Life of Note: Mikhail Kalashnikov

The Saturday Dom runs a weekly obit page on lives of note and there's some really interesting stuff on people who had an influence on history, no less so than did Major General Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK47 assault rifle, who died age 94, couple of days before Xmas.
Its estimated 70 million of the Avtomat Kalashnikov 1947 model (I guess avtomat is Russian for automatic),  were made, excluding copies produced in third-world backstreet workshops. 7.62mm carbine, it can fire 600 rounds per minute, accurate to 300 metres, still lethal at 1500 metres, reputed as robust, lightweight, easy to maintain, operable in environments ranging the full gamut from sand to mud, less sensitive than the American M16, and more reliable than most British counterparts, continuing to operate when most others would jam.
Kalashnikov was born in Khazakstan, a 17th child of a peasant family, went to work on the Turkistan-Siberian railway on leaving school, and on call-up for military service in 1938, trained as a tank driver, then a tank commander, seriously wounded in the 1941 Battle of Byansk, (a stand-off southwest of Moscow where two Panzer divisions surrounded the 50th Army, who managed to extricate without much actual fighting, despite a huge toll of 80,000 killed and 50,000 taken prisoner as a result of the artillery and air bombardment), brooding on the superiority of German weapons, he conceived the idea of making a simple weapon for soldiers "that dont go to university", and built the prototype while recovering at the railway workshops, all with hand tools.
On later posting to the Emsk small-arms proving ground he developed the final version, which became the chosen standard weapon for the Soviet army, but given the 1947 date, never saw active usage in WWII. The pity of it all, and much to Kalashnikov's disappointment, the rifle went on to become the weapon of choice for anybody but the good, was probably responsible for killing most of the Russians killed during the Afghanistan occupation, and the Chechen uprising. Asked at a press conference how he felt about inventing a weapon that had killed more people than the Hiroshima bomb, he replied he'd received a lot of negative letters but still slept well. "Weapons are not to blame when used illegally," he replied. "the ones to blame are the politicians, not the designers."
Anywhere other than Russia, Kalashnikov would have become a multi-millionaire for his invention, instead he got honours heaped on him by Moscow, Hero of the Socialist Labour, Stalin Prize, Lenin Prize, a doctorate in engineering, 3 Orders of Lenin, Order of the Red Banner, and at age 75, Yeltsin promoted him to Major-General.
Ironically, he became a friend of Eugene Stoner, the inventor who made a fortune from his M16 rifle, who gave him more than a taste of the lavish hospitality he missed out on.
A lot of people would condemn the invention of such a weapon, but you couldnt deny the influence the man had on history.

ANZA Harley Demo Day

Quick blat over to PN today for the annual demo day put on by ANZA. Booked in for two rides.

Couple of nice bikes

First up, on the left, the Fat Bob. Gee, this bike keeps getting better. Couldn't get over how quiet it was, moreso from inside my Schuberth helmet, which gives the quietest ride out anyway, surging grunt delivered as quietly as the kitchen fridge. Have to agree with a lot of commentators that 6th gear nearly superfluous. I'd emphasise the "nearly"..., for cruising round US style open roads it would be ideal.
The bike cornered beautifully too, and brakes only needing a touch. I liked the toggle on the digital read-out that gave an option of gear indicator, plus rpm. Other's on the toggle included fuel, odo, and distance.
The forward controls were fine, but I was getting a bit uncomfortable after 30 odd mins.

I mainly wanted to see what the Breakout went like. Pretty similar really, but some bark from the exhaust. I think I liked the deceptive quiet rumble of the Fat Bob better.
Handled pretty much as nice as the FB too, maybe better, certainly no influence felt from the phat back tyre.
A lot more comfortable ride for me though, dished seat and forward controls felt better placed.
6th gear indicator light in a nice big speedo. The left side ignition switch had me tricked.

Back on my old 99 LowRider coming home, I felt more comfortable, maybe neither of them would be good trip bikes without some changes, but you'd be hard placed to find a more fun commuter straight off the shop floor.

The LR embarrassingly gave a bit of starting trouble to get on the way home, how convenient said the shop staff. Unfortunately I couldnt respond positively by leaving it as a deposit on a new machine, but I did vindicate myself by coming home with a new helmet, Scorpion EXO100. Open face model which will earn me criticism from the full-face brigade. Such critics ignore that lack of a visor riding into the sun is pretty imperilling with full-face, this one has a visor. Its also got a flip down sun lens, and have to comment its one of the best shaded lens I've looked through, excellent definition and very little dimming of the vision, and lovely range of sight through to the peripheral. Easily removable, and a clear one comes with it. The visor clips off too.

