Month: January 2011

New guns on the market

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

A bunch of new guns have been released, and so of course we must talk about them, right?

Yes, I’m late to the party. I just haven’t felt a compelling need to be the first guy to comment on these guns.

Ruger LC9. Whatever. Karl said it best.

Ruger also released their Gunsite Scout Rifle. I’m a fan of the Scout Rifle concept and this does seem kinda cool but… I don’t know. It doesn’t move me. I’d like to see a good hands-on write-up on the rifle. I’d like to see how a 16.5″ barrel fares in practical situations (e.g. I don’t expect 1000 yard shooting, but how about 350 yards? both accuracy, bullet drop, and velocity/energy). Box magazine good, but it somehow seems wrong and breaks up the lines of the gun. I don’t know. If someone at Ruger wants to give me one on T&E for a couple of months, I’ll get back to you. I want to like it, but so far I just can’t for some reason.

Kel-Tec has this bullpup shotgun (KSG). That actually perks my interest a bit, but it’s kinda expensive for what it is. I mean, the Kel-Tec RFB interests me: a .308 bullpup. Talk about a “brush gun”, able to more easily navigate through tight spaces. And that’s where the KSG interests me. It’s fully legal (probably some state will ban it, like CA or MA), but overall length is significantly reduced from a traditional shoulder-mounted shotgun, so getting around hallways and so on is greatly improved.

So, interesting stuff. It’s nice to see companies thinking outside the box and also listening to what people want. Oh sure, I think something like the LC9 was market-demanded… not the best ideal from a realistic standpoint, but corporations are about making money, and I’m sure the LC9 will do just that.

Ajarn Chai’s Muay Thai basics

/ hsoi

A series of videos from Ajarn Chai Sirisute, narrated by Dan Inosanto, on Muay Thai basics.

I like how the video builds. Starts with stances, basic leg and arm techniques, then into sparring techniques. It all builds. It’s all fundamentals, and those are what’s key to being successful in just about anything in life.

Doggie School – round 2

/ hsoi

It’s time for Sasha to continue her schooling.

Our first round of training was with Triple Crown Dog Academy. We did 6 private lessons in basic manners and obedience. Overall our experience was a positive one. There’s no question that Sasha is a better mannered and behaved dog, and we’re better owners for the experience. However, we knew Sasha had some baggage, and there’s just some things about the Kuvasz breed that need tending to. It was our plan to go back to Triple Crown for more training, taking their “basic manners and obedience” in a group setting this time, to help with socialization.

But plans have changed.

Wife was poking around Facebook for Kuvasz stuff and happened upon a woman who was local (well, up in Round Rock, city just north of Austin) and lo… she also had a Kuvasz! Turns out she’s a trainer, S.A.F.E. Training for Dogs. From her page:

Elizabeth Marsh is a Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CPDT) and behavior specialist. For over 20 years, she has been training pet dogs and service dogs and providing behavior therapy services for dogs with moderate to severe behavior problems. She has a formal education in behavioral psychology and is the developer of the SAFE Training method – a proven, scientific and reliable method for teaching dogs to adapt to life in a human environment. She is a certified evaluator for the American Kennel Club’s Canine Good Citizen Program and a member of several professional organizations including the APDT, Delta Society and The Humane Society of the United States. She is deeply dedicated to improving the welfare of animals through the education of pet owners and their pets. Elizabeth lives in Round Rock, Texas with her Hungarian Kuvasz dog “Gretta” and her Great Pyrenees “Bo”.

And of course, she has a picture up of her cuddling her Kuvasz, Gretta.

I cannot lie. This held great appeal to us. A lady with a lot of training experience, seems to have the credentials, and not only knows the breed but owns it. She’s got daily experience with what it takes. You know, that could be good!

Wife was very excited and got right on the phone with Elizabeth, even setting up a meeting at our house. Me? I wasn’t too hot to it. I knew nothing of this person and just didn’t want to deal with it. So I put it off.

While things are getting better with Sasha well… after the experience we had at Wife’s in-laws, I got to thinking that yeah, we need a “Sasha Whisperer”. We don’t need some generic training routines. What we need is not just general training, but we also need some work to specifically address Sasha’s issues and situation. After the weekend at the in-laws, I decided to contact Elizabeth and get the ball rolling. I figured that she had as good a chance as any, as far as general training goes, but knowing the breed… heck, that can only help, right?

Yesterday Elizabeth came down to our house and spent about 2 hours with us. Us getting to know her, her getting to know us — and Sasha. She asked us lots of questions, we asked her lots of questions. Sasha hung out, and while she was initially not receptive to Elizabeth being around, Elizabeth had us try a few things.

