It’s interesting to note that most of the advice came down to 2 things: trigger control and sight alignment (including follow-through).
In the end, those are really the two things that matter to get good accurate hits.
Month: August 2010
Getting back in the groove
The home renovations are mostly done. All the actual work is done (and the house looks really good… like a whole new house), it’s a matter of moving everything back into the house. Wife’s been doing a great job on that and lots of stuff is getting purged along the way.
Unfortunately, due to all this work, I’m about a month behind in my daily reloading routine. Just couldn’t get past all the relocated furniture to the reloading bench. 😦 Things are improving, so hopefully in the next couple days I can get back to it. I’m so behind, and I really wanted to get to starting 6.8 SPC reloading before hunting season started. But heck… I’m not even sure I’ll be going hunting this year. *sigh* I’ve had no time to prep for it. But if I do, I really want to use the 6.8. I’ll be fine if I don’t have my own load… the Silver State Armory loads should work just fine.
I’m also out of sync on my daily dry fire. I got out of that groove because the workmen would show up early and go home late and I didn’t want to be drawing guns and making racket while they were here (tho later I find out at least a few of the workers were hunters). Gotta get back in that groove too.
The worst part? I’ve gained some fat around my middle. Due to the trip to Omaha, then the couple of weeks without a kitchen, it was constant eating out. Some things prior to all of that also didn’t help. Now that things are normalizing my meals are much smaller and I’ve already seen a couple of pounds drop. I also need to get back to exercising… clearing out the garage again helps, and I still haven’t been able to check out that Aikido dojo… been so busy.
But, things are normalizing and I’m working to get back in the groove. Might even be able to post here a bit more than I have been.
EPA Lead Ban?
The EPA is considering banning lead, like from ammunition and fishing weights.
Boneheaded move for many reasons. Clicky for details and how to address the schmoes in Washington.
ETA: While they may be schmoes, being rude or screaming declarations and ranting at them is not going to win them over. If anything, it will just reinforce their belief that gun owners, hunters, fishermen, etc. are just redneck morons that need to be herded and lorded over and controlled by any means necessary.
Put your emotions aside, write a brief letter expressing your opposition. In fact, you don’t really have to go into detail about it, just say “yes or no”. With the volume of correspondence they receive, yours will not be read, merely skimmed for key words. When I wrote my Congress-critters about the recent firearms excise tax issue, I received boilerplate “I support the rights of gun owners” responses from my 2 US Senators… when of course, I was writing them about taxes, but they just saw the “gun” keyword and that’s how it was registered.
Phrase your correspondence well.
A few simple things
I’ve been reading a lot of news this morning.
One reason I tend to avoid most news is because it’s depressing. Why is it that what constitutes “news” is negative? Hatred, murder, violence, destruction, corruption, lying, scandal. Granted sometimes life is that way, but there’s an overwhelming focus on such matters in “news”. It’s a major reason I avoid 24-hour news channels because all they contain is various idiots spouting off their opinions as fact. They drive so much of the tension today. Turn off the TV and go outside. It paints a picture of a horrible world where everyone is a predator, everyone is evil, no one can be trusted. We begin to believe it and turn those lies into truth, or at least affect things enough such that we behave in that manner.
But if there’s one thing humans are good at, it’s destruction, especially self-destruction. It’s easy to destroy, it’s difficult to create. It’s easy to listen to rumor, it’s hard to find fact and truth. We don’t like difficult things.
*sigh*
I then ponder much of the negative stuff going on. I begin to wonder how much of this would be an issue of people abided by a few things:
Be responsible for yourself.
Treat others as you want to be treated. (Yes, The Golden Rule isn’t perfect, but understand the spirit).
Leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone. (Don’t tread on me.) You can live your life as you wish, I can live my life as I wish. We may find each other’s lives and choices repulsive, but so long as we’re not infringing upon the other’s ability to life their life as they wish, you can live out your repulsive life while I live out my repulsive life.
Realize that there are other people in this world and those other people may have values, morals, and beliefs radically different from you. They may make choices in life that you don’t like. But realize, you look just the same to them as they do to you. Would you want them telling you your values, morals, and beliefs are horrible and should be banned? This gets back to treating others as you’d want to be treated.
Respect is something to be earned, and that also means it’s something that can be lost. Behave accordingly because respect is measured through the eyes of others.
Beware the slippery slope, even if at the start it seems like you’ll be gaining something good.
Have balance in life. Moderation (nothing in excess).
It kinda harkens back to that “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” stuff.
It was that this country was founded upon such notions (look at why the first Europeans came to this land). But it seems we’ve forgotten it.