Didn't have a face scarf coming home, but wind wasn't unpleasant. The wind noise is a bit distracting.
At the sale price, $149 incl, it would make an excellent round-town lid.
Bugger the full-face critics, most cops round the world wear this model, and as far as looks go, its a stunner.
At the price, I had farm use in mind if I wasn't bowled away with on-road suitability.
OSH have a real problem getting farm people to wear helmets on bikes and quads, and I think the main drawback is the models available are so, so, plain DAWKY.
A model like this, boys will be boys, couldn't help wanting to put this one on!
The clasp is an interesting ratchet latch, with an easy open tab, very comfortable to wear, if perhaps a little on the heavy side.

Thanks to Kerry and the ANZA staff for once again putting this day on, really appreciated.
This year simultaneous events were held in Wellington, New Plymouth, and Napier, so it was a one-day affair, and ample riding opportunity for a smaller attendance.

Appliance: Electrolux Ultrapower

Lol, bit of a laugh this social media biff, but at least I can deal with stuff on my own blog a fair bit more sensibly than many do on Facebook, and so it is come to pass writing up about a vacuum cleaner!
My old sucky 1300w Sanyo's been doing a commendable job, but there are things about vaccys in common that get right up my nose, and make the job a real drag. Like not being able to stay upright and getting the hose in a twist, and no longer on its wheels, being a drag to, well, drag around. Then there's the power cord, inevitably, never long enough, or wanting to spring recoil itself back in. Or if its the paper bag variety, having a supply of bags when you want them, or bagless, trying to empty it in the garden without the stuff blowing in your face, or back in the house through the open door you just came out. Then, storing the thing without it being somewhere you trip over it, or so well put away in a cupboard you're stuffed just getting it out and set up proper like.

I'd followed the TV ads for the Shark, where you could detach part of it and do the stairs, so was interested enough to poke around Mitre10, and more recently Harvey Norman, where I settled on buying this cordless 'Lux. The young lady assistant was very helpful, and pretty too, so I believed her it was a fair punt to buy.
Dear enough at a bit over $400 on special, but its great enough I'm moved to put it up here on the JReb Blog.
Its 2 speed. The low speed is plenty fast enough. I'm in a bloke's house here, where the carpet pile is more shagged than shag-pile, and on high speed, all the buggered pile gets sucked up and blocks the suck-way. Fortunately, a couple of clicks dismantles the suck-way for unblocking, and this whole mention indicates the suction power is right up there.
And this suggests a bloke ought to be doing the 'luxing a bit more regularly, and it sure is easier to do just that with this baby, even though the dust bowl isnt very big.
So anyway, on low power, I can get round all my carpeted floor on one, or sometimes two, empty outs.
The battery has never looked like running out. I got the 24volt model, which I think's probably a wise decision.

In the charger

When not in use the machine clips into its charger, maintaining itself on mnimum power consumption till next time. I've set it up in the hall where I pass it every day and get reminded to do a couple minutes here or there. The charger's got a discrete amber light that comes on intermittently indicating charge, and in the hallway, this is useful in the dead of night if you're trying to find the loo.
The vac head's got a torchlight too, useful when you're working dark corners, or under beds and furniture. There's plenty of swivel angles for getting round stuff, and the head's got about 3-4 ins straight edge each side which when you flush it with the floor/wall corner sucks the corner wonderful. With the old machine I had to pull the head off and use the pipe end.
The powerful suction is also good for mats, saves having to take them outside for a beating.
And the stairs are a dream to do with all this convenience, lightweight, handy angles, and no cord. There's also a nifty button you can push with your toe to clean the rotating brush in the pick-up head.
6 out of 5 for this baby.

Uncle Dave Does a Dive

Uncle David turned 90 recently and the cousins shouted him a tandem skydive for his birthday.
Any trepidation we might have had about him doing it got swept away when he accomplished it with aplomb.
He said he was always curious what it would be like, despite coming close to a parachute jump but fortunately not having to, into shark and Jap infested water, while serving as rear gunner up in the islands around Bouganville in WWII.

David right, Jack 2nd right

The tandem dive was set up for Sat 12th at Taupo, cant remember the name of the company, there are 2 operating there, but its the first hangar on the right.
Its a surprising proper industry, the hangar full of comings and goings, the lift plane operating almost non-stop nearly all day, giving young punters another slice of their adventure tour cake here in NZ.
The company do it well, you get a stretch limo ride out from town, full briefing, video job on the way down, and a movie put together for a take-away memento. David's had Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly" poignantly spliced into the sound, you can view it in the theaterette.

Grandson Jack accompanied him on the dive, but no-one else in the family took the opportunity to have a go. I was content with my ride up and back on the CB, on a fine and warm day, up via the Parapara, National Park, and home via Desert Road.
David took the cake with his closing quip when asked if he'd like to do it again.
"I'll come back for my 100th", he said.

