Sequels, especially to classics, are tricky things. Hopefully this won’t be a terrible, horrible mistake:
Andrew Lloyd Weber has announced a sequel to his massively successful "Phantom of the Opera" that will be set at Coney Island.
Weber's new production, "Love Never Dies," is due to open in London in March of next year.
I had a chance to fire this Smith & Wesson 642 Airweight Centennial revolver yesterday, and holy cow, what a little monster it is.
I have fired revolvers before, including the longer-barreled Smith & Wesson I blogged about here a couple of years ago. Shooting the 642 was a different… and I must say not entirely agreeable… experience.
First of all, I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with this thing. I completely missed a standard bulls-eye target at 7 yards with my first 5 rounds, and hit only twice on my second five. Now, I’m not likely to win a shooting competition any time soon, but I’m not usually that bad. For comparison, I switched to my XD after shooting the 642, and put five rounds in an inch-and-a-half circle from the the same distance. I have read elsewhere that the 642 is highly accurate, so I’ll write it off to user error. I can see some serious practice being required to shoot well with this gun.
Being a much lighter gun than the XD (with an unloaded weight of around 15 oz, it weighs about half as much) it makes sense that perceived recoil of the 642 should be higher—and indeed it was. The double-action trigger pull was also much heavier than the XD’s striker action, or even the DA/SA trigger on my Bersa Thunder 380, and in tightening my grip to overcome the greater tension, the recoil was transferred more forcefully into my arm. It was a little uncomfortable.
I’ve read favorable review of the 642 elsewhere (here for example) which speak to its virtues of small size, simplicity, and value, and I can certainly appreciate the perspective. I don’t think it’s really my cup of tea, however.
I found myself near one of the better shooting ranges in town last week minus a shooting iron, and wanting to stop in and try something new, I rented a pistol chambered for 45 ACP, specifically the Springfield Champion you see here.
I’d never held a 45, let alone fired one, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was, however, expecting that bigger rounds would make for a bigger bang. (.45 ACP rounds are roughly 11.5 mm in diameter, about 25 percent larger than 9 mm rounds.) So I was a bit surprised at how little difference the larger caliber seemed to make to the shooting experience. I was expecting more report or recoil, and didn’t really notice any. Maybe my experience would be different if I compared back to back.
In any case, the Champion seemed nice enough, but the feed spring in the magazine they gave me may have been getting old and tired, because I had terrible feed problems every time I tried to load a full magazine. I would slide in seven rounds, tap the magazine, load it, release the slide… and the first round would jam half way into the chamber. It never happened with six or fewer rounds, so after some experimentation, I just loaded fewer rounds, and the problem went away.
This is clever, until somebody not in on the joke tries to dive in...
What a clever idea: Hong Kong Gym Uses Exercises to Generate Electricity
I'm thinking you could make this fairly cost-effective, since as the article suggests, a generator is pretty basic technology, and is really just a motor running in reverse. That means that many of the parts required are already present in some types of exercise gear, like treadmills and exercise bikes. I can see it having some qualitative impact on the customer experience, depending on how you set things up--for example, I've always preferred powered treadmills to the kind you have to drive yourself, for example. But that might be a surmountable obstacle, and I'll bet you could add generators to some gear, like weight lifting equipment, with little if any effect on the experience. Resistance previously provided by the weights would be provided by the generator, instead.
I wonder how much power could have been recaptured by now if all gyms did something like this? I doubt it would be much relative to world power demand, but it might well be enough to run the lights at the gyms.
Headline: Italy Passes Anti-Soccer Violence Law Hey, I'm as opposed to soccer as anyone, but I think passing a Violence Law to suppress it seems a little much.
I finally decided that my interest in recreational shooting is more than a passing fad, and bought myself a pistol. After doing some research on my options, and having fired a few of them, I picked up the Springfield Armory XD 9mm Tactical Service you see to the right.
The XD shares many features with the Glock 19 I rented. Both are polymer-framed, striker-fired compact 9mm pistols with roughly 4” barrels. Both hail from Europe—the Glock from Austria, the XD from Croatia. Like the Glock, the XD has a trigger safety and an internal safety to prevent accidental discharge if the gun is dropped, but no conventional manual safety. Unlike the Glock, however—and this is part of what attracted me to the XD—the latter has an additional safety feature, a grip safety similar to that on the Colt 1911, which you can see in the picture at the top rear of the grip. Unless this is depressed, both the trigger and the slide are locked. Unlike a manual safety, which requires that you consciously think to release it, the grip safety disengages effortlessly when you hold the gun in a normal shooting grip.
I find the XD’s three dot sights ever so slightly less visible than the bright white dovetail sights on the Glock, but they are still very clear. Like the Glock, this is a gun I find engenders confidence. I took my folks out to the range to try it a couple of weeks ago (Mom’s first time shooting) and they like it too. Between us, we’ve put about 800 rounds through it at this point, and it has performed flawlessly. I am well pleased.
Oh, and despite being quite a bit less expensive than the Glock, the XD came with a nice accessory package, including a two magazines, a holster, a mag carrier, a cleaning brush, a lock, and a magazine loader. The last item was particularly welcome, as several weekends of loading semi-autos at the range had left my fingers very sore.
My second attempt at renting a Glock 19 was more successful than my first—and what a great little pistol.
If you're not familiar with the Glock line, they make a range of pistols of varying sizes and calibers, designated by the model number. The Glock 19 is a 9mm pistol with a roughly 4 inch barrel, a little smaller in length and height than a full-size service pistol like the Beretta 92 or the 9mm Glock 17. With a shorter barrel, you tend to get lower muzzle velocities, all else being equal, but you also get a more concealable weapon.
Glocks are well known for their minimum of external controls, and the Glock 19 was a snap to operate. Recoil felt very manageable compared to the Taurus 92 I had fired previously, which was not what I expected, given the Glock’s smaller mass--but hey, what do I know? The sights were fantastic, very high contrast. I felt myself to be a better shot with this gun than anything I had tried before—though of course, at least some of that could be the effect of practice.
From a usability perspective, this is definitely a gun I would consider owning, but I"m conflicted about the absence of a manual safety. The theory behind not having one is that in a high-stress defensive situation, you may forget to disengage the safety before trying to fire, potentially losing critical moments at a time when you can’t afford them. The flip side, some argue, is that a Glock carried with a round in the chamber, and ready to fire with a pull of the trigger, may be more subject to accidental discharge. Definitely a matter for further thought.
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