For instance, with a territorial dog, it can be hard to introduce someone by having them come into the room. The dog is there, sees this as place to protect. But if instead the person is already in the room then the dog is brought into the room, it can go over better. Sure enough, it seemed to have a positive effect!

Lots of things were discussed, other tips, lots of reinforcement of what we already knew, some “ah-ha!” moments. It was just a good meeting and time.

Yeah, we’re going to give her a try. We’re going to do more private lessons to help work out the issues, with the goal being that towards the end we join some of the group lessons. Elizabeth is excited by the fact she can work with another Kuvasz, which I think gives us something intangible here… there’s going to be a lot of care going in here, not just another client.

We’ll see how it goes. 🙂

12, really 22, to go

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

So I’ve been trying to shed weight.

Not just to remove the unsexy love handles, but lack of belly flab sure helps with inside-the-waistband carry. 🙂

I’m presently at 212 lbs (6’3″ tall). Not obese by any stretch, just a little belly flab.

The thing is? I was about 4-5 lbs. lighter a couple weeks ago. *sigh*  I know why. Vacation, time off, slacking on the diet, drinking too much beer on vacation. It’s all a matter of high caloric intake and not burning enough off.

But I’m back on the wagon. Still doing the up-day-down-day approach because it works well in terms of pure results but also just the mental impact to get through it all. I’m also going to pick up the physical activity. I’m tired of being out of martial arts practice, but even if nothing else, ensuring puppy gets a good walk every day (and me being the one doing it, not just Wife or Kiddos). So, caloric intake reduction, caloric burn increase, that’ll be a win.

Next two weeks will be tough tho. Since I’m essentially starting the diet over well, I’m truly starting it over. That means for the next two weeks each down day will be restricted to 500 calories. That will be tough, but it’s necessary to make this happen.

My true goal is to get down to 190 lbs, but passing 200, being such a pretty round number, will be a nice milestone. Once I get to 190, I’ll reassess where I am and if I need to go more or can stop there. Meantime well… I started at 225 lbs so I’ve technically dropped 15, and if I’ve been able to slow and steady drop 15, that means the next 12, and then 10 after that? Should be do-able by summer so long as I stick to it. But then, sticking to it is the trick isn’t it?  🙂

10 Commandments of Concealed Carry

/ hsoi / 8 Comments

The 10 Commandments of Concealed Carry, by Massad Ayoob.

  1. If you carry, always carry.
  2. Don’t carry if you aren’t prepared to use it.
  3. Don’t let the gun make you reckless.
  4. Get the license!
  5. Know what you’re doing.
  6. Concealed means concealed.
  7. Maximize your firearms familiarity.
  8. Understand the fine points.
  9. Carry an adequate firearm.
  10. Use common sense.

There’s more to it than these 10 phrases, so click here to read the full explanation of each.

Oh UIWebView, how I adore you.

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

You know what’s better than UITextView?

UIWebView.

At least, if all you need to do is display stuff. If you need editing, of course UITextView is what you want. But I’m working on something that only needs to display text. I started out using UITextView because well… I need to display text, it’s only logical to use the text view (duh!). And while there’s some cool stuff in there, like data-detecting URL’s and automagically turning them into tappable hyperlinks that open up in Safari, it’s just not the same. Oh sure, you can read in an RTF file to have all sorts of spiffy formatting and layout, but I’m pulling my text out of an SQLite database. Lacking good SQLite editing tools or whipping up my own editor tool, plus wanting a way to have rich media depictions, I realized: HTML! I can have text, I can format it however I want, I can easily edit it in the lame SQLite tools available, I can have images, I can have tappable links, I could even put in movies, references from elsewhere online…. so many possibilities!

Another cool thing about UIWebView is it can show more than HTML. Take a look at Technical Q&A QA1630. You can show Excel, Keynote, Numbers, Pages, PDF, PowerPoint, Word, RTF, and RTFD documents. That’s pretty damn cool. But, HTML suffices for me because gosh… you’re running atop WebKit. HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, all sorts of really cool things are available to you, and all you have to do is hook up a UIWebView and load the page.

So really, if you just need to display text to an iOS user but want something richer than plain old text, UIWebView is so simple to use.

However…

You should do a few things to ensure a good experience.

