- Saturn's Children
, Charles Stross
- Zima Blue
, Alastair Reynolds
- Shriek: An Afterword
, Jeff VanderMeer (Sub Press, signed – with soundtrack!)
- Dread Island
, Joe R. Lansdale (Sub Press, signed)
- The Blade Itself
, Joe Abercrombie
- The Star Fraction
, Ken MacLeod
- The Happiest Days of Our Lives
, Wil Wheaton (Sub Press, signed)
- The Quantum Thief
, Hannu Rajaniemi
21 January, 2011
Today's take
Evil? Or "better"?
An interesting commentary on Amazon:
In 2001, when my first book Satan Burger came out, I promoted it to readers who were into weird fiction. Due to the also-bought feature on amazon, my book became linked up to a very popular weird fiction book: House of Leaves. For the next three years, Satan Burger was the #1 recommended book with House of Leaves. This launched my career and even though I made less profit per book than copies that were sold at smaller sites like Shocklines.com, I still sold hundreds of copies of the book that wouldn’t have sold otherwise. I’d rather get tons of people reading my books and make just a buck or two per copy sold than make a lot of money per book sold. Ever since Satan Burger was connected to House of Leaves, I was making $500-1000 per month on just that one book, which was enough for a 23 year old with a low cost of living to write full time without need of a day job. My dream of writing as a career became a reality, and it couldn’t have happened without amazon.com.
13 January, 2011
Reaching out to 2,000 yards with a .338 or .375 (and more!)
First and foremost, Lutz Moeller has been found. As far as I can tell, his new site is just the same as his old site, but I don't read any German (so it could be full of new information).
There have been many comments posted to the above post about Moeller. Frankly, it's been kind of heated, and things have deteriorated to name-calling. I wanted to make a new post to summarize some of the comments, but hopefully to also open the discussion a bit more, and to ask some direct questions that either haven't been asked, or haven't been answered.
I'd also like to take a moment to thank Noel Carlson for stepping forward and offering his input on this (although I think he has a commercial interest in this area, which may be some of his motivation). His tidbits of information have been valuable and insightful.
I also want to say that Moeller hasn't made any effort to speak up on his behalf here, and has never answered an email from me. I realize he speaks German, but he does correspond in English as well, and some pretty important things are being said about his work. It seems to me that it's very important he take the time to actually speak up. The reason I originally wondered "aloud" here where he had gone is that he had done a fairly heavy body of research (or at least, it seemed that way looking at his website), and then he simply disappeared after selling a few hundred (or perhaps many hundreds – there are several "transactions" that seem to have taken place on his website, usually involving sets of a hundred rounds) of his specially lathed bullets. It's of course nobody's obligation to respond to me personally, and I'm not by any means an expert in the field, but enough has been said by enough people, that coupled with his silence and strange disappearance, I feel it would probably be to his benefit to at least try to explain some of the research he has done, where he is going with it, what has become of it, results, or anything along those veins. I think it would be very much to his benefit.
So let me preface this by saying that my first accurate marks at 1,000 yards were with a .22-250 on Quantico's Range 4. I'm a capable shooter at that range. I am also well aware that a .308 – or a .300 Win, or a .338 LM, or a .50 BMG – or any of a great number of rounds can handle the range. We simply do the math, as I have walked through, here, in the past.
The background for my interest in very-long-range shooting started with varminting, but was fomented when I read this article a while back: Quest for the Two-Mile Prairie Dog. It occurred to me then, with the right optics and the right cartridge that just about anything was "open" as far as range was concerned. And around this same time, I happened upon what Lutz was doing, and started forming my own cartridges in CAD (and thankfully have access to CFD).
Things get murky here. So as near as I can tell, people started looking at superlative cartridges like the 6 PPC, 6 XC (to right), 6 BRDX, 6.5 Grendel, the 6.5x284, the 6.5x54, the .338 Lapua Magnum, as well as some of the new "short magnum" and "super short magnum" rounds and noticed something: these relatively small-caliber (ranging from 6mm to roughly 9mm; I say small when compared to what we traditionally think of a 1,000-2,000 yard round: 12.7mm "and up") shared a similar design trait. All of them had (in relation to other cartridges of the same caliber) very long, slender bullets, with exceptionally acute points. Some of these "very long" rounds frankly looked kind of silly, but the proof was in the contests: time after time, these rounds were dominating the competitions:
It seemed, especially after the advent of the super-short-magnums (pictured below, in polished silver cases), that people realized having a very wide, squat cartridge with a long, even strangely long bullet seated at the end of it was not impractical at all. The short, wide cartridge actually burned powder better than its longer, narrower brethren, and people began noticing that what should have been ballistically-equal rounds, like the .300 Winchester Short Magnum (WSM) actually had an edge on the .300 Winchester Magnum (hereafter referred to as the "300 Win Mag"). It was a small edge, but it was gaining higher speeds from a changed case.
So on the one hand, cartridges were changing, and on the other, bullets, too, were changing. One technique used on newer bullets which (apparently; this is disputed) met with some success was the inclusion of what Noel Carlson has called "sacrificial forward bands." Noel himself points out (sorry, Noel, I had to do some digging to find out where the term came from; I'm not stalking you around the internet) that this is not necessarily a new invention, but I think there has been new understanding as to the benefits of these forward bands. The linked post shows bullets with these forward bands. There is a company (and here I claim fair use under US law for purposes of illustration, I am not advertising or making any claims of my own innovation here) in South Africa which seems to have a patent (circa 1997) on these bands. The bullets are pictured below, and the bands are immediately obvious:
Without quoting directly from GS Group, there are two (apparently; again, some of this is disputed) main benefits of the "sacrificial bands" or rings on the bullet.
First, the bands allow us to increase pressure in the cartridge because they provide a sort of "gradual pressure relief" as the gas in the cartridge expands. As it passes by the rings, energy is transferred to the bullet (hence the term "drive bands") as gas passes by each successive band. In so doing, the transfer obviously reduces the energy in the gas, reducing the load on the cartridge. So – and this is my understanding; there are lots of secrets and half-truths and plenty of outright ignorance out there on these subjects – if your basic metallurgy in your cartridge is sound, you are able to seat the bullet deeper, fill the cartridge fuller, and drive a bullet with bands faster than you would be able to drive the same bullet in the same cartridge without the bands. And, without the bands, because of a more positive seal on the cartridge, the pressure would be higher in the chamber without necessarily translating to a faster projectile (and would create more danger for the shooter and his weapon).
The second benefit of the bands is more subtle, but is easier to understand with the advent of computational fluid dynamics and the availability of it to anyone with the time (and/or the money) to "do the homework." Moeller has a great image of air flowing over these bands, but because he has been (seeming deliberately) incommunicado, I am quite hesitant to picture it here. I will however, link to the page it is on.
One can come up with similar models on their own using typical CAD software (I've used Alibre, Rhino, and a smattering of others in my own work) and CFD software such as OpenFOAM (which is conveniently available for Ubuntu), provided you follow some rough math (which I will lay out a little further below). It doesn't hurt to have spent a year designing exotic turbojets, either. :)
What we are seeing when we look at the rings on the projectile in flight is a small area of turbulence surrounding the projectile. As it moves forward, the projectile carries with it an area of higher pressure air, effectively wrapped about its midsection. The speculation I've read is that this discourages interference from airflows which are at an angle to the direction of flight, which is to say, those which cross the path of the bullet. The idea is that the ridges or rings around the bullet, with the small amount of turbulence surrounding them, make the bullet more resistant to windage (drift side to side) than a similarly shaped bullet without the rings. This concept is not unlike that of supercavitation (in water; however, let us remember that at mach numbers greater than one, "air" behaves very much like water) but I have yet to build a suitably complex model to actually test this computationally (testing on the range is one thing; trying to prove why a thing works in simulation is entirely another).
