Rob Karloff

From the Collins dictionary : professional ADJ 1 of a profession 2 taking part in an activity, such as sport or music, as a means of livelihood 3 displaying a high level of competence or skill ? a professional and polished performance 4 undertaken or performed by people who are paid ? professional golf N a professional person There are many, many careers that do not involve an apprenticeship. Does that mean that those people are not professionals...?

Sorry, but both Ash and Lee have been taught by and worked for professional artists. Maybe you should call Retro Rebels and ask their professional history and experience before passing a comment like that.

I suppose that would have been a treat for you compared to the usual horse and carriage huh Flash...

Haha, none actually. Andy is a good friend, he built the gearbox for my project australian muscle car and I sponsor his Victor through my business. The car is even more impressive in the flesh! PS : Sorry fudge, they started it eh

Not all Vivas are like that...

You can go too crazy with the aftercare too tho. I know someone who was slapping the creams and moisturiser on every few hours, this keeps everything too wet and lets the ink back out the skin also. It's all about sensible happy mediums. Just like any injury, you want to keep infection out, promote healing, let it breathe and let your skin form its protective scab layer and then get rid of it when it's good and ready. Keeping the colours looking good post-case is simply a case of keeping the sunblock on if you're out in it. I have some mad yellows, greens and oranges (as well as white, always tricky!) in mine, but by keeping them factor 50'd when the sun is doing it's thing they remain as they should and look sharp.

Everyone heals differently. Also some colours have a tendancy to kick out more than others. Many people also do not take proper care during healing, go out and get drunk after, pick or itch the scabs etc. So, the healing of a tattoo, like any cut or skin damage you might do to yourself, is down to the individual and the regime of care they follow. Some parts of my backpiece (done by Caledonia Sun in Stirling) involved a lot of work over certain areas of skin, meaning they were pretty painful after and scabbed a lot. However, I took very careful care of myself while it was healing and there was very little ink kickout. Nappy rash cream like Bepanthen works great on tattoos. I suffer eczema and have allergies to many moisturisers and suchlike, so I wash down with luke-warm clean water (no rubbing or touching), pat dry with a towel and then apply a thin layer of Savlon morning and night for the first 5 days or until the pain is gone and the skin has started to scab off. Then I keep the same washing and pat dry technique and use Boots skin lotion over it twice a day. Another tip is to remove the cling film at night on the day you get your tattoo, give it a wash down with luke-warm water and *do not* try and wash off the gunk/ink left on your skin. Pat it dry of water with a towel, apply the Savlon thinly and carefully all over and leave it at that. The gunky stuff will dry out and help as a protective layer and the air getting to the skin will help with healing. If you itch in your sleep then tie your hands together or something eh

Si, senore... Bravo!!

The day before my birthday. I love you Fudge. And I love Thus Deeth.

The guy in the kilt was indeed Gary the gardener, he's still a gardener and was round my house Sunday night dropping some tools he borrowed back to me! I'm still friends with his ex Anna (who I went out with for a while a few months after they split up!), and actually played pool in Rileys with her and "Wee Anna" back in November. Wee Anna is still a formidable gal and not to be messed with unless you want your balls kicked into your lungs!! Grim is still pretty much the same as he's always been, still see him from time to time and people still seem to think we're related. I guess we did both had similar styled beards for a good while years back (he still has it, I don't!) and are both big strapping loons. Helen with the green obsession is still on the go too, I know her well and fixed up her bloody Mini (old style one) and MOT'd it last april... Paul Fettes and his other half Helen (different Helen!) I know very well, Paul is still punx as fook and both of them took off to the other side of the world a few months back and are currently lounging around Australia having already done Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc. They will be back in a few more months. Penfold is also a very good friend, I always get a kick out of how youthful he looks in photos that Dawn has from their youf... He is still punx as fook too but wife, kids and job keep him busy so I only see him when there is a good DIY or punk gig on and he is not working. Dawn can be found most friday nights in the Moorings of late, haha! She still defies age with amazing ability, I think she made a pact with the devil and will live forever while harvesting the souls of men in return. My memories of the palace are fucking awesome, I used to drink between 10 and 14 pints of the crap they dared to call McEwans lager (pound a pint, remember that!! Johnny Mac will...), and top it off with several house whiskey and cokes which was basically like drinking meths. Me and my flatmate would jump the queue for the cloakroom, be obnoxious to everyone, stagger to the kebab place around the corner, then stagger all the way back to our scummy shithole flat in holland street, stopping to buy porn and a dodgy meat pie from the 24 hour Stephens Porno Palace on the corner. Ah the joys!! I also never got ID'd, not even once, and I was only past 17 when I first went there with my older sister and a bunch of her crowd from Uni. I remember vaguely one time when Stan and Eddie were actually ID-ing everyone coming to the door, so I drunkenly start fumbling for my wallet and Eddie goes "You're alright mate, you ugly cunt!". Haha! I wasn't sure if I should be proud that I looked old enough or be offended! Me and my flatmate used to start our night off in the Wild Boar about 9pm where the One-Up dudes would be DJing Mudd Club esque stuff and hip hop. That was when the Wild Boar was also a slightly scummy student bar and actually had a nice vibe, shame they "improved" it.

