How to save 10s of gigabytes with lightroom temp files

How to save 10s of gigabytes with lightroom temp files

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Screenshot-2016-07-31-11.59

This little procedure just saved me over 20 gigs (yes, this is right, gigs!!) of space on my hard drive. It has to do with how Lightroom updates, read on or watch the video.

Here is something I was quite surprised to realize. With each catalog, you can set how long it would keep 1:1: previews. I usually set this for a month.

Keeping 1:1 previews is quite useful as it really speeds up using the develop module. Sadly, 1:1 previews do take quite a bit of space. This is why Lightroom has a feature that allows you to automatically delete those previews after a while. For me this duration is set for one month. After one month Lightroom will automatically delete those previews. This is a great balance between usability and space.

So each time that you run Lightroom, it looks at the catalog and checks if it needs to delete some old previews. But when you update a major Lightroom version, you are also updating the catalog (including its directory). So that old catalog will never run again, and Lightroom will never delete all those old previews.

I was quite shocked to realize that my two-version-ago Lightroom installation had over 10 gigs of previews.

Those were obviously deleted. There you go, I hope this saves you quite a bit of space as it did for me.

via DIYPhotography.net – Photography and Studio Lighting – Do It Yourself
How to save 10s of gigabytes with lightroom temp files

Watch a Katana Bend When It Hits Liquid


GIF

In order to harden the edge of steel, swords are often heated until they’re impossibly hot and then quenched in liquid to rapidly cool down. This creates a much stronger grain structure in the steel which obviously leads to a much stronger sword. An interesting thing that happens during this quenching process is how the sword dramatically bends before it snaps back into shape (with a slight upward tilt).

Watch it in the video below. You can see the katana get dipped into the liquid, curve downward in shock, and then immediately lift itself back up as if were alive in a matter of seconds.

The reason this happens is because of the two different sides of the sword. A katana has a single edge blade which means that one side (the edge) is going to be thinner while the other side (the back) is going to be thicker. The thinner side gets cooled first, which results in the curve downward as it contracts. As the thicker back side gets cooled, it curves back upward to give the katana its iconic shape.

via Gizmodo
Watch a Katana Bend When It Hits Liquid

The CZ 452: My Favorite .22 Rifle

CZ out of the Czech Republic makes some absolutely stellar .22 rifles that are often overlooked in the USA because of preference for semi-autos or domestically manufactured products, but abroad CZ rimfire rifles are hugely popular. While they do have a following in the USA, in Europe CZ rules the roost and they are a […]

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The post The CZ 452: My Favorite .22 Rifle appeared first on The Firearm Blog.


via The Firearm Blog
The CZ 452: My Favorite .22 Rifle

Embracing The Scout Rifle (Part 1)

cooper scout rifle

Once upon a time not so many decades ago I was a lot more of an outdoorsman than I am now. I fished nearly every day, and hunted whitetail deer in the swamps and woods of eastern North Carolina as frequently as I could. By necessity I was sometimes relegated to hunting from a tree stand or ground blind, but what I enjoyed most was still hunting.

Ghosting along the edges of swamp thickets required good eyes, patience, a feel for prevailing winds, and soft feet in order to see the deer before the deer heard, spotted, or scented you. The post WWII .30-’06 Remington 721 I carried on these forays belonged to my father. It was mounted with a department-store 3-9×40 Tasco scope and a padded nylon sling. It was solid from a treestand or ground blind, but was a little too long and a little too heavy for long stalks, with an annoying tendency to seemingly snag on every briar or vine.

At roughly the same time I was stalking deer in the Carolina swamps, Jeff Cooper was developing his concept of a short, light, fast-handling rifle that would excel in field conditions such of these.

Flash forward almost 30 years.

Today Cooper’s concept of a scout rifle is well-documented, if not completely understood in a tactical-rifle-focused world. Fortunately for me, Gunsite Academy hosted the first Scout Rifle Conference since the 1980s just two weeks ago, and I was privileged to be one of a half-dozen firearms journalists invited for the five-day event.

The first three days of the scout rifle conference were focused on training, with a fourth day dedicated to a friendly competition to put the rifles and 19 shooters through their paces. The fifth day was an opportunity to try our guns and gear from different manufacturers in the morning, followed by a conversation period where the participants could tell manufacturers what they liked about their products, and where they thought there was room for improvement.

steyr scout

I was one of seven conference participants shooting the Steyr Scout. It was paired with a Burris 2-7×32 Scout Rifle Scope and low rings (more on that later), with 155-grain BTHP Hornady American Gunner .308 Winchester ammunition. The other major rifle manufacturers represented were Ruger, with four Gunsite Scouts, Mossberg with six MVP Scout, a Savage 11 Scout,  a Brockman’s Rifles-customized Winchester Model 70, and a Merkel RX Helix. almost everyone ran low-powered, extended eye-relief scopes, though Monte Long of  XS Sights used his company’s iron sights, and Andy Langlois of Andy’s Leather used a micro red dot.

