Birth of the strange one

I'm not going to go right back to the start; of when I fell to earth in a meteor and grew from alien goo. However, I thought it would be a good idea to give everyone (whoever that may be) a better idea of the makings and behind-the-scenes-workings which have paved this path so far. So, for the next few days, or weeks, or however long it may take, I shall give an insight into what I think may have been the key steps which have me led here... or somewhere near here.

The "beginning" is really quite embarrassing on my part as it involves childhood toys.
Now, if you could just imagine for a minute: a typical childhood with quite regular toys - It shouldn't be too hard.
Good; now you know exactly what I was not like.

Even as a child I was strange.. I mean... Creative: I was never found playing a board or video game, or playing with action-man dolls or reading... or whatever else you might expect a young boy to do. I was found grabbing any old rubbish left lying around the house and making a mess whatever tickled my fancy - whether it was a rocket or a robot or god knows what else. Basically - Blue Peter was my best friend. What you may not have known was I was actually the uncredited founder of recycling. I would apparently get a large Christmas or Birthday present... And end up spending the following weeks playing in the box it came in. God himself couldn't stop me when I found a small marble lying around the house and then proceeded to make a "run" for it around the entire circumference of my room out any household items I could find which weren't nailed down.

After a while I'm pretty sure my parents got a little annoyed of "Sean, where's my ____, I'm sure I left it just here..." So I got an upgrade - I moved from cardboard egg boxes to plastic.

By plastic I mean construction toys - Namely K'nex. (Not Lego - I guess it was too basic at the time.)
Just as a little history lesson - K'nex was originally a small selection of "rods" and "connectors" which you join together to create... Well.. Whatever you like really. Originally, of course, you get a selection of pieces and a instruction book. After quickly finishing them (after the first day or so) I started making my own designs, they got bigger and more complicated every day; and so did my collection of pieces to keep up with the demand. looking back at it, it was very interesting how the company developed the toy (not like I cared at the time)
Eventually I was taking up the whole front room again with motorised roller coasters or machines using every piece I could lay my hands on - I have mentioned this extensive collection to many people over the years and I don't think many people have quite understood the size of it.. So - Here it is of today.

 

The 'collection' consists of half-a dozen motors, specialised pieces and at last count several million pieces (roughly weighed and counted on a very rainy day). All this is probably not something to be proud of, but I would like to think I've done my bit in helping the world with the containment and disposal of plastics - but now I'm just showing off.

Anyway, I digress - The idea is that I spent days at a time creating anything I could think of, or duplicating many of the things that grabbed my interest. I would show some pictures... But... A. most are really quite embarrassing, B. I don't think I've got a working scanner, C. I don't think I took many pictures of the good ones and D.Nobody is likely to care anyway.

Does anyone remember the Tv show  "Robot Wars"? You should - It was amazing. Anyway, One of the house robots was named "Matilda" (Which was also a great movie) and I once designed a full size replica in K'nex from a  single 5cm-square picture in the argos catalogue; I cannot explain how amazed and proud I was at how accurate it looked, complete with motors 'n' all. But again - I don't think I have a picture, but I know it's going here if I find one.

Little fact: Did anyone remember the giant motorised helicopter display, made of K'nex, found in Toys R Us? And how it mysteriously disappeared one day? That was because it ended up in my bedroom as a birthday present - Really! Unfortunately it was too big to keep in tact and it had no instructions to rebuild it - I now just have the pieces.