See, I was quite happy to let sleeping mutts die and all that after he so nicely apologised to me in the Moorings early last year. You stay out of my way, I'll stay out of yours. But then someone recently mentioned to me this little MySpace gem here, from the middle of last year. I thought it was quite laughable that someone would extole that they were a whole 27% below perfection at something, but I particularly liked that I got dragged back into it unawares. Myself and many, many others have had quite good comedy mileage out the "In your face, Rob Karloff!" part of late, but I thought it would be fun to wait for an opportune time to "return the ball", so to speak. You may have noticed that since departing from full-time corporate work and starting my own company beginning of 2005 that I have been notably abscent. This is partly due to a loss of interest and inclination, and partly because there are lots more fun things to do with your free time when you're not working. But that doesn't mean I can't have a little fun now and again, does it? The funniest thing for me is the nicely off-key crooning in the track that opens on the profile itself... Must be that 27% fighting back eh

If you write and direct it, will it only be 73% good....? IN YOUR FACE JONNY LUCIFER!

At the least, Hammond will develop a sense of caution he perhaps didn't have before or didn't particularly pay much attention to. A few years back, Micke Kagered had a rear tyre delaminate on our dragster at 302mph at Santa Pod in England, resulting in a 7-time barrel roll through the field of stubbles beside the shutdown area. He sustained a slight back injury that he still gets annoyance from today, and had a nice pair of black eyes from the Gs of the rolls, but was otherwise unhurt. Before the accident he was the most determined and focused racer in the FIA pro series, but since then he is a lot more cautious about anything the car does out of the norm, and spends longer checking the car over himself pre-run. He always bought the best safety equipment available and kept it in pristine condition, and this played a part in his lack of injury. I don't think he'll ever regain that racers "edge" he had, and I don't think Hammond will ever regain that similar character either. Near death accidents change you in many ways, this is something i know first-hand. It's great to have him and the show back though!! Excellent start to the new series, and a great way to inform/satisfy the public, demonstrate that safety was paramount at all times, and to draw a line under it and allow everyone to move on.

