Just another WordPress site
Benedict Redgrove’s brief and wordless film sums up a Wilson factory’s tennis ball manufacturing process, from molding the rubber halves to packaging the finished balls. We hope the lady at the end intentionally turns balls the wrong side up from time to time.
Spitting Distance 360º
Sold Out: Supreme’s Reselling Scene
Home Built
Hotel Okura Tokyo: End of an Era
Hearing Colors
I think there is an argument to be made that no other individual had as much of an impact on the usage of small arms in the late 20th and early 21st centuries than Col. Jeff Cooper. Col. Cooper is perhaps best known for popularizing the “four rules” of gun safety and the Modern Technique of the Pistol, which he taught at the shooting school he founded, the world-famous Gunsite Academy.
Those things alone would be a tremendous accomplishment for most people, but Cooper wasn’t content to focus his life only on handguns. Col. Cooper was also a rifleman, and there is an argument to be made that a concept he popularized, the scout rifle, is just beginning to really hit its stride a full decade, after Col. Cooper passed on.
Col. Cooper began developing the concept of the scout rifle in the late 1980s as “the one rifle you would have if you could only have just one rifle.” It might not be as accurate at distance as a precision rifle, put as much lead downrange as fast as a pure fighting rifle, or be as light as a pack rifle, but was designed to do almost everything relatively well and be a light, and compact weapon that could go almost anywhere.
“It’s most outstanding characteristic is handiness. It is light, compact, and user friendly… It is easy to carry, convenient to pack into a boat, car, or airplane, powerful enough for any targets shot of pachyderms, and easily provisioned throughout the world. It is ideally adapted to the snap shot, and is quite able to group well into the vital zone of a 200-pound target out to around 400 paces… under field conditions.”
—The Scout Rifle: Some Simple Principles – Guns & Ammo – July 1988.
Over a period of years, Cooper refined the concept down into a set of fairly rigid criteria; those rifles that fit the criteria were scout rifles, and those that were outside the parameters were dubbed “pseudo-scouts.”
The criteria for a scout rifle includes specifications for the rifle, sights, optics, slings, an accessories
For a long while, the only way to get a scout rifle was to send your short-action .308 rifle to a competent gunsmith to be reworked to Scout criteria, which could easily lead to a very expensive firearm.
Fortunately for us today in the middle of the scout rifle’s resurgence, we have a number of factory-made scouts to choose from.
Introduced in 1998, the Steyr Scout is the “grandaddy” of all factory scout rifles, and the only scout personally approved of by Col. Cooper in his lifetime. Owning a Steyr Scout was originally a very expensive prospect. As time has passed, however Steyr has not only refused to raise the price of their Scout, but has recently been able to drop the price of the rifle to a MSRP of $1,499 as interest in the platform has surged.
The Steyr Scout is popular and versatile enough that it became the basis of a precision rifle, the Steyr Elite .308.
Perhaps nothing is more directly responsible for the recent resurgence of the scout rifle concept as the Ruger Gunsite Scout, which was developed in close partnership with Gunsite Academy. Introduced in 2012, with blued and stainless versions for both right and left handed shooters, it it a sub-$1,000 price point that is attractive to a lot of shooters.
Mossberg jumped into the expanding scout rifle market last year with the MVP Scout, a variant cleverly designed to use magazines from both the M1A and SR-25/AR-10 family of rifles. The MSRP on this newest scout is listed at a MSRP of $738, and can be found for significantly less, assuring that it will be once of the top-selling scouts for years to come.
The Savage 11 Scout has a MSRP of $818 and may convert lot of fans of the AccuTrigger, but its too-beefy design is both a little too long and too heavy to be a true scout.
Springfield Armory makes a trio of short-barreled M1A variants designed for forward-mounted scopes including the Squad Scout, but weighing in a hefy-8.8 pounds empty, they don’t come close to meeting the core concept of being light and easy to carry.
* **
I was fortunate to be one of a hand-selected group of attendees for the second-ever Scout Rifle Conference at Gunsite Academy last week, where an influential group of scout rifle experts, shooters, media, and and manufacturers got together to train on the platform, have a friend;y competition, and then hold a roundtable to help manufacturers further refine their designs.
I’d not fired a scout rifle under field conditions prior the the Scout Rifle Conference, but by the end of the week, I’m sold on the concept of the scout rifle as one of the most mature and thoroughly refined concepts I’ve encountered.
We’ll be talking more about the Scout Rifle Conference in the days ahead.
The post SCOUT: The One Rifle To Rule Them All… appeared first on Bearing Arms.