On the road home

Great Sight in the Morning Sky

Great sight in our southern hemisphere 6.am morning sky, Venus in the head of Taurus beside Alderbaran, with the Pleiades just off to the left, and Jupiter in between.
Be great if you're born a Taurean, all that love and power in one hit, lol.
Except, if you're an astrological purist ascribing to what the Sumerians brought to the table of knowledge over 4000 years ago, and due to Precession of the Equinoxes since.......
you're in the wrong house!
Astrologers will maintain that what you're born under is what's in their tables, but for me, I like what you see is what you get.
Have a happy time Taureans!

Transit of Venus 6.6.12

Didnt give this much fore-thought, seeing the weather was so bad, but around 2-3pm the cloud peeled away.
An article in the local rag stated no-one alive has seen a transit in NZ, they come twice in eight years, every 100 odd years apart, the last one was in 2004 but you had to be on the other side of the Earth to see it, and the next one isn't due for another 105 years.
That was enough motivation for me.
The old boyhood telescope somewhere up in the attic would have taken too long to set up, wouldnt have a clue where the smoked sun-lens would be, so it was down to the workshop and the arc-welding mask. I used to map sunspots as a kid by projecting from the eyepiece onto a sheet of paper. I burned holes through a few bits of paper before I got things right, lucky I still got my eyes.
Actually, it took two welding lenses to shut the light down enough, and sure enough, there was little dot Venus. So there, I saw it.
Even tried taking a pic with the cellphone, Venus is the little dot down near the bottom, lol.
Rather fortuitous the sky clearing, just imagine being old Capt Cookie sailing halfway round the globe, if the weather had been inclement when he got here.

Frizzell Comes to Town

Other highlight of the week in Wangas was the visit of artist Dick Frizzell, promoting his new book, "Its All About the Image", with a lecture at Alexander Library.
Was fortunate a year or two back, to be invited to make up numbers for an art weekend at Pukeora Estate, Waipukurau, where 10, mainly rural gents, completely unschooled in the finer points of painting, were delivered to the care and tutelage of Dick, to have us create an art work before the weekend was through. This, all part of the Arts Channel series, "Artland NZ", where several artists were commissioned to "do their thing" for an episode each.
Self dubbed the "Pukeora Picasso's", it was rather fortuitous that Pukeora Estate is now a winery, and all being rural blokes with a dab hand at knocking up a feed, we each contributed to the food basket, to round out a great weekend, and learn a new hobby.
While we'd all freely admit the non-likelihood of any of our works getting into the National Gallery, we were all immensely surprised at what we achieved with a bit of solid tuition, and simple pointers on how colour might be mixed and moved around a canvas.
What I learned was never to be intimidated by any work of art just because one might not feel in the same class, it is really, all about the image, and what the individual perceives as important, as, after all, all art, whether painting, verse, prose, or movie, is a political statement.
Dick has quite an irrepressable mischief, albeit good mannered, about his journey along his road of appreciation and learning, and I was fortunate to have been levered into it his way.
This is a great read if you want to know how to appreciate art, as a racehorse breeder, there are similarities.

My first go at painting a picture

Kahungunu Seafarers Weigh Anchor in Whanganui

Been an interesting week here, outside of RWC.
Monday night was a lecture/video evening presented by Awhina Twomey and Hannah Rainforth, who earlier this year spent several weeks on board a traditional design double-hulled ocean going waka.
There were a fleet of seven such canoes navigating, using revived traditional methods of the 1100-1600 AD period, from Auckland NZ to San Francisco CA, each of them crewed by different cultural groups representing Aotearoa NZ, Fiji, Samoa, Hawaii, Cooks, and the other two Pan-Pacific.

Use of pacificvoyager photo acknowledged

On account of not wanting to knock down fourteen 200 plus year old trees to carve the hulls out of, the 33 metre waka were cast in fibre-glass here in Auckland. Sails were also conventional material, but one waka did carry tradional pandannis sails.
One novelty of construction was a solar panel bank mounted over the prows, which charged, I presume, batteries to drive twin swing-down propellers, auxilliary power is a mandatory requirement of all ocean going sailing vessels.
The waka had 8-bunk water-tight crew compartments in each hull, a small galley on deck, plus a head.
All crew had life jackets and clips to attach themselves to a stanchion line for safety purposes.
Steerage was effected by a steering oar, sometimes requiring 3 men to handle. Sails were twin mast, inverted keeler.
Apparently, there was only one man left in the whole Pacific, who had been raised in traditional sailing culture, a Marquesan, and its fantastic of him to share his knowledge with the new school of navigators.
The system uses stars, sun, moon, wind, cloud formations, ocean current and wave direction, drift matter, seabirds and fish, to steer by.
The ancient sea-ways were pretty well established in the Pacific Triangle bounded by NZ, Hawaii, and Easter Island, (NZ Maori tongue is highly similar to that of Easter Island, Rapanui, being the two most isolated corners), but the presence of a North American Indian welcoming committee at San Francisco exercising recognisable protocol leaves one with the strong impression contact with the American coastline did occur throughout those times.
These young women had a fantastic experience. A documentary was shot during the mission, with an environmental message theme, and is due for release in due course.
The whole exercise had funding assistance from German industrialist/philanthropist Dieter Paulmann.
An excellent website including GPS tracker progress of any of the waka offers more extensive detail:
http://www.pacificvoyagers.org/

Get a Load of This...