There's another piece I keep hearing about (and seeing) in modern bullet design. Noel tells me this is actually a holdover from old (e.g., out of date) manufacturing dies and that it is not effective in stabilizing a bullet in flight. The piece I am referring to is the recessed boat tail, or an inverted "dimple" at the aft end of the bullet. Again, the principle in use here is to create a small pocket of turbulence that travels with the projectile, this time at the rear. By inverting the rear of the bullet, a small pocket of turgid air creates another high pressure area which resists the flow of air from the fore end of the projectile interfering with it. The notion here is that the high pressure area directly aft of the bullet serves to streamline the flow around it, and allow it to effectively "re-coalesce" aft of the projectile itself. This is not unlike the principle of a spoiler on a car, but of course the geometry is very different.
Noel, brings up many fascinating points. Where can I find details on artillery shells? I don't see any schematics online, and I don't think there are many communities that would really be consumers of such schematics. So it seems to me that researching very high caliber shells (107mm, 150mm, etc), would be fruitless, and possibly also not even relevant to small-arms design, even "down" to my 20mm ideas. Further, I notice currently we're using RAP shells, which sort of renders their bc moot (RAP I guess being the logical successor to base-bleed). Control surfaces... You've got me thinking, but I'm still missing something. Outside of the self-discarding sabot crowd, I can't think of any long-range projectiles that have control surfaces.
For my own part, I've still been trying to design a cartridge, or understand the right way to go about designing a cartridge (in spite of the lack of public information about what goes into said designs). The math that I have been using is by no means revolutionary; it is derivative, and I'll be the first to admit it. I looked around at what was working, and started drawing up relational dimensions for what these highly accurate cartridges shared. I've been experimenting with altering the ratios, but at present, I have the following constants, based upon the unit "cal" as one caliber.
Diameter of case rim: 2 * cal
Length to shoulder from base of cartridge: 5 * cal
Length of projectile: (anywhere from 5.5 to 8 * cal)
Length of cartridge shoulder: 2 * cal
Length of neck: 1.2 * cal
Seating depth: cal / 2
Barrel wall thickness: cal
This means that the length of the case (without the shoulder; I don't yet have any data on shoulder angles or depths) is going to be in the neighborhood of 8 calibers, but of course, 2 calibers in diameter making it a wide, short cartridge with a lot of volume. I have been experimenting with calibers, in this fashion, from 6.5mm up through 20mm (more on the 20mm in a minute). I have even written a program to plot the varying characteristics of these rounds on these assumptions (such as cartridge volume) to try to identify a sort of "sweet spot" between cartridge volume, caliber, and overall size of the cartridge with bullet seated. Things get big fast, even though the equations are linear (as volume is exponential and overall length expands geometrically). Pretty soon, especially in the 12.7mm+ category, the rounds get really, really big.
But nobody's talking about what goes into their rounds. Nobody is talking about their ratios, and what reasoning they have behind it. It can't just be lots of observed experience, as I have a very hard time believing people are cutting new barrels and re-tooling new chambers for each of these iterations. Increase the seating depth a little, and you have a new chamber, possibly a new barrel, and so on. Change the length of the projectile in calibers, and you of course need to adjust twist, the length of the barrel, and again, re-tool the chamber.
So how are people coming to these numbers? I have a good number of gunsmithing books, and an equal number on the practical details on shooting, and nobody seems to be sharing what their "magic numbers" are – even though, if they were to create a novel cartridge and start selling it, their secret would be out and the ratios would be easy to duplicate (and test, though not necessarily successfully) on different calibers.
I think this may be partially responsible for the reason people are being so quiet. Lutz was certainly interested as of March 2009. But can that be the only reason? I have a feeling people are just highly superstitious and private about their thoughts on rifle and cartridge design due to culture. It's almost as if everyone has their own secret chili recipe or secret barbecue sauce they think will win the county fair. But this strikes me as totally outdated and outmoded in an era where people can work together across continents to achieve results greater than the would have on their own.
Outside of Wikipedia, and its collation of a large amount of ballistic data (which I in fact helped populate with another user), and perhaps Chuckhawk's, there really isn't a large collection of ballistic data, cartridge dimensions, and notes on usage, accuracy, and so on. If a community formed to start researching these kinds of things, I think we would very rapidly start to see a new breed of cartridge (and indeed a new breed of rifle) emerge. Nothing bad can come of this. Yet, people cling to their secrecy.
Well, let me air a little of what I've been working on, although I'll admit I have a few secrets up my sleeve in respect to the actual design of the cartridge (mainly related to very novel and complicated manufacturing techniques beyond the simple lathing-down-a-billet-of-copper process).
The case for a bigger hammer
My idea was, why not make a 20mm round with the same characteristics of a "stretched" (e.g., 6.5 caliber) .338 LM (or Dominator, or whatever) round? I never intended it to be an HE or arty round (or anti-tank, like the Lahti or NTW-20), mind, but a single-shot rifle round. With a 20mm round, you have the case capacity to make just about any range that we can practically see with any optics I know of, and the mass to "affect" anything at the desired distance. (I suppose non-line-of-sight impact is also possible at with a 20mm [ ... ]).
But when I started my modeling on the cartridge, I found almost no public research on either 20mm caliber (outside artillery) or what people were doing with the 6.5-caliber rounds that made them so accurate. CFD wasn't showing me anything I hadn't seen, but I knew that when one is working with that much propellant, one does not make assumptions.
I guess what I'm getting at is it seemed to me to be "missing the point" to take a small-caliber round like a .338, and try to re-engineer the shape of the bullet so that it could better resist windage and reach out further. Why not instead increase the mass of the projectile (reduced windage is a nice effect of increased mass), using sound geometry from the outset, and increase the case capacity so that you had the push to "get it out there."
By increasing the mass of the round, we can effectively cheat at the math and physics parts involved in making small, fast cartridges go very far accurately. A more massive round simply resists windage better, and drop is far easier to compensate for.
I did find that Anzio Iron Works makes a 20mm rifle, but will not speak of it, its specifications, provide ballistic data, let alone CAD data, and so on. It seems a bit of a non-sequitor. Or at least not relevant to my interests. They never responded to my emails, and their rifle is incredibly expensive. They also don't discuss accuracy at all, nor what its intended purpose is. Or if they've had any military sales. Given the size of the thing, my guess is no.
I've got most of the work for the 20mm "done," but lots of questions remain, like what would the BATF think of it, were I to build it? the rifle itself would be entirely non-man-portable and likely have to be towed: consider just the weight and length of the barrel required. Assuming I found somewhere to test it, would it actually be legal to do so? Could I just class III it? (the real technical details I'm intent on patenting, so I don't want to get into some of the finer details; certain implementation details – which are, at present, proprietary to me – might make it a lot less relevant to the BATF.)
I can just see the headlines, though. Virginia Man Builds 3-mile Cannon, Reportedly for "Testing Purposes" It might be worth it for the patents alone.
