RoryQ

I think the question of big pieces versus a lot of smaller pieces is an interesting one. The extreme of big pieces is a bodysuit from one artist... The extreme of small would be having all one-shots, I guess, or nothing bigger than sort of middling-sized.

Guess the grass is always greener to some extent... I really enjoy getting one shots these days, because they're easier to squeeze in more of, and require less planning, but at the same time they don't pack the visual wallop of a big piece. And some designs and styles only really work at a certain scale, IMO....

Saw 'Neds' lately on TV.

Teenage Glaswegian gang fights, impenetrable accents, black humour... Brilliant. Set in the 70s.

Ned= non educated delinquent

I'm starting to get pickier. I have room for about 10 or so more one shot tattoos on my legs. No more room on my upper body unless I go onto my hands or neck, which I won't.

My rough plan is to finish my front piece with Tomo with a visit a year (prob another 2-3 visits), and maybe do 1-2 one shots a year. I'll be done in 10 years, but so be it.

Maybe when I'm 60 I'll start with blast overs...

This one was done by Dave Cummings in seven sessions over two months. So yeah' date=' it need not take years. I don't think I have the ability to be tattooed that much in that short a time period though. [/quote']

What would put me off about weekly appointments, if I were doing it again, would be the fact that you'd have a freshly healing back all the time, more than the pain. It would screw up your sleep, clothes etc for the duration....

I know one of the members on here has that big reaper back piece Chad is doing in London. That thing is amazing. I saw a similar unfinished Jef Whitehead one. Big Reapers make good subject matter, really powerful looking.

I think part of the appeal of a back piece is the required patience' date=' discipline, and sacrifice.[/quote']

Well, those in a rush could always pay a couple of visits to Chad Koeplinger. I think there was a 2-session 7.5 hour back piece he posted lately? It looked like it took a lot longer ... Like the Xam whale-rider tattoo earlier in this thread.

Joking aside, I agree that the complexity, commitment and finality is part of why back pieces are special.

I think even with a more detailed back piece it need not take years, though. The limiting factor mostly relates back to money, right? To pay the artist and to travel, if necessary.

Jesse Gordon Jnr. Clipped from his Instagram. Nice guy, interesting to hear a little about the history of Inksmith & Rogers.

@Gregor

I think as long as your diet is in hand you should be grand. I've never done ETK or any of Pavel's Kettlebell only programs, but he's a legit guy and if you do it properly I'm sure you'll get something out of it. Post up in this thread after a bit?

@Gregor @kylegrey @hogg @Cork @Colored Guy

Gregor, as Scott R says, when people lose a lot of weight unfortunately they are almost always also losing muscle mass along with it.

My view is that leaness is rarely a comfortable bedfellow with a goal of building strength (unless you are very genetically gifted). As Scott alludes to after a certain point in your training you have to be taking in a surplus of calories to support progress. Whether the goal is strength or hypertrophy, a lot of classic programmes like 5X5, Starting Strength, old bodybuilding splits etc. go hand in hand with an expectation that you will eat like a King for a while. Invariably, you're gaining muscle but inevitably some fat. Typically the intention in the long run would then be to try to cut some of the fat while maintaining as much of the muscle mass as possible.

I've seen a lot of fellow intermediate lifters seem to constantly swing between a kind of boom and bust. They do something like Starting Strength and eat like crazy, and their squat and press shoot up. They also get fat. Then they spend several months cutting, but botch it, and end up a lot leaner but also weaker. Then, the cycle begins again. I've done this myself a fair bit, despite efforts to the contrary.

All that said, I think there are two other points worth considering:-

1. If you're a novice lifter in terms of your strength standards and/or have a lot of weight to lose I think it is possible to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time... For a while. I think for most men they can ride both horses up to the point of achieving some basic benchmark strength standards (bodyweight bench, double bodyweight deadlift?) but, after that, if you want to get a lot stronger then you can't achieve that while simultaneously trying to get leaner and leaner.

2. On the possibility of building strength whilst not gaining mass, whether muscle or fat, I think it's possible to follow a programme which is based on strength as a skill, and which seems to relate heavily to the CNS and lifting. The work of Pavel Tsatsouline springs to mind. He has recommended near daily training in the past, with relatively heavy weights, pursuing the idea of strength as a quality that can be developed through practice, rather than just being a physical attribute you either have or don't. I've made decent progress in strength terms on a high frequency / moderate intensity / low volume programme a little like this (Dan John's '40 Day' programme). If you want to get stronger but want to actively avoid getting bigger in any sense then this is a route worth exploring. In the long run I'm sort of agnostic about how long you can continue to progress in strength terms without accepting that you are going to have to get bigger, however. A lot of the benchmarks which Pavel and co. use as demonstrators of notable strength being developed are often also highly skill related (the one legged pistol squat being a good example).

