That Was the Week that Was: 2015 Week 05

We’re now three for five on TW3s for 2015. We’ve been a little late posting them.

It’s hard to get real excited about these. The one thing we do like about them, however, is that they give posts from earlier in the week a second chance to be seen.

Generally, the life of a blog post is nasty, brutish, solitary and short, so if anything can give one of these posts legs, we’re all in favor.

The Boring Statistics

This week saw a decline in posts compared to last. We posted only 21 posts and 17,000 words, down from 27 posts and about 20,000 words. Comments have been 212 so far; it’s a mere number but we seem to think that if we break 200 comments, we have a community going. A conceit, perhaps, of ours. Mean and median post length were 784 and 800, compared to last week’s 730 and 655 respectively. As we noted last week, the mean close to the median suggests only that the posts were fairly balanced in lengths — long posts had offsetting short ones, and vice versa. We have, at least temporarily, stopped tracking tail-of-the-distribution (very long and very short) posts as we did last year… we didn’t get enough knowledge for the effort.

Comments

We have had 212 comments as of press time, up from last week’s 193 (which doesn’t seem to match what we said we had last week. Er, data collection). The most commented post was the criticism of Jesse James’s vaporware laws-of-thermodynamics-violatin’ suppressor, You Can Tell He’s Lyin’, ‘Cause His Lips Are Movin’ with 22.

The Week in Posts

Here’s the recap of our posts for this week The links may not be live till later, maybe even tomorrow:

• We began on a Snowbound Sunday
• And warned we might be slow updating in, In Case of Blizzard, Keep Calm and Shovel On. Incidentally, we’re getting another one Monday. Lucky us.
• As a couple local businessmen learned to their felony chagrin, AECA Export Licensing is No Joke.
• When Guns are Outlawed, only Outlaws will have Thumbs, but they’ll still be killing people. It wasn’t the gun that made Abel do it, either.
• We look at criminologist Adrian Raine’s (Penn) answer to the old question, If Guns Don’t Cause Crime… What Does? We say, “Criminals!” Raine says, “Criminals’ biology.” Interesting argument he has.
• A guy on the net built himself a billet Roman sword and He’s Feeling Gladius All Over.
• When Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Try to Bum Them From Cops — one of the most remarkable dumb-ass criminal stories we’ve ever heard.
• We squeeze in an extra TV review as Wednesday Matinee: History’s Sons of Liberty. The less you know, the more you’ll like it (and the more bad history you’ll “learn.”)
• A story of the Falklands, and Resistance. UW: Terry and the Particularized Intelligence.
• Cody sends a Ghost Gunner Update — Received 26 January
• Even Arab neckbeard neckchoppers have Bubba the Gunsmith: Ay, yi yi yi yi Relief….
• Jesse James rips off his customers: You Can Tell He’s Lyin’, ‘Cause His Lips Are Movin’.
• We have a UW Bleg: Imperial Japanese Special Operations Forces? Turns out they didn’t really have ninjas.
• Think you’re a hot shot? Here’s a Headshot at 100 Yards… With a 1911. And it isn’t even Jerry Miculek!
• We think Smart Guns: Potemkin Safety are two ways of saying the same thing.
• Picture Post: They’re Saying this guy is Aryan Brotherhood, How Come? What odds he has an AB tramp stamp?
• Genius in this field is marked by agreement with us. Case in point: Loose Rounds on the M14.
• On the centenary of gas warfare: Devilry, Thy Name is Germany.
• More on Jesse James’s Aero-Sonic deflated football (or is that, “Moron Jesse James’s…”)
• A dystopian alt-history, or parallel universe: Saturday Matinee 2015 05: The Man in the High Castle (2015, TV). You can watch the pilot for free if you have Amazon Prime.
• That Was the Week that Was: 2015 Week 05 — that’s this post, so a link would just circle back to here.

About that Airplane…

We’ve spent a few more hours match-drilling and finish-drilling parts, test-cleco’ing assemblies together, and reorganizing things in the workshop. For example, we had bench tools sitting on stands because the stands’ bolt holes didn’t match the grinders’ and sanders’ holes. With a plate of MDF and carriage bolts, the stuff’s all bolted solidly in place, and all the finishing machines (bench grinder with grinding and Scotchbrite wheels, tool grinder with fine grinding and polishing wheels, and disc/belt sander) on a single master power switch so that their own on/off switches are not hot unless we’re planning to use one or more of them. The Scotchbrite wheel is a thing of beauty where we have rough-cut edges needing sharp edges, little nibs, and stress risers removed.

The coolest thing has been involving the kids in the project. Blogbrother’s kids are meh on gun building, so this is their first time working with metal. Kid, of course, finds it as cool as AR building (and when are we going to do an AK?, he wants to know).

Going Forward

No promises, just gun fun with the guys and gals. Sound good? Be there!