Volt were fantastic!!! They sounded immense. Cheers Shaz

http://www.myspace.com/karloff http://www.myspace.com/thegrit

Valves are never my problem, it's the cheap shit quality transformers they seem to be using in Marshalls these days. My EL34 50/50 has one Drake OPT and one Dagnall OPT, and the Dagnall is now toast (It crapped on me playing through one of the Laney 4x10 cabs at Toms last practise). The OPT in my JCM2000 head is also crispy fried, I haven't looked to see what brand OPT it has as I'm still pissed off that it's eaten OPT number 3. My action plan is to fit Drake units to all my amps, either the same unit as in the B channel of my 50/50 or the spec of OPT used in the 100/100 so that all my amps run over-sized OPTs. In terms of valves, unless you're spending money on old valve stock units such as the Siemens in my JCM800, one brand is as good as another. As someone pointed out, only 3 or so valve plants exist in the world now, and I'm pretty sure at least 2 are in Russia. Groove Tubes and many other "brands" are the same damn valve with a different logo on them, despite what the marketing garb tells you. The only thing you need worry about is installing 2 or 4 power valves with as close a match to each other as you can get. Even most matched sets from Marshall or whoever still have a significant variation from one valve to the next, so the only way to really do this is to have a good stock yourself, or trust that a supplier such as Watford Valves will send you a pair or quad as close as they can get! The closer (and therefore better) the valves are matched, the more you pay. But the service life will be MUCH better, and general sound quality should be more even. In a Marshall, one half is a push, one half a pull (so 1 push 1 pull in a 50W, 2 push 2 pull in a 100W). Ideally you want the combined values for the push to be as close to the combined values for the pull as you can get. If you shell out for pricey matched sets, then make sure you get the spec sheets for those sets, partly for this purpose and partly so you know your valve supplier has actually spec'd them! To be honest, as long as you're putting the same type of valve in as you're taking out, you do not run a huge risk of causing damage to the amp. You'd be VERY unlucky to have a valve of the same type be far enough away in performance compared to the old one to cause damage. So, if you're in a bind and have the valves to do it, whack them in and play. Swap the entire set if possible to further minimise. If it's from a push-pull design amp, swap them over and keep them in the same grouping as they were in the amp you swipe them from. Mis-matched speaker cab and head impedance settings are the real amp killers, not some un-biased valves. Modern amps like the JCM2000 series are simple to bias if you have a good quality multimeter. Don't bother if your meter cost less than 100 or hasn't been calibrated in donkeys, any measurements you might take would not be accurate. You can't even cheat by taking the existing bias measurements and setting the new valves to the same, as the valves wear the bias reading will change. Marshall have a service department down at the factory. Phone the main number and ask for it, they will organise the pickup of your amp from a business address by courier, and an engineer will call to advise what work is needed and the cost. We recently had Sid Karloff's early Mk II JCM800 2204 serviced by them as well as the Mant's very old/worn and abused JMP bass series head (which sounded like death when they got it). The cost was reasonable, and both sound very crisp and punchy now.

It was le rock.

We killed Elvis. No-one's beaten that yet... 8)

I thought Metallica looked and sounded tired. The new track I heard at the start of the set was boooooring. They had none of the energy displayed when they made a surprise appearence before St Anguish a couple of years back! To cap it off, some meathead, who wouldn't let me past as I tried to head up the hill to go back on the Retro Rebels stall and let Mat see some Metallica, decided to punch me in the back after a pushed past anyway. So I whacked him a beauty in the nose and sent him flying. Spent the rest of the night pissed off like fuck with a sore back and swollen up hand. Managed to catch ColonOpenbracket, thought they put on a professional show even though its not my kind of music. Good to see Marty get some sucess after years of good work. Thought their drummer was very solid and impressive, playing to synth tracks is not easy and he was flawless. Lordi were good, I managed to get into the tent and they entertained as usual. Again not music I would buy or listen to, but I appreciate their stagecraft and show. Sick Of It All were blinding as always, loved the set, loved the circlepits, loved singing along at the barrier!!!

Yas min, just got home to find I'm going to Bahrain with the raceteam! http://www.eurodragster.com/news/news.asp Same car we used back in November, just going to pull a burnout on each day of the meeting.

Around 7000hp. We use Nitromethane, not gasoline, and we also have a honking great supercharger on the motor too. But its mainly in the fuel. Direct drive, through a 5-disc clutch system via a reverser and into the biggest rear axle you ever saw. I don't think the restricted V10s will be that great to be honest, you have the penalties of weight and size over a smaller V8, plus choking a motor is no way to make good power and delivery. No matter how you do it! Their only advantage may be reliability, as a de-tuned V10 should hold together a lot better than a balls to the wall V8. But, what good is reliability when most of the pack will piss away from you for most of the race? Not that many will blow up, leaving you to come home mid-to-bottom of the field.

