WordPress.com seems to be having problems this morning. I can’t get into the admin area (http redirects to https then hangs). I can view the blog, just can’t admin things.
But there’s this “quickpress” thing… trying it to see if it does anything.
Month: September 2010
Taliban Gun Locker
A NY Times blog posting about what you find in a Taliban gun locker.
The guns are old (e.g. a 95 year old Lee-Enfield was being used), beat up, but still work (shows that proper lubrication of the internals is most important). I’m curious how accurate they are, but after watching this video well… at least something’s accurate.
The conclusion of the article is a good one:
The paired Lee-Enfields and Kalashnikovs in Marja say as much about the nature of these weapons, and their ammunition, as they do about the Taliban. The Lee-Enfield and Kalashnikov lines were made by the millions, and both are noted for reliability and durability. These two facts have made them, in the eyes of people who carry or face them in war after war, either remarkable tools or a scourge.
And along with the Mosin-Nagant rifles that also turn up in Taliban caches, they and their ammunition are markers of old empires and the standardization of cartridges that accompanied war in the 20th century. That leads to the next point: Cartridge standardization between units and among allies — meaning, fielding many weapons that all fire the same ammunition — was intended to make logistics less complicated for conventional armies and their nations.
It has been a boon for insurgents, too.
For the 24 rifles and machine guns in the locker, produced in multiple nations over many decades, only three types of cartridges are required to feed them — the Lee-Enfields fire the .303, the Kalashnikovs fire the 7.62×39-millimeter round, and the PK machine guns and Mosin-Nagant fire the 7.62×54R round that has been issued to Slavic forces since the 1890s in Imperial Russia.
All of these facts and factors might seem arcane. They are not.
Together the technical qualities of these rifles and the thinking behind them, along with the quality of their manufacture and the relative simplicity of their ammunition resupply, have helped a largely illiterate insurgent movement not just to exert its will on its own country, but also to stand up to the most sophisticated military in the world.
Hot in Austin
According to News 8 Austin’s weather staff, it’s going to be hot today:
A few years ago a took a Cub Scout den to visit News 8. One of the meteorologists joked how it was great to have a job where you could be wrong and not get fired for it. Indeed! 😉
Muscovy Duck Ban
Frequent readers know how muscovy ducks frequent our house. They are not our ducks, but they are a regular part of the neighborhood and we do care for them. Wife and I have discussed when moving out to the country to obtain some muscovy’s and raise them. They’re pretty neat animals, and supposedly their eggs and meat are very tasty. No no… I can’t try any right now. City limits (ordinances) has issues with that, but also well…. the kids have named them and we just can’t butcher a named duck. 😉
But I now read about a Fish & Wildlife regulation, CFR 21.54. Here’s the official FWS document. This effectively puts a kibosh on our desire to raise and farm muscovy ducks.
The interesting thing? While it was put out for public comment, no one knew about it because there was no central group of “muscovy advocacy” for FWS to contact to get the word out. So the regulation is now in effect, but because of the recent outcry they have temporarily suspended enforcement and are taking further comment.
It seems the intent of the rule is to manage feral populations. I have no problem with feral population control — I have no problem with population control in general because you have to keep things in check. However, the wording of the rule basically kills any ability to have muscovy’s as pets, to put them in poultry shows (bye bye 4-H), to privately raise them (e.g. you’re not a commercial farmer, you just want them on your own property for meat and eggs), and so on. This doesn’t help manage feral populations, but does restrict the freedoms of the citizenry.
I know you may not care about muscovy ducks as much as I do, but if you have a few moments give this page a read. It briefly explains the problem and provides people to contact to explain the problem in hopes of getting the rule properly revised to meet the goals of all involved parties.
Thanx.
Updated 9/20/2010: This morning I received a reply email from George T. Allen (that was prompt!):
John:
Thank you for your email. The proposed regulations changes have already been approved, and I expect that they’ll publish before too long. You’re welcome to comment on the proposed rule. I will try to inform you and others who have contacted me about muscovy ducks when the proposed rule is open for comment.
Regards,
George
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
George T. Allen, Ph.D., C.W.B.
Chief, Branch of Permits and Regulations
Division of Migratory Bird Management
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
4401 North Fairfax Drive, Mail Stop 4107
Arlington, Virginia 22203-1610
703-358-1825 fax 703-358-2272
George_T_Allen@fws.gov
Looking forward to it!
Sunday Metal – KISS
While doing last week’s Sunday Metal, YouTube of course suggests related videos. I start digging through and see other Midnight Special videos… from KISS!
Here’s some great footage of “Black Diamond”.
“She” with a solo from Ace:
Not from Midnight Special, but old B&W footage of “Parasite”
A recent live performance of “Parasite” (for contrast)
“I Stole Your Love” from 1977. Contrast the stage setup:
Wrote this post with Daughter sitting here, watching along. She can appreciate the live performance, the lack of Auto-Tune, and all that goes with it. 🙂
TSRA endorses Perry in 2010
Received this email announcement from the Texas State Rifle Association PAC
On Thursday, September 16th, the Texas State Rifle Association-PAC joined Chris Cox, Director of NRA-ILA, in Dallas to formally endorse Rick Perry’s re-election as Governor of Texas.