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Our Rangemaster, Il Ling New (above), also brought her personal scout rifle, built from a Remington Model 7.

Mario Marchman and Gary Smith were the other two Gunsite instructors working with our group. Scout rifle expert and gun writer Richard Mann did most of the work in pulling the event together, and was nice enough to bring a number of his personal scout rifles for us to gawk at during the trip.

What is a scout rifle?

When Col. Jeff Cooper was hashing out his concept of the scout rifle, he was envisioning a hard-hitting, lightweight, fast-handling rifle for field use primarily in the Americas and Africa. It needed to be light and compact to be carried long distances sometimes in heavy brush. It needed to use a common but hard-hitting caliber that could be resupplied throughout the world, and it needed to be rugged and capable of a snap-shot on man or beast in a compressed amount of time.

A lot of people hear of the concept of a scout rifle and get hung up on the idea of a scout rifle being something for a military scout/sniper in the late 20th century, which is decidedly not the case. It was instead inspired by military and frontier scouting traditions dating back to the late 19th and turn of the 20th centuries, and instead of a weapon designed for interpersonal conflicts, it was primarily designed as a wilderness rifle for men who moved lightly through rough country, sometimes for days or weeks on end.

Cooper had a rather lengthy list of criteria for scouts, and as the concept matured over time, some of those criteria (such as the ability to take stripper clips) were superseded by others (detachable magazines). The basics, however, have remained the same.

The rifle

  1. 1 meter or less in length
  2. Chambered in .308 Winchester (or at least uses the .308 as a parent case)
  3. short-action
  4. 18-20 inch barrel
  5. good trigger
  6. light weight (ideal was 3 kilos or 6.6 pounds with sights, scope, and sling; max was 7.5 pounds with sights, scope, and sling)

The sights

  1. low-mounted, long eye relief optics with low magnification, mounted forward of the action
  2. ghost-ring rear sight, and a post front sight

The sling

  1. CW or Ching sling
  2. flush-mounted sling swivel sockets (no protruding hardware)

Day 1

We started the first day with a welcome to Gunsite Academy for that who had not attended previously, where we went over site and safety rules, met our instructor cadre, and got a crash course on the scout rifle concept and what Col. Cooper was attempting to accomplish with his “one rifle” solution. After that, we hit the range was to check our rifle zeros to see if they’d shifted in travel. I discovered that the low rings I had been sent for the 2-7×32 Burris scope were too low. The scope was touching the barrel, and I didn’t have backup rings. Fortunately, Mike Nischalke of Steyr Arms had a backup Leopold 1.5-4×28 scope scout with pre-mounted rings. I got it zeroed, and was quickly back in business.

Day 2

snap-shooting

We jumped right into on the second day, making snap-shots from 25 yards as a warm up. Cooper believed that a good scout rifle shooter could make a shot on a 4″ target at 25 yards in less than 1.5 seconds from an offhand ready position.

From the warm up, we went through the various intermediate positions.

  • kneeling
  • braced kneeling
  • squatting (“rice paddy prone,” one of my personal favorite positions for intermediate range shots on level ground)
  • sitting

We also talked about both the standard prone position and  the flattest and the lowest and most stable of all field shooting positions, Hawkins prone (below). In Hawkins prone, your support side hand grabbed the sling at the front sling swivel and makes a rest for the barrel, while the butt of the riflestock is on the dirt, snugged into your shoulder. Rumor has it that the position was created by a World War I sniper in the trenches of France trying to keep as low as possible to keep from attracting the attention of enemy snipers.

hawkins prone

The support-hand Hawkins position turned out to be a valuable technique when we hit Gunsite’s infamous Scrambler. The Scrambler is a (typically timed) field problem course. There are seven positions and seven targets, and you can fire up to twice on each to make your hit.

I don’t have any video of someone shooting the Scrambler with a scout rifle, but I do have video of my Townhall Media colleague Katie Pavlich make the run with an AR-15, which should give you an idea of the kind of intermediate field shooting positions the Scrambler is designed to induce.

Our group—all the Steyr shooters—then rotated over to the York range to do a “guide/hunter” drill.

We were paired up, and one shooter played the role of the hunter, while other other played the role of  the guide. We would walk towards a steel target, and then drop into an intermediate position when the instructor’s shot time buzzed. The “hunter” had one shot to get a hit on target. If the “hunter” missed, the “guide” had to immediately get a hit with 1-2 follow-up shots. If we missed all three shots on the pepper popper, we had to conclude that the lion/tiger/bear/oh my had successfully made it’s charge, and we we being ripped into tasty bite-sized pieces.

We concluded the day with a a drill where we approached a fixed target front 35 yards away, and when we reached the 25 yard line, we had to make a quick hit from all three sling positions:

  • African Carry (5 shots)
  • American Carry (5 shots)
  • European Carry (5 shots)

If you’re not familiar with the three different positions, you’re in luck. Our Scout Rifle Conference rangemaster, Il Ling New demoed, these three positions during a series of videos she did for Ruger when they launched their Gunsite Scout Rifle last year.

