Icehouse Canyon
Posted 18 December 2007
Here is the KMZ
Another site goes on-line!
Posted 15 February 2007
I have downloaded TextPattern and I’m not afraid to use it!
Yesterday I unveiled Guntards.net. It’s basically a web forum with a front end based on the TextPattern CMS. It’s not very fancy, but what’s interesting is how I first downloaded the files on the 11th and finished it by Valentine’s Day morning, working in my spare time. The next site I do will probably take even less time. As it is, it’s taking me longer than it should now because I am still not that familiar with CSS and am just learning Textpattern.
Amazingly, the software for all this, the forum, the CMS and the database backend for both of them, is completely free and open source. And it’s also pretty robust, not just hacked up crap.
Textpattern and PunBB are supported through on-line forums and wikis. If I had any questions about how to do something I could just ask in the forums and get instant answers. But this time I didn’t have to post any questions, since everything I needed was available in the wikis (in fact, my method for adding the header to PunBB is a better one than the wiki suggested).
Can I be stopped? I have two more TextPattern-based sites up my sleeve. Stay tuned!
New Urban Redneck site goes live
Posted 4 February 2007
After fooling around with Textpattern for over two years, and finally migrating my company’s site to it during the New Year holiday, I’ve learned enough in the process to go ahead and set up the Urban Redneck site.
We’re not complete, yet, of course. There is still a lot of work to do in migrating the HTML content of the old Urban Redneck site to Textpattern, especially the tedious business of uploading all the photos. But I hope to get it all done within a week.
Once you get your head around it, Textpattern is really powerful and flexible.
"Assault weapon" California style
Posted 20 January 2007
I have a lot of evil shotguns in the office, but no evil semi-automatic centerfire rifles because they are illegal in California. However, for some reason that is not clear to me, evil semi-automatic rimfire rifles are not subject to California’s “assault weapon” ban.
I have been interested in those 10/22 stocks from people like Rhineland Arms and RB Precision, since I make stocks for shotguns and are always looking around at other folks’ approaches.
The Rhineland Arms stock is especially intriguing. Looking at the pictures, it didn’t seem possible that it could be fully machined from aluminum and sold – through distribution – for $100. I’m here to tell you there’s no way I could get something like this made for under $40 (my necessary cost level if I was to sell through the channels at an MSRP of $100). Machine shop rates must be pretty low in Texas.
Anyway, even rimfire stuff can get pretty spendy. Here’s a run-down of the costs:
| $ 234.00 | Ruger 10/22 (including DROS) |
| 194.95 | VLTOR Weapons Stock |
| 109.95 | Nikon 4×32 Rimfire Scope |
| 95.00 | Rhineland Arms Stock |
| 89.99 | Adams & Bennett Blued Bull Match Barrel |
| 80.00 | Mesa Tactical Adapter Mount Standard Profile Picatinny Rail, 7-1/2” (2) |
| 79.95 | Picatinny Scope Mount & High Rings for Ruger 10/22 |
| 68.49 | Harris Bipod |
| 49.95 | Leupold QRW Rings |
| 24.00 | Ladder Rail Covers (2) |
| 15.95 | Butler Creek Lens Caps |
| 7.00 | A2 grip |
| - | Uncle Mike’s Dome Stud |
| $ 1,049.23 | Total |
The original plan was to build a sort of scout carbine with iron or red dot sights, but the stock elevation is too high to use the rifle with iron sights. So I settled on a sniper. This meant the side rails (my own Mesa Tactical rails that happen to have the same screw size as well as 1” screw pattern as the Rhineland stock) were superfluous (don’t need lights on a sniper), but after digging around in a box in the shop I found the rail guards that actually provide a very comfortable and firm grip.
The top sight Picatinny rail is by Volquartsen, but Hornet Products bundled it with a set of cheap Chinese rings I threw away as soon as I opened the package. So the rail alone should be a lot less than $80 if you can find it (if Mesa Tactical made a rail like that it would retail for about $45 to $50).
I didn’t buy the VLTOR stock for this project; I have a number of AR-15 stocks laying around here. Ditto the A2 grip. I also snagged an Uncle Mike’s sling stud from another rifle I had around here, which I needed to mount the bipod.
