Cylon Build Part #1

Been a long while since I have posted anything on this blog.

However, I am in the process of building a Battlestar Galactic Cylon helmet.

I am keeping an update of the progress over here

A typical night out in Leeds

A Very Savage Affair...

59 Pages
59 Fabulous pictures
17 Great stories
6 Stupendous Poems
1 Fiendishly hard crossword
And its free!

Click here to get it

Leeds Savage Club in the Yorkshire Evening Post and....

A bit, well a whole page actually on the Leeds savage Club. Thats me on the left in the picture btw. You can read the online version here

Also, a blog post of interest by a fellow member Ivor Tymchak over here.

 

Hard Hats, Not Feathers -The Leeds Savage Club

LS-TW-024
Originally uploaded by Chance1234.com

February was a hectic month. You would be surprised at how much work it takes to resurrect a late turn of the century organisation. So much so, after signing and agreeing the constitution this Saturday gone. I am taking a well deserved break and will lazy copy and paste to a couple of other articles. Actually , I am very hectic getting the LeedsSavage.com site up and running ( we are missing a web officer at moment), but I will pretend, I am being lazy and enjoying that break.

From the Culture Vulture Site

A portion of Leeds’ Victorian history was brought to life this weekend at privately owned Temple Works in Holbeck, when the newly reformed Leeds Savage Club signed their constitution in the building. The enormous former flax mill built, by John Marshall in 1836, is in the early stages of repair for re-use as a major cultural venue, acting as a much-needed destination for the regeneration area that is Holbeck. During this period it is opening its doors to a wide variety of arts organisations who want to help build up the project. Though repaired, its raw state will be maintained as such – a perfect context for the “noble savage”.

Continue reading here 

and from Temple Work Site


On Saturday afternoon about a dozen people gathered in the boardroom of Temple Works to resurrect a roguish Victorian writer’s and artists’ group, The Leeds Savage Club. I can’t pretend it was the most incendiary meeting I’ve ever attended. How can you make poring over every sentence of a constitution and discussing every jot and tittle of a necessarily dry document exciting? Article 2, Paragraph 5, Clause 2 did cause some mild controversy, however, but not the heated debate I was hoping for. The boardroom was freezing. We were there for three hours, feeling the temperature slump by the minute. In the end people were wearing gloves, wrapping scarves around their ears, and hugging hot cups of strong tea. One guy even kept his hat on, though I suspect that’s some sort of Bohemian affectation. The constitution was ratified and rubber stamped though, and the Leeds Savage Club is raring to go and recruiting once more. Here’s more information from The Chief;

Continue Reading Here 

I must apologise

If you are reading this, then my attempt to cross the Channel by giant catapult has failed miserably. I would first like to apologies, if my calculations were slightly off and you have had the poor misfortune of scraping myself off the white cliffs of Dover - a most terrible task I would imagine. Hopefully you have instead, retrieved this off my body as it bobs gently up and down in the English channel.

This postcard was bit of an after thought, for you see, I was so confident in my planning, I did not make any arrangements for in case things went wrong. I also apologies for the saucy nature of the card, but it was the only one I could find at 4am in the streets of Calais. If the image offends you, just imagine the lady is merely leaning over that car bonnet to listen out for some engine trouble. Its unfortunate the wind has caught her dress.

In my right hand inner jacket pocket, you will find my wallet. There should be enough in there to run the following 25 words in the Times obituary section.

"Quentin Pollock, Inventor, Dreamer and transport visionary, passed away attempting to cross the channel by giant catapult. He hopes, he has inspired, and now passes on the gauntlet.

Really Sorry to bother you with this bruden, but you will also find in my wallet, the money for a pint of ale and a pie, I do hope this is satisfactory enough compensation. Once again apologies.

Quentin Pollock


The above was done for a task of the Leeds Writing Group, entitled "A Life on a postcard...."

5K Run for Barnardos

I am doing a 5K run for Barnardos on March the 14th. The above is an artists impression on me doing the run. Please sponsor myself, which you can do by clicking here 

You can also find out a bit about Barnardos, and what they do here

So we meet again...