Anyways, I know this is a very long post, but I am tired of all the comments coming in on the "where is Lutz Moeller" post that are argumentative, slanderous, uninformed, or speculative at best. Noel, unfortunately, you've been the subject of a number of these comments (which I have deleted rather than let through; they're not adding to the discussion, but they don't stop coming in, either). I'd really like it if you could take a little time to describe some of the things you're doing and maybe we could start a public discussion on what makes a cartridge a great cartridge.
There have been many comments posted to the above post about Moeller. Frankly, it's been kind of heated, and things have deteriorated to name-calling. I wanted to make a new post to summarize some of the comments, but hopefully to also open the discussion a bit more, and to ask some direct questions that either haven't been asked, or haven't been answered.
I'd also like to take a moment to thank Noel Carlson for stepping forward and offering his input on this (although I think he has a commercial interest in this area, which may be some of his motivation). His tidbits of information have been valuable and insightful.
I also want to say that Moeller hasn't made any effort to speak up on his behalf here, and has never answered an email from me. I realize he speaks German, but he does correspond in English as well, and some pretty important things are being said about his work. It seems to me that it's very important he take the time to actually speak up. The reason I originally wondered "aloud" here where he had gone is that he had done a fairly heavy body of research (or at least, it seemed that way looking at his website), and then he simply disappeared after selling a few hundred (or perhaps many hundreds – there are several "transactions" that seem to have taken place on his website, usually involving sets of a hundred rounds) of his specially lathed bullets. It's of course nobody's obligation to respond to me personally, and I'm not by any means an expert in the field, but enough has been said by enough people, that coupled with his silence and strange disappearance, I feel it would probably be to his benefit to at least try to explain some of the research he has done, where he is going with it, what has become of it, results, or anything along those veins. I think it would be very much to his benefit.
So let me preface this by saying that my first accurate marks at 1,000 yards were with a .22-250 on Quantico's Range 4. I'm a capable shooter at that range. I am also well aware that a .308 – or a .300 Win, or a .338 LM, or a .50 BMG – or any of a great number of rounds can handle the range. We simply do the math, as I have walked through, here, in the past.
The background for my interest in very-long-range shooting started with varminting, but was fomented when I read this article a while back: Quest for the Two-Mile Prairie Dog. It occurred to me then, with the right optics and the right cartridge that just about anything was "open" as far as range was concerned. And around this same time, I happened upon what Lutz was doing, and started forming my own cartridges in CAD (and thankfully have access to CFD).
Things get murky here. So as near as I can tell, people started looking at superlative cartridges like the 6 PPC, 6 XC (to right), 6 BRDX, 6.5 Grendel, the 6.5x284, the 6.5x54, the .338 Lapua Magnum, as well as some of the new "short magnum" and "super short magnum" rounds and noticed something: these relatively small-caliber (ranging from 6mm to roughly 9mm; I say small when compared to what we traditionally think of a 1,000-2,000 yard round: 12.7mm "and up") shared a similar design trait. All of them had (in relation to other cartridges of the same caliber) very long, slender bullets, with exceptionally acute points. Some of these "very long" rounds frankly looked kind of silly, but the proof was in the contests: time after time, these rounds were dominating the competitions:
There have been some amazing results with the 6.5-284 over the last couple of years. In 1000-yard benchrest, the 30-calibers are still used by more shooters, but the little 6.5 is becoming more prevalent every season, and taking home more than its share of fake wood trophies. Rich DeSimone set a tough record to beat in the IBS Light Gun category with 1.564" 5-shot group at 1000 yards with his Ackleyized 6.5-284 Super and Clinch River 147s. Last year alone, John Hoover and his daughter Marissa each nailed perfect 100 scores at Williamsport with their 6.5-284s. In 1998, John shot Williamsport's first-ever perfect Light Gun 100 score, with 5X and a 5.585" group for TEN shots.
(via 6mmbr.com – an authoritative source, if there is one, on the state of small-caliber, long-distance, benchrest shooting and competition)
It seemed, especially after the advent of the super-short-magnums (pictured below, in polished silver cases), that people realized having a very wide, squat cartridge with a long, even strangely long bullet seated at the end of it was not impractical at all. The short, wide cartridge actually burned powder better than its longer, narrower brethren, and people began noticing that what should have been ballistically-equal rounds, like the .300 Winchester Short Magnum (WSM) actually had an edge on the .300 Winchester Magnum (hereafter referred to as the "300 Win Mag"). It was a small edge, but it was gaining higher speeds from a changed case.
So on the one hand, cartridges were changing, and on the other, bullets, too, were changing. One technique used on newer bullets which (apparently; this is disputed) met with some success was the inclusion of what Noel Carlson has called "sacrificial forward bands." Noel himself points out (sorry, Noel, I had to do some digging to find out where the term came from; I'm not stalking you around the internet) that this is not necessarily a new invention, but I think there has been new understanding as to the benefits of these forward bands. The linked post shows bullets with these forward bands. There is a company (and here I claim fair use under US law for purposes of illustration, I am not advertising or making any claims of my own innovation here) in South Africa which seems to have a patent (circa 1997) on these bands. The bullets are pictured below, and the bands are immediately obvious:
 |
| Courtesy GS Custom Bullets, gsgroup.co.za |
First, the bands allow us to increase pressure in the cartridge because they provide a sort of "gradual pressure relief" as the gas in the cartridge expands. As it passes by the rings, energy is transferred to the bullet (hence the term "drive bands") as gas passes by each successive band. In so doing, the transfer obviously reduces the energy in the gas, reducing the load on the cartridge. So – and this is my understanding; there are lots of secrets and half-truths and plenty of outright ignorance out there on these subjects – if your basic metallurgy in your cartridge is sound, you are able to seat the bullet deeper, fill the cartridge fuller, and drive a bullet with bands faster than you would be able to drive the same bullet in the same cartridge without the bands. And, without the bands, because of a more positive seal on the cartridge, the pressure would be higher in the chamber without necessarily translating to a faster projectile (and would create more danger for the shooter and his weapon).
The second benefit of the bands is more subtle, but is easier to understand with the advent of computational fluid dynamics and the availability of it to anyone with the time (and/or the money) to "do the homework." Moeller has a great image of air flowing over these bands, but because he has been (seeming deliberately) incommunicado, I am quite hesitant to picture it here. I will however, link to the page it is on.
One can come up with similar models on their own using typical CAD software (I've used Alibre, Rhino, and a smattering of others in my own work) and CFD software such as OpenFOAM (which is conveniently available for Ubuntu), provided you follow some rough math (which I will lay out a little further below). It doesn't hurt to have spent a year designing exotic turbojets, either. :)
What we are seeing when we look at the rings on the projectile in flight is a small area of turbulence surrounding the projectile. As it moves forward, the projectile carries with it an area of higher pressure air, effectively wrapped about its midsection. The speculation I've read is that this discourages interference from airflows which are at an angle to the direction of flight, which is to say, those which cross the path of the bullet. The idea is that the ridges or rings around the bullet, with the small amount of turbulence surrounding them, make the bullet more resistant to windage (drift side to side) than a similarly shaped bullet without the rings. This concept is not unlike that of supercavitation (in water; however, let us remember that at mach numbers greater than one, "air" behaves very much like water) but I have yet to build a suitably complex model to actually test this computationally (testing on the range is one thing; trying to prove why a thing works in simulation is entirely another).
