- Obviously a labor of love. Nerdy, nerdy love, but love all the same: Every single minute difference between the book and movie versions of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King tabulated in handy list form.
- Why yes, John Moses Browning also invented the rotating barrel recoil-operated pistol, he just didn't use it.
- "Cartographer: made analog maps for cruise missiles." One of the more esoteric job descriptions I've read.
I can't claim much differentiation in nerdiness from your first set of links. I just finished re-subtitling the Fellowship of the Rings Extended edition to replace all the spots where it says [SPEAKS ELVISH] with the proper Sindarin (or Quenya or Khuzdûl or Black Speech or Rohirric) text, translating wherever the movie doesn't have burned in subtitles.
ReplyDeleteIt all started from typing to rip the Blu Ray so I could just WATCH THE MOVIE, but Blu Ray subtitles are images, not text, so my Blu Ray ripper has a OCR component to it that almost, but not quite, completely screws up the translation to text. So as long as I was in the SRT file to fix bad character translations, I thought I might look up the proper translations, and well, the Nerd Muse was upon me.
Well, this nerd will be checking out the Ring comparisons tonight. Work interferes. I tried to check out the Browning link, but my (Japanese) company blocks any site that openly discusses guns. (Yours is, thankfully, an exception.) Interestingly enough, the blocking algorithm is OK with the photos often found at The Feral Irishman.
ReplyDeleteRE: John Moses Browning
ReplyDeleteOK, if he's so smart, could he figure out how to put a Ruger Mk II back together on the first try?
;-)
How is it that some people have such a gift? It would be interesting to bring him on a time travelling trip to X-ray, CAT scan, and otherwise examine that mighty brain. Ditto da Vinci, Pasteurm Edison, Tesla, and the other great inventors, scientists and artists throughout history. To borrow a phrase, where do we get such men?
Chris,
ReplyDeleteWhat happens if you try to internet search "Curtis LeMay" or "Enola Gay"?
i'm not sure i can stand any more nredy love right now. maybe later when i wake up more.
ReplyDeleteanyway, JMB discovered that the rotating barrel system just didn't work reliably with pistol ammo and dropped it. of course, every few years some ding dong tries it again. (see Beretta Cougar)
In addition to the Styer mentioned at the link the Beretta PX4 is also rotating barrel lockup.
ReplyDeleteScott J,
ReplyDeleteYes, but since it came almost a hundred years later.
(Don't forget the Beretta Cougar, Colt AA2000, and the Savages and the French MAB-15 while you're at it. :) )
And the CZ-24. :)
ReplyDeleteYou gun nerd. :p
ReplyDeleteTam, The PX4 was the first rotating barrel I ever encountered so I mentioned it.
ReplyDeleteIt lept to mind because a friend has one in .40.
He's mentioned possibly selling it to me for $400 and I'm tempted so I'd have something to do with all that .40 brass I come across when scrounging .45.
But if I had $400 in the gun budget there are plenty other things I want more.
Ooh! And the Boberg XR9!
ReplyDeleteScott J,
ReplyDeleteThe reason Ian mentioned that this patent came out "15 years before the rotating-barrel Steyr" is because most people assume that, since it is the first well known production rotating barrel recoil-operated pistol, that this method of locking must have been invented first by Steyr.
It's cool, Tam. Before you posted it I didn't know how old the design was or that there were other modern era weapons using it.
ReplyDeleteMy processor is a bit off today. I'm still bewildered that I actually traded 429 rounds of my .308 reloads for a stainless taper barrel Mark II yesterday. It popped up on Armslist and I came down with an acute case of gottahaveit.
docjim505 said...
ReplyDeleteRE: John Moses Browning
OK, if he's so smart, could he figure out how to put a Ruger Mk II back together on the first try?
I bet he could. It took me two tries with my Mark I. That latch is a good idea and a PITA at the same time.
Too bad we couldn't have a collaboration between Bill Ruger and JMB. The things they could come up with. A gunsmiths dream or nightmare (pick one).
Great gun designer.
ReplyDeleteSuperb gun design patenter.
How foolish of me...I forgot to also mention the Obregon 1911 copy. Gonna do a video on one of those later this week. :p
ReplyDeleteIf you find yourself in Utah, a visit to the John M. Browning firearms museum is a must.
ReplyDeleteVisit? More a pilgrimage.
http://forums.1911forum.com/showthread.php?t=227641
http://theunionstation.org/index.php/museums-2/john-m-browning-firearms-museum/
ReplyDeleteanyway, JMB discovered that the rotating barrel system just didn't work reliably with pistol ammo and dropped it.
He chose the wrong implementation.
I've got a rotating barrel pistol of my own and it works fine.
I did not know that about JMB. I inspected a 1907 Savage pistol the other day only to discover that it used a cammed, rotating barrel lockup. I did not know that either. There is no reason why it would work any worse than a cammed, tilting barrel. Same idea, different axis of movement. 6 vs. half dozen, so it comes down to implementation only. Then there is the locking pin system as used in the Vz. 52 and too bad if implemented properly.
ReplyDeleteThe tilt barrel in my Glock is an exact (upside down) copy of the SKS tilt bolt, which in turn came from some other rifle that your great grandfather Vasily may have used. Everything new is old again, or something, like the rotating bolt of the Stoner system which seems to work OK, so bite me. -- Lyle
Lyle,
ReplyDelete"The tilt barrel in my Glock is an exact (upside down) copy of the SKS tilt bolt..."
Erm, tilting barrels in pistols predate the SKS by roughly a half century. (And the gas-operated tipping bolt in the Simonov design doesn't have much to do with short-recoil tilting barrels anyway...)
I immediately went to the movie differences link and found the commentary on the Scouring of the Shire. Leaving that out changes the understanding of the Hobbit characters immensely, and I hope Peter Jackson regrets doing so all his days.
ReplyDeleteIt makes Han shooting first, or second, look like a minor editing error in comparison.
When I worked at Colt's, I had the pleasure of hanging around with Kevin Kaminski, the poor bugger who gets stuck with all the crap jobs in engineering and somehow turns everything back to green again.
ReplyDeleteAmazing guy, who has pulled everybody's bacon out of the fire at least once. Including mine, and I am always in your debt sir.
The 2000 (I still have one NIB if anyone's looking for one, along with the employee purchase paperwork) was a Reed Knight design some fool bought on a wierd deal. If we didn't develop it before a certain date, it all went back to Knight's Armament, along with any improvements Colt's had done.
Anyway, the primary problem of a rotating barrel in a serious caliber (O.K., 9mm, semiserious caliber) is the drag on the rotating lug. Kevin found that he could set it up to shoot accurately, or loose enough to be reliable, but never both at the same time.
The end product looked kind of cool, pointed well, and didn't kick badly for a plastic framed gun. Big grip and medium cartridge. And the production models shot reliably, but not too accurately. Simply no way to tune them for target work.
Even today, I'd put any of them up against an S&W M and P in the same caliber, but the full time double action trigger is, to use the Colonel's phrase, a marvelous answer to a question never asked.
If you HAVE to have full time double action (why?), the 2000's is the best available. But again, why?
I still have several rubber work mats showing the 2000, with the lamest sales ads in recent history, aimed entirely at low skill revolver shooters who were presumably never told that the magazine and semiauto pistols had existed before the 2000's appearence.
They're probably worth more to a collector than the pistol is.