Author Archives: Rob Ellard

I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking about how many points you could score in Scrabble with that name if only you were allowed to use proper nouns and more than eight letter tiles. I know that’s what went through my mind, displacing all thoughts of Katy Perry on a Spacehopper.

Zwicky, you see, realised that some galaxies were travelling far faster than they ought to be compared to the observed gravitational mass of surrounding galaxies. Something else had to be exerting a force on them to give them this additional oomph. Something dark.

Of course, it would be easy to attempt to describe this further, using real world analogies in an attempt to make the obscure have some meaning. But Richard Feynman nailed it when discussing quantum mechanics: “It will be difficult. But the difficulty really is psychological and exists in the perpetual torment that results from your saying to yourself, ‘But how can it be like that?’ which is a reflection of uncontrolled but utterly vain desire to see it in terms of something familiar. I will not describe it in terms of an analogy with something familiar; I will simply describe it. I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‘But how can it be like that?’ because you will get ‘down the drain’, into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.”

I love a bit of Physics, me. So do a whole host of you, even those of you who don’t think you do, because you are currently looking at a page on the Stealthvape website.

We carry out little lab experiments every single time we build a new coil or construct our own box mods. We do stuff that today’s kids rarely get the opportunity to carry out in school because of a temporary relocation into a Geography classroom or thanks to Darren acting like a pillock and disrupting the class.

“I’m sorry, but if I can’t trust you to carry out experiments safely without attaching a power supply to Jeremy’s nipples then you’re going to spend the hour copying from a book.”

What I’ve always found sad is the volume of people who say they “can’t do science” or they find it dull. But then look at the enthusiasm vaping brings out in folks…Vapers may enter not being conversant in batteries, Ohm’s Law or mixing chemicals in the kitchen but the community acts like a free Open University for nicotine heads.

Isn’t it awesome to explore how different flavours interact when mixing up a DIY juice? Well, no. That bit is an utter PITA all things considered because after spending tens of pounds on assorted concentrates I never managed to titrate anything remotely vapeable. But then that’s Chemistry and, as every Physicist knows, that’s not a proper science anyway. Like Biology.

We are vapers therefore we are scientists – and we’re at the bleeding edge of modern physics research. Dark matter increases the velocity of matter…which explains why my tank empties so quickly. I can prove it: just look at your wick the next time you go to change it…dark matter everywhere.

I’m sending a bagful to dark matter theorist Dan Hooper at Fermilab in Chicago. Actually, thinking about it, I’ll hand deliver them so I can go call on Katy Perry.

Images courtesy of a delightful article here

It is clear from the abuse I’ve received this week on one social media platform that people adore to get into a tizz over nothing important. The advice I’ve always received from my wife is to ignore idiots when they’re doing stupid things. But what does she know? She never ignores me and my life is an ever-growing list of ill-advised actions.

Spending time worrying about the things no one else appears to be worrying about is just one of those imprudent time killers – and so I give you vaping kinemortophobics. It’s one thing to run out of juice during a working day, it’ll be another thing entirely to drop to the last bar of battery charge during the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

A cursory scan of the interwebz will pull up 12,200,000 results; buy a survival kit, advice of what essential components ought to be and how to ensure survival. From a feeble plastic device for a couple of quid to a full-blown £349 Gerber flesh-hacking kit, the apocalypse may not be imminent but the fears of one have produced an online market.

But what’s it worth? What is the point in staggering around hunting the undead and living off fried mice if there’s no vape? What the flip is going on vendors – don’t you care about us once the undead have risen?

Clearly not.

We care. We love you and want to live together on a boring farm like Season 2 of the Walking Dead. Vape Camp is going to be the go-to location for those who wish to avoid a non-life biting necks.

Firstly, get stocking that freezer. In the hours after the news breaks that the world is going to hell in a handcart you’ll need to DIY juice and fill multiple litre containers. Although a number of juice vendors think the mail service is going to continue to operate as normal (what with it already being run by zombies) the likelihood is strong that eliquid deliveries may suffer.