There's another piece I keep hearing about (and seeing) in modern bullet design. Noel tells me this is actually a holdover from old (e.g., out of date) manufacturing dies and that it is not effective in stabilizing a bullet in flight. The piece I am referring to is the recessed boat tail, or an inverted "dimple" at the aft end of the bullet. Again, the principle in use here is to create a small pocket of turbulence that travels with the projectile, this time at the rear. By inverting the rear of the bullet, a small pocket of turgid air creates another high pressure area which resists the flow of air from the fore end of the projectile interfering with it. The notion here is that the high pressure area directly aft of the bullet serves to streamline the flow around it, and allow it to effectively "re-coalesce" aft of the projectile itself. This is not unlike the principle of a spoiler on a car, but of course the geometry is very different.
Noel, brings up many fascinating points. Where can I find details on artillery shells? I don't see any schematics online, and I don't think there are many communities that would really be consumers of such schematics. So it seems to me that researching very high caliber shells (107mm, 150mm, etc), would be fruitless, and possibly also not even relevant to small-arms design, even "down" to my 20mm ideas. Further, I notice currently we're using RAP shells, which sort of renders their bc moot (RAP I guess being the logical successor to base-bleed). Control surfaces... You've got me thinking, but I'm still missing something. Outside of the self-discarding sabot crowd, I can't think of any long-range projectiles that have control surfaces.
For my own part, I've still been trying to design a cartridge, or understand the right way to go about designing a cartridge (in spite of the lack of public information about what goes into said designs). The math that I have been using is by no means revolutionary; it is derivative, and I'll be the first to admit it. I looked around at what was working, and started drawing up relational dimensions for what these highly accurate cartridges shared. I've been experimenting with altering the ratios, but at present, I have the following constants, based upon the unit "cal" as one caliber.
Diameter of case rim: 2 * cal
Length to shoulder from base of cartridge: 5 * cal
Length of projectile: (anywhere from 5.5 to 8 * cal)
Length of cartridge shoulder: 2 * cal
Length of neck: 1.2 * cal
Seating depth: cal / 2
Barrel wall thickness: cal
This means that the length of the case (without the shoulder; I don't yet have any data on shoulder angles or depths) is going to be in the neighborhood of 8 calibers, but of course, 2 calibers in diameter making it a wide, short cartridge with a lot of volume. I have been experimenting with calibers, in this fashion, from 6.5mm up through 20mm (more on the 20mm in a minute). I have even written a program to plot the varying characteristics of these rounds on these assumptions (such as cartridge volume) to try to identify a sort of "sweet spot" between cartridge volume, caliber, and overall size of the cartridge with bullet seated. Things get big fast, even though the equations are linear (as volume is exponential and overall length expands geometrically). Pretty soon, especially in the 12.7mm+ category, the rounds get really, really big.
But nobody's talking about what goes into their rounds. Nobody is talking about their ratios, and what reasoning they have behind it. It can't just be lots of observed experience, as I have a very hard time believing people are cutting new barrels and re-tooling new chambers for each of these iterations. Increase the seating depth a little, and you have a new chamber, possibly a new barrel, and so on. Change the length of the projectile in calibers, and you of course need to adjust twist, the length of the barrel, and again, re-tool the chamber.
So how are people coming to these numbers? I have a good number of gunsmithing books, and an equal number on the practical details on shooting, and nobody seems to be sharing what their "magic numbers" are – even though, if they were to create a novel cartridge and start selling it, their secret would be out and the ratios would be easy to duplicate (and test, though not necessarily successfully) on different calibers.
I think this may be partially responsible for the reason people are being so quiet. Lutz was certainly interested as of March 2009. But can that be the only reason? I have a feeling people are just highly superstitious and private about their thoughts on rifle and cartridge design due to culture. It's almost as if everyone has their own secret chili recipe or secret barbecue sauce they think will win the county fair. But this strikes me as totally outdated and outmoded in an era where people can work together across continents to achieve results greater than the would have on their own.
Outside of Wikipedia, and its collation of a large amount of ballistic data (which I in fact helped populate with another user), and perhaps Chuckhawk's, there really isn't a large collection of ballistic data, cartridge dimensions, and notes on usage, accuracy, and so on. If a community formed to start researching these kinds of things, I think we would very rapidly start to see a new breed of cartridge (and indeed a new breed of rifle) emerge. Nothing bad can come of this. Yet, people cling to their secrecy.
Well, let me air a little of what I've been working on, although I'll admit I have a few secrets up my sleeve in respect to the actual design of the cartridge (mainly related to very novel and complicated manufacturing techniques beyond the simple lathing-down-a-billet-of-copper process).
The case for a bigger hammer
My idea was, why not make a 20mm round with the same characteristics of a "stretched" (e.g., 6.5 caliber) .338 LM (or Dominator, or whatever) round? I never intended it to be an HE or arty round (or anti-tank, like the Lahti or NTW-20), mind, but a single-shot rifle round. With a 20mm round, you have the case capacity to make just about any range that we can practically see with any optics I know of, and the mass to "affect" anything at the desired distance. (I suppose non-line-of-sight impact is also possible at with a 20mm [ ... ]).
But when I started my modeling on the cartridge, I found almost no public research on either 20mm caliber (outside artillery) or what people were doing with the 6.5-caliber rounds that made them so accurate. CFD wasn't showing me anything I hadn't seen, but I knew that when one is working with that much propellant, one does not make assumptions.
I guess what I'm getting at is it seemed to me to be "missing the point" to take a small-caliber round like a .338, and try to re-engineer the shape of the bullet so that it could better resist windage and reach out further. Why not instead increase the mass of the projectile (reduced windage is a nice effect of increased mass), using sound geometry from the outset, and increase the case capacity so that you had the push to "get it out there."
By increasing the mass of the round, we can effectively cheat at the math and physics parts involved in making small, fast cartridges go very far accurately. A more massive round simply resists windage better, and drop is far easier to compensate for.
I did find that Anzio Iron Works makes a 20mm rifle, but will not speak of it, its specifications, provide ballistic data, let alone CAD data, and so on. It seems a bit of a non-sequitor. Or at least not relevant to my interests. They never responded to my emails, and their rifle is incredibly expensive. They also don't discuss accuracy at all, nor what its intended purpose is. Or if they've had any military sales. Given the size of the thing, my guess is no.
I've got most of the work for the 20mm "done," but lots of questions remain, like what would the BATF think of it, were I to build it? the rifle itself would be entirely non-man-portable and likely have to be towed: consider just the weight and length of the barrel required. Assuming I found somewhere to test it, would it actually be legal to do so? Could I just class III it? (the real technical details I'm intent on patenting, so I don't want to get into some of the finer details; certain implementation details – which are, at present, proprietary to me – might make it a lot less relevant to the BATF.)
I can just see the headlines, though. Virginia Man Builds 3-mile Cannon, Reportedly for "Testing Purposes" It might be worth it for the patents alone.
Anyways, I know this is a very long post, but I am tired of all the comments coming in on the "where is Lutz Moeller" post that are argumentative, slanderous, uninformed, or speculative at best. Noel, unfortunately, you've been the subject of a number of these comments (which I have deleted rather than let through; they're not adding to the discussion, but they don't stop coming in, either). I'd really like it if you could take a little time to describe some of the things you're doing and maybe we could start a public discussion on what makes a cartridge a great cartridge.
