Author Archives: Rob Ellard

“Bad News for People Using E-Cigs,” runs the headline penned by the mighty Frank Milhorn. What do you mean you’ve never heard of Frank? It’s Frank bloody Milhorn, author of such giants in the literary world as “Signs of recovery in the bingo market“, “The annual shed of the year competition“, and “Ghosts are swimming in water“. See? We knew you had heard of Frank.

Frank knows everything, and if he says there’s bad news for ecig users then you can be certain he’s correct, he never makes a mistake. He begins: “It has been reported that E-Cigarettes, commonly called Vapers…” Oh. Never mind, everybody can make a mistake, let’s continue.

“It has been reported that E-Cigarettes, commonly called Vapers, actually contain more cancer causing substances than traditional cigarettes, including increased levels of carbon monoxide and various other chemicals which are unstable organic compounds.”

Hmm. This doesn’t run true, Frank. Are you sure? Increased levels of carbon monoxide – coming from a product that isn’t combusting? Maybe things will pick up in the second sentence.

“It is also revealed that these vaping devices can contain over 80% more nicotine than a traditional cigarette, meaning you are taking in far more of the poisonous chemical every time you puff.”

Frank, Frank, Frank. Maybe it was the Californian equivalent of a boozy Bank Holiday, maybe you started writing your article shortly after suffering a major head trauma, but you’ve cornered the market in some funky alternative facts here.

“E-Cigs use nicotine laced liquid, which creates a vapour which contains the same kind of chemicals a normal cigarette does.”

Hold on there, the same kind of chemicals? I thought you’d just said there were more chemicals? It’s hard to keep up because you’re flying through this so quickly (what with you being the expert). Can you explain clearly what the main problem might be?

“There is an argument saying that people will ‘smoke’ more using these devices, for unlike the traditional cigarette, where you smoke it down, and you have a visual that stimulates the brain letting it know you’ve had a cigarette, these don’t shrink in size, and many people are using them as a type of pacifier.”

That’s handy to know, and gives us a great idea for a new Stealthvape vaping product: the Stealthvape shrinking mod that gets small the longer you use it; it’ll be a surefire winner, everybody will want one. Well, they will as long as they haven’t read Frank’s article and been convinced by the power of his words.

“Though we know that smoking is bad for you, it is said by experts that these electronic cigarettes will never be as safe as smoking a conventional cigarette. If you are one of the many people who have been considering giving up smoking and have considered using an e-cig as the way to help wean you off your smoking addiction, then maybe it is time for you to think again!”

We salute you, Frank – you have managed to construct the single worst piece of writing on the subject of vaping we’ve ever seen. His work can be read on the Democrat Gazette in all its glory, if you’d like to leave a complementary message.

The mood music surrounding vaping has changed over the years. Once upon a time vaping was like an independent, free, underground club scene. We danced to our own beats and stayed up way past bedtime. We were the cutting edge of harm reduction; we were so cool it hurt. We were the Marc Bolan to the establishment’s anti-smoking beribboned, roadside sycamore tree. It would only be so long until they tried to end us.

The Tobacco Products Directive is slowly beginning to become a day-to-day reality for a number of people in the UK. Across the channel, other vapers are discovering that 2017 is not quite what 2014 promised. The Czech republic is driving through a series of measures that includes bans and restrictions. The Prague Monitor points out that the benefit is that everything will be more expensive: “The binding directive is advantageous because it will bar suspiciously cheap and low-quality products from China, where there is no guarantee, from entering the market“. Yes, like a twist on the Marks & Spencer slogan: it’s not just cheap – it’s suspiciously cheap!

The Labour Party in Wales tried to force through measures to ban vapers from doing something relatively harmless to others anywhere they could be seen. Like we were all sucking on a portable breast in public, puritanical health experts and politicians wanted to lock us away in special toilets. Well, maybe not toilets. Maybe a restructured dungeon in Harlech castle. Or something.

To what extent is it our fault that people began to try to shut us away and take away our toys? Were we too young and beautiful, did we make Martin McKee gaze into his mirror and gently weep? Were we simply shining too brightly?

Or was it the people who thought it was perfectly acceptable to go around vaping in supermarkets? Standing next to the meat counter, asking for *half a pound of brisket, and exhaling a menthol cherry cloud? *(For those still struggling with imperial-metric measures, half a pound equals 0.76 litres)

Does vaping etiquette even matter any longer? For a while it was one of the great debating points on ecig forums – but since the advent of the “We get it, you vape Bro!” memes it’s like we are as cool as Piers Morgan at an Under-18s disco.

