This is an interesting experiment, just to keep me busy after the failure of Royal Tiki.

You'll find a description of this quick process over at lowhum, but for now you can visit the squidoo page about Cordless Tool Combo's and Cordless Combo Tools now.

P.S. This is far too simple to work I think, but It's fun nonetheless.

P.P.S. Thanks Howie.

On second thoughts, perhaps I should link to ebay from here too?

Cordless Combo Tools.

For a variety of reasons this blog will be leaving the Royal Tiki site permanently in the next few days.

It will reopen on my personal website in March when that site is updated.

See you on the flip side...

You may not have heard of a donkey jacket in the states, but I've always loved them since having one as a teenager in England. A few years ago now!

Anyway, I got inspired by all the recent talk of car club jackets on the HAMB so I tracked down someone who imports them over here. I could only find one importer, and luckily he was only 45 minutes away in downtown Atlanta!

I just picked mine up early this morning (gotta love that 7am traffic) and thought some of you might be interested. It's thick wool with PVC on shoulders and top of back.

Best part? $65!!! www.crashandburnatlanta.com

I'm no model, sorry

I was looking at my YouTube favorites this evening and found an old gem that I still love. Taken from the Nicolas Cage movie Gone in 60 Seconds - I think it was on the DVD under special features - you can find the music video here on YouTube.

Looking on iTunes came up empty though, and although Amazon lists it, it's out of stock.

Of course, Google is now completely overrun by spam-like sites that display the lyrics of songs so little joy to be found by searching for the name.

Does anyone know if it is available somewhere?

Sorry about this folks, but starting tonight (Friday, January 18th) I am going to be renaming the categories on the site.

Inevitably this will cause some broken links for a few days. The site itself should be fixed up overnight, but Google will update its links "in due course" as always.

I know this reflects badly on us, but it's important enough that I felt it should be done sooner rather than later. In the big scheme of things, it's no big deal. As I get older I'm trying to not stress the little stuff. That said, I wanted to at least post an apology for those of you that hit a missing page.

To try and distract you, here is a picture my kid drew..

Yes, it's that time again - join us at the Southern Skillet on Sunday at 9am. We'll be the bunch of guys at the back talking hot rods...

Read more on the HAMB

Continuing on my journey through tiki world, today I am listening to the syrupy tones of Vegas Vic in his Tiki Lounge podcast.

I use iTunes to listen to music while at work, so I simply subscribed to the podcast using this iTunes link and got all episodes.

I'm currently on episode 3, back from June 2005

Believe it or not, I've only just joined at the Tiki Central forums. I've been there before of course, but only quickly and never to linger long enough to read much. 

Too much time spent on the HAMB I guess.

Last night I jumped on and introduced myself. One question came up quite quickly - is music on web sites more acceptable nowadays? Obviously myspace is the big fish and every profile page plays music. So the kids are used to it. It was always a laughable offense to put blinking text and music on web sites - but now I'm not so sure about the music.

Many tiki and hot rod sites play cool music now. I visited www.thehukilau.com and loved the music!

What do you think? Tell me below.. cos otherwise the next time you visit you might find music here..

We just returned from the World of Wheels show in Atlanta - I enjoyed it but I was dragging the kids around by the time we left! My 13 yr old daughter said she was going to die from boredom unless we left soon.

There were a *lot* of stock muscle cars that weren't floating my boat, but enough hot rods to keep me happy. I loved seeing the showboats too - for a change. It's amazing how much time and money goes into some of these cars showpieces.

And of course I had to pony up for a socal tin sign and get it autographed by Jimmy Shine (from the Hard Shine TV show). He was a nice guy, chatty and talked to all my kids too.

During a recent hot rod gathering I mentioned one of my favorite movies "The Loveless" to a couple of people only to get blank looks!

Ok, so it's not a famous movie by any means - it certainly qualifies as a cult movie by most measures in fact - but I was lucky enough to see it many years ago and it stuck with me much like I remember the first time I saw American Graffiti.

The loveless is a biker flick - no hot rods in this one. But it is set in the late fifties, in rural Georgia, as a small biker gang stops on the way to Daytona to "hear them howl". It is period perfect.

The atmosphere of the movie is thick, and with rockabilly musician Robert Gordon co-starring in the movie and writing the soundtrack most hot rodders will love it. This is not some sugary movie like Hot Rod; be prepared for a dark movie that nonetheless still makes you wish you were one of the gang..

I see that you can still buy it at Amazon.