You can see the kinds of groups I was getting at 50 yards when I took the rifle out to the range. I am very impressed with this performance, considering everything inside the receive is factory (my other 10/22 shoots better than this, but that was after replacing much of the action).
New Mesa Tactical site unveiled
Posted 1 January 2007
Today after struggling with our OSCommerce shopping cart for over two years, I finally shitcanned it in favor of a new Mesa Tactical site based on Textpattern.
Because the shopping cart was so brittle (difficult to change once it was set up) and also because we kept having problems with our SSL certificate and UPS shipping module (which were hard problems to pin down without lots of finger pointing), we decided last year to get rid of it and refer as many sales as possible through our dealers.
Also, I was tired of my people complaining about this or that that was wrong or missing on the website. Now if they complain I can just tell them to fix it themselves. Everyone has a login.
I love TextPattern. The more I work with it, the easier it will be to build more sites. I have three additional projects in mind.
Why you should own an M1 Garand
Posted 23 May 2003
Today on rec.guns a fellow called Terry posted the following in answer to the question, “Why should I own an M1 Garand?”
Satisfaction!
It satisfies the eyes. It looks warm, robust, serious, and capable. It looks like victory, freedom and liberation. It looks friendly. It does not look evil. It does not look delicate. It does not look cheap.
It satisfies the ears. The clocklike schnick when you pull the bolt back. The warning click as you shove home another 8 round clip. The massive, solid slam as the bolt rams another round into the chamber. The deep throated bark of the muzzle as you fire away. The final Ka-Ting as the empty clip is ejected. The horrifying scream of agony as the guy four benches down learns never to hesitate when removing his thumb from a freshly loaded clip.
It satisfies the touch. The warm sculpted wood. The curve of the stock. The curl of the bolt lug. The take-up of the trigger. The robust, solid, yet unsharp push of the kick.
It satisfies the soul. It is the defender of liberty. It is the champion of victory. It is the guaranteur of freedom. It will not be used to rob banks. No terrorist will unleash it on a crowd of unarmed victims. No gangster will use it to shoot little girls while missing his imagined gangster enemies. It is the good guy’s weapon. It is just the ticket to liberate a country. It opens the doors of concentration camps. It saves people from tyranny. It topples dictators. It squashes fascists. It pushes communists behind their walls. It defends the homeland. It provides for the common defense. It is necessary for the security of a free state. It brings joy to women and children as they fire it. It strikes fear in the hearts of those that oppose freedom. It makes friends at the shooting range. It reminds us of the cost of freedom. Its lavish expense is appropriatly justified.
It is your duty as an American to own one. Get one now. Buy ammo. Use it. Never mind the price, find the best one you can. You have no excuse. Production lines are starting back up. The time is now.
Be careful with your thumb.
Leonids
Posted 19 November 2001
During the night of 17-18 November, the earth passed through a cloud of dust particles from the tail of comet Tempel-Tuttle. As these particles passed into the earth’s atmosphere, they resulted in a spectacular meteor shower. Because the radiant, or point in the sky from which the meteors seem to originate, is in the constellation Leo, the meteors are called the Leonids.
I had already intended to be at El Mirage dry lake in the Mojave Desert north of LA that weekend to watch the SCTA trials. Since the Mojave is a great place for stargazing, I decided to bring my camera along and see if I could get any time exposures of the meteor shower. After a bit of napping early in the evening, I awoke about midnight and, looking up out of my sleeping bag, noticed a couple of shooting stars above. Though this was well before the anticipated peak of activity, at about 2:00am, I got dressed and set up my camera.
In person, the meteor shower was spectacular, coming in waves for about an hour and a half. Photographing the meteors, however, was problematic as the sky is large and you were lucky if meteors appeared in your camera’s field of view during the time the shutter was open.
I have little experience with astronomy time exposures. I looked at some Websites on the subject, and they had surprisingly little information about what film types, f-stops and shutter speeds worked best. Based on my experiences with the Leonids, I would have used some different settings and film, and perhaps caught more than just the brightest meteors. All the time exposures below were taken with a Minolta SRT-101 and Kodak Gold 200 ASA color print film at an f-stop of 5.6.