Next, batteries do not charge themselves. If you haven’t already got a solar charger (schoolboy error), hop in the car and ram-raid Maplin. If you haven’t already obtained a lifetime supply of cotton, silica and wire then you are going to have to be inventive with tampons and cables you strip from walls.

Which leaves devices: It’s not enough to have something that vapes. Stuff needs to double up. An eGo and an Evod may appear to be ideal for lightweight vaping on the run – but when you are stuck in a warehouse as the hordes close in the best they’ll achieve is close quarters eye damage. Throwing the kit to the other end of the room in order to make a distracting noise is probably the best use they’ll see (although incorrectly recharging it can start a handy fire for making a nice mouse stew).

No, just like an Igo-L will do nothing more than bounce off a decomposing face, the vape gear you need will have to be able to deliver serious damage as well as giving a rewarding cloud.

The solid structure of a Piccolo and Spheroid are more than sufficient to make puncture wounds and will cause brain damage to walkers. It should be noted that the drip tip will probably remain in the victim and infected blood will contaminate the wadding, rendering unable to be vaped. This is a one-use emergency killing device only.

Heft is what we need here. A simple box mod might be useful for inflicting blunt-force trauma, or tripping over a clumsy corpse. The thin walls and poor build quality will prevent these mods from repeatedly being able to keep you living and breathing.

Something like the 26650 Black Oak was made for the apocalypse. Nothing to break, serrated frontage and a massive bulk makes this the choice of champions. It will take out an entire horde and still function for that evening’s cloud chasing competition. Indeed, a decent cloud may help you evade death – something worth bearing in mind.

For the purist, the person who wants the ultimate in denying the undead an ability to exist, there are the twin vape weapons in the Ehuge and the Congestus. Crowds will gather to watch you expertly despatch staggering plague carriers. Mass and length turn these into impressive survival tools.

See you out there.

I’ve been riding motorbikes since I was legally able to. In many ways I feel the same way about bikes as I do vaping given the liberating experience they offer. Maybe liberating isn’t the best word? I ought to buy a load and post them to Tibet to see if it helps remove the Chinese. Defeated by your own atomisers, that would suck.

Perhaps that’s why the Subkangerlantis doesn’t come with instructions on how to use it safely? The Chinese know the sense of relaxation and joy that freedom from smoking offers, perhaps they understood the power of a sub ohm tank went far beyond the ability to chuck clouds in front of Wolf Hall to improve the viewing pleasure? Today your coils, tomorrow the world.

Bikes are ace. Pirsig’s Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance missed the boat on metaphysics. Sure, some people love to get involved in the workings of the engine but it’s the focus on the road that empties the mind. It’s an emptiness that induces a tranquillity of being; smoothly flowing from corner to corner while the skin sense changing temperatures and the nose is flooded with smells.

I find a slow vape the same – none of the immediacy of sub ohm clouds flooding the room but a gradual cyclical vape sending spirals of vapour curling and dancing airborne. Focussing on breathing, the flavours and the heated fog on my tongue is beautifully cathartic.

It’s why I don’t understand race reps. I don’t get motorbikes covered in plastic replete with their dayglo power rangers. I don’t understand the need to turn the B6047 from a road to bliss into an extension of Donnington race circuit. The residents of Great Dalby don’t understand either. They don’t know why every sunny Sunday brings the sound of baffle-free exhaust pipes expressing the rage of an engine hitting the red line limiter.

The B6047, like a whole number of roads around the country, is now covered in road signs telling bikers how many other bikers have died on it this year. I’m sure someone somewhere thought this was a great plan to reduce road casualties – in the same way they invented Take Me Out to put folks off having sex with stupid people – but it hardly seems to be working.

I’m certain danger perception just doesn’t get communicated through a sign or someone moaning on about it. If it did smokers wouldn’t have bought Death cigarettes. I feel it comes from experience, that the closer you get to the limit the more you appreciate the stuff on the safer side. Not just that but the knowledge accrued from experience.

I can service an engine like I can build an atomiser head, the months spent pawing Evods into life and coaxing mesh wicks away from the bright side developed an appreciation for the beauty of it: Pirsig’s gestalt, the coexistence of rationality and being in the moment.