I'd be curious what @kylegrey has to say, seeing as pro bodybuilders seem amongst the best at getting really lean whilst keeping on lean muscle mass. Genetics, or just a matter of being really good at cutting when the time comes for it?

He's great' date='cool style. What you getting? Next week is like a mini convention at the shop! I'm in with Oliver Peck tuesday.[/quote']

I'm going to pick something out of Jesse's new book of flash.

Oliver did my feet at AllStar... You have great taste in tattooers ;) He's a fun guy to get tattooed by.

Tattooed by Jesse Gordon tonight at All-Star in Limerick' date='Ireland.[/quote']

That's cool... I'm booked in with him on Monday!

You'll need it for the squat days. When you have to do 50 reps...ugh!

Ah' date=' there is a 5 x 10 day on MMS Lite but it's not quite as brutal as the original MMS (with the complexes).

[url']http://danjohn.net/2012/01/mass-made-simple-lite/[/url]

After a few months now of GVT and then a pretty conventional bodybuilding split, I am running Dan John's Mass Made Simple Lite (MMS Lite).

It's a breakin week of 3 workouts and then 5 weeks of 3 workouts per week. They're full body workouts, with a focus on hypertrophy coming from load not just volume. Each workout has a little bias (more pressing, more pulling, more squatting etc). They all finish with farmer's walks.

So wish me luck...

@mmkaoji

I always used to use it too, but a couple of times when I was abroad with no access to it I started being fairly minimalist and just washing gently and maybe down the line some unscented moisturiser. I noticed that the tattoos weren't healing any worse, and when I broke out the bepanthen again recently I felt like even with a thin layer it is just too thick- I don't trust it.

That's mainly why I've dropped it, but when I was getting tattooed my Mo Coppoletta a couple of weeks back we talked aftercare and he said he didn't recommend it either.

With all that said, it's obviously one of the big and trusted aftercare options people use, and I doubt it's actively screwing people's tattoos up, so each to their own.

I'm healing the last bit of black and grey on my sleeve right now, and I pretty much just ignored it bar washing it. I really think the less interference, fiddling etc the better... for me, anyway.

Just watched the trailer for the 'Robocop' reboot.

In the original movie, you could hear Robocop coming from the next block away, because he was all thudding feet, servo-motors and pistons whining... He was like this clanking big industrial machine, you had the sense that he could actually punch through walls, that he weighed a ton and whatnot.

The new Robocop just looks like a guy in a halloween costume to me. Shiny plastic, too streamlined, too quick in his movements.

Dissapointing.

I'm on the third book in Joe Abercrombie's 'The First Law' trilogy - 'Last argument of kings'. I feel like this series has started slowing up a bit for me, after a cracking first two books.

After this it's back to my re-read of Stephen King's 'The Dark Tower'... 'Wolves of the Calla' is up next.

I read 'The Wind Through the Keyhole' last week, which slots in between 'Wizard and Glass' and 'Wolves of the Calla'. Bloody great little novel. It's cleverly done, like a russian doll: It's a story within a story within a story. Roland is recounting a story of his youth to his companions, and in that story from his youth the young Roland tells a fairytale story about old-time Gilead. Sounds weird, but the fairytale really drew me in - sort of Grimm Brothers territory, with woodsmen, domestic violence, murder and a magical quest.

I read an earlier post of mine in this thread, where I mentioned using bepanthen for a few days early in the healing process... How times change, I wouldn't touch the stuff these days.

The only game I played this year was X-Com on the iPad. I was addicted to the original series on PC, and this seemed like a godsend...

Now, a few months on, I'm like 'meh'. I think, despite the graphics, it's actually a shallower game than the old incarnations. The aliens are stupider and eventually it just feels really formulaic.

I don't think it's just nostalgia, the playability just isn't the same, IMO.

I'd still buy a sequel if it was a reboot of 'Terror from the deep' though... I still remember the thrill of fear as you encounter your first lobster man and realise that he can take a hit from your entire squad and still massacre them. (Sorry, getting carried away...)

If I was going to go again I would be tempted to get less big Japanese pieces and do more one-shots, traditional american, and just gradually fill up the body. I really like the open and shut nature of one-shot appointments... I think I'm a little jaded with endless chipping away on big projects. It can be cool to walk in and out the same day all done.

Getting quite specific: I don't regret my back at all, but if I were doing it over I would probably try to get Tomo or Shige to do it and go for something with lots of colour and detail, in fabrics etc.

But the grass is always greener...

It's an amazing amount of hours to get in over the course of a week... Seriously, I think after two days of tattooing I am fried.

I am presuming you (peterpoose) has a high pain tolerance (that must be a given), but I'd be curious, like Iwar, on how you feel about doing all these days - how do you pass the time? Do you do anything special to deal with the pain once you're into your third or fourth day? Also, how does the healing work out?

