In the comments from ‘about me’ , Martin Newton (a UK grandmaster of safe opening tools) is angry with me. Even calling me a ‘person of questionable character’. Something that really hurts coming from a person who’s tool making abilities I admire for a long time. The problem is I can not even blame him for calling me that….
Mr. Newton claims the design of the ‘last hope’ credit card pick is a cheap rip off on a business card designed by another legend in lock opening tools: John Falle. And I do not even want to tell you how I admire Mr. Falle’s tool making skills …
Now, to our defense, we never saw a business card with ‘John Falle’ or ‘Martin Newton’ on it. Babak received a ‘pick business-card’ from a US company called MBA at the Aloa 2007 convention in the US. And I received a similar (yet not really usable) business card from Kevin Mitnick beginning of 2007 too. The minute I heard the Toool.US crowd wanted to make a special ‘last hope’ memorabilia pickset inspired on an ‘MBA design’, I mailed MBA to ask their permission/opinion about it. There were at least three mails on this topic, and reading back my mails I can only say I really tried to do the right thing.
My big mistake on the previous ‘Last Hope pickset’ posting is I did not mention MBA (and/or John Falle & Martin Newton) for the design. And that was wrong.
People who visit this blog more often know I try to give credit where credit is due. And giving credit to Babak and the people who put the drawings in CAD, but forgetting to credit MBA (and/or John Falle) was plain stupid. And I sincerely want to apologize to MBA, Mr. Falle and Mr. Newton for this.
Gonna crawl under a big and heavy rock now …
Update July 16 09:30: Crawled from under the rock and found a reply to my privately mailed apology to Mr. Newton. It seems the matter is resolved now that he knows the full story. His final word were: “Thanks for understanding my point of view, no hard feelings.”. I must say I am very relieved by that!