Category Archives: Technology

Golf anyone?

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Get your golf ball launcher here. Teaser material from the site:

Each launcher fits ANY NATO standard 22mm flash suppressor or grenade launcher.—M-16/AR-15, Yugo SKS, FAL, CETME/G-3, PTR-91, Galil, MAS 49/56, FR-7, FR-8 and many more.

Lot of other interesting stuff on the site too. You can find videos of “reactive target” shooting also and what a one or two pound charge of explosives will do to a car.

Stupid engineer

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The guy that drove the Jeep into the airport then tried to blow it up wasn’t a medical doctor as was originally reported:

THE terror suspect critically ill in a hospital burns unit is an engineer with the skills to make the explosives used in the Glasgow and London attacks.

It has emerged that Kafeel Ahmed, who allegedly drove the Jeep into a Glasgow Airport terminal last Saturday, is a doctor of engineering, not medicine.

Police believe he may have made the two bombs found in vehicles in London, as well as the one in the foiled Glasgow attack.

Ahmed, 28, who was previously thought to be called Khalid, has a masters degree in aeronautical engineering and a doctorate in computational fluid dynamics, a highly specialised subject in which computers are used to simulate the flow of fluids and gases.

The bombs from London and Glasgow consisted of gas cylinders, petrol and a detonating system using mobile phones.

Aeronautical engineering isn’t normally about making explosives for bombs–although occasionally that is the inadvertent outcome. But still one would think a good engineer would be able to make something work and would also know enough to do some tests. But it could be he didn’t have any practical experience. Schneier called it Terrorist Special Olympics in the UK.

As Ry and I discovered some things that you think would be incredibly easy are not. For example, we spent a couple years, off and on, before we came up with a exploding fireball target that worked. See Project Fireball for both our successes and our failures. And even with all our experiments we occasionally change “some little thing” and we get a failure. As Ry puts it, “We don’t have enough columns on the spreadsheet.” I recently purchased some ammonium nitrate from a new supplier. The old stuff was fertilizer grade material which took us a couple years of tweaking our recipe, containers, and procedures before we got reliable detonations at Boomershoot. The new stuff is explosive grade. We will do extensive tests and probably make some changes before trusting it for an actual event.

I think it’s Hollywood that changes our expectations of both the ease and the effect of explosives. In the recent U.K. cases we can probably thank Hollywood as well as a stupid engineer for the failures of the terrorist bombs.

More testing

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It looks like Ry and I have some more testing to do. We just make fireballs when we could make fuel-air explosives. We’ve known about F-A explosives for a long time but it’s a much tougher problem than the fireballs. You need some very good timing on the second explosive charge.

Maybe someday–certainly not for this 4th of July.

Quote of the day–National Counter Terrorism Security Office

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Terrorists generally select targets where they can cause most damage, inflict mass casualties or attract widespread publicity. VBIEDs can be highly destructive.

National Counter Terrorism Security Office (U.K.)
Police explosives experts prevent carnage at the Tiger Tiger Club
[Just in case you have forgotten, I gave you the minimum evacuation distances for Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIEDs) here. It’s only a matter of time before we see them in the U.S. You should be prepared.–Joe]

Schroedinger’s cat–the rest of the story

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Tamara K. posted:

Heisenberg used to house sit for Schroedinger, and would get annoyed when his buddy would call home from out of town and ask “Where is my cat? And how fast is it going?”

I thought this was quite funny. My son James responded with “*groan*” but my friend Sean wanted to know what the punch line was.

You must not assume Sean didn’t “get it”. That thought crossed my mind for only a few milliseconds before I dismissed it. So I told him that was it and explained that I thought it was funny just the way it is even if it is a bit obsure. Two minutes later he delivered his punch line for the story:

So Heisenberg put the cat the box with a gadget that released poison gas based on radioactive decay. Schroedinger called again, asking, “Where is my cat? And how fast is it going?”

Heisenberg replied, “Let me check. Oh! It’s dead. You killed it.” And hung up.

Scope Eye (How Not to Hold a Rifle)

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Ouch!  It hurts just watching this, especially having myself fired the Safety Harbor 50 Caliber AR that Ry loaned us last summer.  The 70+ year-old who’s firing it didn’t get the buttstock on his shoulder, so it slid under his armpit from the recoil, causing the optic sight to clock him in the face.  That’s a heavy rifle moving back at him at a good clip.  He was OK, after he stumbled to his feet and I was able to get him to reply to questions.  Notice the image blur as the shock wave (usually referred to as “muzzle blast” but in this case I use “shock wave” as a more descriptive term) hits the camera.  Also notice the gravel being hurled back and to the sides from the high-pressure jets coming out of the muzzle break.

Firing the little .50 BMG “carbine” with a proper hold feels about the same as firing a magnum load from a 12 ga. shotgun.  Quite nice, really.  Its all about style.

Quote of the day–John Stossel

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When everyone in politics jumps on a bandwagon like ethanol, I start to wonder if there’s something wrong with it. And there is. Except for that fact that ethanol comes from corn, nothing you’re told about it is true.