A quick rant on the Global Observer
First, the Global Observer aircraft has many of the same parameters that we at Spun were aiming for, only we were aiming to do far better. Second, at Spun, we were prepared to do on kerosene or JP-8 what the Global Observer appears to be doing on LH2. Folks, there's a reason we decided that LH2 was not a reasonable fuel for aircraft, and we decided that back in the fifties with the Suntan engines. It Just Doesn't Make Sense. Either operationally or functionally. So I'm not sure what the big accomplishment is, nor am I sure what GO does that something like Corona or Keyhole couldn't do, nor am I sure it's cheaper, and I certainly don't think it's implemented in a better way.
It seems that somebody has pulled the wool over somebody else's eyes. We (Spun – I won't bother with linking to Spun's website since we're not operating anymore) were more than capable of providing this craft to people on standard fuels, and finding people who would even listen, let alone pour in one percent of the budget that's gone to Global Observer was nigh on impossible.
And so, the age-old rule of government acquisition seems firmly in place. Buy what's expensive because it must be better, by the very nature of the fact that it's expensive.
Folks, we could have had hyperspectral imagery in place for a month or more over any given geographic area, running conventional fuels, in a cheap, simple flight and avionics package. Pilot training would have been minimal, airfield resources would have been minimal, and nobody would have taken the (extraordinary) notice that they have taken of GO. Maybe that's the whole point. A low-key solution is not what the US Government wants right now – it wants a mythical monster that can loiter on liquid hydrogen doing unconventional things in unconventional ways, damn the costs and logic. Because that's what we represent: maximum effort despite the reasoning to the contrary.
We still own Spun's IP. Anyone wishing to get in touch with us knows how to reach me, and I'll be happy how to tell you how to put Global Observer to shame with conventional fuels and a typical sensor package, designed and built by a guy who has worked in the industry.
Right now it's hard just not being disgusted.
It seems that somebody has pulled the wool over somebody else's eyes. We (Spun – I won't bother with linking to Spun's website since we're not operating anymore) were more than capable of providing this craft to people on standard fuels, and finding people who would even listen, let alone pour in one percent of the budget that's gone to Global Observer was nigh on impossible.
And so, the age-old rule of government acquisition seems firmly in place. Buy what's expensive because it must be better, by the very nature of the fact that it's expensive.
Folks, we could have had hyperspectral imagery in place for a month or more over any given geographic area, running conventional fuels, in a cheap, simple flight and avionics package. Pilot training would have been minimal, airfield resources would have been minimal, and nobody would have taken the (extraordinary) notice that they have taken of GO. Maybe that's the whole point. A low-key solution is not what the US Government wants right now – it wants a mythical monster that can loiter on liquid hydrogen doing unconventional things in unconventional ways, damn the costs and logic. Because that's what we represent: maximum effort despite the reasoning to the contrary.
We still own Spun's IP. Anyone wishing to get in touch with us knows how to reach me, and I'll be happy how to tell you how to put Global Observer to shame with conventional fuels and a typical sensor package, designed and built by a guy who has worked in the industry.
Right now it's hard just not being disgusted.
12 January, 2011
More books arrived
- Steven Hall, The Raw Shark Texts
Charles Henderson, Marine Sniper: The Explosive True Story of a Vietnam Hero
Eric Brown, Engineman
10 January, 2011
Today's take
- Jeff Noon, Vurt
- Richard Matheson, Hell House
- Stanislaw Lem, The Cyberiad
- Jeremy Robert Johnson, Angel Dust Apocalypse
07 January, 2011
The paucity of good reviews and recommendations in fiction (and non)
I shop at Amazon. I shop almost exclusively at Amazon. I have been now since 1997. Every once in a while I go to a brick-and-mortar book stores because I'm out of books right now and can't wait for new books to arrive in the mail (and yes, I am a "Prime" member). But I find when I go to a b-n-m store, I pay more for the book, it's harder to find (how do you grep your way through a bookshelf?), and since my back is a wreck, I can't linger over prospective books, reading enough to know whether I want to buy them. This means I have "worse luck" at the physical bookstore than I do with Amazon.
Amazon also has a better selection (well, of course, right?). But they have more than that. They incorporate the used book sellers as well, so I can buy a U-2 flight operations manual (and have in fact done so), which I would never find at a b-n-m store, and would be very hard pressed to find at a used store (though, clearly, some used book store, somewhere, has flight manuals and the like, since I'm buying them...). I can even pick up an electronic copy of an AH-64 operator's manual
. So, really, Amazon has a lot of stuff I really want and would have a hard time finding somewhere else.
But there's a downside to this. Amazon also knows what I like to read. Their algorithms are so "good" at this, in fact, that they seem incapable of showing me anything that I might be interested in reading, but don't know that myself. This is harder to explain than it should be. Basically, since Amazon knows I want to read books about ELINT and Radar and ECW, and that I also like Alastair Reynolds, Iain Banks, Ian McDonald, Charles Stross, Richard Morgan, and so on, that, because my purchasing history has included so many purchases by these authors on these subjects, that they never show me anything that's an edge case that might lead me to discover a new author – like Paolo Bacigalupi, who I really like, but didn't find out about on Amazon (I have since forgotten where I heard about him, but I know Toby Buckell was talking about him lots, and maybe Scalzi was too).
So, just using Amazon, I have a hard time finding an author that I know little about, like Jeff VanderMeer
, who I (mostly) like. The linked book is one I found after almost two hours of weeding through books tangentially associated with books I liked ("7% of people who viewed this title bought X instead" or by going on what reviewers of books I liked had also read). But spending two hours to find a book that I read in just a couple days is not what I'd call efficient or effective. I read a whole stinking lot. I burn through, sometimes, a novel a day, and certainly at least one a week, and added to that are various nonfiction, non-novel, and technical books (I once did some pretty rigorous examination of what I read and how it's broken down, but it works out to an even split between fiction and non, with a smattering of periodicals and technical manuals thrown in; surprisingly, I spend as much as 41% of my time awake reading.) And this has caught up with me to the extent it is very hard for me to "break habits" (such as reading an author I've been reading for a long time. I am presently sick-and-fucking-tired of Stephen Baxter, but Amazon will tirelessly recommend him to me because I've bought so many of his books from them), or to make new ones.
There didn't seem to be any real solution to this. They are my sole bookseller, and they're the people with the "grep" function, and they're the people with more books than anyone else. But I needed books, and I knuckled under and decided to (gasp) manually peruse the books that Subterranean Press had in stock (their stock is small, specialized, expensive, and sells quick. They're a great press, and I've got a lot of special editions – signed, numbered, etc – from them, but they're not my primary source of fiction by any stretch). After going through what they had, I wound up spending $298 (with shipping) for only seven books. Granted, I know these are books I want, and they're very high quality books, and (maybe most importantly) I am supporting a very good press, but that is a lot of money to spend on words-on-paper. To top this off, when I was completing my order, I got a 500 error when I tried to finalize the order. I emailed them and told them their site screwed up, but I had no idea whether the order went through until I emailed them again (they, stupidly, don't have webmaster@ receiving email). Bill at Sub got back to me and told me my order had gone through, and was kind enough to send me a PDF receipt for the order so that I was sure my order had the right stuff in it, etc. This experience bugs me, though, because I don't trust a store that can't unfailingly process a simple credit card transaction. That's core to doing business, especially when you rely heavily on the Internet for your business.
