2003

The highlight of the modding year for me had to be getting on to the PR staff as a writer - the vacancy being caused by the continued absence of DarkSamurai, and the impending departure (temporarily, as it turned out) of Kayinstorm. I'd like to think I got the position due to me beig the best candidate for the job, but maybe it was because I was the _only_ candidate for it. Either way, I was very glad to see DS & K return to the fold after a month or so to share the load - after 30 days straight of posting, I'd damn near lost my ollies.

I think we've got a pretty good team for the "Daily Disturbance" section now - Kayinstorm brings a mixture of tales of woe & visually impresive mods to the party, Anathema brings a femine touch that is rare on tech sites, Ironserif posts his jokes, Darksamurai posts the same mix that he has from the beginning, and I bring ... let's just call it a mix of achievable mods, daftness, and downright weirdness sometimes. The newest member of the team, ZENNZZO, continues to impress - when it came to recommendations for another writer, ZENNZ was a close second on my shortlist of 2. I never doubted that he had the modding skills and ambition, I was just a little in doubt about his writing skills. I can only say now that I'm really pleased to have been proved wrong.

I see that other modding sites have tried to go with regular columns, with varying degrees of success. Naming no names, even the best of them don't have anything like the variety, quality or quantity that the PR DD team produces. With the same number of regular writers as some sites, we post one article a day - other sites struggle to achieve one a week. I think this is a reflection of the dedication & commitment of the PR staff in general - as a casual visitor (or even a dedicated forum member) you don't appreciate the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes. Put it this way, the way I look at is that I have 2 jobs: one is 25-35 hours a week (& doesn't cover the bills, but that's another story), the other is PimpRig - another 25-50 hours a week (and I'm by no means the hardest working member of staff) for no reward other than the love of it, a certain amount of glory, and the occasional bit of hardware to review ... some of which turns out to be crud and/or is not something I wanted or needed (again, another story).

Work on "Chickenhead" continued ... or should I say restarted. Like a lot of modders, I had three rigs on the go - one of which was finished (but subject to further tweaking), my "next" rig that was going to be the most ambitious & impressive thing you could possibly imagine (yet somehow always fails to materialise)... and the one I was working on at the time. Abandoning the "Channel Z" theme (due a high probability of it looking pants) meant I was in need of new inspiration. None came though, so knowing my current "next" rig (if you see what I mean) would involve a fair amount of work with copper sheet, I thought I'd get some practice in. Wanting to show off some of that copper pretty much dictated the "window" design & paint choice.

As with "Why Sheep?" before, "Chickhead" was a learning experience, allowing me to brush up my filling & painting techniques, and develop a bit more skill in the sleeving department. The biggest thing I learned was that anyone thinking they are going to get super smooth, super shiny, blemish free results from copper sheet is in for a world of pain ... the stuff distorts as easy as anything, and corrodes the moment you touch it. In the end, I learned to live with the imperfections, but I did find it very frustrating at first. I got a lot of work done in 2004, but it _still_ wasn't finished ... if I'd started a couple of weeks earlier I might have been able to get all the painting done before the winter set in, but I didn't, so the completion of "Chickenhead" was going to have to wait for another year.

2004

The beginning of the year saw my first review items arrive - an Antec Super LANBOY case & an SL350 PSU. The timing couldn't have been better, as it also coincided with the arrival of an ABIT NF7 mobo, XP2800+ CPU, HSF & a stick of RAM, thanks to the generosity of other members of the PR staff.

Since then, the quality (and/or usefulness) of the review items I've recieved has dropped ... but my reviewing technique has improved, so I'm not complaining. I'm still looking for another paying writing job (you would be too if you'd been doig data input for 8 months), and the more formal writing I can point to having done for PimpRig the better, as far as my jobhunting chances go.

Project "Chickenhead" was finally finished, and if the appluase wasn't exactly rapturous, I could see why. It was shiny, had a certain amount of style, and you could appreciate the work that had gone into it ... but it ended up being fairly plain, so although copper cladding hadn't been done before (afaik), the rig as a whole was no great showcase for it. The PSU was the best bit of it - if I'd used a clear plexi case it would have shown it (& the internal copper bits) off much better.

With no new rig to work on, modding continues, but on much smaller projects, like PSU Sleeving, fiddling with CPU heatsinks, ducting & fans, and Test PSUs.

The Future?

Well, I have lots of ideas for new rigs …

I've toyed with the idea of building (from scratch) a case something like the Guild Navigators' transport from “Dune” (the movie version), building (again, from scratch) a 6ft tall AT-AT (from “The Empire Strikes Back” & “Return of the Jedi” ) housing a full ATX system and a CRT monitor, complete with HD activity indicator lasers, and more recently with a more conventional tower case, incorporating cast concrete, moving water & live plant material.

Of the three, that's the one that's most likely to see the light of day, but on the other hand, I might come up with something completely different, and only let you know when it's finished.