My phone replaced a brass plug(drobinin.com) |
My phone replaced a brass plug(drobinin.com) |
Procrastination level: Ultimate
> If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
From episode 9 of his Cosmos TV series.
https://kottke.org/23/11/if-you-wish-to-make-an-apple-pie-fr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos:_A_Personal_Voyage
There were a number of "history of technology & invention" TV series, all inspired by Connections.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_TV_series...
I do think he understated the difficulty of the hunt itself. He's planning to use the "supervision" rule to avoid needing his own firearm license, and male deer are indeed unlicensed for shooting (but not female deer!). Then you have to find one. He's right that they have reached "pest" status, since humans killed off the wolves. Every now and again someone suggests reintroducing the wolves, to cull the deer (and occasional tourists).
The open terrain (because the deer eat saplings) can make it easier. I have a great photo somewhere of a single majestic deer which I just happened to see from the road when I had my telephoto lens with me and mounted on the camera. I've even once seen a deer in Edinburgh itself, along a railway cutting.
Huh. I'd have expected it to be based on the center, but I guess the goal is "it must be entirely within this ring to count" rather than just "I hit this ring".
Is it is consistent for old posts too, I hope it is not LLM :)
They use wave detection from each corner - either air/sound or via the target backing - to triangulate and with modern electronics can be quite accurate.
It's nice from an audience point of view to be able to see the results of each shot almost immediately. Kinda like watching snooker championships.
This approach is novel however and has other pros and cons.
Haha no, not even close. Saddler's Forfar Bridies take that prize.
It’s unlikely I would have done that if it had been something like “Using computer vision to score rifle shooting cards”.
The one I went to is indoors, although not a tunnel but a Nissen hut [1].
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Um... No. An american 22 can be very slightly smaller. American-invented calibers are measured to the depth of the grooves in a rifled barrel. The rest of the world measures to the flat parts between the grooves. So no, it is not obvious how wide a bullet is.
And beware the plural. If someone (usually a salty navy person) says that a gun is "50 calibers" he means something completely different than a "50 caliber".
I totally see the programming challenge there, but it's in no substantial way making the journey any easier. Any somewhat working human brain can count this quite quickly and then move on with other things.
Really, I don't get it.
If he had been shooting at an outdoor range, or even an indoor range with a higher ceiling, he probably wouldn't have been pushed to automate the process.
All the .38s and 9mms of the world are just slight variations on .36" round ball, .44 caliber pistols are generally .429", there's a .45" pistol caliber labelled .460 (.454 also counts), .50 BMG is actually .510", calibers claimed to be "7.62mm" use either a .308" or .311" projectile depending on the country of origin and sometimes not even then (France and Switzerland call this size 7.5mm, Argentina called this 7.65mm, Japan called it 7.7mm, the British called it .303), "8mm" can be either a .318" or .323" projectile, .32s are all .312" diameter, but one cartridge that uses this same projectile labels it as .30 and another .327.
The same 5.7mm projectile (.224") is used in cartridges that claim to have a diameter of .220, .221, .222, .223, .224, .225, 5.6mm, 5.56mm, and 5.7mm.
.277" projectiles are used in cartridges that call themselves 6.8mm, .270, .277; same thing with .284" projectiles used in cartridges that call themselves 7mm and .280.
Not just diameter, the bullet itself is identical. The cartridge is longer with more powder in a .357, which makes it a good bit more powerful in practice (2 to 3 times as much energy).
The explanation for the caliber discrepancy is halfway interesting:
"Despite its name, the caliber of the .38 Special cartridge is actually .357 inches (36 caliber/9.07 mm), with the ".38" referring to the approximate diameter of the loaded brass case. This came about because the original 38-caliber cartridge, the .38 Short Colt, was designed for use in converted .36-caliber cap-and-ball Navy revolvers, which had untapered cylindrical firing chambers of approximately 0.374-inch (9.5 mm) diameter that required heeled bullets, the exposed portion of which was the same diameter as the cartridge case."
My goal was to get a deer stalking certificate (e.g DSC1), which includes a shooting test: 2 chest shots at 100m from prone, 2 chest shots at 70m from standing/kneeling/sitting, and 2 head shots from 10-20m standing (they use cardboard deer targets, so not far from training at a range).
This was just a good title.
Thinking about this a little more: the reason I opened and read the piece was because it inspired questions. First of all, a phone and a brass plug are conceptually different things. So immediately I thought “how can a phone replace a plug? What sort of plug?” Then I thought more about plugs - is it a bath plug? An electrical plug? This doesn’t make sense! How can a phone replace a plug? And then the specific fact it was a BRASS plug made me even more curious. What sort of plugs are made from brass? It’s a strange and specific thing to make a plug from… there’s clearly something I’m missing here and I’d like to find out more. So then I opened the piece, and the quality of the writing meant that, invested in the question as I already was, I didn’t really mind that the answer wasn’t immediate. I was prepared to go on the journey the writer had contradicted for me to find what I needed to know.
That’s why it’s a great title, because the questions it prompted meant that by the time I clicked and started reading I was already mentally invested in the journey.
Where do you see that?
The article is about someone in Scotland who took up marksmanship as a hobby.
There are multiple mentions of him being motivated by wanting to shoot deer for meat. It is a through line via the article.
> The article is about someone in Scotland who took up marksmanship as a hobby.
I wish it were so. With a bit more self awareness the author could have said “initially picked up a rifle to learn to hunt deer, but doing so i learned how targets are scored and become interested in automating that process.” There is nothing wrong with that. But pretending that someone is doing all this coding to get better charcuterie is where it becomes frustrating yak shaving.
I would definitely get to the point of stalking deer faster if I were to book a few 1-1 sessions at an outdoor range instead, but "faster" was never the point.
A perfectionist defines a goal and then finds the perfect path to get there. He was just giving in to distractions and "perfectionist" is the wrong label.
> every minute spent perfecting this automation was not spent improving shooting skills by, you know, shooting
I mention in the post that I had access to the range only 1-2 evenings a week, so there was no way I could improve my skills outside of these few hours.
> if I don't care about 8/10 vs 9/10 shots from 25 yards, there is no way I am putting a shot within a 4" circle from 100 metres.
Totally with you there. Though isn't what counts in the end how close you were to the center? If you look with your eyes and it looks like it was in the 3rd ring, what does it matter whether it "technically" wasn't because half a millimeter was in the next ring? It was surely much better shot than fully in the next one, unless you actually want to go to the olympics or are otherwise competing in the sport.
Don't get me wrong, I totally respect the challenge of automating the counting but that this actually helped your progress still seems doubtful to me.
> I mention in the post that I had access to the range only 1-2 evenings a week, so there was no way I could improve my skills outside of these few hours
Ok, fair. Though we can surely agree that even though the automation-building that you did during all this extra time improved your skills, it was coding skills rather than shooting skills? (Which, again, is fantastic!)