I couldn't resist it....

This has been an odd week. Last Friday the entire country has closed down for a week for the 'National Day' holiday to celebrate ostensibly, the moment when China effectively became a Commie police state. All well and good, but coming so soon after the Mid Autumn Festival it effectively means that China has suffered a second consecutive week of, I'll put it frankly, bone idleness. I can only apologise to my loyal customers since I have back orders to fulfill and although I have performed my end of the bargain with considerable aplomb, I am at the mercy of the sodding post office, whose vagaries are well documented and whose work ethic is so arbitrary that nothing short of a supercomputer running chaos theory algorithms can predict it.

So, in this interregnum between Summer and Autumn, I took time out to move home (precisely 20 doors down the road in fact), helped the old man relocate part of the existing factory to nearby Anhui Province and get on with some much delayed design work. Having done all of that, I did what any self respecting man would do when surrounded by temporary systemic national indolence, I joined them and went out to get pissed.

This evening I went for a beer with my mate, the paint chemist, we'll call him 'Bob'. Inevitably the conversation turned to the subject of the industrial crackle that I had him develop for me a couple of months back. I have been getting A LOT of mails regarding this stuff and I have had to say NO to all of you who asked. I have tried to ease the pain somewhat by revealing the Perfetto crackle technique and process but the industrial coat has gnawed at me for the past few months and my reluctance to offer it is mainly economics. I won't bore you with the details of it but needless to say, this stuff is NOT cheap and has to be implemented on an industrial scale (based on dead weight of the material to be painted) in order to be economical.  You see, this stuff has its roots within the automotive industry and has to  be, ideally, applied by robots and setting up the process is expensive and time consuming unless you have the clout of a major car manufacturer. Which I don't.

However, never one to take no for an answer, I proceeded to blag, bullshit and bully Bob, with the aid of copious amounts of Hennessy XO and the memory of an incident involving a Thai ladyboy, a large daikon radish and some live prawns,  into doing a small run in his test lab. Rotting in hell not withstanding, I am now quite please to offer a small limited run of sonics in this wonderful industrial crackle for the price of £250 each.

Absolute numbers are a bit up in the air but depending on how many I can be bothered to strip down, I will say no more than 20 of each model MAXIMUM. Probably less, as Bob simply did not make enough of the stuff to paint more than that.

The initial test piece has been chucked around quite a bit and has not suffered in the slightest. It's more durable than the powdercoat and is virtually indistinguishable from the Perfetto coating. Considering a spare body will cost you upwards of £50 and a Perfetto repaint £30, having a totally ready painted one for £50 premium on top of the standard price is a nice little deal for a quite groovy upgrade.

Some of you have emailed me asking if I can repaint your sonics in this. The answer is categorically NO. This is mainly because it is not *just* the body that need repainting but the slider plate/button too. It is a lot of work to remove the slider plate/button for repainting and can and will destroy the electronics requiring a total rewiring. I am keeping this run separate and exclusive with a price tag to reflect this. If you want one and have purchased a standard one prior, I suggest you do what everyone else would do and Ebay it ASAP and use the proceeds to purchase one of these :-) Who knows, maybe you might sell it to someone who is gagging for one of mine but can't bring themselves to buy one from me.

So, if you want one, email me as these things will go quick and I don't forsee them becoming available again until 2012 at earliest. Since I tweeted this a couple of hours ago, I have 5 takers of Tennant versions so they are going...

Here's a reminder of what you are getting:

Allahu Akbar, I've been hacked!

In the past two hours visitors to my site will have encountered the following:

It appears the ragheads have taken time out from blowing up buildings and stoning women to drag themselves into the information age. Anyway, it is not my site alone that has been affected, but the entire server of which my site is one of hundreds. My host is on the case and full service will be resumed soon. Inshallah.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

CT Aztec Universal TV remote - opinions needed

What you see above you is the 1st Season Aztec sonic as used by Christopher Eccleston. As you can see, it is a handsome beast.

The good news is that I shall be using this as the basis for my long rumoured universal TV remote control. And the good thing is, that in addition to light and sound and the ability to control TV sets, it will look identical to the above, albeit without the ability to extend.

However, a small snag has come up. In order to make this without extraneous buttons and thus accurate to the prop above, I can only realistically put in5 functions without compromising the aesthetics:

1. Power on/off + search

2. Volume up

3. Volume down

4. Channel Up

5. Channel Down

The optional function will be a mute switch but will need one of the other functions to be given the shove.