Gurb, 75 kilometers north of Barcelona, is a quiet farming community of 2,500. It has suddenly become a popular place, thanks to being the birthplace of Guifi.net, one of the world’s "most important experiments in telecommunications." It was built by an engineer who got tired of waiting for Telefonica, the Spanish telecom giant, to provide internet access to the people of his community. At first he wanted an internet access for himself, but it soon became clear that he also wanted to help his neighbors. Guifi has grown from a single wifi node in 2004, to 30,000 working nodes today, including some fiber connections, with thousands more in the planning stages. An article on Backchannel today documents the tale of Guifi. From the article: The project is a testament to tireless efforts — in governance, not just in adding hardware and software — by Ramon Roca (the engineer who started it) and his colleagues. They’ve been unwavering in their commitment to open access, community control, network neutrality, and sustainability. In 2004, he bought some Linksys WiFI hackable routers with a mission to get himself and his neighbors connected to the Internet. This is how he did it: Roca turned on a router with a directional antenna he’d installed at the top of a tall building near the local government headquarters, the only place in town with Internet access — a DSL line Telefonica had run to municipal governments throughout the region. The antenna was aimed, line of sight, toward Roca’s home about six kilometers away. Soon, neighbors started asking for connections, and neighbors of neighbors, and so on. Beyond the cost of the router, access was free. Some nodes were turned into "supernodes" — banks of routers in certain locations, or dedicated gear that accomplishes the same thing — that could handle much more traffic in more robust ways. The network connected to high-capacity fiber optic lines, to handle the growing demand, and later connected to a major "peering" connection to the global Internet backbone that provides massive bandwidth. Guifi grew, and grew, and grew. But soon it became clear that connecting more and more nodes wasn’t enough, so he created a not-for-profit entity, the Guifi.net Foundation. The foundation, thanks to its cause and a cheerful community, has received over a million Euros to date — from various sources including several levels of government. But as the article notes, a million Euros is a drop in the bucket next to the lavish subsidies and favors that state-approved monopolies such as Telefonica have enjoyed for decades. The article adds: The Guifi Foundation isn’t the paid provider of most Internet service to end-user (home and business) customers. That role falls to more than 20 for-profit internet service providers that operate on the overall platform. The ISPs share infrastructure costs according to how much demand they put on the overall system. They pay fees to the foundation for its services — a key source of funding for the overall project. Then they offer various kinds of services to end users, such as installing connections — lately they’ve been install fiber-optic access in some communities — managing traffic flows, offering email, handling customer and technical support, and so on. The prices these ISPs charge are, to this American (Editor’s note: the author is referring to himself) who’s accustomed to broadband-cartel greed, staggeringly inexpensive: 18 to 35 Euros (currently about $26-$37) a month for gigabit fiber, and much less for slower WiFi. Community ownership and ISP competition does wonders for affordability.
Contrast this with the U.S. broadband system, where competitive dial-up phone access — phone companies were obliged to let all ISPs use the lines as the early commercial Internet flourished in the 1990s — gave way to a cartel of DSL and cable providers. Except in a few places where there’s actual competition, we pay way more for much less.Read the story in its entirety here.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
via Slashdot
Engineer Gets Tired Of Waiting For Telecom Companies To Wire His town — So He Does It Himself
Last April, LEGO Ideas member len_d69 lit up the Internet with their concept for a Lion Force Voltron LEGO set. The viral concept has since reached the 10,000 votes needed for LEGO to seriously consider making it an official set. But len_d69 isn’t done yet. They’ve recently submitted two more Voltron sets, this time based on Voltron: Legendary Defender. The first one is just like the classic set, five lions that can be combined to form a super robot. I think this one’s not as well done as len_d69’s concept for the original Voltron set – I don’t think it captures the new mecha’s streamlined and curvy build. It’s still a good MOC though!
On the other hand, I can get behind len_d69’s concept for a Voltron: Legendary Defender bust. It has swappable jaw pieces so you can display it as the Black Lion’s head or as Voltron’s head. In Black Lion mode, the jaw can open and turn into an entrance, just like in the series. It also has a cockpit on top that fits minifigs, and should ideally come with a Shiro minifig. You can vote for the concepts on LEGO Ideas, or check out more shots of the prototypes on len_d69’s Facebook page.
via MightyMega
LEGO Voltron: Legendary Defender Robot and Bust Concepts
Wonder Bread is already semi-miraculous: It’s impossibly soft, sweet, and shelf-stable. But unlocking the true potential inside this fluffy stuff results in a substance nearly impervious to heat and electricity, not dissimilar from what used to cover the exterior of spacecraft.
The process for turning Wonder Bread into carbon foam is essentially the same as making charcoal. As extremely Canadian tinkerer AvE shows, you just stick the material into a very hot oxygen-free container until it’s blackened. Just as charcoal retains the shape of the wood, carbonized Wonder Bread is full of the same tiny holes that make the unburnt version so fluffy. Holes mean foam, foam means incredible insulating properties.
AvE’s creation can, by his estimation, withstand temperature of up to 6,600 degrees Celsius (about 11,900 degrees Fahrenheit) and has an exceptionally high electric resistance. Arguably the coolest thing about this baking incident gone wrong is that astonishing levels of heat don’t really melt or burn it in the traditional sense—it sublimates, instantly turning into gas.