The next step I took was kind of sneaky, looking back on it. I went to Amazon's UK site, which I order from far less frequently, and asked it for recommendations. Thankfully, while Amazon (US) has done a lot to "flatten" the two sites (making my account portable to both sites, including my shipping data, credit cards, etc), they haven't (yet) pushed over my reading habits. I think this would be hard for them to do because many of the books published in the US just don't have an equivalent in the UK because they're sometimes published under a different imprint, the content is different (books in the UK, generally, use British English, and when re-published in the US are converted to American English, and yes there is a difference!), and so on. I'd go as far as to say it would be disastrous for them to try. At any rate, by going to the UK site, I was surprised to see new authors. I also saw a few items which had been published by my "normal" authors which hadn't yet made it to US shores (I try to buy the UK imprints anyways because they're generally just better printed, and I prefer British English these days) – I avoided those. I was looking for something new, after all. So, thankfully, I was able to find six or seven books on Amazon UK by authors I had not yet read, but which were seemingly up my alley. I have high hopes. However, I paid $40 for the books (I bought paperbacks instead of my usual hardbacks), and another $40 for shipping and "packaging" (who are they kidding? packaging?). Thus bringing my total to $400 for a meager twelve (or maybe thirteen, I forget) books. Granted, I will enjoy them, and they're all of high quality, physically, but I cannot imagine it will keep me reading for more than a month or two. This is really unfortunate, and equates to a seriously expensive habit.
My alternative is e-books or spending a serious, serious amount of time researching new things to read. New authors. I tried, by going through the copious reviews of people like Peter Tilman (who is lucky enough to be part of the Vine program) to find something I might want to read. The problem is, I guess a lot of the reviewers, especially the really productive reviewers (those who have hundreds of reviews – I myself have only just over a hundred from over a decade of use), seem much more tolerant of reading drek than I am. They'll read the drek and write a review that says, well, the story was such-and-such and it's clear the author was influenced by so-and-so and this-or-that book, but it really was quite droll and the characters were thin, and I just didn't like it. (some of them will even slap a 3-plus star rating on a book with a review like that!) But, when I read this review, do I want to read that book? Of course not! So I went through lots of people who were very frequent reviewers, and found that by and large their reviews were useless to me because they'll review anything, and it's really hard to find the items they've reviewed that they really liked because they're so poor at using the ratings system to down-rate the drivel. I find this very frustrating. The review system should work to help me find a book I like. The Vine program in particular should be even better, and should be encouraging reviewers to make the review system itself better. But it's a wasteland. I don't think there's malfeasance (for example, I'm not saying that reviewers are making junk reviews just to satisfy their obligation to the Vine program), but Stuff's Not Working, and the consequence is it's really hard for me to find new books to read, those "edge cases" where I might not have sought the book out for myself, but would (could) be very interested. One of my favorite books in recent memory was The Dervish House, which was (partially; River of Gods was the reason I picked it up, but that was on a whim. I still haven't finished River, whereas I tore through Dervish House because it was so brilliant) an edge case.
One might think – I really wish – that Shelfari was better at recommendations and that their community generated – engendered even! – reviews, allowingme one to traipse through reviewers who have similar tastes to mine, who aren't afraid to completely pan a book that sucked, who are more interested in reading as a pastime – a serious one! – and want to do it properly. Shelfari just fails to deliver on that front, and it's sad. They could be doing more. They are, however, an Amazon asset (which I think was their goal all along, really), and they no longer need to aspire to be anything better than they are. They've succeeded in being what they needed to be to be purchased. And whether they wanted, from the beginning, to be a provider of blog widgets and sell-through revenue or not, that's what they're doing, not building a community.
My last resource, perhaps, is the blogging community. But I find myself at a loss for how to use the blogging community to find books that I (will) like. Because the community is so diverse, I can't just search through Blogger, I'd have to search through WordPress and TypePad and LJ (and probably Facebook, too)... and so on. And even if I figured out a good way to search through "the community" as a whole, how would I restrict it to just the items related to what they were reading? And, once I had figured that out, how would I further restrict that to things that I am interested in? The "relations" aren't there. There isn't a way for me to find people with similar (or similar enough) tastes and then look in to what they're reading.
It's a really thorny, unhappy quandary. I love reading, and it's becoming harder and harder to find new things I want to read. I'm in the same position with music, but frequently with music, I can enjoy a "product" (like an album) a lot longer than a novel. I don't often re-read books, but I found myself listening to Good News for People That Like Bad News today, which I hadn't listened to in ages. I enjoyed it.
I know I frequently suggest people reply or email me if they have suggestions, and I seem to get replies only when I've said something particularly inflammatory or been outright incorrect, and here I don't think I've done either. But, please, if you have a suggestion, let me know. Hell, even suggest books.
I do think I am in the market for an iPad – I'm going to wait to see if the rumored bump comes in April – and that means I will probably, grudgingly, start reading e-books. But I truly have a passion for the printed word, and I don't think I'll ever fully give up books. Besides, switching to e-books doesn't get me past the difficulty of finding what to read in the first place.
Perhaps I should get back to writing and spend more time writing instead of reading. Work has just been so evil to my soul lately, I am not feeling especially creative. I was thinking about fiddling with The Urban Circuit today (which I haven't really worked on in maybe a year), but after the motorcycles were stolen, it's hard to get in the mood. That, and the broken back. Argh.
edit: after writing this post, I toyed around with Shelfari some and found that its search matching was kind of fuzzy and strange. I started by searching for House of Leaves due to a discussion I was having with my wife. When it returned books that were definitely not House, I realized it was using some other matching algorithm than a direct match. While Shelfari's "readers like you" function (just showing me other people who have books on their shelf that I have on mine, but one at a time – do I really need to see other users who have a copy of Lord of the Flies but nothing else I have on my shelf? really?), the weirdness of their search function has enabled me to find another six books I'm interested in for a bit shy of $70. So, almost $500 now for right around twenty books. It certainly is an expensive habit. Ick. One would think that buying books would be cheaper than buying movies on blu-ray discs.
Amazon also has a better selection (well, of course, right?). But they have more than that. They incorporate the used book sellers as well, so I can buy a U-2 flight operations manual (and have in fact done so), which I would never find at a b-n-m store, and would be very hard pressed to find at a used store (though, clearly, some used book store, somewhere, has flight manuals and the like, since I'm buying them...). I can even pick up an electronic copy of an AH-64 operator's manual
. So, really, Amazon has a lot of stuff I really want and would have a hard time finding somewhere else.But there's a downside to this. Amazon also knows what I like to read. Their algorithms are so "good" at this, in fact, that they seem incapable of showing me anything that I might be interested in reading, but don't know that myself. This is harder to explain than it should be. Basically, since Amazon knows I want to read books about ELINT and Radar and ECW, and that I also like Alastair Reynolds, Iain Banks, Ian McDonald, Charles Stross, Richard Morgan, and so on, that, because my purchasing history has included so many purchases by these authors on these subjects, that they never show me anything that's an edge case that might lead me to discover a new author – like Paolo Bacigalupi, who I really like, but didn't find out about on Amazon (I have since forgotten where I heard about him, but I know Toby Buckell was talking about him lots, and maybe Scalzi was too).