The question I want to put to you lot is whether you want the mute function and if so, which function would you ditch?

Opinions mucho appreciated.

On a final note: The fiscally challenged tightwads who find my prices onerous have a new champion called Dan Stokes who goes by the rather bellicose moniker 'Anakin Starkiller'. This deluded carpetbagger somehow thinks he can produce an accurate machined metal sonic for $100-$200 and has been actively courting business on the RPF.  It seems that this tool has harvested the wisdom and observations from this blog yet has missed out some of the more pertinent gems that I have let slip. That is, it is simply not possible to create a CNC'ed machined, accurate sonic with custom sound chip for less than what I charge and I'm in China where prices are less (but going up rapidly). Any less and I'll be doing it for charity. Dan will learn this the hard way and his little sycophants will have their hopes for a £60 sonic sadly and hilariously dashed.

Anyway, this fuckstick has now roped in Russ Brown to help him machine this and we already know that Russ and his old man were responsible for the infamous MFX. Indeed, Russ has been selling unofficial MFX's for quite a while now, both above and below the counter, so maybe he will shift a few more of his 'overrun' MFX's via Dan Stokes? Who knows...maybe even QMx might use Russ too. It's very chummy little world we live in, eh?

...but I ramble. Let me get to the point. Let's consider the following pic:

According to Dan Stokes, there were two Aztec props. One static closed and one extendable. The alleged static closed one is the one pictured at the beginning of this blog and the extending one is the one shown above.

Actually, they are both of the same prop. The crackle pattern, especially in the troughs of the ridges give it away.

None of the Aztec props were truly static as popular belief would have it. Both extended and indeed one was fixed into the half extended position during Season 1.

If Mr Stokes cannot see such a basic thing as this, what hope does this bode for his would-be run?

Sonic Screwdriver Vs Bus

As you well know, I don't sell my sonics with any kind of warranty against abuse, stupidity or just sheer bad luck: I just build them to the best of my ability and let nature and serendipity take its own course.

However I would like to share something that happened last week that amazed me no end and as with all good tales, this one also involved a sonic screwdriver.

I was down south last week on business and decided to pop over the border to Hong Kong to catch up with some family and friends during the Mid Autumn Moon Festival.

As some of you who have visited already know, Hong Kong is an odd place and is one of the few places in the world where jaywalking is still an offence punishable by a stint in the stocks. Ok, I was kidding about that bit, but it is still a crime where your collar can and will be felt if the strategically placed Rozzers at the pedestrian crossings catch you at. The result of this crackdown on pedestrian waywardness is that everyone (and I mean everyone), only crosses the road at designated pedestrian crossings where the metronomic tick tock of the lights suddenly speed up to sound the all-clear for vast swathes of humanity to run the gauntlet in 20 second intervals every 3 minutes. And god help you if you aren't possessed of the swiftness of foot of Usain Bolt and don't make it across in the alloted window, as time and Hong Kong traffic wait for no man. In fact, Hong Kong traffic waits for no one. Me included. 

Which brings me onto my little tale. There I was, walking along in the early autumn sunshine, minding my own business when I felt the overwhelming urge to cross the road. Spying the nearest pedestrian crossing I saw the green 'safe-to-cross' light flashing and heard the rapidly increasing tick-tock cadence signalling the rapid evaporation of my allotted 20 seconds. So like any decent amber-gambler, I legged it.

About halfway across, the vigor of my less than graceful sprint caused my sonic screwdriver to fly backwards out of my breast pocket and in a graceful arc, land onto the tarmac where it bounced once and then lay at rest in the middle of Nathan Road. The realisation of this made me turn my head and my eyes traced its flight through the air, in slow motion, and I screamed 'nooooooooooooooooooooooo' (again in x0.2 speed so it sounded, in my head at least, particularly deep and manly) before making a pitifully futile attempt to pluck it out of the air with my hand but as I was pegging it with all the urgency of a black slave from a Klan lynch mob, momentum and time was not on my side and no sooner had my foot reached the opposite kerb then the lights changed and the waiting traffic accelerated off.

My sonic screwdriver was then run over by one of these:

My poor sonic disappeared under the wheels of this beast. The next three minutes were amongst the longest of my life and as I waited for the tick tock to speed up again so I could run to the middle of the road and inspect the damage. Truth be told I didn't expect to retrieve anything but the earthly remains of one pancaked Eccleston sonic but for no other reason than I think someone upstairs is well keen on me,, not only was sonic intact, but it was still working!!!!! Here's what it looks like:

Minor dint in the bulb:

The head has taken a couple of dings, but trust me when I tell you the original prop is in far worse shape:

...and here's the how the Perfetto faired. Not bad considering it's been run over by a bus:

I'm going to leave the battle scars on as I feel they add a certain character to the prop. Not many props can say that they've been run over by a bus and survived in full working order. It was certainly an eye-opener for me.