John Stossel
May 23, 2007
The Many Myths of Ethanol
[Remember when I wrote about ethanol a while back? My brother Doug did some quickie “back of the envelope” type number crunching and came to the same conclusions Stossel writes about.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Tom Scocca

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Replace my real light bulbs with fluorescents, in sickly yellow or morgue blue, and I’ll have to burn something else for color. Whale oil, maybe.

Tom Scocca
May 22, 2007
Fluorescent Fanatics Turn Me Off

This is what you get in a police state

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Big Brother gets to watch you in return for the false promise of increased security. From our worlds airports:

Faces are blurred, but not chests or crotches. Snoerwang said that was necessary because otherwise “women could just hide things by stuffing them in their bras.”

…

Snoerwang said the images generated by the machine were not like photographs.

“They’re kind of futuristic. There’s nothing sexy about it,” she said.

What does “nothing sexy” have to do with making it acceptable? And to who? There are people that find animals and fecal material sexy. Want to bet that there won’t be a culture of some sort of deviants built around these photographs? And there will be names attached to the photos as well. Names are checked on your ID just before you go into the machines. People watching the images will snap pictures with their cell-phones or other miniature image capturing devices and associate the picture with the name from their friend checking the ID.

It will do nothing to prevent determined people from getting weapons on board. It only will catch those that are careless. In the mean time airport security costs billions. The airplane security game cannot be won with the current assumptions. It’s time we considered the alternatives.

Just testing

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Before bringing my blog back online I did some performance testing while it was hosted on my own machine. This included tests with all the links, sitemeter, etc. visible. Most of the testing was done early (as in midnight until 3:00 AM) on Wednesday morning. Can you tell from my Sitemeter graphic?

If it would available I would consider this

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No hair transplants for me. I would consider regrowing it though.

Idaho hardware testing

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I had two old computer hard drives that needed to be disposed of and Jaime had another. I had deleted everything on mine then overwrote the free space with random data and wasn’t too concerned about someone getting their hands on it. But Jaime’s hard drive failed in a strange manner. She could read from it just fine but couldn’t write to it. She transferred all the data to her new drive but couldn’t delete the data off of the old drive. “Dad”, she said, “I think this is something for you to take care of. Boomershoot is next weekend, right?”

The two cardboard boxes on the sides each contain about two pounds of Boomerite (a impact sensitive high explosive manufactured by FlashTek). The cardboard box on the top contains another pound of Boomerite. We call this stress testing.


Here I am about to initiate the stress test with a shot to the top cardboard box.


The stress test is completed in microseconds.


This is where the hard disks used to be. That is my size 14 boot for comparison purposes.


Although there are lots of smaller pieces in the crater this is the majority of the mass we were able to recover from the three hard disks.

Except for the first, all pictures are by Kimberly Joe Huffman-Scott. Idaho Hardware Test (also sometimes called an Idaho Stress Test) is a name used by Ry from years ago when he was using AK’s and 12 gauge shotguns on Mac’s and PCs.

Quote of the day–This Is London

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Use of spy cameras in modern-day Britain is now a chilling mirror image of Orwell’s fictional world, created in the post-war Forties in a fourth-floor flat overlooking Canonbury Square in Islington, North London.

On the wall outside his former residence – flat number 27B – where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move.

Orwell’s view of the tree-filled gardens outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched on traffic lights.

The flat’s rear windows are constantly viewed from two more security cameras outside a conference centre in Canonbury Place.

In a lane, just off the square, close to Orwell’s favourite pub, the Compton Arms, a camera at the rear of a car dealership records every person entering or leaving the pub.

Within a 200-yard radius of the flat, there are another 28 CCTV cameras, together with hundreds of private, remote-controlled security cameras used to scrutinise visitors to homes, shops and offices.

The message is reminiscent of a 1949 poster to mark the launch of Orwell’s 1984: ‘Big Brother is Watching You’.

This Is London
George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house
March 31, 2007
[Via a chain of links I followed starting with Uncle.–Joe]

Cap & Ball, Black Powder Freeze Frame

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Here is the moment of cap ignition, all by itself.  Note the little puff of smoke coming from the back of the cylinder– its from a supersonic explosion.  View the whole sequence here.

 

We had some fun that day.  We also discovered that 12 gauge slugs REALLY pick up and throw bowling pins off the table, but for speed shooting nothing beats heavy buckshot.

Boomershoot WiFi

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I’ve upgraded the Boomershoot Internet wireless capabilities to where I want them. I now have an Internet connection at the explosives magazine:

Ahhh…. shelter, guns, explosives, electricity, an Internet connection, a little food and water and all I need is, well… let’s just say Barbara.