First meet of the rebooted Leeds Sketching Group this sunday just gone and it was an opportunity to meet an old prehistoric friend at the Leeds City Museum

The Megalorceros Giganteus

Here is my sketch from 2009



















and here is the sketch I did this sunday gone

You can see the originals over here

New Drawings and Rebooting the Leeds Sketchers

It's coming up to a year since I started my drawing blog, so I thought I would start revisiting some drawings I did back then.

From January 2009, Here is my drawing of the tendons on the finger

And from January 2010, Here is my drawing of the tendons on the finger

You can view them full size and the original posts, by clicking here .

In other news, I have taken over the reigns of the Leeds Sketching Group, which sadly has been a bit dead for the last few months, but I'm hoping to reboot it, and get some life back into it. Our first new meeting is next sunday week. If you are a sketcher in Leeds then come along! details here 

Round House Leeds - Can Anyone chuck any light on this ?

I came across a newsreel on the pathe website from 1939, which shows a round concerete house, situated somewhere in Leeds. Sadly, not much google-able information is given, especially as the family at the house have the surname Smith. 

I have asked over at the secretleeds site, but that has drawn a blank there. Can anyone shed any light on it ? especially where it was and what happened to it. 


Click here to play the video 

Breaking News On The Latest Financial Meltdown

The Worlds Stock Market was in financial meltdown this monday morning, after a wave of panic selling which started late friday afternoon, continued to show no signs of stopping. On the trading floor of the Dutch Second Bank, traders who normally execute buy orders, sit by their phones, which have yet to have ring since the crisis started. On the other side, where the sell orders are exectued, it is bedlam as brokers clammer over each other and runners fail to handle the large volume of calls - a scene repeated across investment banks around the globe.

620 Billion has been wiped off the Dow Jones, 74 Billion from the FTSE and they continue to plummet. Looses not seen to this extent since the black monday of 1987, though experts have ruled making direct comparisons as the situation is vastly different.

It will be many days, if not weeks before the full impact of this crash will be felt. The government in response today issued an emergency 50 billion government bond in the hope to turn the tide of selling into buying.Many will question however, is it too little, too late ?

It seems also, we have learnt little from the recent sub prime market crash. As details of the of the current crisis, becomes more apparent:

Historically, the price of treacle has been linked with that of tuppeny rice, with approxiamatley three pounds of Tuppeny rice being worth one pound of treacle. This morning, the price stands at half a pound of tuppeny rice, half pound of treacle.

The cause being the complex financial instrument which is the Weasel. The Weasel was introduced initially as a safeguard investment, in the case of failed rice crop. Many saw an easy profit in these Weasels and they were sold and exchanged across the market without regulation. Some institutes, such as the now collapsed Barkmen Brothers took on so many other peoples weasels, they literarily "popped"

And that is how, when in years to come, when we ask what happened to our pensions and saving, is the only response we can give, as it the way, the money went.



The above was done for an exercise set by the Leeds Writing Group which was to take a verse of a song and write it as a serious bit of journalism. I had in mind a news broadcast when writing this, so its probably a bit comma heavy. If stories in finance are your thing, here is a piece I wrote a looong time ago, entitled Investment Bank Wo's

PlugIn for Posting Code on a WordPress Blog

Firstly a rant. 


IF YOU WANT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY AS A PROGRAMMER THEN;


Make sure you keep all your historic projects in check. Whether that be, making it clearly marked that it is abandoned, removing all instances of it from the web, or updating documentation/websites and pointing past users to newer versions. 


rant over. 


I have been helping out on setting up this wordpress blog for a Leeds based IT contractor who is posting up code samples amongst other things.  It has been a real pain finding a plugin that works (see above rant) and in the end, the blog is using Syntax Highlighter Evolved. I honestly couldn't tell you whether it was the best, because I gave up going through them, when I found the first one that worked. 

Mazzz In Leeds New Logo

@Mazzz_In_Leeds asked us to come up with the logo for her new shiny website, which you can see in situ here

Firstly I should really mention the star of the logo, the Magnum .44 or to give it, its proper name: Smith and Wesson Model 29.