Wow! What a piece of shit

At the London Toy Fair at the beginning of the year it was announced by Wow Stuff that they would be producing a die cast metal replica of the Eleveth Doctor Sonic Screwdriver claimed to be 'screen accurate' by Wow Stuff staff manning their stand and embellished by some pretty outlandish lies as well.

I poured scorn on these claims as well as the claimed price tag of about £20 in one of my blog entries earlier this year and I gave some pretty good reasons why economics and common sense would make it impossible  for them to produce what was promised together with a prediction as to what the finished product would be like. As time went on, insiders who had seen the product grumbled that this much feted 'cheapskate's sonic', is actually not all it was cracked up to be with rumours that it would be static and the dimensions and build being heavily compromised. Now, as we reach the fag butt end of the summer, some pictures are finally emerging of this so-called 'screen accurate' sonic.

Thank you to one of my readers Mark for sending me this pic as it really does make for a real eye opener and, at the risk of sounding like a smug fucker, reinforces the fact that I know what I am talking about.

So, without further ado, here is the Wow Sonic:

....

...and what a piece of crap it actually is. I don't know what the fuck happened but how did they manage to make a die cast metal replica look more plasticky than the plastic toy? I'm not one to disparage a good effort irrespective of my own personal opinion of the maker, but this thing sucks in a very big way. In fact, I am astonished that despite everything, they seem to have gone out of their way to make it look cheap and nasty especially after touting it as a Hero prop grade replica that was used on the show. Which leads me onto something else I find quite annoying: the ill informed bullshit and deliberate misinformation that is fed to the punters at Tradeshows/Fairs/Conventions by the cocktards that man the manufacturers stands. This is no fantasy: I have seen and heard it first hand. Indeed, during the Toy Fair earlier this year I was told by the rather enthusiastic twit manning the Wow Stuff stand that the replica would be 100% accurate and many prototypes were given to the production team for use as the actual props on the show. And we now know what a bunch of hairy gonads that turned out to be. This even extends to the QMx stand at the recently held ComicCon where bullshit was bandied around so freely I thought I was on a farm. So it appears that the lesson of the day is to take some of these claims with a healthy dose of Sodium Chloride and actually think about the logic of these claims, especially from beardy weirdies waving around sonic screwdriver prototypes. Oh, and a pair of wellington boots wouldn't go amiss either!

Comparison Shots of the Perfetto Vs Powdercoat

I finally got round to painting one of my sonics in the Perfetto. Here's how the Eccleston sonic looks in the current powdercoat and next to the screen-accurate Perfetto crackle:

The difference is highly noticeable and makes a marked improvement, I think.

On a related topic, I had previously repainted the MFX in this screen accurate crackle and it has made it an altogether different and better beast. I wasn't happy with the crackle size so I stripped it down and repainted a second time in order to get the crackle more screen accurate and here's the result:

The result is, I'm sure you'd agree, freakily simlar to the finish on the DK sonic pictured third down.

A new kind of crackle

I've had some good news this morning. Remember a couple of weeks back when the QMx sonic news broke I decided to look into replicating their paint? I succeeded, as my findings have shown. However, in addition to my own experiments here in the workshop I also pulled in a favour with a chemist buddy of mine and we have been looking at developing a whole new industrial coating with industry leading figures for hardness, durability and substrate adhesion.

Well, this morning he delivered the following:

No, your eyes do not deceive you, this is an industrial coating that has the highest ratings for adhesion and hardness possible.

I am in a quandary now. The Perfetto solution is perfectly acceptable from the point of view of results but they are more random and less predictable as many factors can vary the outcome of crackle size, shape and distribution but it is that randomness which this type of finish is all about. The issue is the cost of handpainting all of them. It is incredibly labour intensive.

The industrial coating however is much more uniform, predictable and standardised. It can also be applied via automation with an exact amount of paint applied to each sonic and in a coating thickness that is identical from one sonic to another.

Do I invest more money, money I have already put into the powdercoat, into this new experimental coating? Indeed, will existing customers pay for the ungrade? I need to think about this and discuss the options with my chemist friend and see if I can economically put this stuff into production.