All of this is backed up by a recent study in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. The researchers found that carbon foam made from bread “is mechanically stiff, can shield against electromagnetic interference and is much less flammable than current carbon foams.” Scientists sat in a lab, made bread, and torched it because this method is cheaper—and in some cases better—than existing options to manufacture carbon foam.
via Gizmodo
Wonder Bread Plus Fire Makes a Miraculous Material
You probably long ago put your CDs into iTunes, but DVDs are not so easy to digitize. The process requires third-party software, and some apps are more obscure than others. MacX DVD Ripper Pro has long led the field, and you can currently get it free via MakeUseOf Deals, saving $59.99. No strings attached, just pure generosity! What it does MacX claims this is the fastest DVD ripper around, and there is no reason to argue. The app turns DVDs to digital files at top speed while giving you full control, utilizing multi-core CPU processing. It will even rip copy-protected…
Read the full article: Freebie: MacX DVD Ripper Pro Helps to Digitize Your Movie Collection
via MakeUseOf.com
Freebie: MacX DVD Ripper Pro Helps to Digitize Your Movie Collection
These custom built lightsabers look pretty authentic and dangerous. And that is the whole point. If you want a lightsaber you can use for realistic and immersive live-action roleplay, Kyberlights could be your weapon of choice. They are tough and durable and they look badass.
You can use them to live out your Star Wars dueling fantasies, as an accessory at a convention, or for sci-fi LARP meetups. They are built to last, ensuring they’ll handle the most violent abuse you can dish out, just like a real lightsaber.
They are made from interchangeable parts, so you can mix and match different components to customize your lightsaber any way you like. Each one consists of a hilt, a guard that attaches on top of the hilt, a pommel that screws on at the bottom, a sleeve that goes around the hilt, and a blade that slots on top of the assembly. They can light up in one of 20 beautiful bright colors, and make all the appropriate lightsaber noises when swung around.
Head over to Kickstarter to order your own Kyberlight saber for $199.
Few things irritate office workers more than booking a meeting right over lunch. Sure, it may be the only time most people’s calendars are open, but that’s probably because everyone’s trying to get out of the office and have a meal. The solution is simple: don’t schedule lunch meetings unless you’re buying lunch.
At my old job, I had to organize more meetings than I prefer to remember, but one thing was certain—if you booked a meeting in that time block between 11am and 1pm, you should expect someone to walk in and tease you with “so, when’s lunch getting here?”
Obviously if it’s important and everyone agrees that it’s the best and only time for the meeting to happen, then it needs to happen, but considering that lunch is the only time that most people working in offices actually get to get up, walk around, leave the office for a little bit, or have a little time to themselves, it’s best avoided if at all possible—and if you do need to intrude on that time, the least you can do if you’re the meeting organizer is to provide or organize a lunch delivery, even if you ask everyone to chip in for it.
For the rest of us though, if you have that particular manager or team member who just can’t get away from booking people over lunch, may we suggest the old “block off time for everything on your calendar” technique to keep them from booking you? Your calendar will look busy (especially if you make it a private appointment) and they’ll have to find some other time you’re available.
Photo by riopatuca (Shutterstock).
via Lifehacker
Don’t Schedule Lunch Meetings Unless You Plan to Provide Lunch
As always, thanks to everyone who entered our Show Us Your Favorite Round contest. There were many varied and inspiring entries, but in the end, someone had to put his foot down and choose the best, and that foot is me.
Congrats to all the winners.
via The Truth About Guns
Our Show Us Your Favorite Round Contest Winners
A walk through the woods. It sounds wonderful. Birds chirping, deer frolicking off in the distance, the majesty of the trees, the opportunity to get lost and drink river water that ties your stomach in knots. Hiking doesn’t have to be a combination of pure joy and fear of succumbing to the dangers of being outside.
To lower your chances of becoming wild animal fodder, we found some great tech to take along on your next jaunt into the woods. To stay in touch with your companions, the GoTenna turns your smartphone into a two-way FM radio-based texting machine with location sharing capabilities. So if you do wander off the trail, your GoTenna-enabled friends can quickly find you.
If you do get get lost or forget to bring along a canteen, the Lifestraw Personal Water Filter will make a nearby river or lake a source of refreshment, instead of a series of trips behind a tree to unleash your bowels. Our test to filter out anything that would destroy the intestines of one (un)lucky hiker was (thankfully) successful.
We documented all this borderline-self-abuse using two Narrative 2 clips. Unfortunately, only one of them actually delivered on the promise of shooting video or photos every few moments. But the one that did work as advertised caught some candid photos of our walk. But you have to make sure the clip on is pointed in the right direction. A lot of our photos were of trees because the Narrative was pointed slightly up.
To keep all this tech juiced up, we wore the Voltaic Offgrid Solar Backpack. The panels on the bag take the raw power of the sun and use it to keep your smartphone, tablet or any other gadget charged up. The internal battery is removable so your devices aren’t trapped in the bag when they need a to stay on during chats with your friends. It’s also helpful when you’re watching movies on your tablet while you fall asleep in your tent after a long day of enjoying the wilderness.
via Engadget
Getting lost in the woods isn’t so bad with this tech