In general, the V8 rule will make for an interesting ballgame. Their are a lot of engine builders in the current F1 game who have a very good track record with making V8s produce good reliable power. Cosworth in particular were at one time king of the V8s. The nice thing about a V8 is the relative lack of stresses you have to somehow balance and absorb. 4-stroke, 8 cylinders, and with the low overall displacement you can go with a nice sized bore and very short stroke, meaning pretty good RPMs for a V8 design. For comparison, the V8 in the dragsters I run is 500ci displacement, billet aluminium block, heads, connectings rods, etc etc and is good for 8500rpm maximum before it starts to self destruct. The average production car V8 is usually good for 5-6000rpm. Quite a bit less than the V10s were jumping up to huh?! I reckon the best V8s will be making around 700hp or thereabouts. That's quite a lot when you think about the lack of displacement they'll be running!! Toyota may fare better this year because of it, I think their biggest problem with their car last year was a lack of sheer power. They have good V8 experience in other motorsports though. The rather middle of the road drivers they have will be the ultimate limiter for their performance I think. They made a mistake when they gave Alan McNish a rough time, witnessed by their continued poor success after and his instant return to success once back in a good team with a good car. Interestingly, after our performance at the FIA invitational dragrace at the Bahrain circuit back in November the track and crown prince had requested both Top Fuel cars remain at the track and that we come back out to put on a small demo before the start of the F1 GP. I'm still waiting to hear back from Sweden as to whether this is all happening, but I hope it is!! Quickly burn some rubber and make some serious noise down the dragstrip, then stick the car in the garage and go watch the GP from the Sakhir tower!!! If it doesn't happen then I have to organise getting the cars airfreighted back to Germany and picked up and taken back to Sweden so we can get them stripped and prepped for the start of our racing season in June.

Tyrell did not have an aerodynamically good car to start with. But, it did add significant gain to those cars who had a stable airflow pattern over them, such as the Ferrari. They may not look like much, but those 2 wings added together to give a good few square cm of wing area. The big advantage was you could put them right up in the clear airflow going over the top of the car and not impact the flow to the rear spill area and delivery of smooth air to the rear wing. It may look like a flimsy stalk they're held on, but carbon fibre works best in compression and even a thing support like that can take serious loading. Hence why they also make their suspension control arms and struts from carbon.

You have to remember that testing results don't mean an awful lot in terms of GP performace. When you test, you run to test specific parts or scenarios, rarely will teams give it a balls-out run just so they top the press coverage of the test session. Most prefer to work away doing what they're there to do and keeping their actual performance level secret until the racing starts. The tracks are never the same as at an event, no matter how much prep goes into them. This I know also from the testing sessions we've done ourselves with the dragster. McLaren have already openly admitted they're struggling to keep the gears in the back of the car, either running fine or turning the insides of the box into expensive paperweights. But, they always overcome these kind of things. Button will be very lucky to win a race this year. Rubins is a fierce driver and he's often consistent with it. The BAR car and team are very good, but I don't think Button quite has what it takes to get over the peak of that personal performance hill. I think Williams will have a much better year, maybe as much as 4th behind Renault, McLaren and Ferrari. I believe they will find themselves in a mid-field tussle with a very strong Red Bull, BMW and Honda. Red Bull I think will show the biggest improvement this year, only 1 year after being dejected and sold by Ford! They have solid drivers (Coultard is one of the best drivers, and has been very unfortunate to have been saddled with an unreliable car since Hakkinen left McLaren), and now they have serious money going in and technical talent with it. Watch out. My money is on Raikonnen for the title. I think McLaren and Renault will be very close, but I get the feeling despite the win last year that the Renault program does not have the full shoulder of Renualt behind it due to the cost and all the other issues around Briatore and Alonso that have occurred since.

I didn't need to see that at all. Craig and James look pretty into it huh?! I must upload my camera phone pic of Craig made-up like a pirate with a big curly black moustace painted on his face from that party a few weeks back. Haha.