Governor Perry, an avid hunter, target shooter, and a concealed handgun licensee has signed every pro-hunting, pro-self defense, pro-gun bill brought to his desk by TSRA or NRA. In 2007, Perry signed Castle Doctrine legislation as his first bill of session.
Governor Perry is not only endorsed by TSRA but rated an A+ based on his consistent record of support.
Houston Mayor Bill White, the Democratic challenger, is rated a B for two reasons; his answers to questions on our 2010 candidate questionnaire and his long-time alliance with Mayors Against Illegal Guns. MAIG’s founder, Mayor Bloomberg of New York supports everything from assault weapon bans to stopping gun shows.
Why would a Texas Mayor align himself with out-of-state, anti-gun mayors? A person must be “known by the company they keep”.
We urge our members to support a life-long friend to Texas gun owners.
The rest of the TSRA-PAC ratings/grades voters guide is supposed to come out October 1.
Old School MMORPG
Before World of Warcraft (certainly the most successful MMORPG ever), there was the MUD: Multi-User Dungeon.
I remember discovering MUD’s back in undergrad. Had a great time playing them, met some good people, and frankly if not for them I wouldn’t be a computer programmer today. The natural progression was starting as a player, but then wanting to get into the creation side of MUD’s. Certainly you can create worlds without knowing how to code, but I wanted to run a MUD and shape the world… so I had to learn how to program. I picked myself up a book on the C programming language, bought a development environment (THINK C), and got to work. I also recall that at my undergrad institution, the mainframe everyone used for email and such was a VAX-VMS system… no way to run a MUD there. But over in the CS department? They had 486’s running some flavor of Unix (SCO, I think), and I managed to finagle myself an account even though I wasn’t a CS student. 🙂 Good times.
Of course, pure MUD’s were text-based. We dreamed about making graphical MUDs, even thinking of ways to combat the limits of the age. For instance, if all you had was a 2400 baud modem, you can’t be pushing massive amounts of graphics over that slow connection (you kids today think a web page taking 3 seconds to load is slow? back in my day….). Besides, we lacked the time and resources to develop such things, but it was always on my mind.
I guess that’s why modern MMORPG’s don’t appeal to me — been there, done that, got over the addiction.
However, Daughter keeps seeing commercials for various MMORPG’s and they’ve perked her interest. Heck, with LEGO Universe about to come out, Oldest is curious too. However, they all hit the same snag: monthly subscription fees, and Dad isn’t going to pay for it. If they want to spend their own money on that they can, but so far they’re unwilling. 🙂
Nevertheless, Daughter keeps inquiring and it hit me: why not try a MUD? Sure it’s low-tech, but it’s no different from reading a book vs. seeing the 3-D IMAX movie adaptation (i.e. it’s text, you get to use your imagination instead of perceiving someone else’s).
Of course, the geek in me won’t let it be just any MUD! No… my dreams of running my own MUD may have faded but they’ve never left me. I went searching for codebases and found tbaMUD which seems to be a good foundation (I won’t bore you with the lineage). Back in the day, I did things to get MUD servers running on Classic Macs, but it never really worked like people wanted. With Mac OS X being Unix-based and most MUD codebases being biased towards Unix well.. download and see! So I obtained the tbaMUD source, fiddled with it a bit to get it working in Xcode, and ta da… I’ve got a MUD server running here at home. 🙂 It’s not connected to the world at-large but hey… I got to get my geek on, and we’ll see what Daughter thinks of it.
So with that… she should be awake soon. We’ll start up a telnet session later this morning and see what she thinks.
What a week
Haven’t been writing much because it’s been a heavy and involved week at the old day job.
Dove hunting hopefully will happen this weekend. 🙂
AA SureFire
Check it out!
I carry a SureFire E2L Outdoorsman with me all the time everywhere. It’s amazingly handy and once you start carrying a flashlight, you’ll be amazed at how much you end up using it. While the use of the 123A lithium batteries has never really been a problem for me, being able to standardize on the ubiquitous AA is very appealing (it’s one reason I like the Aimpoint Comp M4). You could use lithium AA’s to get some extra life, but in a pinch you can stick whatever in there.
Comparing the E2L AA specs vs. the E2L specs, they’re the same flashlight save for the power source. Consequently, the AA version is a smidge heavier and longer (and I assume the diameter is a little smaller). I am surprised to see that the max lumens is higher than the 123 version. And of course, runtimes vary.
Anyone want to buy me one so I can test it out the AA version against the 123 version? 🙂
Don’t assume; assert.
For the love of Knuth…
If you write code that makes assumptions, assert on those assumptions and assert in a manner that the developer stuck with maintaining your code will see them.
Doing so would save much hair loss, and cut down on the number of times the original author of the code gets damned to hell by the maintainer.
Thank you.
Stuff From Hsoi 