It's a pretty useless weapon at the end of day; Its certainly not light, easy to conceal and smooth to handle, but it does look pretty damm cool. If you want to blow a large hole in a car door from about 12ft away, whilst waking the dead, I can't think of a better choice of weapon.

I wanted to give the logo a quite rough and ready appeal, there is very little photoshopping on this, apart from a bit of noise, joining up the separate scans of the gun (it would not fit on my scanner in one go!) and I had to duplicate one of the Z's

For about four weeks before starting on the logo,  I was on the hunt for suitable letters from magazines. Z proved to me the most difficult, until thankfully The Leeds Guide did a review of a pizza restaurant. The L is also from the front cover of this magazine.

One final thing to mention, is Mazzz In Leeds is up for the readers choice award, head  over to there, have a read of the stories and make your vote.

The Big Attack

11.03 am that is the official time that history will record as the start of the following events. Midday they would note that it was too late to stop it from happening.

Two hours later, out in the Thames estuary the first official sighting was made.

At 2.14pm, the Prime minister appeared on our screens and delivered the warning to the country.
Forty four minutes later and the government was to have been evacuated.
The riots saw that they did not make it.
Five pm when commuters should of been flooding onto the streets, they instead fortified their offices and hid.
The army had their barracades in place by six and seven thousand soldiers would lay down their life over the course of the night.
By seven the ultimatum came: "You have one hour to hand over one billion dollars"
It took over an hour of debate from the emergency goverment before replying "We do not give into mad scientists"
As Night fell over the city, the first of the giant rubber monsters came.
He was called "Glowing Laser Eye Fiend" and starting mowing down the east end of London.
Big Ben didn't get a chance to strike midnight as it was decapitated by "High pitch screaming looks like a wasp type thing".
An hour later, "Big thing with big claws" came along and started ripping up Soho.
The people in Westminister cried for joy when the tanks arrived and then cried in despair as “Glowing laser eye fiend” turned them into a big blob of molten metal and flesh.
At 3.17 am the RAF sent in their best, by 3.23, they were sending in their second best and 3.45 anyone who could fly a plane was being scambled.
The Evil scientist reissued his demand for a second time, this time for two billion dollars and it only took the emergency cabinet a second to respond with "WE DO NOT NEGOTIATE WITH MAD SCIENTISTS".
In the twilight hours, the Japanese arrived and in a back street near Trafalgar Square they began to assemble their secret weapon.
As dawn rose, “50ft Giant Ninja School Girl” was ready and racing to our aide.
“High pitch screaming looks like a wasp thing” was knocked out of the air by a single flying kick, tearing up the turf in Hyde park as it hit the ground.
“Glowing Laser Eye Fiend” put on a good chase for forty minutes across the south London boroughs, but thankfully was bought down by a Skillful thrown Shruiken.
“Big Thing With Big Claws”, didnt even put up a fight and lied down in the middle of Carnaby street like a cat caught with the cream.
 Sadly “50ft Giant Ninja School Girl” didn’t make it in time to stop the evil mad scientist escaping in his rocket, however England was safe once more.
As the nation sat down for elevenses, the country tuned into the radio and heard the new prime minister reitereate joyful and defiantly "We do not negotiate with mad scientists"

This was done as one of the tasks for the Leeds Writing Group. The task was 24 hours, 24 sentences. 

Last Receipt From Borders

I braved the crowds this morning to see If I could get any last minute bargains at Borders in Leeds. There really isn't that much left, just about six tables packed with books and judging by how busy Leeds has become this lunch, I am guessing probably very little now left.

Most of the titles left seemed to be romance novels, children's books and books by second rate comedians and ex soap stars. Dragging the rear were a few by authors which I think belong in the eighties.

Still, managed to pick up a copy of Richard II, script to the play Miss Julie(which I have seen several friends in several different stage versions of - sometimes too much of said friend) and also a book I remember doing at school called "I'm the King of the Castle" by Susan Hill; which coincidentally I happened to be talking about the fish scene to Mazz In Leeds the other day.

