Arnie’s Airsoft started four years ago on Thursday, November 23, 2000 at 6:51pm. We know this because Arnie is a man who has “always time stamped work that I've done in the news.” Little did he know that his website would grow to become one of the main websites that all airsoft players would go to. Arnie’s Airsoft is a website that always has the latest news from around the world. He takes “the time to strike up a good working relationship with everyone out there. That way I get to keep up to date with the latest happenings, plus continually making new acquaintances from around the world.”

Mmmmm Coffee

This caffeine junkie doesn’t sleep much and “this means that I effectively do the work of two people because I'm awake for long periods - just look at the update timestamps for the site. I hate to think of the amount of email that I've fielded over the years, but it's no surprise I go through keyboards at such a huge rate.” Among other things, the website also contains many reviews, projects by players, and a very active forum. Arnie’s has taken over where websites like X-Ring left off. It aims to bring the viewer the lighter side of airsoft and appeals to first time players and to those that have been in the game for over a decade. The website is currently in its 4th major revision. Arnie’s Airsoft has without a doubt been instrumental in the growth of the game. It surprised me to find out that this website, in a sense just turned out that way. “I never really remember a conscious effort at any point to go off and start a huge website; things just kind of grew that way all on their own.”

Arnie's favorite machines.

It all started by finding the right combination of a fun subject and the desire to learn html. “The best explanation I can give is that roughly five years ago I came across Airsoft for the first time through a couple of friends. The main problems I'd had with my previous attempts at learning web technology was that I just couldn't keep myself enthused with the subject matter. There was no real passion or drive on my behalf concerning the material being created. I kept getting bored and never really got anywhere.”

“Completely by chance I'd found a subject matter that I could rabbit on about for hours and one that kept me interested. I didn't know it yet, but I somehow managed to create a niche for myself on the internet. Blogging wasn't the rage that it's become now, and the flow of information out of Japan to the UK and US was not very fast. People didn't really know what was going on and didn't know where to look for Japanese news and photos. This was pretty much the foundation of the site that I started all those news updates ago. I'm still learning, still interested in the subject matter and still developing the site.”

A distinctive feature of the website is the cartoon caricatures done by artist David Mallinder. David’s work is also found in the UK magazine Safezone. “I felt that the photos of guns splashed across the webpage were giving off the wrong impression. Sure they weren't real, but it left the casual viewer with possibly of the wrong idea about the site. I struggled with ways to lighten up the theme, and thought about cartoons. I considered doing some (I'm not bad at artwork myself), but being short on time never really got round to it.” Eventually he saw some illustrations that were done for the UK KGB team in Cornwall. “Asking about I managed to contact the guy responsible via email. He was ever so happy to help out, which was greatly appreciated on my part, and after bouncing ideas between us he came up with some sketches of some caricatures to use on the site. These are the cute guys that you see on there now.”

In the beginning Arnie’s Airsoft used to be hosted on space provided by his ISP, as it grew it later moved to his University account. “Within a short period of time my local user space was getting more external hits than the department's pages and when the traffic popped up on their logs people started asking questions. I was told that one academic tutor burst into the tech support room and demanded that the site was pulled down because I was publishing photographs and material about firearms, guns, and other Evil Stuff. At this point I started looking for somewhere relatively permanent to stick the website. I'd done nothing wrong, but rumors about me and the website were around, and I'm one who enjoys a low profile and quiet life.” “Throughout this time I got to know the guys at Airsoft.org which at the time was run by Alex Goodey.” Eventually that site closed and the UK Airsoft Network (UKAN) was started by Lee Smallbone (aka CJ). “Lee offered me free managed hosting for my site on one of their servers, where the site stayed throughout the development of both sites (and several changes of ownership at UKAN). Regrettably it was never made particularly clear to me who actually paid for and did the 'managing' of the server that we were hosted on, and because of the basic misunderstandings surrounding this area quite a few arguments surfaced. As time progressed, UKAN changed hands quite a few times ultimately coming under the ownership of ASCUK after a volatile period of attrition between the owners of ASCUK and UKAN. As things changed it became clear that our thoughts on running sites and Airsoft were growing rapidly different, and UKAN/ASCUK was something I didn't want association with. Inevitably, earlier this year we decided to part ways at which point Arnie's became completely self hosted.”	Step 1 Add coffee. 2001
	Step 2 Add more coffee. 2003
	This is what you get! 2004

Moving a massive site like Arnie’s has its challenges “it meant taking on more administrative responsibilities that I wasn't used to. Despite being given plenty of warning about our move I was still pretty much unprepared. Moving sites that take up the best part of 2-3Gb between machines isn't an easy task and I had other things on my mind, backups that were meant to be taken by me weren't, but the old server admins helped out and sourced the latest hard drive copy after the old server was taken offline. They then transferred this copy to our new home. Because of the size and amount of use the site gets these days we actually run on our own dedicated server rack. It's nothing hugely fancy, but spec wise the machine equates to something on par with a mid to upper range home PC.”

