21 gun Salute

Took the family to Remembrance day, we watched the 15th Field Regiment RCA fire a 21 gun salute from their 105mm C3 Howitzers, I managed to get this very good shot of the #3 gun firing. You will note that the crew is kneeling, unless you are wearing a knee pad under your uniform it sucks. Kneeling as such is a holdover from the WWI days when horse drawn artillery was expected to go into the Direct Fire mode against infantry and kneeling kept you behind the gunshield.

Afterwards we went back to the Armouries and had lunch at the Sergeants Mess. It was great to see the guys again as I served with the Regiment from 1977 to 1987. My kids had a great time there and enjoyed the food and playing in the WWII vintage Field Artillery Tractor (FAT) that they have restored and pulling a 25pdr field gun and Limber.

Iman at the wheel of the FAT




The guns must be cleaned before the men can have lunch

lest we forget

Lest we forget, those who have gone before and do not neglect those that came back in who or in part.

WWI


WWII


Korea
Medak Pocket

Afghanistan

Peak Plastics? Man invents small portable machine to convert plastic to oil

I am sure the idea is not completely new, but it’s well packaged and thought out. One key question would be how much electricity is required, another would be scalability. Plastic litter is a significant issue in 3rd world countries, this type of machine could be a local source of oil for small remote communities, especially in Africa where solar energy is more abundant. I have always thought it would be good to separate garbage into types, even if we can’t use that type now, someone will look at that stockpile and come up with a way to exploit it.

Thanks to Rod from Tanknet

How an Engineer opens their blinds

Chain reaction through the house

No respect for Mosques (or Churches)

For a religion that gets inflamed about cartoons and some idiot wishing to burn a Koran, they are strangely silent on the rather too common attacks on Mosques and the people praying inside of them. Pray tell what crime did this child commit to deserve this? In fact I wonder what were the crimes of all these people to suffer this pain and anguish?

Now had the West done this deed there would be hell to pay both in Islamic countries and by our own media, but sadly the Western media really doesn’t care if some foreign nutbar kills a few foreigners in some strange place, especially any place where kidnapping and killing curious journalists is considered an acceptable past time.

At least Islamic nutbars are not discriminatory as shown by the recent brutal massacre inside a Christian Church in Iraq by the remnants of AQI. I have met many good and decent Muslims over the years, but there is one glaring problem with Islam in it’s current form:
Evil flourishes when good men (and woman) do nothing to stop it
When the average Muslims begin to stand up shoulder to shoulder and say “Stop this madness now” only then will the people who create this violence feel the fear of the wrath of the people they have kept subdued. Only then will peace be upon him and his followers.

Klondike shipwreck brought to life with 3D scans

A Gold Rush-era shipwreck at the bottom of a Yukon lake is coming to life with the help of cutting-edge digital 3D scan images.

The images were produced in June by researchers working on the wreck of the A.J. Goddard, a 19th-century sternwheeler that vanished in Lake Laberge in 1901.

Researchers from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology captured images of the sternwheeler with underwater sonar scanners supplied by the U.S. firms BlueView Technologies and Oceangate.

Millions of captured images were then assembled into a 3D model, similar to a recent map of the wreck of the Titanic off the east coast of Newfoundland.

Last year, an archeological team that included the Texas-based institute and the Yukon Transportation Museum announced that it had discovered the shipwreck, mostly intact, at the bottom of Lake Laberge.

Read more at CBC North

Some good images of the gold rush, a number of sailboats on Lake Labarge at 5:10

I'm A Denier

Remember that Galileo was a denier also.


Via SDA

In this country one can be charged and get a criminal record for not doing something.

A good letter in a local paper about the gun registry
Interesting statistics. (A look at who’s packing what, Oct. 15, 2010 South Delta Leader). But I sense another excuse for a long gun registry.

The reasons the long gun registry is opposed by so many are not obvious to readers of such articles. Registration is often confused with other sections of firearms law such as transportation, storage and licensing.

A registered firearm is generally owned by a hunter, collector or target shooter who is required to have a license and it is obvious that if the police can determine that a member of a given household holds as firearm license he or she likely owns a firearm.

The registry is redundant, especially if one considers the average criminal in possession of a firearm would be foolish to apply for a license and register a gun intended to be used in a crime. The argument that we register cars does not apply.

There is nothing in the criminal code that precludes me from removing the plates from my car and storing it in my garage. If my car were stolen from a locked garage I would be considered a victim, but if my properly stored gun were stolen there is a good chance the investigating officer would initially charge me with unsafe storage of a firearm and I could have a criminal record for the rest of my life.

In fact, if my firearms license were to expire prior to me filling out the renewal paperwork I would also be liable to charges under the criminal code and I am baffled by the fact in this country one can be charged and get a criminal record for not doing something.

Please, media people, do some research and tell the whole story.

Mike Young,

Delta

We Canadians don't take our moral cues from the UN

We Canadians don't take our moral cues from an organization that buried its moral compass in the jungles of Rwanda, that shot up its moral compass in the mountains of Yugoslavia, that defecates daily on its moral compass in Darfur.

Chales Alder echo's my thoughts on the matter.

Via SDA

Day 190 of the Happy Meal Project

Well as you can see, if the civilization as we know it is brought to ruin, make sure you dig through the rubble of the local McDonalds to find some substance. We are at Day 190 of the “Happy meal Project”. You can note the dog shows little interests in the petrified remains of this culinary gut bomb.

First post on the project