Day Three of the conference turned out to be much more dynamic day, where we had moving targets, turning targets, and another one of Gunsite’s legendary field courses, the Vlei.

We’ll dive into Day 3 of the Conference and the Scout Rifle competition in Part 2.

The post Embracing The Scout Rifle (Part 1) appeared first on Bearing Arms.

via Bearing Arms
Embracing The Scout Rifle (Part 1)

Larry the Lobster Rescued From Restaurant, Dies Getting Shipped to Aquarium

Larry the (unfortunate) lobster, seen here still alive (ABC News via YouTube)

Animal rights activists were appalled when they learned that a 15-pound, 100-year-old lobster was about to become someone’s dinner in Florida. So they organized to “rescue” it and deliver it to an aquarium in Maine. They even gave it a name: Larry.

Well, Larry has now gone to that big ocean in the sky. Which is to say that Larry’s dead. Cause of death? Overeager animal rights activists, it would seem.

After Larry was spotted on the local news for his gigantic size, an organization called iRescue raised money to pack Larry in ice and gel packs and ship the lobster from Sunrise, Florida in a styrofoam container. Larry’s journey up the east coast to Maine was only supposed to take one day. Instead, Larry didn’t arrive until over a week later.

When Larry was first packaged for shipping last week, FedEx refused to take him. The restaurant’s styrofoam container was said to be leaking and iRescue, the animal rights organization that was paying for the “rescue,” had to pick up the package and arrange for Larry to have a temporary home in some tank somewhere else.

The iRescue team packed up Larry again eight days later and used different gel packs and a different styrofoam container—presumably one that wouldn’t leak. Larry was finally shipped successfully on Tuesday, but when Larry finally arrived at the Maine State Aquarium around noon on Wednesday he was dead.

And frankly, it sounds like iRescue should’ve used some more cold gel packs if they wanted to give Larry a shot at surviving the journey.

“This lobster had a bit of a, you know, circuitous route from its origin,” Jeff Nichols, a spokesman for the Department of Marine Resources told the Portland Press Herald. “You need to really surround it in gel packs. This container really only had three.”

But even with all this effort, other animal rights organizations weren’t too keen on Larry living out his life in some no good aquarium like a common Sea Monkey.

“PETA is calling on the Maine State Aquarium to let this elderly crustacean live out his golden years in freedom and peace,” the always level-headed organization said in a statement before Larry met his unfortunate demise.

Larry was originally purchased for a family dinner at the Tin Fish restaurant in Florida. It’s not clear what’s being done with Larry’s body now, but he probably wasn’t fed to anything at the the aquarium given the strict quarantine rules.

My guess is that Larry probably wound up in a dumpster. RIP Larry. We hardly knew ye, but you were obviously too delicious for this world.

[Portland Press Herald via ABC News]

via Gizmodo
Larry the Lobster Rescued From Restaurant, Dies Getting Shipped to Aquarium

This Concealed Carrier Saved An Officer Under Attack

concealed carrier

An concealed carrier in Ohio has been presented with the Citizen’s Award of Valor for stepping in with a drawn handgun to stop a meth abuser who was fighting a Mount Vernon officer for control of the officer’s gun.

The suspect stopped fighting Cpl. Michael Wheeler, and when Wheeler looked up, he saw the suspect staring down the barrel of Dylan DeBoard’s pistol.

Cpl. Michael Wheeler of Ohio’s Mt. Vernon Police Department owes his life to a brave civilian who stepped forward with a drawn gun.

Wheeler said he was being attacked by a homeless man who later acknowledged to officers that he was high on crystal meth. Knocked to the ground and fighting to subdue the “very irritated and out of sorts” attacker, Wheeler ended up on his back with the man straddling him.

“I’ve never been in that situation before,” the 14-year department veteran told InsideEdition.com Wednesday. “I’ve always been able to take control of a situation.”

Earlier this week, Wheeler was able to reward Dylan DeBoard, the man who saved him, with the city’s Citizen’s Award of Valor. Every day, he remembers that day last year when things could have turned out far, far worse.

He often stops by DeBoard’s home, Wheeler said, just to say thanks. “Every time I see him I let him know how much I appreciate what he did.”

On that day last year, Wheeler’s shoulder microphone had been ripped off in the tussle, so he couldn’t call for back-up. And then the man started going for Wheeler’s gun. And that’s when Wheeler began to think he was running out of options.

“I pulled him in close to me to try to restrict his range of motion,” Wheeler said. But the suspect just kept “trying to reach my belt.”

And right about then, the man sat back and put his hands up. Wheeler wondered ‘What the …?’

He lifted his head and looked in the direction the man was staring. There stood another man, with a gun.

After DeBoard announced that he was a concealed carrier, Cpl. Wheeler flipped the drug abuser off him and cuffed him. Wheeler credits Deboard for saving his life.

The post This Concealed Carrier Saved An Officer Under Attack appeared first on Bearing Arms.

via Bearing Arms
This Concealed Carrier Saved An Officer Under Attack