Now, with Direct Access, middle-aged men can leap straight onto a Honda Fireplace and go at twice the legal limit. China has given the world direct access vaping: within 2minutes of taking up ecigs people desire a 0.000001ohm coil and a cloud the size of Luxembourg.

I don’t understand it but can I decry it? Nope. I’m too busy constructing Zen & the Art of Mechanical Mods.

The feeling of anticipation doesn’t lie in the train-spotter experience; it’s been a while since I’ve found looking at other people’s mods and attys remotely interesting. The joy of the Internet is not reserved to hunting out saucy pictures of cartoon ponies or shooting tanks – even if that is its main purpose – but online forums have an ability to suck likeminded folk together.

I’ve been fortunate to meet a collection of weird oddballs online that, if society had any sense, would be shunned by right-minded thinking folk. Weird oddballs who are right up my street and make me laugh – something BBC’s coma-inducing Miranda can only dream of. Of course, if you’ve been vaping for a while and using forums you’ll already know this: Vapers be like nice. In the main.

I’ve got juices that didn’t shine for me bagged up to give away, there’s a box with bits I sold all ready to be handed over to the new owner and now the slog comes…

To begin with each meet up necessitated that I take along my entire vape kit. I’ve no idea why, but I’d take bags full of wick, wire, juice and kit as if I had to prove I could coil to exactly one ohm after seven pints. This is a mistake – do not do it. Ever.

Each and every meet after this would see people thrusting all manner of atomisers at me. This went on for so long at the last one I barely had time to drink and could totally remember my name at last orders. My tip to the noob is this: pretend you are absolutely abysmal at everything; imagine you are vaping’s equivalent of Nicholas Cage, keen to do everything but unable to do anything in a convincing fashion. The less people rely on you to fix a short means you have more time for your quest to attain alcohol poisoning and your pub grub won’t get cold.

So my problem is this: I’m not taking anything other than a few tanks and a couple of mods. I need to plan ahead of time in order to predict what flavours I’ll be vaping over the course of 48 hours away from home. I have no concept of what type of curry I’ll be eating on Friday night, the chance of me successfully predicting what my vape whim will be on Sunday morning is non-existent.

And then there’s the battery issue: How come I find it impossible to leave home without taking the contents of Torchy’s ebay store with me? This is going one way, an ITV sitcom way because despite previous mistakes I know I’m going to end up repeating them again. Oh sod it – the wire can go in too.

The vape bag is empty but in an hour or so it’ll be bulging again. And come Sunday morning my head will be foggier than the pub was. And I’ll want to do it all over again.

Go to a vape meet.

A by-product of the liberation of Afghanistan has been spiralling opiate use. From the 2009 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Drug Survey, the four-year period witnessed a rise of 53% in opium use and 140% in heroin. This isn’t an attempt to make a simplistic direct correlation linking freedom from decades of war to drug abuse; I include this simply as an example that by attempting to solve a problem another has grown in its place. Whether caused by or opening the opportunity for, Aristotle told us “horror vacui” – nature abhors a vacuum.

Every Christmas brings with it a renewed push to eradicate drink driving from the roads. Almost universally supported, but the act of being drunk and in charge of something has been an age-old problem. In 1872 you could be prosecuted for being drunk in charge of a horse-drawn carriage, cow or steam engine – and yet as recently as 2009 a man was prosecuted for riding a horse while intoxicated while another ran a red light, inebriated, riding a pony trap in 2014. Strict legislation neither prevents nor alters the behaviours; education and a sense of freedom to make choices does. Banning or taxing vaping will achieve nothing but resentment and non-compliance in the same way that a teacher punishing the whole class for the actions of one errant child does.

Under the Town Police Clauses Act, 1847 a person could be fined up to £1,000 for hanging out washing or even flying a kite in the street. Having rid society of such menaces it is now possible to wander any town or city centre on a Friday evening without being disrupted by anti-social behaviour. In the same way that preventing the public beating of carpets didn’t cause drunken yobs to fight a century and a half later, actions and behaviours were replaced for people in high office to continue being concerned about.