Can't help putting this link up.
Reminds me of the days I had a Honda 200TRL trials bike here on the farm.
Getting round hillside sheep-tracks was just as much fun and challenge, some of the trackside drops were just as awesome, even without the altitude and the rocks, but skinnier in places.

http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/scariest_bike.html

Thanks Keith for passing on the link, and acknowledgement to the stars in the clip.

And what about this bloke!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TshFWSsrn8

Can this bloke ride or what???

Take your helmet off to this bloke.....

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No_vqA2A3KY&utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=12a1612987-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email

Right Hand Rule

The change from left-turning giving way to approaching right turning, back to the old right hand rule, can't happen soon enough. Neither should we have to wait till after the RWC.
Most of us grew up with the right hand rule, give way to your right, and if turning right give way to everything.
Simple.
To give the controversy a bunt, I'll allege our current rule is responsible for 50% of intersection accidents and road rage, (its a lot simpler to whack someone, than figure out the difficult, lol).
We're the only developed country still doing it. Victoria reversed its implementation after 2 years, and I'll give them points for seeing its faults rather than attribute to any possible lack of Aussie ability to understand its workings.
I had a little reminder the other day how dangerous our current system is. I was in my right-hand lane, signalling to turn right at the lights. A bus was approaching from the opposite direction, so I stopped.
Right at the line, the bus indicated to turn to his right, and as the approaching left lane up till this time was entirely clear, I started my right turn too.
But, suddenly, from behind the bus, a motor, obviously vexed at being in the wrong lane behind a no-intention signalling bus, hooked out, shot across the intersection, and there we screeched to a halt, 4' apart, but me wearing some expletives from the driver. Fair enough, I broke a biker's rule never to go until the coast is absolutely clear.
But under the old right hand rule, where the left lane would have had unrestricted right of way and traffic flow, that motorist would have been in it, and completely visible to me.
Under our current system its a real bummer trying to decide which lane to approach an intersection in, even when you're first to it, because the vehicle pulling into the lane beside you, might be going in another direction, or more likely, will try to drag you off for lane rights across the intersection.
The proposed new rule does have one snag, the right hand rule wont apply at a T junction. This is plain nuts.
One other point, something similar to the old RHR still operates in USA, only its a left hand rule, and I think our conditioning to the current stupidity only makes assimilating to riding there the confusion it can be.
Even better is their 4-way stop system at uncontrolled intersections, first in has right of way, then subsequent, but we'd need to modify our national aggro for it to work here.
Actually, we've got roundabouts, which offer pretty near the same thing, and might even be safer.

Arming the Police

Have just heard Police Assn's Greg O'Connor on ZB's Larry Williams Live, being questioned on his renewed stance for arming of police, (as in strapped to the hip), following the serious machete attack incident on a Taihape lawman.
If the police arm up, wont the crims follow suit? asks Larry.
Too late says Greg, the crims are already there, growing in drug based where-withall and resource to obtain. Theyre carrying to protect themselves from inter-gang dispute, but increasingly police, and inevitably, more public are getting caught as collateral damage.
Seems like a side-arm wouldnt have helped in this circumstance prods Larry.
Maybe not so if the crim knew at the outset he was out-weaponed, responds Greg.
Everyone from the PM and the Police Minister down dont support arming of police, says Larry.
Greg responds, it would be interesting to poll the public now, 9 lawmen killed in the line of duty in the last 2 years, multiple more attacks.
If the police cant protect themselves, how are they going to protect the public.
There might be a hue and cry about it right now, (on implementation), but in 6 months time, it'll be like nothing happened.
I'm on Greg's side.
In America all police are side-armed. All the ones we struck were polite, amiable, and helpful. I dont doubt they could be insistent.
The big difference between here and there is simply that we've got more and worse baddies in our society than America has, and this was somewhat of a shock to me to experience. As Greg said, we arent some peaceful little South Pacific paradise anymore.
I had a look up of police stats between our two countries, the rate of serious injury crimes, and crimes against property, per 100,000 of pop. is double here in NZ than in USA.
The situation regarding murders is the reverse, but I bet it wont be for long if we dont arm our police.
Or we'll end up like America before Wyatt Earp came to town.