So, as we look to the future, if vaping poses 95% less risk than that delivered by cigarette smoking, then the danger posed by second-hand vape is less than the chance of, err, Piers Morgan (again, it’s an open goal) being liked by anybody. But, even if we escape a clampdown on public places we still have venues to contend with. Individual places still restrict vaping for no other reason than it looks like smoking. Vaping will be banned in areas surrounding Japan 2020:”The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry is considering measures against passive smoking for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games. The International Olympic Committee and the World Health Organization agreed in 2010 to realize ‘tobacco-free Games’.”

So, maybe a better question than where do you do it is where will you still be able to vape yours?

The thing is: words change. Meanings, over the course of time, ebb and flow. One minute the words ‘bollocks’ describes a group of medieval vicars, the next it’s on the cover of a young beat combo’s LP. What? You don’t know what an LP is? What do they teach people at school these days? All flower arrangements and how to ask how everybody is feeling today, I suspect.

Then, the word goes on to mean everything that awesome. For example: “This car/nailgun/crack pipe is the bollocks!” *You can now study for a degree in swearing, this is true, that’s how far education has fallen. Which all may be a bit off topic, but don’t worry about it because we are on a journey in the new Vauxhall Bollox and will be arriving at our destination in approximately five more paragraphs.

Some will recall the advert that included a sexy lady vaping as though she was giving a man oral pleasure. It sent shivers through the establishment. Once upon a time they’d never be able to shut up about the Romany bint (with a field and her paints, suggesting we feint at her beauty). Heavens to Betsey, they hollered, and threw their hands to the sky, while The Telegraph described it as “sexy as watching someone gutting fish“.

But, faster than you can say “You see an awful lot of sideboob in shower adverts these days“, the paradigm has well and truly shifted – and thanks for that has to go to the daughters and sons of Henry Ford.

In the 1990s Dennis Hopper was in-demand cool. Once, at the centre of youth culture, he was a cult figure. Then he went through a period of wearing corduroy jumpers and dancing badly at parties. Then he became a symbol of rugged desire once more. He was the perfect face for the Ford Cougar advertising campaign, a car named after a wild animal capable of ripping your face off.

Hopper was great, the Ford Cougar was great, and every single thing was great. But the Millennium loomed and the Millennium was set to ruin everything.  It gave us The Backstreet Boys and bastardised the lovely word cougar. Now cougar means a middle-aged lady – who is capable of ripping your face off.

For sex.

And in Ford’s latest advert they play on that association. The sexy sex-crazed voiceover of a sexy lady asks other middle-aged sexy ladies how much they like sexy sex. Oh, for sure, they spell it Kuga (and make no mention of sex) but it’s still all about the moist, throbbing sex.

So, there we have it: the way ahead is clear as Britain moves from 70’s smutty innuendo to full-on sex references in advertising. Come on eliquid manufacturers: where is Fani juice? Now we can all own Mantool’s Rodâ„¢, the mod you want in your hand all of the day. There may be limits to this, we would advise against The Subohm Pederast atomiser. That wouldn’t be funny at all.

So, maybe you’re a smoker who has stumbled across this website while researching your options? This can be your new term; it can be the moment you step up from Primary to Big Kid School. But if you’re already a vaper, this doesn’t have to exclude you, there’s plenty of scope to broaden your fun.

New kit purchases

This is simple for the smoker switching to vaping – buy everything.

For vapers, if you are lucky, you won’t have spent far too many hours this week being dragged about from store to store. The fortunate will not possess teenage girls, who appear to need to see every product that every shop sells before deciding what things to try on. And after the trying on comes the need to drink something (normally served hot but she prefers it fancy and with ice in) while deciding what things to go back and try on a second time.

But Vaping’s New Term means you can justify that thing you wanted to buy. You can look your partner directly in the eye, lie about the cost, and add it to the drawer of things that rarely get used. What have you put off getting?

Then, like the need to maths sets and new folders (despite the fact that I can go into the bedroom upstairs and find at least two functional maths sets and enumerable serviceable folders), you are also going to need to stock up on lots of different types of juice, wire and wicks.

New times, new learning

New vapers have a mountain to climb; you are all a bunch of Doug Scotts, Junko Tabeis and Aleister Crowleys. You may have set up base camp with a starter kit, but the odds are you’re feeling intimidated looking up at the peak of Mount Cloudchucker. The next heading may help you out.

Likewise, for experienced vapers, there is probably at least one aspect of vaping you’ve put off because you can’t be bothered with the faff. The hot favourite in the betting stakes for this is building a mesh wick and using a genesis/genesis atomiser. Just do it. Set aside some time to mess about with a cheap one and walk about feeling all steampunk and old fashioned.