In Management Control Systems by Merchant & Van der Stede, in relation to employees, they write that it’s impossible for individuals to enjoy following a strict set of guidelines for a prolonged period of time…they rebel. Merchant and Stede caution that people will fake report figures, call in sick, slack off or demonstrate any number of undesirable behaviours. If employees see what they are being asked to do as out of their control, not meaningful to them or simply unfair they will subvert their outcome.

Their ‘employees’ are analogous for the general public. If public health officials and politicians place strict mandates on vaping then it will be met with large-scale non-compliance because it is devoid of logic, unjust and seeks to control our free will. Like sourcing Snus from Sweden, markets outside of the EU will flourish for mods and juice. Global eMarkets will fill the voids created by insensitive and ill-considered legislation.

There are few whose lives have not been touched by cancer and yet alcohol (which causes 1,008,850 hospital admissions and costs the NHS over £3.5billion a year) doesn’t face the same controls that are heading towards vaping. Imagine the outcry if we were to be told that beer was to be limited to 3.6% and only sold in 100ml child-proof/drip-free bottles.

And no one mentions dementia and Alzheimer’s, the biggest killer of women and fifth largest killer of men in England and Wales. There seems to be a huge disparity and unfairness in the attacking of vaping, targeted as a result of dogma and vested interests, wholly disproportionate to the threat it poses to the population.

I strongly suspect that even if electronic cigarettes are forced out of the national consciousness it won’t free up many hours for public health officials – they will seek out new monsters to battle. A new war to be fought will rise up in its place, probably of equal or less threat to the fabric of society as vaping is.

My postmodern nihilism leads me to pose a further question: to what extent does Karr’s maxim, from the satirical Les Guêpes, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” hold true for our use of nicotine? To paraphrase: the more legislators attempt to change things for us the more they will stay the same. Afghans will remain at risk, cows will still have the occasional drunk owner and people wishing to use nicotine will still find a way to do so.

I understand the reasoning to try to improve the public health but surely that should only be if those members of the public want it improved and their actions pose a clear danger to themselves or others? The data doesn’t support legislation or taxation and, until it does, the de facto position cannot be to assume threat.

All I do know for certain is this: If they remove my liquids from me I’ll be buying an awesome kite and heading for the M1, and to Hell with the Town Police Clauses Act of 1847.

My parents owned records by Max Boyce and we holidayed in North Wales with my Dad’s rugby team – but not once did they mention leeches while I saw them collapse around a campfire in a field strewn with empty Watney’s Party Seven tins. You’d have thought an industry providing 42 million leeches a year to the UK market would be something to crow about? You know, like the low incidence of cholera in Wales in the 19^th century?

Wheels revolve, needs change and the inexorable crushing foot of progress tramples on us all.

You will have seen from the website that Cotton Bacon is now on sale. Not just that, a new form of nickel is here too – not only is Stealthvape probably the only vendor in the world stocking tempered nickel round wire, the product line has been augmented by tempered nickel ribbon.

More options for coils and wicks; advances, developments…change. I love shopping online, I can get what I want without ending up with pockets full of coins – I’m like that, I hate change.

I think it’s an age thing. I think you get to a point in your life where you want to say ‘alright, I’ve learnt lots of stuff and most of it has proven to be useless (especially the bits about celebrities, fashion and pastry making).‘ I think that is what lies behind the elder generation pining for the old days when you couldn’t move in your street for the police. A bit like living in the Notting Hill Carnival without the drugs, violence and annoying dancing.

I know I should ‘get it’. I appreciate that everyone who has adopted nickel coils goes on about how great it all is – it just makes me feel like when my Grandad was shown how to bodypop. I end up feeling awkward, uncoordinated and that the world is laughing at me. Again.

Louder.

It’s a desire for simplicity that has drawn me strongly to stainless steel and taken me away from the brass and copper that I adore. If there were a Facebook quiz analysing your responses to predict your favourite colour then mine would be a freshly polished copper hue. Although, saying that, given the abysmal record of Facebook quizzes to get the right answer that possibly isn’t a given. I mean to say, how the Hell am I ever “Sansa Stark, first daughter and second child of Eddard and Catelyn Stark”? Stupid Facebook quizzes.

