Shore Leave

Friends, As some of you know, I do a bit of writing for Steve Jackson Games. The new version of GURPS has a wonderfully streamlined system for vehicles, very useful for GURPS itself, but some of the statistics are a little hard to track down for those of us trying to write game versions of various real world vehicles. I was wondering if anyone knew of any good sources for the following information... For ships and submarines: 1) Although it is not too hard to find the standard displacements and full load displacements for warships, for a lot of cargo ships, they only list tonnage (which is a measure of volume, not actual mass). While I am sure using to…

It it's inexhaustive march toward the ultimate big brother state, work has cought up and finally blocked harpgamer at the office. I do not feel that those those in power would find the humor in me submitting a form for excepting harpgamer from the internet acceptable usage "policy". So be that I will now be accessing from home alone.

Too funny not to share ... http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-20-stupide...-vehicles-ever/

Brad, in your stash of military systems references, do you have any info or opinion on the performance of the Russian (NATO Designation) AT-8 Songster ATGM which is carried by the T-80 and even referenced to have been carried by the T-64. This is a through-the-barrel ATGM similiar in theory to the dismally failed Shillelagh ATGM found on the US M-60A2 Tank. Thanks

Only eleven days to go until Will and Kate get married. This is actually going to do interesting things to the British economy. You see, this Friday is Good Friday, which is a Bank holiday. Monday 25 April is also a Bank Holiday (Easter Monday always is). You've then got another holiday on the day of the wedding itself, followed by the May Day bank holiday on Monday 2 May. Following that, we have local elections in much of the country and a referendum on changing the voting system in all of it on Thursday 5 May, which means a lot of schools will be closed as they're being used as polling stations... What are the views of our non-British posters on this?

Happy New Year from HarpGamer ! Hope you have a good one.

Many difficulty levels for a game to find NATO members, partners and others: http://www.nato.int/multi/mapgame/public/index.html

Merry Christmas, thanks to a blizzard yesterday, a white one here in Minneapolis!

Just received my copy of IEEE Spectrum in the mail today and see that there is a fairly long article essentially chronicalling EM guns and recapping the current state of affairs. "One day in 1977, researchers at Australian National University were putting the finishing touches on an experiment that they hoped would cap nearly a decade’s worth of groundbreaking research on electromagnetic guns. Tantalized by the prospect of unleashing the pure power of electromagnetism to accelerate projectiles at rates never before achieved, countless ­researchers had been pursuing the technology since the turn of the century. But without much success." http://www.spectrum.ieee.or…

What I did over the weekend was attend the Woodbury Snowmobile Club (http://www.snowraces.com) annual Radar Run. I designed and built the electronics for the 4' x 8' sign in the pictures. It uses a standard 802.11g wireless network to receive the information from a computer program I wrote. The sign itself uses a Rabbit microprocessor module as its brains. Their timing system was broken so most of my time was spent kludging that to work, instead of watching the action and plugging speeds into my sign. Anyway, just a little proof that I love electronics and dislike computers!

Let’s Play War - Could war games replace the real thing? (Nautilus) Excellent article!

Passed on by my dad's employer (well, before dad retired).

Head over to http://maps.google.com Click Get directions From: New York To: London Click Get Directions button. Note step #23 in your travels.

From the Summer 2011 US Naval War College Review Why Wargaming Works (PDF)

Some pics of the heavy surf yesterday in the wake of Hurricane Katria in and around the High Frequency Surface Wave Radar (HFSWR) site at Cape Race, Newfoundland. The lighthouse at Cape Race The HFSWR site from Cape Race. Not much to see, really, just a bunch of vertical pole type antennas Heavily fortified C3 bunker at HFSWR site Heavy surf from Katria ...

Saw this over on CSW. youtube Eryx Missile Shot

Sigh ... From BBC News Gun T-shirt 'was a security risk' A man wearing a T-shirt depicting a cartoon character holding a gun was stopped from boarding a flight by the security at Heathrow's Terminal 5. Brad Jayakody, from Bayswater, central London, said he was "stumped" at the objection to his Transformers T-shirt. Mr Jayakody said he had to change before boarding as security officers objected to the gun, held by the cartoon character. Airport operator BAA said it was investigating the incident. Mr Jayakody said the incident happened a few weeks ago, when he was challenged by an official during a pre-flight security check. "He says, 'we w…

I think Bob Hope had it right. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a6YdNmK77k

Whats up with IRC gents? is it just a select few of us that cant connect today or is this global thing? Cheers Terry

A series of videos from PBS about life aboard USS Nimitz: http://www.pbs.org/weta/carrier/full_episodes.htm Buddha