New friends

Friends are simply people you don’t like the look of and haven’t spoken to before. Or something like that, we don’t pay too much attention to motivational posters.

Get along to a vape meet, join a group on Facebook, and/or sign up to a forum like Planet of the Vapes. Vapers are happy little souls who are always bursting to help other vapers. OK, this may be a bit of an exaggeration, but meets and online sites are excellent sources for tips and hints.

Plus, another key aspect to any new term is to the little kids – you know, the one who is smaller than the rucksack he has enveloping him like it’s consuming him during the school day. Actually, forget that bit.

Finally, if you’re a vaper who is just about to embark on a career as a teacher then there is only one tip for you: go to a supermarket, buy as much alcohol as you can afford, consume, then repeat this on a weekly basis.

Think of T-shirt sales, it’s probably a safe bet to say that there have been more sold adorned with the mugshot of Mr Guevara than there ever would be with one of, say, Mary Berry. Rebels were people like Gandhi, James Dean and Robin Hood; they were the poets, the artists, the pirates and the highwaymen. Even the Rebel Alliance was a bunch of rebels. We are Sappho, Sylvia Plath and Mary Shelley.

The thing is we have a problem, and it’s an almost insurmountable one.

Were you in a band when you were younger? Did you start one from scratch with your mates? If you can answer ‘yes’, then you know what the issue at hand is. The first thing a freshly formed band does is to convene a meeting at a nearby pub. The assorted members troop in, nurse a single pint for three hours and argue the merits of the names they scrawled on the back of a receipt from Tesco.

World of Leather? No.

Accident and Emergency? No.

Three Letter Acronyms? No.

Bag of Sh you get the idea. Round and round they go, because they appreciate how stupendously vital the epithet is. Trivial stuff such as writing songs, rehearsing and performing live gigs can wait – that sort of flotsam is almost irrelevant to the modern musician anyway.

Naming a band is more difficult than naming a baby. This is a fact for almost all baby namings because of the absence of a drummer, drummers have the knack of messing everything up – hence the reason they tend not to be responsible for having a child. Drummers will never agree to any band name.

How can we all band together, we free-spirited cloud creators, if we don’t have a snappy collective name? Rebels need to be in opposition, which needs to be conveyed in the sobriquet. We need to be Anti-something.

This means that we are Anti the anti-vapers.

This means we are the Antiantivapers.

Or, Antiantiva.

Antiantiva, the sexy, rebellious militant wing of vaping. Well, militant to a point, don’t let that bit scare you. We aren’t setting out to smash the state, system or even the settings on the television. Antiantiva plans to be militant about the sort of cakes we have at meetings, and we might have a very heated discussion about what type of tea to buy from Morrisons.

First order of business: any person with basic knowledge of science knows that two negatives make a positive, so the antis cancel each other out. Removing the anti and the other anti from Antiantiva means that we are just Va.

Damn, which means we are simply vapers. Like every band naming session I’ve ever been a part of, this was all a big waste of time – except that this is proof we are all cool.

Equipment is going to get smaller. Do you remember how little 2ml is? It’s tiny and, as men everywhere know, trying to convince someone they’ll be satisfied with a small portion is a non-starter. Heck, when was the last time a fast-food employee asked you if you fancied “going small”?

It’s going to get smaller, more expensive and then vanish – because that’s what happens to small things. Keys, loose change and children under 3yrs-old are all prone to being misplaced. The answer is simple: buy a Stealthvape lathe. We absolutely guarantee that anybody proficient in making their own coil or rewicking already has the full skillset required to manufacture their own mods and atomisers. Honest.

Not only will you have the option to manufacture all of your own kit in your spare bedroom but also you will no longer be stuck with dull materials like steel or brass. We will be stocking Stealthvape Gold bars, Stealthvape Tin and Stealthvape Platinum. Plus, for those with a sense of fun and adventure, we will be stocking Stealthvape Rubidium (excellent entertainment at pool parties) and Stealthvape Uranium (never lose a mod in the dark again).

We have also looked around at types of wire that have no connection to vaping. When the thought police start raiding homes searching for vapers hoarding reels of Ti wire we figured it would be a great idea to begin using something more commonplace – so say hello to Stealthvape Barbwire.

Stealthvape Barbwire is just as good as any other vaping wire on the market but can also be used to security proof your back garden or pen in a load of sheep (something many of our customers have told us they have a problem with). An excellent flavour production is enhanced by the Barbcoil™ ability to retain a wick and prevent it slipping out.