So, just using Amazon, I have a hard time finding an author that I know little about, like Jeff VanderMeer
, who I (mostly) like. The linked book is one I found after almost two hours of weeding through books tangentially associated with books I liked ("7% of people who viewed this title bought X instead" or by going on what reviewers of books I liked had also read). But spending two hours to find a book that I read in just a couple days is not what I'd call efficient or effective. I read a whole stinking lot. I burn through, sometimes, a novel a day, and certainly at least one a week, and added to that are various nonfiction, non-novel, and technical books (I once did some pretty rigorous examination of what I read and how it's broken down, but it works out to an even split between fiction and non, with a smattering of periodicals and technical manuals thrown in; surprisingly, I spend as much as 41% of my time awake reading.) And this has caught up with me to the extent it is very hard for me to "break habits" (such as reading an author I've been reading for a long time. I am presently sick-and-fucking-tired of Stephen Baxter, but Amazon will tirelessly recommend him to me because I've bought so many of his books from them), or to make new ones.There didn't seem to be any real solution to this. They are my sole bookseller, and they're the people with the "grep" function, and they're the people with more books than anyone else. But I needed books, and I knuckled under and decided to (gasp) manually peruse the books that Subterranean Press had in stock (their stock is small, specialized, expensive, and sells quick. They're a great press, and I've got a lot of special editions – signed, numbered, etc – from them, but they're not my primary source of fiction by any stretch). After going through what they had, I wound up spending $298 (with shipping) for only seven books. Granted, I know these are books I want, and they're very high quality books, and (maybe most importantly) I am supporting a very good press, but that is a lot of money to spend on words-on-paper. To top this off, when I was completing my order, I got a 500 error when I tried to finalize the order. I emailed them and told them their site screwed up, but I had no idea whether the order went through until I emailed them again (they, stupidly, don't have webmaster@ receiving email). Bill at Sub got back to me and told me my order had gone through, and was kind enough to send me a PDF receipt for the order so that I was sure my order had the right stuff in it, etc. This experience bugs me, though, because I don't trust a store that can't unfailingly process a simple credit card transaction. That's core to doing business, especially when you rely heavily on the Internet for your business.
The next step I took was kind of sneaky, looking back on it. I went to Amazon's UK site, which I order from far less frequently, and asked it for recommendations. Thankfully, while Amazon (US) has done a lot to "flatten" the two sites (making my account portable to both sites, including my shipping data, credit cards, etc), they haven't (yet) pushed over my reading habits. I think this would be hard for them to do because many of the books published in the US just don't have an equivalent in the UK because they're sometimes published under a different imprint, the content is different (books in the UK, generally, use British English, and when re-published in the US are converted to American English, and yes there is a difference!), and so on. I'd go as far as to say it would be disastrous for them to try. At any rate, by going to the UK site, I was surprised to see new authors. I also saw a few items which had been published by my "normal" authors which hadn't yet made it to US shores (I try to buy the UK imprints anyways because they're generally just better printed, and I prefer British English these days) – I avoided those. I was looking for something new, after all. So, thankfully, I was able to find six or seven books on Amazon UK by authors I had not yet read, but which were seemingly up my alley. I have high hopes. However, I paid $40 for the books (I bought paperbacks instead of my usual hardbacks), and another $40 for shipping and "packaging" (who are they kidding? packaging?). Thus bringing my total to $400 for a meager twelve (or maybe thirteen, I forget) books. Granted, I will enjoy them, and they're all of high quality, physically, but I cannot imagine it will keep me reading for more than a month or two. This is really unfortunate, and equates to a seriously expensive habit.
My alternative is e-books or spending a serious, serious amount of time researching new things to read. New authors. I tried, by going through the copious reviews of people like Peter Tilman (who is lucky enough to be part of the Vine program) to find something I might want to read. The problem is, I guess a lot of the reviewers, especially the really productive reviewers (those who have hundreds of reviews – I myself have only just over a hundred from over a decade of use), seem much more tolerant of reading drek than I am. They'll read the drek and write a review that says, well, the story was such-and-such and it's clear the author was influenced by so-and-so and this-or-that book, but it really was quite droll and the characters were thin, and I just didn't like it. (some of them will even slap a 3-plus star rating on a book with a review like that!) But, when I read this review, do I want to read that book? Of course not! So I went through lots of people who were very frequent reviewers, and found that by and large their reviews were useless to me because they'll review anything, and it's really hard to find the items they've reviewed that they really liked because they're so poor at using the ratings system to down-rate the drivel. I find this very frustrating. The review system should work to help me find a book I like. The Vine program in particular should be even better, and should be encouraging reviewers to make the review system itself better. But it's a wasteland. I don't think there's malfeasance (for example, I'm not saying that reviewers are making junk reviews just to satisfy their obligation to the Vine program), but Stuff's Not Working, and the consequence is it's really hard for me to find new books to read, those "edge cases" where I might not have sought the book out for myself, but would (could) be very interested. One of my favorite books in recent memory was The Dervish House, which was (partially; River of Gods was the reason I picked it up, but that was on a whim. I still haven't finished River, whereas I tore through Dervish House because it was so brilliant) an edge case.
One might think – I really wish – that Shelfari was better at recommendations and that their community generated – engendered even! – reviews, allowing
My last resource, perhaps, is the blogging community. But I find myself at a loss for how to use the blogging community to find books that I (will) like. Because the community is so diverse, I can't just search through Blogger, I'd have to search through WordPress and TypePad and LJ (and probably Facebook, too)... and so on. And even if I figured out a good way to search through "the community" as a whole, how would I restrict it to just the items related to what they were reading? And, once I had figured that out, how would I further restrict that to things that I am interested in? The "relations" aren't there. There isn't a way for me to find people with similar (or similar enough) tastes and then look in to what they're reading.
It's a really thorny, unhappy quandary. I love reading, and it's becoming harder and harder to find new things I want to read. I'm in the same position with music, but frequently with music, I can enjoy a "product" (like an album) a lot longer than a novel. I don't often re-read books, but I found myself listening to Good News for People That Like Bad News today, which I hadn't listened to in ages. I enjoyed it.
I know I frequently suggest people reply or email me if they have suggestions, and I seem to get replies only when I've said something particularly inflammatory or been outright incorrect, and here I don't think I've done either. But, please, if you have a suggestion, let me know. Hell, even suggest books.
I do think I am in the market for an iPad – I'm going to wait to see if the rumored bump comes in April – and that means I will probably, grudgingly, start reading e-books. But I truly have a passion for the printed word, and I don't think I'll ever fully give up books. Besides, switching to e-books doesn't get me past the difficulty of finding what to read in the first place.
Perhaps I should get back to writing and spend more time writing instead of reading. Work has just been so evil to my soul lately, I am not feeling especially creative. I was thinking about fiddling with The Urban Circuit today (which I haven't really worked on in maybe a year), but after the motorcycles were stolen, it's hard to get in the mood. That, and the broken back. Argh.
edit: after writing this post, I toyed around with Shelfari some and found that its search matching was kind of fuzzy and strange. I started by searching for House of Leaves due to a discussion I was having with my wife. When it returned books that were definitely not House, I realized it was using some other matching algorithm than a direct match. While Shelfari's "readers like you" function (just showing me other people who have books on their shelf that I have on mine, but one at a time – do I really need to see other users who have a copy of Lord of the Flies but nothing else I have on my shelf? really?), the weirdness of their search function has enabled me to find another six books I'm interested in for a bit shy of $70. So, almost $500 now for right around twenty books. It certainly is an expensive habit. Ick. One would think that buying books would be cheaper than buying movies on blu-ray discs.