Agreed on the above...

It's not my cup of tea either, but clearly guys like Victor Potugal are good at what they do- so kudos to you.

Here in Ireland the tattoo scene in Dublin (what there is) is massively into realistic black and grey and the more 'out there' realism, they love all the Eastern European Robert Hernandez type work.

Finished my sleeve with Mo Coppoletta. He did the upper part of the arm too, a koi, out of shot.

-General Budget (I'm comfortable at around 35-45 dollars a day)

-Housing (Thinking mostly Hostels in big cities, huts on islands)

-Modes of transportation (Plane/Bus/Train)

-Cool fuckin' places to go (anywhere)

There's an old thread from when I went to Cambodia for 8 days, a few people chimed in with bits and pieces of advice: http://www.lastsparrowtattoo.com/forum/random-crap/2965-anyone-been-cambodia.html

35-45 dollars a day is going to be loads for Cambodia based on what you're suggesting you're after. On that budget you won't be able to stay in Raffles or eat in the expensive western-style restaurants that the expats and khmer elite frequent, but everywhere else should be good. I'm getting hazy on prices, but I think you could get a can of beer for 1-2 dollars most places, although, again, if you walk into an air-conditioned western-style bar you might pay twice that. I'm pretty sure a khmer style curry with meat, in a middle of the road restaurant, was about 4-5 dollars. If you ate at a real neighbourhood-style place with wooden planks for tables and empty gas cannisters for seats it would be even cheaper.

Travel-wise the best way to get around is probably on a tuk-tuk, most trips were a handful of dollars, and you can haggle with the drivers. You could rent your own bike, but unless you're a really good (or perhaps resilient is a better word) driver I'd suggest it's quite dangerous given the way they drive.

If you're going to Siam Reap and then Phnom Pehn (or vice versa) then there's not really a 'good' way to make the trip. We thought about the river boat, but from what I gather it's ferociously boring, with not a lot to see. Going on the road is a bit like a cross-country drive, there are pot-holes that you could swim in when it rains. Oncoming traffic also likes to play chicken with you, so the first hour or so is quite white-knuckle until you make your peace with possible death. The up-side is that you see a bit more of the countryside and there are some pretty cool roadside restaurants to stop at.

If you change your dollars for local currency you'll pay slightly less for things, provided you see what the local price is, but the locals are so poor that there came a point where I didn't want to be screwing them out of a marginal profit on me. Saving 1-2 dollars might not mean much to me but it made a big difference to them.

Things I would recommend:-

-Angor Wat and the whole temple circuit outside Siam Reap - just amazing, allow a day for Angor Wat and find someone who can show you 1-2 of the temples that the jungle has reclaimed.

-S21 and the killing fields

-The royal palace in Phnom Pehn

Bring lots of the strongest mosquito-repellent you can get your hands on. My foolproof method of avoiding food-poisoning while I was there was to drink only cooked food and drink only beer or bottled water. No ice, salads, fruit that I didn't peel myself etc.

Enjoy...

I recently read The Croning by Laird Barron. It's his first novel after a couple of collections of short stories and while I think he hasn't quite mastered the longer form' date=' it's a good read if you're into Lovecraftian horror. It's got a good creepy atmosphere, malevolent cosmic entities and the cults that worship them, ancient megalithic tombs in the woods, all that good stuff. It's a fun read.

I am currently reading The Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson and thank you @Badtastebetsy for the little warning because I'm not entirely convinced by it yet. It isn't bad, it's just that I feel that there's way too much "world building" stuff and not enough story yet. As a reader, I don't really care about the intricacies of how magic systems work in this world (in this respect I can totally see how the books came out of an RPG campaign), I want adventure and excitement and peril and good battles and all of that stuff. Granted I'm only a little over a hundred pages in right now and since it's a ten-book series I need to take a long view of the thing.[/quote']

I know what you're saying about world building vs characterisation - I think that's a legit criticism of Erikson that is true for the whole series. Its like he's writing sketches or historical record at times.

I'd say stick it out to at least the end of 'Deadhouse Gates' if you can, it's much stronger than the first book. Then decide, maybe.

I did enjoy 'Gardens of the Moon' by the end, but it took me the first half to get into it... The definition of a slow burner...

@RoryQ, that sounds truly horrible. 5x10 is high volume for me.

Yeah, I feel pretty wrecked today but I'm not back at it till Monday now. I think it's the squats that really do the damage.

Well it's only relatively recently that I've tried to finish things out, I used to always think the grass was greener and be switching things up.

But this year I have really tried to get into my head that consistently following a programme to some kind of finish, even if it's flawed in some way, is going to offer the best chance of progress.