And what about those wicks? We all know that the government plans to ban all forms of cotton wool just to annoy us, well we’ve come up with a true game changer: the Stealthvape Perforated Duvet. It looks just like a normal duvet because it is a normal duvet – but the perforations enable you to tear off handy pieces to be inserted into your atomiser. No need to thank us, we spend all of our free time coming up with ideas like this just to help you.

What about juice? Simple, we’ve created the Stealthvape Natural Eliquid Company branded blender. The average person in the street will think it’s just a normal blender, but it isn’t. It’s a normal blender to be used to turn any food into an eliquid. You won’t have to worry about flavourings passing some kind of pointless certification because you just need to throw in a full Domino’s 12” and add your own nicotine. Mmm, pizza juice. Where does the nicotine come from? Easy, from the new Stealthvape Hydroponic kit. Simply turn that space in the attic (where you currently store old video recorder instruction manuals) into a tobacco farm.

Some might call us mad – but we’re just mad for solutions.

But protests, he loved protests.

Only yesterday: the two all beef patties, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onion – all served in a sesame seed bun had been served up with a particularly small portion of French fries. It took just 117 seconds for him to eat most of them before returning to the cash till in order to lodge his disapproval.

“They were cold,” he barked at the part-time student, who cared as much for his dilemma as she did for football. Far too many people don’t like football. She stared at him with the dead eyes of someone who doesn’t get paid enough to care. Not only that, thought Ashia, but he hasn’t even finished his sentence. I don’t have a clue is this is a statement or a question – let alone knowing what he wants me to do about it.

That didn’t concern Bob now; yesterday’s problem had been solved by the (yet-to-begin-shaving) manager with a free portion of fries. What concerned him was that his juice was expensive. The thing is, Bob reasoned, is that if he had the recipe, the flavourings, the bottles and anything approaching the motivation to do it, he could make the same thing for a fraction of the price. “The thing is,” he explained in Primark as his wife looked at her seventh skirt, “just because these makers spend months developing a unique flavour they reckon they can charge me a fortune.”

“Just because they invest tens of thousands of pounds in premises, insurance, equipment, stock, packaging and delivery they think I should have to pay for it – it’s not right,” he continued to the empty space that used to contain a wife and an armful of garments.

Jane and Bob shared many things but listening to each other wasn’t one of them. They coexisted in a special plane, each aware of the presence of the other – but they’d taught themselves a long time ago that the secret to a successful marriage was to pay absolutely no attention to what the other was saying, thinking or doing.

And as Bob continued talking to the curtain in front of the changing cubicle he decided enough was enough. These vape companies deserved everything coming to them and, mindful of the supporters’ protest on television foremost in his mind, he knew just what to do.

Jane didn’t even know he had gone. She’d paid for two tops, had a coffee in Costa and was currently looking at a range of bath products you ought to be able to eat. Bob wasn’t there. Bob had seen the big walkout by Liverpool fans. Bob was inspired.

Jamie touched his left ear, fidgeting with the black plastic stretching his ear lobe. Jamie was poking the ear stretcher his Mum liked to call stupid. She used other words to describe it but most of them are not printable here. Jamie had taught himself a long time ago that the secret to a successful home life was to pay absolutely no attention to what his Mum was said, thought or did. He’d worked in the vape shop for all of three weeks and he didn’t get paid enough to care about Bob’s protest.

• Step one: The fans had bought their tickets – so Bob bought a bottle of his favourite juice.
• Step two: The fans had walked out of the stadium in protest – so Bob left the shop.
• Step three: The club had capitulated after the demonstration was shown on television – Bob went home to wait for the phone call.

But Bob couldn’t check the television coverage of his protest because Jane was watching a sweary chef. Bob is still waiting for the juice manufacturer to call.

You will feel like it’s an ohm from ohm at our luxurious five-coil retreat. Journey with us to explore an underlying natural order to things, a path of enlightenment culminating with the revelation of the perfect vape, the Tao of vaping.

It is a path you have already been walking down whether you were conscious of it or not. As a smoker you simply made do. Perhaps that first drag in the morning was good for you, perhaps it cleared the pipes or hit the spot, but from thereon in, throughout the day, it was downhill and habit. You didn’t poke your fag with things; you didn’t steep boxes of two hundred in cupboards.

Young padawan, you were destined to join us at the Stealthvape Tao of Vaping residential weekend resort, you just didn’t know you were an devotee chasing a dragon.