First, set your UIViewController (typically, but use whatever is appropriate) to be the UIWebView’s delegate (and heed UIWebView’s documentation about its delegate property). Then have the delegate object respond accordingly:


- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType
{
// If there's anything clickable, we don't want to show it inline; open up Safari to show it.
if (webView == self.myWebView)
{
if (navigationType == UIWebViewNavigationTypeLinkClicked)
{
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:request.URL];
return NO;
}
}
return YES;
}

(Apologies for the crappy code formatting… wordpress.com’s editor seems to be doing funny things to code and I can’t get it to play nice). What this does is “redirect” any clicks upon links. As it is, if a user tapped on a link, that link would open up right there in the UIWebView, which may not be the desired user experience. So, using the above code you can redirect any link taps to an external web browser (Safari), and maintain your UIWebView as a pretty panel of stuff. Nice.

I’m in process of converting my UITextView’s to UIWebView’s. It’s a hassle, but it’s generating better results. I can keep all of my data as simple text streams, I can format it and have a high degree of control over the formatting, I can include rich media. What’s not to like?

How is less more?

/ hsoi / 9 Comments

A bill has been filed in the Texas State Legislature that would require Texas residents wanting a concealed handgun license to have a Texas CHL. That is, you couldn’t be a Texas resident and obtain say a Utah license and then carry here via reciprocity.

While I won’t comment on the legislation itself, I will say it’s not the smartest thing to carry in this manner.

Most laws that apply in this area, like for firearms and use of deadly force, are not “universal” nor Federal: they are state. If you take a Utah course but then carry in Texas, where is your understanding of Texas law? You will be held to that standard, so you better understand it. There’s also the fact that it takes money out of Texas and that skews the count of how many CHL-holders are in Texas, all politically important tools. But ignore that and let’s get selfish here: the bottom line is if you ever are in a situation, you need to think about yourself and how you’ll be able to handle it.

What burns my butt from the article tho is this:

“When I was doing the Texas class, I felt they weren’t getting enough out of it,” said [Brad Brasuell, a Utah concealed-handgun-permit instructor from Denton], who carries a Utah concealed-weapon permit. “The Utah class sticks to the meat and potatoes of what they need to know in the civilian world, without all the bureaucracy and fluff of the Texas program. People say the Texas program costs too much money and takes up too much time.”

Texas is 10 hours, Utah is 4. So, 6 hours that can mean the difference between you and your life isn’t worth it? 6 hours that could help keep you out of a lot of legal trouble isn’t worth it? Utah costs about $80 less than Texas. You know, if you are involved in a self-defense shooting, it could cost you tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, even if you are 100% in the right. If you don’t think $80 is a big deal, think about the cost of a lawyer.

How much or how little do you value your life and time? If you think you value it enough that you should carry a gun for self-protection, why aren’t you taking bigger steps to protect yourself like ensuring you understand the law? like understanding non-violent dispute resolution techniques (a component of the Texas CHL curriculum)? like ensuring you actually are proficient with your firearm?

Brasuell said he’s not worried that the Utah class doesn’t include live shooting. “The shooting requirement in Texas is a joke and a falseness of security,” he said. “I have seen people who never shot before pass it and feel they can defend themselves. That is not the truth.”

Read what he’s saying: if he’s seen people who have never shot before pass the Texas CHL live-fire test, that means there were people taking his Texas classes that had never shot before. Thus I think it’s safe to assume there are people taking his Utah CHL class that have never shot before, and then walk out of his class still never having shot a gun! If you think it’s a false-sense of security to pass a minimal test and get a license, I think it’s a worse false-sense to have truly zero experience and get a license! I will agree the Texas CHL live-fire test is minimal, but I’ve also seen some people struggle to pass it so it’s not a cake-walk. If we suppose those 50 rounds are the only 50 rounds this person has and will ever fire in their life (until the moment they might need it), it’s certainly 50 rounds more than nothing at all. It’s at least some sort of experience, and even that minimal experience may be enough to save their life. Is he saying that no experience is better than some experience? That ignorance trumps knowledge?

Of course, as a firearms instructor, I’m biased into thinking that more education is good. We don’t promote a kindergarten-level education as ideal for the working world… we try to push at least a high school diploma or GED, we try to push people to go to college and beyond, vocational training, whatever… we generally push more education as good, more knowledge as good, and the way to survive and get ahead in the world. Why would there be any less of a standard with firearms? Why is there promotion of less education as a better way to go, especially for something that could save your life?

I fail to see how the lesser requirements of the Utah license gives you more. Someone please enlighten me… no wait… if you do that, I’ll have more knowledge, and apparently that’s a bad thing. *sigh*

Updated: Karl Rehn, of KR Training, chimes in on this topic.