Here is a crude partial map of the signal strength. I was way overdue to be home and didn’t have time to do a very good job on it. I had planned to walk the area but instead drove around in the van. I suspect the neighbors figured I was crazier than they already thought I was. The signal inside the van isn’t as going to be as good as if you were in a tent or just set up at your shooting station. There are two access points with the SSIDs of Boomershoot1 and Boomershoot2. Boomershoot1 is illuminating most of the area with Boomershoot2 just hitting the western quarter of what you see in the map. This gives the people in shooting positions 63 through 70 a signal. Although it’s not on the map Boomershoot2 is primarily to get signal to the explosives magazine and I was able to tweak it enough to get the west end of the shooting area.

The line of signal strength measurement at the south through the center of the picture is right next to the shooting berm. Further to the east I dipped down into the actual shooting positions in the .50 Caliber Ghetto.

Here is the Taj Mahal with it’s wireless antenna fully installed:

Historic moment

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First email sent from my explosives magazine (the Taj Mahal) at the Boomershoot site (use the aerial or hybrid view):

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2007 5:04 PM
To: ‘Ry Jones’; ‘Doug Huffman’
Subject: From the Taj.

 

Ping times are 1483 mS on average. This makes for a very poor remote desktop experience. But it does work.

 

Lots of fun. An inverter blew out and took out the power supply for the range extender. Lucky I had another with me that worked. Lots of other hiccups too. Nothing ever goes smooth.

 

-joe-

Those ping times were to boomershoot.org which is physically in Dallas (I think). My remote desktop is actually in the Seattle area but I didn’t have a way to ping off of that location easily. Yeah, I could have used my remote desktop to connect to the router and enable ping responses but I didn’t think of it at the time. The ping times are mostly in the earth to satellite to earth again so it doesn’t really matter much if I’m pinging Dallas or Seattle when we are bouncing off of a piece of metal in orbit.

 

I’ll have pictures and a signal strength map to post tomorrow. The bottom line is that it will be hard to find a place at Boomershoot 2007 that doesn’t have a free WiFi signal.

Hello Iran! Are you listening?

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Via Ry. Meet MOP, Boeing’s new bunker-busting super-bomb:

The 20-foot-long bomb that weighs 30,000 pounds — much heavier than the 21,000-pound MOAB, or Massive Ordnance Air Burst bomb, unveiled in the prelude to the Iraq war.

…

MOP will go a lot deeper — 200 feet of 5,000 psi concrete. MOP pulls it off by not being all that explosive — less than 20% by weight, compared to almost 90% for the MOAB. That’s because bunker-busting bombs need very thick casings to survive the effects of impact.

…

Potential targets for MOP or other deep penetrators would include the Iranian underground centrifuge cascade at Natanz and the heavy-water reactor complex under construction at Arak.

Ry told me about it yesterday. I thought about for a few seconds and announced, “I’ll bet I could defeat it with 100 feet or less of concrete.” I explained and Ry countered with a solution to my defense. I modified my defense and defeated that as well. About midnight last night I woke up with a solution to my modified defense–use more than one bomb per target. I thought about that solution for a few seconds and came up a defense against that attack plan too.

I incredibly impressed someone has designed a non-nuclear bomb that will penetrate 200 feet of high end concrete. But with a smartly designed bunker that may not enough. But my thought process over the course of just a few hours should be a lesson to Iran, don’t count on your bunkers being safe should you continue on your current path. You designs could be made obsolete in a matter of days. Can you redesign and rebuild as fast was we can come up with new attack plans? And you won’t know our plans until after the bombs start dropping.

Quote of the day–Suresh Parameshwar

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It’s not a build break until you have people baying for your blood in the morning.

Suresh Parameshwar
April 3, 2007
[From a technical perspective a “build break” occurs when computer source code will not compile (the automated process of converting human readable code into machine code). In almost every medium or larger sized project people check-in their code to a common computer which does the compile once per day/week/whatever. The resultant code is then installed on test machines and the testers go to work on it to see if they can find bugs. The developers also “sync up” with the common computer to get everyone else’s changes to use in their development for the next day. If the build breaks nearly all the testers and many of the developers are idle until the build is fixed. Hence, it’s a big deal if the build is broken.

I had checked in some code in the middle of the afternoon with a stupid mistake that broke things. Mike noticed it something like 40 minutes later and I fixed it within a few minutes–long before the morning build. Suresh was reassuring me it wasn’t a big deal, even though I was quite embarrassed.

Today Suresh was slightly embarrassed when I during a code review I pointed out one of his mistakes. But we’re not going to talk about that here.–Joe]

No French jokes for the next year

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Very, very impressive.

Far, far more bravery than I could muster. I would love to fly and probably would try parachuting. This is a couple orders of magnitude beyond that.

Please don’t tell my daughter Kim about it. I’d worry too much.

[Thanks to Lyle for the link.]

Air car

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We have gasoline cars, diesel cars, electric cars, propane cars, and hybrid cars. And we have air guitars. But have you ever heard of an air car? It should get great “gas mileage”. And of course the zero pollution (except for electricity powering the air compressor at the filling station) would be very cool. It might even work. Here are some details on the engine.