Archive for the 'Hobbies' Category
Cooper Arms editing Wikipedia
29 October 2008IV50, bit rot, and Boomershoot
29 October 2008I have a bunch of videos that I encoded using a great (at the time) codec: the Intel “Indeo” codec. Sadly, I no longer have the source to these compressed videos and the installer and vodec I have for Indeo no longer works; I even tried installing the codec on XP, no dice. Wikipedia led me to Ligos, the current owner of the Indeo vodec. $15 later, I have a version of Indeo 5.2 that works on Vista! I transcoded a bunch of videos from Indeo 5.2 using Windows Movie Maker; these were published on Soapbox and Flickr. I appreciate that the quality of the videos is degraded due to transcoding; I hope you appreciate that staving off bit-rot is a painful task.
Ultimate rifle strength test - 50 BMG
22 October 2008These guys put a lot of faith into the action of this rifle. The last test - plugging the barrel with a set screw - doesn’t kill it. Amazing.
You love me! You really love me!
21 October 2008
People are bat shit insane
17 October 2008Make a pink cozy for a pistol, get raked over the coals in comments. For the record, I’m not sure I buy the claim of a MSS with 63 confirmed kills; 12 days E&E and I can’t find anything in google on the topic?
I’m a professional!
15 October 2008I took a bunch of pictures for a video game artist in France, expecting nothing of it. The project was interesting to me (take a bunch of pictures to someone else’s specifications); that was, really, payment enough.
Today this "cookware" (how it was declared on the customs forms) showed up from France. At the current exchange rate, it’s about $115 (115 € with tax and shipping; $155)
I guess I can hang out a shingle now! At an hourly rate of, oh, $4 an hour or so.
I’ll keep my day jorb
The story of Red
15 October 2008If you’d like to read about the birth of Red One, Wired has a great article on the topic.
New Nikkor 50mm
22 September 2008Nikon has announced a new 50mm lens; at f1.4, it is plenty fast. Not sure about spending $440 on a prime, but I might.
Trigger Men
12 September 2008On Joe’s suggestion, I read Trigger Men: Shadow Team, Spider-Man, the Magnificent Bastards, and the American Combat Sniper. If you’re interested in the mechanics of war fighting vis-a-vis the sniper, the book is interesting. A lot is made in the first few pages about the unflinching look at a side of killing people blah blah blah; I suspect anyone that Takes Life Seriously has thought enough about the process that none of the verbiage is shocking or disturbing in the least.
I realize that some points bear repeating; when every person interviewed makes the same point, perhaps some editing could be employed to cut down on page count. A nice executive summary at the front would have been nice; I’ll give you two of mine:
For the sniper:
- Surviving training to become a sniper is harder than being a sniper.
- Most engagements are at close range with M4 or M16s.
- Forget one shot one kill; try for two shots, one kill.
- Snipers are misused by every branch of the military.
For those managing snipers:
- Snipers are misused by every branch of the military; don’t be “that guy”.
Enjoy; I did.
TinEye results
9 September 2008Before, I was kinda… meh. I searched for a picture of a soldier, and TinEye came back with two other pictures of the same soldier. Different angles and backgrounds, but it’s the same guy. The image is a subset of a filmstrip of four.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like there is a way to share search results when the source image isn’t online somewhere. Trust me, TinEye is pretty boss.
