Stuff What I Made

As a cash strapped electric guitar playing teenager, one of my hobbies was making effects pedals. Many of them were made from plans in those cheap paperbacks that you could buy in the high street electronics shop Maplin. In the age of buying almost everything online, it seems almost absurd now that there were such shops, but I digress. Anyway the paperbacks in question (invariably penned by the prolific R.A. Penfold) contained all sorts of weird and wonderful gizmos, many of which I took a crack at, but the only device that I really needed and have hung on to,... [Read More]

While this wasn’t my first mountain bike, it was the first one I put together myself, and the first that I paid for (insofar as you technically pay for anything when it’s through pocket money). The frame was aluminium, the hot new material at the time, purchased from one of those multi-page Merlin Cycles ads in MBUK. It was some kind of mass produced no brand affair, will no frills at all and probably on the heavy side, but at the time it felt pretty special. [Read More]

There used to be a jumble sale in the church at the end of the street in which I grew up. (Actually, as far as I know it still runs.) One year, I decided to buy myself a pram. As I was wheeling it back along the road, an old fellow noticed me and exclaimed “that’ll be a guider!” or words to that effect. [Read More]

When I was about 9 or so, I got my sweaty little mitts on an Usbourne book Fun With Electronics, from a children’s book shop that used to be on Comiston Road. [Read More]