced lovingly together by some great creator, to then be set adrift on the turbulent sea of existence, where we are tossed to and fro', at the mercy of whatever forces we find ourselves enclosed by.

All follow clear and distinct paths, separate from each other, but all are destined to fall or be torn apart and reclaimed by the sea and the wind and the passage of the years.

The boats here might so easily be echoes of our very substance and their plight could so easily be ours.

...

But they're not.

I gave one to Kristyna and the other one got trod on.

All that metaphorical stuff is just hooey and they're just boats.

...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! A GIANT FOOT IS CRUSHING ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

00439 HMS Flotsam

Commissioned in 1936, HMS flotsam sailed the inshore bays of the Channel Islands providing air support for small children who had grown bored with throwing sand and digging. She was decommissioned after a collision with a six-year-old which left her listing heavily to port.

In her heyday the flight deck would be a hive of activity with mostly (sometimes entirely) imaginary crews prepping the aircraft for inland reconnaissance missions. Shortly before take-off, pilots would brace themselves for the force of "the hand" and subsequently "the throw", which would launch them to their almost certain doom.

Details of the original vessel are captured lovingly in this scale model:

00438 The high seas (5ft)

When the waves are way over mast height and there's no room for error, you have to be able to rely on your vessel. That's why I sail the PS001 and 002 series. I've been in this game for over 117 months and if there's one thing I know, it's how to pick a stable seaworthy craft that'll ...

... *&$£!@!!ing things sunk!

oh well, I guess half an hour was all I should've expected from a bunch of twigs

00437 TP5B nostalgia

Seen here during maintenance, the TP5b underwent primary testing, but never lived up to the promise of increased range. At this time no craft had flown beyond a standard heft (right arm over)