But we can get it back. It just starts with each one of us, deciding to live our lives that way and then doing so each and every day. It will be a struggle, most people won’t understand, but I believe it will be worth it in the end.
Or am I just being too much of an optimist? too much of an idealist? Are we just doomed from the get-go?
Irony – Ruger and Boy Scouts
Ruger is making what they call the Ruger Model 1255, which is a special order limited edition version of their 10/22 rifle. What’s special about it? It’s a Boy Scouts of America commemorative.
It’s quite pretty, with the Norman Rockwell image engraved on the buttstock and other BSA logos carved on the stock.
But the thing is? While BSA may have licensed it, no Scout could ever shoot it within the scope of a BSA activity. While you can shoot rifles chambered in .22 LR, they have to be single-shot or bolt-actions with the magazine removed. The Ruger 10/22 is semi-automatic with a 10-round magazine.
*sigh*
The Sword – Tres Brujas video
The first single off The Sword’s new album, Warp Riders, is for “Tres Brujas”.
Unfortunately wordpress.com doesn’t let me embed myspace videos, so you just have to click here. Just do it. It’s a pretty cool video.
And it looks like “Lawless Lands” will be the next video/single.
OH… if you want to hear this before you buy, the band’s MySpace page has the entire album available in streaming format. If you dig rock and heavier music (esp. Black Sabbath, “stoner rock”, and that vein of stuff), you need to check it out. Been listening to the album non-stop since I bought it off the iTunes Music Store. It gets better with each listen.
I have no connection with the band other than being a fan and we’re all Austin-based.
The Sword – Warp Riders
Austin band, The Sword, have released their third full-length album, Warp Riders.
The album marks a departure for the band, both in terms of theme and sound. The theme moves to a sci-fi concept, and the sound is a little more “rock” than “metal”. There’s no question, the sound and the themes are still The Sword, but you can tell there’s a different sound.
For instance, songs like “Night City” and “Tres Brujas” have a bit more 70’s rock sound to them. I could see these songs, especially “Night City” being played on rock radio stations. There’s a good groove to things, a hook, memorable choruses that you’d find yourself singing or humming later on.
But fret not. Heaviness still abounds on tracks like “Arrows In the Dark”, “Astraea’s Dream” (one of two instrumentals). Still epic sounds like “The Chronomancer I: Hubris” (clocking in a 7 minutes and 35 seconds).
Why the change in themes and song structures? Could it be an attempt to gain a larger audience? If so, nothing wrong with that (perhaps all that time on tour with Metallica rubbed off?). I think the band is still true to who they are, but I would say if you want to hear what “The Sword” is about, you have to check out the first album, “Age of Winters”.
But I think the change is good, especially for this third album. If they did the same thing on this album, then I think the band would have forever been pigeonholed into being this “stoner rock” “Dungeons & Dragons” sort of band and they’d have a hard time breaking out of that mold. Taking the approach they did on this album shows the band can paint with a wider brush, yet remain true to themselves.
I’m digging the album so far. I just wish their only Austin appearance wasn’t at the Austin City Limits festival… need to see them in a local club next time they return to their hometown.
Austin murder rate up 38%
The city of Austin’s (my city) murder rate has climbed 38%
The City of Austin’s murder rate continues to be higher this summer than the previous year. While year-to-date crime statistics show a decrease in amount of overall violent crime, Austin’s murder rate is up by over 38-percent. The Austin police department’s Shelia Hargis says a large amount of those homicide are closely related to another crime. “One thing that seems to increasing this year versus in the past is the city’s robbery-related homicides” says Hargis. The latest Austin crime report also shows a 14-percent decrease in overall robberies, which points out even the small number of robberies here in Austin are now escalating to murder.
One can ponder as to why the rate climbed. Could it be because Austin claims itself a “sanctuary city“? Could it be due to the economy and folks being more desperate? Could it be due to illegal drugs (and “repealing prohibition” could stop it)? Could it be because folks are going crazy from the heat? I’m sure Austin Police have an idea, but so far they’re not sharing.
But whatever the reason, a key take-home point is that homicides in conjunction with robberies are starkly rising. That means the question is no longer “your money or your life”, it’s now “your money AND your life”.
Stay safe.
BWToolkit
BWToolkit is a library of code for Cocoa development.
Actually, it’s more than just a library of code. It comes with an Interface Builder (version 3) plugin that simplifies development and use of the framework. BWToolkit is open source under the generous BSD license, and you can obtain it as source code or you can obtain it as a nice “drop and play” package.