It’s a quest for simplicity in the sense that as much as I love the look of freshly polished brass and copper – I loathe spending time doing it. Once upon a time I enjoyed it, the process was cathartic…but once upon a time I did many things I thought I enjoyed (like Facebook quizzes) before discovering the time could be better used to daydream, fiddle and any of a number of other forms of procrastination.

Wheels revolve, needs change and the inexorable crushing foot of progress tramples on us all.

Leeches have returned: Wales once more provides the three-jawed, 300-teethed mini monsters to a medical market. Maybe this means I can skip the revolutions in the vape world and just pick them up next time around.

The problem with personality is that there is no discernable cut off. It seems to me that it’s impossible to say some people are positive and others negative, it’s not a Boolean on/off function. I prefer the notion of intersecting rainbows where one end resides in a pot of gold and the other a vat with the dismembered body of Katie Hopkins filled up with excrement. But focus on the rainbows.

It’s this mental impression of personality that holds me to a belief that no one apart from Katie Hopkins is purebred evil. Pol Pot may have massacred between 2 to 3 million people but, by all accounts, he always sent his mother flowers and was a massive fan of The Two Ronnies – especially Ronnie Corbett’s seated monologues to camera.

The Spock-like logical side to me knows that mods, coils and atomisers have no soul. I fully appreciate the in-human nature of metal. And yet I can help but feel that sometimes, shortly before I wake up, they get together on the rack and plan out to the finest detail exactly how they’re going to ruin my day.

Just look at your box mod, now. Do it.

See that? See those buttons? They follow you around the room. I swear there’s a hive-like collective intelligence like that exhibited by a colony of ants. A single one is stupid – but lob a load of them together like the Argentine Ant super colony stretching 3,728 miles from Italy to Portugal. The same thing if you managed to clone Katie Hopkins and make a billion of them live together without access to Twitter.

No. Sometimes atomisers are egged on by the rest of the collection: “Go on, Gary, you’re nearly empty. You know he’s going to recoil you later. Just mess him about a bit for shits and giggles.”

And so that coil you’ve made a hundred times before, the one you know always runs in at 1.1Ω, gives an odd reading. Or the reading flits about. Or, halfway through vaping, the regulated mod finds the ability to throw up 1,000 watts. But mainly that the wick and coil that operate so effectively on a daily basis suddenly don’t wick juice.

Damn your hide, denizens of the rack, I know what you’re doing – I can hear your tinny chuckles. But it isn’t just that they conspire to mess me about, they constantly flummox me by simply working.

I’d put off getting the new Kayfun for a whole host of reasons. It struck me that the level of complexity of the device was overkill and that, combined with the cost, it would fail to reward me. Of course there was also fear. Not fear that I’d be unable to master the thing, more the fear that being a sizable lump I’d not want to be hit with it when my partner discovered I’d bought yet another addition to the collection. My expectations couldn’t have been lower, like when my daughter made me watch La Hopkins in an episode of Big House Full Of People No One Knows (apart from Cheggers and that vessel of spite in human form).

“Go on Sharon, mess with his head. He thinks you’re nothing – but there are two types of atomisers, those that do and those that don’t. Be the atomiser that does.”

For a while I’ve been accumulating more metal than a patient undergoing reconstructive hip surgery. Plans to cease buying things failed in the same way that I never gave up drink for January, never cut down on crisps and how the bicycle remains gathering a nice collection of cobwebs. The resistance to change, the force preventing me from clearing out those mods not seeing use, feels as though it increases the larger a collection gets.

Do mods combine their mass? Do they begin to exert a gravitational pull? I’ve not witnessed drip tips flying in orbit around the vape stand but I’m betting it happens. Probably when I’m asleep and the kids’ toys are playing around the house.

It’s the catastrophising mind-set I have; the worldview that if things go pear-shaped for vaping under the next government I’ll need to return to simple mech-based vaping…this, and the work of the evil vapers who drum into you the need for a backup to your several other backups. Damn you Pop Will Eat Itself, damn you and your “One’s too many, ten’s not enough”!

