Graham Smith

I'm not worried about storage. This won't be my primary computer and the bulk of the data I need will either be on SD cards or an external drive. Heck, my laptop only has 80gb worth of stuff on it including Win 7. I can put the whole thing on a microSD card. One of the things I like about these new tablets is that it's so easy to connect them to a full size keyboard, mouse, and monitor. You can darn near use one as your main computer. Of course, the little Atom CPU in the less expensive units isn't going to win any speed contests but what the heck can I expect for $350

A friend recently picked up a new ASUS Transformer T100 with Win 8.1 installed. I've rigorously avoided Windows 8 due to all the issues it has had but from the tech journals I read, a lot has been fixed in 8.1 and it may be time to start looking at it. I have no plans for replacing my main system with a tablet hybrid but from what I can see, the little T100 works pretty darn good as a road warrior Netbook. And before anyone says iPad, Android, or Chrome - there are a couple Windows programs that I need to run on this so they are out of contention from the start. I've looked at the Dell Venue and a few others but there prices are up in the $500+ range where the Transformer is about $350 including a keyboard cover (such as it is). I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has purchased one of these.

It's a good caliber but it's just not "sexy" any more. The new young studs on the line are all 6mm and 6.5mm and the loads they are making for these are scarey accurate and very low recoil. I'm not sure about loads for the 162 AMAX in a 7-08. I've seen the numbers on a 7mm mag and they are impressive as hell, but not on the 7-08. What's your load and what kind of velocity are you getting? As to down-range energy, that may be an issue in hunting but not so much so for paper.

I'm going to toss out an observation here. No matter how hard anyone tries, there will always be some bugs that get by testing and into a general release. This is true of every software program ever made - even ones created by a single user for their own use. That's because it's nearly impossible to fully test software unless you use it in a real life production environment. I develop database software and all work is done in a mock up and tested by me to make sure it does what it's supposed to. Whenever possible, I get the end user(s) to check the end result. But for every 10 things that go without a hitch, there's one that falls on it's little beak. And invariably it's because there was something I did not or could not test. I cannot reproduce everything that can happen because I'm a developer not a user and the user is going to do things unexpected. In the case of software like Practiscore, you can add in the factor that every user (club) has a different setup and a different mode of operation and different "requirements". This makes it pretty darn tough to test. And having been a beta tester for the better part of 25yrs, I can also tell you that there's often very little that I can do to test software other than to do a quick, "Yup, it doesn't blow up." type of test. Often, the only thing I am testing is to see if some problem I had has been fixed or to check some new function as best as I can. But things will get past me. The last big upgrade I did to my database software had to be rolled back because I found that there was something that had changed that was going to require about a weeks work on my largest application to deal with. I am, possibly, the only person with this particular set of circumstances so I'm going to have to bite the bullet sooner or later. The lead software developer is a very good friend of mine and the best he can say is "Sorry about that but you understand why this change was necessary.", which I do. I just don't have to like it.

It's basically just points per second. Add up your points, subtract your penalties, and divide by time. Something I find useful is to play with scores in a spreadsheet. You can see the effect of A vs C vs Miss, penalties, lost time etc. You can play what if with the scores and see what the effect is of taking an extra shot (time lost vs point gain) is. And very importantly you can see why a short course and a long course may require a very different approach.

The free version of Avast is like the free version of AVG, it doesn't have all the features of the paid versions. It's the features that you don't have that hook into the browser and slow it down.

Avast isn't the fastest AV out there, but how it's setup can make a difference. Many AV programs hook into your browser to monitor what's going on and to protect you. Most people need a certain amount of protection since there are a lot of traps out there for the unwary but an AV program can overdo it a bit sometimes. One of the things that makes AVG Free faster is that it has limited functionality. It doesn't do everything that it's bigger siblings do. I use the paid version and have specifically had to disable some of the browser functionality if I want to look up anything faster than a snails pace. MS Security Essentials takes the opposite approach, less-is-more, which is why it make browsing so much faster. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a tinker toy and isn't very effective. But it's enough if you are careful. Chrome is a nice browser with some nice features but can be a real dog compared to Firefox and Opera. Open Task Manager sometime and you'll see that even when it's setting idle, it may be eating up processor time.

I've been reading about it but don't have any real interest since I make my living writing code and don't need any more hobbies. But it reminds me a lot of some of the early "kit" computers. I think that it's an interesting idea and the fact that it's open source, small, inexpensive, and extensible make for some interesting possibilities.

I thought that you couldn't reset a rooted Nook that way. There's some strange voodoo instructions on the NookDev site involving 6 repetitions of holding the power button for 15 seconds. As to the battery, never had a need but it's supposedly easy to open and unplug the battery.