Many a shaman will tell you is that the one ‘true’ way is the path of the genisis; everything we know about spirituality we learnt from David Carradine on television. The toughest route is always the correct one, and the path of most resistance is situated by the bubbling Pool of Curses.

The route is long and arduous, and one we insist you complete barefoot. It is covered in small rocks, shards of glass and bricks of discarded Lego. Not much fun when you are a devil-may-care, bare-footed e-cig adventurer kicking it Shaolin style.

But you will emerge as a spirit on a higher plane. After several hours attempting to make the atomiser work you will find yourself spent of negative energy – as it leaves your body to be absorbed by the pool.

Now you are ready for progression to the Zen Room of Coils. Empty your mind (like you emptied your wallet to attend this course), as you focus on the wire in front of you. Can a one-handed vaper clap in the Forest of Dean if no one is around to hear? It’s irrelevant questions to life like this that will not trouble you, as we won’t be asking them.

We will focus on the larger things: If you cut your hand on a sheet of mesh and no one is around to see does it still hurt? If a butterfly flaps its wings will rid a hotspot? By teatime on the second day you will have balanced your yings with your yangs, and emerge back into the car park in your complimentary Stealthvape Tao of Vaping Yogi clothes.

It’s because fashion is a fickle dominatrix; one minute she’s poking you with something pokey to make you wear a puffa jacket, then she’s whipping you into buying an iPod. Unless you buy in (and continue buying in), before you know it, you become a perm in crocks and a turquoise shell suit.

At some point, for reasons historians will debate long over, the mullet ceased to be a good look. Men, who last week leered at their reflections and considered them to be the depiction of everything desirable, suddenly had the rear locks cropped. There was a point, you’ll remember, when the must-have mod was the Roller. Then it wasn’t.

As cowboy TV shows gave way to those about aliens, which in turn became a bunch of vapid celebrities in a jungle, so too did the trend in mech mods shift to Paps then, in turn, to a host of Nemesises. Umm, Nemesii. Err, more than one Nemesis.

But where have they gone?

Before the Age of Box, be it original or clone, tables groaned under the weight of metal tubes. Forums filled with pictures demonstrating that vapers bought into the adage of always having a spare for the spare – to the extent that mech mods stretched across the frame.

Comic collections fit in boxes, guitars get mounted onto walls like mooseheads, what has happened to all of the stainless steel and brass? Where are all the GGs? And the tons of Taifuns? And somewhere, who knows where, lurk a fair few million Kayfun.

The sheds and attics of the nation have been plundered of their tat. It’s all been relabelled “vintage” and stuck up for sale again, for three times what it originally cost, to people with beards and single-speed bicycles. Where is the previously loved mod shop?  Where is AntiqueAtty.com?

Somewhere abouts there is the sum total production from Greece, America, Britain and the Philippines – not to mention all of the original and hooky equipment from China. Are the houses of the nation full of collections and moaning spouses? Is it all on display with pride or stored away with embarrassment?

And the hundreds upon hundreds of pounds? Is this money thought of as wisely spent or does it rank up there with the time you bought a singing fish?

What benefits does this offer modders and vapers? The board is designed as an upgrade for the DNA 200 and consequently can be used as a drop-in replacement or as the heartbeat of a higher-powered mod. Back to back size comparisons can be seen below, the DNA 250 is on the right of both images. 

It uses a 2 or 3-cell Li-Po series voltage input. Obviously, as the name indicates, power output is raised from 200 watts to 250 watts. Another step forward is the improvement of 2 amps charging through a micro-USB port. Reduced charging times will lead to less time on the desk and more time in use.

With a 55 amps continuous the fuse has been revised to ensure safety. This is accompanied with the standard reverse polarity protection. Mounting points remain the same, along with screen/button/USB positions, enabling a simple upgrade from the DNA 200 board devices.

The board will deliver an improved vaping experience with stainless steel coils through a developed temperature control system. This upgrade is also available for the DNA 200 as a firmware update.

Other features include:

Temperature protection: vapour production will be maximised through coil monitoring. Toxin production resulting from high temperatures and dry burns is combatted as a result.

·      Pre-heating: additional watts are supplied to the coil in order to reach the working temperature as quickly as possible.

·      New atomiser/coil warning: the board identifies a change and allows setting adjustment to be made.

·      OLED screen: same size as the DNA 200 and replaceable.

·      Informative display – wattage, voltage, temperature, resistance, remaining charge, room temperature, coil material, energy of the most recent puff, puff duration, board temperature and puff count.

Finally, the board can be used with Evolv’s Escribe software. A video on how to use Escribe can be found here. An interactive training course from Evolv can be found here.