The rest of my selection was a bit random with novels set mainly in the Victorian period  in the hope I can get some ideas for future DAC stories.

Its a real shame that Borders is closing its doors. Between them and the nearby Waterstone's there was always a good bet that if one of them did not have a book you were looking for the other would. I think in general, I probably bought more reference books from Borders than anything else. It is also going to leave quite a blank space on the Brigatte and with several other shops displaying closing down signs,it is not looking to bright.

Beauty and the Beast

following on from approaching Leeds from the east
I attempted the same from the west this sunday gone, however the weather was not on my side and I cut short my walk which meant I did not get as many photos as I wanted.

Approaching from the west is a pleasant contrast to the previous walk and it was nice to see lots of people using the path and there was abundance of wildlife to be seen en route, including this fella.

Shortly after passing him was when the heavens began to open and instead of walking directly back along the canal path, I decided to cut off the corner and walked through the suburbs to get back to the centre on doing so I passed the former site of Leeds International Pool.

The Pool was built in the sixties and as local legend has it, the architect John Poulson who five years later would be up on corruption charges, didn't factor in the width of the pool lining, thus making the pool one inch too short for international competions.

There is a great write up and urban exploration photos up here from January 2008 and some more of my own photos from Sunday are in my THIS IS LEEDS set on flickr

Leeds Victoria and Hunslet Mill

Went for a walk last sunday along the canal heading east into the city of Leeds. Firstly, boy does it stink and a lot of the tow paths were closed, so a fair chunk was spent walking around souless industrial estates.

Did however come across this place which from what I have been reading was the Victoria and Hunslet Mills.  The site is quite large and the black and white image below shows what it would of looked like in the fifties

I found the B&W image on the 28DaysLater site, which has a thread that gives a bit more about the history of the place and some inside photographs.   The Photographs I took up are up on my flickr account

MotorHead at the 02 Academy Leeds

You don't describe a Motorhead crowd, it is normally used as a simile and those of you who take an interest in the arts of crowdo'measurelology would not of been disappointed by the crowd last night. Conversations were rife about whoes head was who in the crowd shot on x dvd's, old battle stories were being swapped as season veterans rattled off lists of concerts venue. There was enough leather in the room, that any passing cows who happened to pass by and look through the window, would of thought they were looking into Dante's Inferno and then proceed back to their bretheren and started suicide cults.

It goes without saying the audience was only dressed in one colour - black.

The night began with the Amazonian (though all breasts in check) Girlschool opening, a little slow to get going in their first couple of numbers, but by the end of their set had laid down just that perfect balance of distorted guitar to wet the appetite in preparation for the main course of Umlaut.

Next up were the Damned who last time I saw them was at the Kentish Forum four years ago and my viewpoint was this . I was thinking about taking some front on grainy images this time, so I could flick between the two to create some sort of 3D captain sensible, which I m sure was the ambition of many a school child in the eighties.  The Dammed played an extremely tight set and were absolutely full of beans with Vanian being on top form.

Then onto the main act itself and if it was disappointment you were after, then you would of been disappointed as it got off to an explosive start.  My first reactions were how much I missed vinyl as the crisp studio remastered digital copies of the songs on my ipod have removed all those wonderful , slight off notes and guitar strings scratches and whilst the computers can make things nice and crisp, I prefer my motorhead raw and that it is exactly how it was served last night.

Do I need to mention it was loud ? Yes I do, I believe by asking if I need to mention it and then by mentioning it , I can add to the stress that it was loud - would you want your killed by death any other way, I think not.

Mikkey Dee's drum solo was made of the stuff that could make the world a better place and politicians should take note. I think it would be an understatement to say that the lad had some energy.

The highlight of course was hearing Ace of Spades as the devil intended it , though I must also say some of their new material they played was worth the price of the admission ticket alone.
All in all, everything you could of wanted from a motorhead gig with an added dollop of loudness and rawness.

Ps. To the dollop who standed behind us and threw his beer straight up instead of forward - your doing it wrong.