Well, that's the rub. With my Nooks, I could do the restore 5 times in a row and it wouldn't take. The only sequence that worked was to upgrade to the 1.2.1 firmware, then restore, then upgrade to 1.2.1 again (since the restore wiped that), then root. And I didn't mention this but after the upgrade then restore, I found that turning the Nook back on required a "hard restart". Hold the button for 30sec release hold the button for 10sec. Curious about the one that is stuck. I don't know enough about how these things work to know if something like removing the battery for a few minutes would "clear" anything.

FWIW, now that I have re-rooted my Nooks, which includes an upgrade to the Nook 1.2.1 firmware, I find that connecting to the internet results in an automatic update of the time.

As already noted, for some reason, the RASI install has to be modified for some of the older Nook, like mine. I found that the give away is that after the factory restore, you should find the Nook as booted to the B&N Welcome setup. If that didn't happen then it hasn't gone back to the factory settings and you have to do the loop-d-loop I described. Notice: Your Nooks may be different than mine. What works for me may not work for you.

Sorry, but that doesn't work on the Nooks I have. I got confirmation of this from JC. For some reason, RASI will not restore the older Nooks that are at 1.1.0 and already rooted with the old rooting software. For those you have to start by upgrading them to v1.2.1. You can do this all with the RASI card, but you have to take care since you end up repeating a step. The sequence ends up being like this: Upgrade to v1.2.1 Restore to Factory Upgrade to v1.2.1 again Root

OK, there is definitely something missing in the instructions about changing a Nook over from the older rooting to the new Root-n-ScoreIt. What I end up with is a screen with the "Drag to Unlock". When I do that, it asks if I want to complete action using ADW.launcher or ReLaunch. Unless I am mistaken, the old rooting is not getting removed when the Nook is "Restored". At this point it almost looks like it has to be restored twice to get it to work. What am I missing? <time passes> I have just tried three times in a row to do a factory restore (using Root-n-ScoreIt) on a previously rooted Nook with no success. There's clearly something missing here. I know from the past two that I did that if I go ahead and reroot it with RASI it will screw up and, at that point, I can restore it from there. But that's hardly what I would call an elegant solution.

Having setup Roon-n-ScoreIt on two new spare Nooks, I decided to switch our others over since I like the way it behaves better. But I've run into a problem. After resetting the Nook and installing Practiscore as per instructions, I find that the N button now opens Relauncher rather than the desktop. How do I change that? Just ended up doing it all over again and it's fine now. Very strange.

The width of the table is the width of the shooting area. Having not shot this I cannot say for sure if that would make any difference or not. If you can stand on the center line behind the table and clearly see the poppers without having to lean out to either side to avoid the center target, then it really doesn't matter. But the setup notes are very precise about everything else so I wasn't sure.

The shooting area for a classifier is supposed to be clearly defined but by leaving out the dimensions of the card table, there's no longer a defined area. It's just that with all the rule book lawyers in this game, I can see how this could be an issue.

Well, I never expected it to get this complicated. The big problem I have with all the protection is that it's easy to turn an open field course into a stand-here-shoot-this course. All the extra barrels and walls and no-shoots can clutter up a stage and force the shooter to shoot the targets from particular locations. FWIW, at our match yesterday we had a 180 DQ on a stage with a number of no-shoots positioned to prevent 180's. And I included a warning about this particular stage during my briefing. It's my opinion that the DQ happened, in part, because of all the extra no-shoots. They did as much to confuse the stage as to help.

Any ideas on the size of the card table?

We do a warning in the match brief and if there are any places in any stages where extra caution is prudent, I try and point them out. But this still boils down to two fundamental questions. 1. Do the rules say that designers MUST protect the targets from being seen and shot from past the 180. 2. Do you do take these precautions even if the rules don't say you must?

What the heck are the dimensions of a "standard card table" supposed to be? And how do you "stake a chair in place"? http://www.uspsa.org/classifiers/13-07.pdf Since the width of the shooting area is dictated by the width of the table, I can see where this could well be an issue. Also, if I read this right, you can move around to the rear of the chair as long as you shoot from between the fault lines.

You have it surrounded. IF the rule is intended to mean you have to protect the targets beyond the 180 then we are getting into some really shaky ground. In this example, T1 is in a position where the shooter would have to be really careful not to go past the 180 when shooting it, but T2 is far enough past the shooting position to be "safe". BUT, once past the wall, the shooter can easily turn and engage both and break the 180 even though it's a clear violation. Do I have to protect against them doing that???

We have been using Marsh Spray Stencil Ink for years. It is expensive but it dries almost instantly, only takes a very light coat, and doesn't layer up and flake like paint often does.

Whereas I don't think that T1 is illegal - but we (my club) protect against it anyway (like with T2). I don't have as much expertise as others but there seem to be a goodly number of experienced people here who split down the middle on this. It all comes down to interpretation of the rule(s) and that's never a good thing.

And the problem that's created with that interpretation is that the onus is then on the stage designer to determine what a "reasonable person" should or should not be aware of. A rule should not depend on that. Either the example I posted is illegal or it's not. And if it's not then no such rule exists.