Since day one, Arnie has done most of the work himself. In the beginning the site “started out as static HTML, and then moved to framesets of various formats. The major change to the site came when I started using my own fork of PHP-Nuke for the ‘Beta’ site. Whilst Nuke was flexible and a useful system for managing news, it is was a security nightmare. To this day, the original author has never patched any of the multitudes of holes that there is in the engine. I spent a huge amount of time customizing and patching code. The bad news was that no matter how much work you did you ran the risk that further holes or previously unthought-of exploits could be found.”

Unfortunately, the website has had its share of being hacked by “‘script kiddies’ - people without an original thought in their head that seek nothing more than to deface websites and generally cause a problem for the rest of the world to boost their own dwindling ego.” He has been hacked three times “one issue related to PHP-Nuke, one related to the older gallery software I used to use and one related to an issue with Coppermine (the newest photo gallery software). It's a sad fact that basically if you have any system that allows a reader to modify data on a web server in any way it will lead to security vulnerabilities unless the content submitted is heavily managed and monitored.” To solve this Arnie reworked the entire system. Over a weekend he started to code his own engine, the same one we see in use today. “Several vats of coffee and about 38hours later I had the workings of a decent engine running. The system does pretty much everything that I want it to, it's fast and looks good. I didn't think it was bad for a weekend's work myself.”

The website is paid for by Arnie and with expenses rising some players suggested that he change the site to be supported by paid members. But he didn’t want to go this route. “Well the first thing you should realize is that I'm really, really bad when it comes to organizing anything money related. The main problem I have is that I hate charging people for things. I actually design and maintain five other websites on a regular basis for close friends of mine in other periods of my free time. One thing I've tried to make a point of is learning from other people's mistakes on the internet. I've seen more than one site initiate a member donation plan in varying forms, and generally speaking they just don't workout. I never started the site to make money, it's a hobby of mine. I put a lot of work in for others because I choose to, I just wouldn't feel the same if people paid me to do things for them. It's hard to describe but my gut feeling is that it would move things from me writing about what I want to when I want, to me having to update the site to keep paying members happy, which is somewhere I don't want to be.”

However, players still wanted to donate money. “There's a donate button on the site, but it's not used a huge amount. I added it at one point as I had several folks that really wanted to donate towards the upkeep of the site. I added the button there so that if anyone wanted to make the choice to donate they could. It's always appreciated when someone does donate, and I make the effort to write a personal email back to anyone that does donate to say thanks (I feel it's the least I can do). We had a rash of donations just before we moved with helped lower the initial outlay that was needed when we bought our own server.”

With the sport growing so fast and in so many places, Arnie believes that airsoft will still be around for awhile. But “specifically relating to the UK I'd be truly surprised to see anything gun shaped in public hands of any type in 5 years time. The short of it is that firearms of any type are becoming less and less acceptable in any form. It's also a familiar opinion that it's also an easy bone to throw to the masses to gain political favor come election time.”

One case that could possibly affect the public’s view of airsoft guns is the case of Harry Stanley. In London 1999, Stanley a 46 year old father of three, who was shot dead by Metropolitan Police. He was carrying a chair leg in a plastic bag that Police officers mistakenly believed to be a shot gun. Fast forward to 2004, a second coroner’s inquest resulted in an unlawful killing decision. There currently is a protest by some Police officers. Arnie states “ignoring the rights or wrongs of this case it now places Police Officers in an even more troubled position. They must attend an incident where a firearm may be present with the intention of stopping any crime taking place; the application of lethal force may or not be appropriate to stop the crime. A snap decision must often be made and a mistake on their part may end a life needlessly and severely impact their career as a Police Officer. The standard short sighted fairly immature response is ‘well they'll ban chair legs and bananas next!’, but the fact remains that replicas of any form are obviously a huge risk and threat to the Police in this regard. Airsoft is therefore less than popular at this point in time with law enforcement and I respect their view on the matter.”

“Everyone knows that replicas of any form are not a true physical threat to the public; just stop anyone in the street and ask them if they feel that banning replicas would reduce firearm related deaths and they'll give you the obvious answer. Yet for some reason the general public seemingly accept that a complete ban of air weapons, replicas and anything else that looks like a gun would have an affect on "real-steel" crime.”

One of the things that Arnie likes is that “airsofters are a pretty decent bunch, from the players, through to the sites, organizers, manufacturers, distributors and dealers. Because of the team based nature of the game side of things, there's a strong community spirit across the forums with the founding traits of honor, good faith and honesty showing through in most areas.”

Some of his favorite guns includes “an IPSC style pistol that Clarence Lai made for me, it was the first custom piece made specifically for me, and there's something about having your own name down the frame that still makes me smile.” Another one he is proud of “is a custom revolver that I made for myself with a colleague. It's not exactly skirmish-safe (at least I'd not be first in line to get shot by it) as it tends to dust standard 6mm BBs. Based on the Tanaka M29 it's had a new front section, upper rail, barrel and gas set fitted to it, with a new N-Frame wood grip.”

He also prefers CQB games “I've always been a bit of a fan of mind games and puzzles, and not afraid to try unorthodox methods to solve a problem. To date I've found that the skirmish sites that have large building areas and are more milsim most tend to engage me more as plainly put there's more to think about.”