I’ve stumbled across BWToolkit a few times in my development work, but it wasn’t until recently that I could begin using it (seems to have a requirement of Mac OS X 10.5 as a minimum…. doesn’t state that explicitly, but you can see it in some of what it does plus examining the source code). In my use of it so far, it’s been really well done and a real joy to development. Having been an engineer of the PowerPlant C++ Mac application framework back in the day, I know what it can be like to write reusable code modules like this, and BWToolkit has a lot of spit and polish.
Some things I like about it:
- Drop and play. Just download the distribution, install the IB plugin, ensure the framework is added to your project (link to it, copy it into your resulting bundle) and that’s it. So simple.
- Use is very simple, because there’s no extra work. Just edit merrily away in Interface Builder.
- It’s got a lot of those widgets that you commonly want to use but there’s nothing standard from the OS for you to use. Oh sure you could make the widgets, but BWToolkit makes things like the BWAnchoredButtonBar, BWAnchoredPopUpButton, BWUnanchoredButtonContainer and so on… it just helps round out those commonly used widgets so all you have to do in IB is just drag and drop and get on with your work.
- I love the BWSheetController. I wish I had thought of that class! It’s so common to have a xib with a main window (e.g. document) and then you need to display a sheet on the window. To display the sheet, there’s a lot of infrastructure code you have to write every time, and it’s the same code over and over — perfect candidate for a reusable class to factor that out. With BWSheetController it’s even better because it’s just adding an instance of the controller to the xib, hooking up some outlets, and viola… functional sheet with just a few clicks. Wonderful!
- Most of the classes are based upon Cocoa classes. For instance, BWSplitView is an NSSplitView, the button classes are typically just aggregates of other NSButton’s. It’s good to subclass where it makes sense, instead of fully recreating from scratch.
- The use of the BSD license pretty much means there’s little reason NOT to use BWToolkit. It makes your life a lot easier, little restriction upon use, it’s free (beer and speech). What’s not to like?
Some things I don’t like:
- I found a bug (BWSplitView’s show up in initial random locations if the host window’s “visible upon launch” setting is not on). I reported the bug via email but have received no reply from the author (it’s been long enough). Granted, it seems he’d prefer filing it in his bug tracking system, but I don’t have the cycles right now to do that so I wanted to at least email to ensure the bug didn’t slip through the cracks. So, I’m not sure how active the project is right now. *shrug*
- There’s not much documentation. Granted, there’s enough to get you going, and eventually you can figure things out. But to make a well-rounded distribution, full documentation of the classes/widgets and an accompanying sample application that shows everything off would make for a better final product.
- Some of where documentation would be very useful would be things like bottom bars…. you can do bottom bars now so, what’s the point of this class? What advantage does it provide? Or is it a holdover from long ago when the OS provided no means whatsoever? In which case, is the bottom bar class smart about the OS version? Again, one could figure it out from reading code, but formal documentation is better.
All in all, a nice little toolkit.
Optimist vs. Pessimist
My Dad spent much of his life involved in politics in some manner or other. Consequently, most of my life has had me indirectly involved in politics. I recall being a kid and being dragged to all sorts of functions and speeches and mostly just hating it (not a kid’s idea of fun). But for some reason, there was one speech that was memorable to me.
Dad knew a good speech sometimes starts out with a joke relevant to the topic. I don’t remember the body of the speech nor who he was delivering the speech to, but I do remember the joke. It went something like this:
There were these two boys: one was an optimist and one was a pessimist.
A team of scientists wanted to study their behavior, so they put each of the two boys in a room. They put the pessimist in a room filled with all the latest toys and fun things — anything that a young boy would want to have and then some. They put the optimist in a room knee-deep in manure. The scientists left the boys alone in their rooms, then after some time had passed, came back to see what the boys were doing.
The pessimist was sitting in the middle of the room, his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. He hadn’t touched any of the toys, just sat there.
When the scientists looked into the optimist’s room, they saw him picking up a piece of manure and flinging it over his shoulder. Then he picked up another one, flung it, another and flung it, and kept repeating this action. The scientists wondered what he was doing so they stopped the boy and asked him.
The boy replied, “With all this manure, there’s got to be a pony in here somewhere.”
and laughter followed.
I admit, at the time I didn’t fully understand the depth of the joke. Yeah I understood it at some level, and for whatever reason the joke stuck with me — probably the mental caricature I conjured of some boy flinging pieces of poop over his shoulder. 🙂
As I’ve progressed through my life, the joke has never left my mind. It’s always been a reminder of how to look at life. When you have good things and all you do is bitch and complain, life’s going to be pretty unhappy for you. But even if life hands you a mountain of shit, if you can smile at it and find some sort of good in it, life works out a lot better.
Stuff From Hsoi 