El Mirage Sunset
Not related to the Leonids, but I thought I’d start the series with a shot of the gorgeous sunset we had on Saturday night. Motor homes at bottom belong to SCTA spectators, shrouded in the dust that lingers whenever the wind stops blowing.
Looking at northeast horizon, two minute exposure
The problem with all these photos is the film is not fast enough and the lens is not open all the way. I think I could have got more meteors if I had got more light through the camera. The meteor is at the center left of this image. The streaks at the bottom are idiots driving around in the dark at 1:30 in the morning.
Looking at northern horizon, four minute exposure
All but one of the stars are fainter than the meteor, which is just above and to the left of the center of the photo. The bright lights at lower right are some campers. Tiny white spots are dirt on the scanned print.
Looking up to the northwest, five minute exposure
The closer you are looking to Polaris, the shorter the distance the stars move during your time exposure. The meteor should be obvious in this one.
Looking at western horizon, five minute exposure
It finally got too cold to stand around making time exposures, so around 3:00am I got back into my sleeping bag and watched the show from there. Before I went to bed, however, I made this image of neighboring camps, including my parents’ motor home to the left. The lights in the distance are from over a hundred camps of SCTA racers and spectators, about a mile away.
The last solar eclipse of the millenium
Posted 14 August 1999
This looks really weird. You can tell something is going on.
- Mitzi Adams, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
On 11 August 1999 a total eclipse of the sun started in Newfoundland, crossed the Atlantic, swept across one of the most populated parts of Europe, then through bits of central Asia and the Subcontinent before sliding off the edge of the horizon. I work about half the time in Brussels, and so I had an opportunity to view the eclipse.
Early in the morning several of my colleagues piled into three small cars and worked our way from Brussels down to France to be able to witness totality. We had some adventures getting down there, not least when a truck smashed head-on into the car in which I riding, but eventually we found ourselves on the shoulder of a country lane north of the French town of Hirson, just inside the area of totality, where the moon would completely obscure the sun.
Unfortunately, that part of France was very cloudy and overcast that day, so we were not able to see the crescent sun being finally swallowed up by the moon and the blazing corona surrounding the phenomenon. However, there are several other unusual effects accompanying totality, which we were able to experience even under an overcast sky.
Totality was to occur at about 12:25. After all our sufferings along the way, we arrived within the zone of totality with about fifteen minutes to spare. By then it seemed a bit darker than a normal day, though it was difficult to tell for sure with all that cloud cover. But as the minutes ticked past we could see it getting gradually darker, and the temperature was dropping noticeably. In fact, it was really quite chilly for noon in August, and most of us were not really dressed for it. We shivered in the murk.
By about 12:20 there was no doubt it was darker and colder than any cloudy August day should be. However, the most dramatic dimming only began within about two minutes of totality. By about 12:23 or so the light started seeping away very rapidly, like nothing I’ve ever experienced before in nature. During the approximately 48 seconds of totality, it was quite literally as dark as night under those clouds. I even have a photograph to give you and idea of what it was like (taken without a flash, unfortunately):
Well, it’s not a very good photograph. In fact, in real life you can still see sky and shadows, even at night, and so I and my colleagues spent totality “oohing” and “ahhing” and looking at the sky and each other until suddenly it started getting light again, very quickly. Within four or five minutes it seemed like any other overcast day.
Suddenly the clouds thinned a little above our heads and we saw the crescent sun, filtered through the overcast so we didn’t need protective glasses to watch it. The solar crescent was a thin sliver of gold, but there was still enough light to make it seem like any other cloudy noonday. Eventually the clouds thinned to the point we had to use the Mylar lenses to observe the eclipse, and we were a bit disappointed this couldn’t have happened ten minutes earlier. But I don’t think any of us were sorry we had come so far through so much to experience a fleeting winter night during an August noon.
I’ve never really given much thought to eclipses before (I’d witnessed two partial solar eclipses as a child), but after this experience I am a believer. Solar eclipses occur somewhere on the planet about every two years. I believe the next one will be in Mongolia or somewhere like that. Sometime in the next twenty years or so I should have a shot at experiencing totality again.