In March the collection finally numbered over twenty mods. Of that I only tend to use the regulated ones – so what purpose does a collection serve? How many mods turn you from a vaper into a prospective vendor?

One Internet advert later and eleven parcels sat waiting to be wrapped – and now I realise where the inertia to divest the collection comes from. I’m a man, I have man genes…we don’t wrap unless it’s in a gangsta style. My wife’s birthday present was tastefully presented in the packaging a bicycle rack was delivered in, with a side order of masking tape circumventing the joyous gift.

Packing up eleven items made me empathise with vendors across the country doing this on a daily basis. Not just the tedium of fighting tape, tearing skin from lips and slicing into skin with paper but also the worst bit – having to visit the Post Office.

Entering our local mail specialists is like climbing out of HG Wells’ Time Machine. You are flown back to a time where customers are as welcome as children talking in Victorian family dining rooms. The wonder of the modern age is that for most people, most of the time, we can avoid the ritual humiliation of the Amusement Park queuing-style system.

A woman employed for her observation skills noticed something was up. “You have more than one parcel,” she opined, the air now charged as clearly I had contravened the secret first command of posting. Other options were presented to me that included form filling. Exactly how difficult should sending mail be? Meanwhile, in the ever-growing queue, there had been a birth, two birthdays and one unfortunate fatality involving a greetings card.

I may have finally managed to overcome inertia and sell on some kit but I can’t see this happening again in a hurry.

By ‘say‘ I mean ‘shout‘, Brian was given to expressing every thought through the medium of barely concealed hatred of the world. Grammar school boys had clearly not been kind to him through the years. When not spitting contempt for our collective sins he was tasked with our class-based religious education. Line by line we worked our way through the bible, across five years, from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21. Well-meaning questions in the beginning became honed opportunities to raise a laugh and drive the Reverend into frenzy.

Brian didn’t teach; it was all or nothing proselytising. He expected his charges to be empty, willing and unquestioning vessels that he could pour instruction into. Failing that he expected them not to run or tell tales when he (frequently) beat and kicked anyone he felt was not taking the word of Brian seriously enough. Bruises would heal but the memories of the raucous laughter as he failed to understand irony live forever.

As vapers we are confronted by quandaries regarding proselytising on a number of fronts: whether or not to sing the praises of vaping to smokers, if we should advocate our position on sub-ohms & battery stuff and then there’s the whole political thing. If there’s one concept I took from the years of Brian’s bellows it’s that going head-on with a person about something invariably fails.

I’ve been struck by the number of disparaging comments about vapers I’ve seen or heard recently from smokers. A number of them don’t seem to like us. They don’t like us a lot. I always considered that I avoided all conversation on the topic of vaping unless it was bought up elsewhere. And then I caught myself offering a custard-loaded Squape to a smoker in a manner that shocked me. “Go on, vape it!” I extolled to the poor woman expectantly; withdrawing the gift the second the words dropped from my mouth and I realised the magnitude of arse that I was being. I lived to vape another day and no drinks were spilled but it has given me pause for thought.

Meanwhile, on a forum, the weekly debate over subohms has kicked off again and left me wondering why any of us care what others do? I’ve not once seen a person standing by the foot of a stage and hollering at Lemmy Kilmister, demanding Motörhead turn it down a bit. The volume they play at can damage hearing and might lead to stringent sound legislation thereby curtailing everyone’s fun…and yet no one seems to be bothered. But it seems to be impossible for some vapers to not lambast others because ‘it can reflect badly on all of us if something goes wrong’.

And then there are the campaigners; and a subset that holds fervour for their actions that borders on the fundamentalist. I’ve signed some petitions but nothing to the level to say I’m actively politicking, mainly because I have a fatalist view of what is occurring – but then this is my choice. What they, you and I all choose to do is just that, and isn’t the concept of ‘choice’ what harm reduction is all about?

I don’t fish or spend my time recreating meals from Come Dine With Me; I wonder if people who do those and other pastimes proselytise? “Go on, hold my rod! Try it! Go on, try it! Fishing is bloody brilliant!”