Well, after that fiasco yesterday I had to shell out £115. Luckily I didn’t need a new ignition tube, so the £115 was just for the cost of thier time and for the cost of getting a new key cut.

The problem is, I am extremely unfortunate in that my keys are very thin at the start of the ridges, so it’s quite possible that my key will snap again sometime in the future.

Today, I thought it was about time I gave my car a good old clean out, vacuum the inside and wash the out, ready for my first day at my new job (since I didn’t want them to see how messy it was in there).

Just to clarify, it was VERY messy. There were old cans, bottles and wrappers everywhere, as well as some mud powder from when I gave my friend Chris lifts to and from his work, His muddy boots left a lot of muck everywhere.

So, back to today, I washed the car with little incident, cleaned it up all nice and sparkly, cleared out the trash inside got it looking as good as a 16 year old Nissan Micra can look. This is where the trouble started. I put my key in the ignition so I could start the car up and move it back round from it’s “washing spot” to its “parking spot”, as I did this, the key snapped in half inside the ignition tube and thus rendered the key mostly useless. The car was left in a very awkward place, blocking up 3 of the parking bays for the other houses in my cul-de-sac and the steering and brakes had locked up.

Brute force was not going to move the car, my parents were out and I couldn’t get any assitance from them, the only other person left was to try my Auntie. I gfot in touch with her and then she let my cousin’s husband know of my predicament. He works with cars so he offered to come round and give me some help.

Turns out I could still start the car up with a lot of wiggling about with what was left of the key fob and thankfully I managed to maneuver my car back to its parking spot. I didn’t have a spare key, since… Well, since that one had also broken a while back.

See, it seems to me, that my keys, I don’t know about other Micra keys, have a small fault in them, where the shape of them causes them to be rediculously thin at one point along the key’s length. Both keys had snapped at exactly the same place.

So now, it looks like I will have to get a new ignition tube fitted. Thank you Nissan, for your piss poor job at making keys that dont break easily.

I have been working hard on some new artwork (most of which you can find in the gallery) As well as some slight modifications too the website design. I felt that the site was a bit too dark overall, so I’ve re-done the background and headers. This is an ongoing process and I’ll be making some more changes adn tweeks as time goes on.

The first piece of new art that I want to talk a little bit about is the Nebula wallpaper. I have made three versions of it, one in 1440×900 (My resolution of choice), one in 1280×1024 and the last in 1024×768. I really do think it’s a beautiful piece, and I was inspired to create it after seeing a lot of the fantastic nebulae photos from NASA, as well as other wallpapers of the same ilk.

You can download the Zip file with all three resolutions here

The next piece is a Digital Matte edit (I believe that’s the proper term for it) of a photograph of the Syndicate Bank in London. This took me quite a while to produce, as I was learning new techniques and styles.

Working with custom brushes made from photographs that i’d taken I applied layer after layer to create a brooding, darkened, post-appocalyptic version of the bank. I’ve shown the original and my edit (credit for the original photograph is not mine) so that you can clearly see the difference.

I do love this one a lot, a lot of time and effort, and a lot of learning too, which is ALWAYS a plus.

As a sort of side note: I’ve also added a twitter box to the side bar, as well as a funky little library utility, so that (if you are interested) you can keep track of what I am reading.

-Steve