29 December, 2010
Doing wacky things with the (k)ubuntu installer and live cd
I have groaned numerous times in the past that Ubuntu no longer (it used to be in there, folks...) contains LVM in the installer. This sucks for a lot of reasons, but mostly it sucks because it doesn't have to be that way. Since the box to configure any other kind of partition scheme than "one giant ugly partition" is called "Advanced", why do we not just assume that the user has clicked said button and knows how to make logical (and physical and groups and ponies) volumes?
How this all sort of worked out is thus: I was having trouble with installing Natty from a memory stick (and the Maverick CD wouldn't boot the machine at all, so I figured what the hell, let's try Natty; this was kind of a rough day to begin with), and so I decided I would be tricky and simply boot from yon memory stick and then apt-get install nfs-common, mount the cdrom and just install from the network that way. Unfortunately, due to not having a connection to the internet with the Natty machine (but having a connection to the machine next to it*), I was not able to simply grab it from the repository. This led to me reading an old-and-stale post explaining how to set up your own mirror of (debian). I think, since that came out, the tool apt-mirror(1) has emerged (hah, that worked out well) – sudo apt-get install apt-mirror – and it is a lot easier to pull down a mirror. One simply configures apt-mirror and it does most of the work of "creating a repository for you."
But back to my install. By this point, I realized I could mount the repository, but it also became immediately apparent to me that I could install lvm in the "live cd" (where "cd" is "whatever you booted off of) environment. So I worked up that fancy ssh bit for the (pointopoint) machine next to it, like so:
deb ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty main restricted universe multiverse
deb ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
deb ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
And simply commented out the rest of the lines. A simple "apt-get update" and it (slowly... why is it the ssh method is so, so slow? on a gigabit point-to-point connection?) updated its package list, and I cheerfully installed lvm and its associated packages, and went to town with fdisk and lvm tools carving up my disks.
I then ran the installer from the live cd-or-whatever environment, clicked Advanced, and began to select mountpoints and filesystems (even though I had already made them ext4, it wanted me to choose – leaving it alone wasn't okay, although not formatting it or not using it was) for my new logical volumes.
There was a problem with this, however. As I did this, it would only let me select seven volumes/mountpoints and then upon selecting the eighth, would crash. Now, in this case, I had created two special logical volumes, /export and /VM, so I elected to just not use them during the install process and figured I'd re-attach them by hand after the installation.
Minus the two volumes I wanted in my default fstab, the installation went off without a hitch, taking a whole lot longer than normal (for some reason there were lots of calls to resolve hostnames during the install, and each one had to time out because while I had network connectivity, it was not connectivity with functional dns. I know this because I watched the traffic with ufw's logs.). Everything seemed copacetic, but the installer barfed all over my grub configuration and the system was (is – I haven't fixed it yet) unbootable.
The system is fully installed; I can mount all the logical and standard partitions and traipse through them without issue, it's just that the grub config included data about the logical volumes, when /boot was on / and / was of course a physical, normal, ext3, volume. So, first of all, I miss the old grub with the simple menu.lst. Second, I hate debugging grub on a good day. Third, it is in fact possible to install (k)ubuntu on top of lvm – it's just an enormous pain in the ass and seems buggy. Now, you may (correctly) point out this is the Natty installer, and Natty is in fact alpha right now. So I will try my same trick with Maverick, and see if the Maverick installer has the same problem. If Maverick does, I think I shall submit a bug (although I seriously doubt anyone else is doing this).
In related news, I am reading up on debian pre-seeding, as it looks like I can just configure all the lvm and everything else much the same way I would with kickstart or jumpstart.
*this bit is for google: yes, the intel e1000e "ether express pro" gigabit nic autoswitches/auto switches – autocrossovers, whatever. you do NOT NEED a crossover cable for this nic. thank goodness.
How this all sort of worked out is thus: I was having trouble with installing Natty from a memory stick (and the Maverick CD wouldn't boot the machine at all, so I figured what the hell, let's try Natty; this was kind of a rough day to begin with), and so I decided I would be tricky and simply boot from yon memory stick and then apt-get install nfs-common, mount the cdrom and just install from the network that way. Unfortunately, due to not having a connection to the internet with the Natty machine (but having a connection to the machine next to it*), I was not able to simply grab it from the repository. This led to me reading an old-and-stale post explaining how to set up your own mirror of (debian). I think, since that came out, the tool apt-mirror(1) has emerged (hah, that worked out well) – sudo apt-get install apt-mirror – and it is a lot easier to pull down a mirror. One simply configures apt-mirror and it does most of the work of "creating a repository for you."
But back to my install. By this point, I realized I could mount the repository, but it also became immediately apparent to me that I could install lvm in the "live cd" (where "cd" is "whatever you booted off of) environment. So I worked up that fancy ssh bit for the (pointopoint) machine next to it, like so:
deb ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty main restricted universe multiverse
deb ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
deb ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src ssh://host/export/linux/natty/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
And simply commented out the rest of the lines. A simple "apt-get update" and it (slowly... why is it the ssh method is so, so slow? on a gigabit point-to-point connection?) updated its package list, and I cheerfully installed lvm and its associated packages, and went to town with fdisk and lvm tools carving up my disks.
I then ran the installer from the live cd-or-whatever environment, clicked Advanced, and began to select mountpoints and filesystems (even though I had already made them ext4, it wanted me to choose – leaving it alone wasn't okay, although not formatting it or not using it was) for my new logical volumes.
There was a problem with this, however. As I did this, it would only let me select seven volumes/mountpoints and then upon selecting the eighth, would crash. Now, in this case, I had created two special logical volumes, /export and /VM, so I elected to just not use them during the install process and figured I'd re-attach them by hand after the installation.
Minus the two volumes I wanted in my default fstab, the installation went off without a hitch, taking a whole lot longer than normal (for some reason there were lots of calls to resolve hostnames during the install, and each one had to time out because while I had network connectivity, it was not connectivity with functional dns. I know this because I watched the traffic with ufw's logs.). Everything seemed copacetic, but the installer barfed all over my grub configuration and the system was (is – I haven't fixed it yet) unbootable.
The system is fully installed; I can mount all the logical and standard partitions and traipse through them without issue, it's just that the grub config included data about the logical volumes, when /boot was on / and / was of course a physical, normal, ext3, volume. So, first of all, I miss the old grub with the simple menu.lst. Second, I hate debugging grub on a good day. Third, it is in fact possible to install (k)ubuntu on top of lvm – it's just an enormous pain in the ass and seems buggy. Now, you may (correctly) point out this is the Natty installer, and Natty is in fact alpha right now. So I will try my same trick with Maverick, and see if the Maverick installer has the same problem. If Maverick does, I think I shall submit a bug (although I seriously doubt anyone else is doing this).
In related news, I am reading up on debian pre-seeding, as it looks like I can just configure all the lvm and everything else much the same way I would with kickstart or jumpstart.
*this bit is for google: yes, the intel e1000e "ether express pro" gigabit nic autoswitches/auto switches – autocrossovers, whatever. you do NOT NEED a crossover cable for this nic. thank goodness.