Search engine results and other stats

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

For the last couple months, I’ve been tracking a bunch of stats on the website. When I upgraded to the new version of WordPress I went and added Google Analytics as well, which gives me tons of information. One interesting thing I’ve noticed is that there are two search queries that are consistently in the top ten for search results that bring people here. The first is “are guns good investments’ , or some similar phrasing, and the other is “HK flare pistol”.

Both of these posts are from several years back, yet they are always in the top ten of searches that brought people here. (Other search terms on that list are “commander zero”, “notes from the bunker”, and other obvious hits.)

Some other interesting stats – hits from the US account for 94.23% of traffic. Of that, Texas is the largest percentage of hits (10.76%), followed by California, Florida, Washington and Virginia.

Biggest referrers? Prepperwebsite.com with 17.23% of referral traffic coming from them. Followed by Survivalblog.com, offgridsurvival.com, and suburbansurvivalist.

After the main page, the post that gets more traffic than any other is this one, making up 2.6% of all posts read by people. (That doesnt sound like a high percentage, but with over 1300 posts on the website the fact remains that this particular post is seen by more people than anything other than the most recent post at the top of the blog. The next most popular draws less than half that amount of attention.)

And the thing I get asked about most in email? Where I got the new header graphics for the website. We’re steadily decliing into a Third World economy and this is what people ask about..’whered you get those cool pictures?’ (They were turned up in some late night random Google surfing.)

Page hits is about 1000 a day, which is kinda sad considering how long this blog has been running…but thats cool since I really post for myself and not for the fame and notoriety. (Although, to be honest, from time to time I’ve gotten some cool stuff out of it.)

Anyway, I thought I’d share a few of those stats since I find them interesting.

 

 

Article – Injured dog rescued from mountain, owner wants it back

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

About 13,500 feet above the ground, among the snow-capped peaks of Mount Bierstadt in Colorado, Scott Washburn and his wife, Amanda, found an abandoned, dying German shepherd dog.

Washburn and his wife this past Saturday, Aug. 11, were on a leisurely hike up Mount Bierstadt in Clear Creek County, a 14,000-foot peak near Denver that is categorized as a “14er” because, as Washburn said, “the peak is over 14,000 feet high and considered a Class 3, meaning it is not the most difficult – but it’s too difficult for a dog to be on it or an inexperienced person.

“We were hiking to this ridge and we got off course and I was a little ahead of my wife,” he said. “She called out to me and said, ‘Hey I found a dog,’ and figured I misheard her ’cause there was no way a dog was where we were.”

This is reprehensible and intolerable behavior from the owner of this dog.  This guy takes his dog where he shouldn’t have, leaves the injured dog behind, assumes it is dead and doesn’t even go back for it. Meanwhile the injured dog is slowly dying. Happy ending is that some folks got together and rescued this dog. Happier ending would be the dog not being returned to the sack of crap that abandoned it. Best ending is that sack of crap getting a beatdown to the point he has hysterical flashbacks if he ever comes near another dog.

How someone can do this is beyond me. A dog is willing to do anything for you, follow you endlessly, take tremendous abuse, and still die to protect you. You don’t abandon it at the first sign of trouble and you definitely don’t leave it for dead if there’s even a chance its still alive. When I got Nuke I made it clear that there was a contract between us…we were all part of a team and we do not abandon each other. Ever. He trusts me to take care of him and I trust him to always be there for me. Thats how it works with dogs.

Grrr…now I really wanna go to Colorado and kick this guy in the nuts.

 

ETA: Oh look, he has a Facebook account. With a picture of his dog.

How’s that marker panel look?

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Okay, time to play “Find the multicam hunting pack”. Ready? Go!

Ok, now lets try it with the marker panel in place.

Cool, huh? That’s the marker panel that was mentioned a few posts back. Here’s a comparison picture. Obviously, any object that is a bright day-glo orange is going to jump out at you. What I’m liking about this is that theres a velcro patch on either sidfe for glint tape for night/IR visibility, theres paracord loops at the corners for easy attachment, and the whole thing weighs less than an ounce and folds up to about the same space as a matchbook. When hunting season gets here I’ll definitely have this on my pack to keep my visibility high. And, as I said, it’s also handy for just marking where you left the dang camo gear that has a tendency to disappear into the background when you put it down and get about fifty yards away from it. I’m curious to see how long the color lasts before it fades away into a pale tangerine color. Given its use during the brief hunting season and the infrequent wilderness emergency, it shouldnt be spending enough time out in the sun for it to fade, but you never know. Like what I see so far, though. Definitely gonna stuff this into my hunting bag this fall.

Source: Battle Systems

 

Charging the smartphone

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

I’ve become rather convinced that, for me anyway, the smartphone-type device has a definite bit of utility in preparedness. Currently, I have an iPhone. (I actually like the BlackBerry but given the enormous amount of support for the iPhone product it made more sense on a logistical basis than the BB.) I’m not going to really beat the topic of why I think it has utility, I’ve done that elsewhere, but I want to discuss one of the logical issues about these smartphones – how do you keep them charged when the power is off?

I received, as birthday gifts (thank you!), two different hand-crank chargers. Both use the same technology and have similar uses, although with slight differences. The first was the Freeplay FreeCharge and the other was a similar device marketed as Etón American Red Cross Clipray. Both are basically hand-crank generators with DC output at 12 v. The Eton has a USB port since it seems aimed specifically at USB-style devices, the FreePlay has a 12 v. ‘cigarette lighter’ plug. The Eton is less bulky and also supports a built-in rechargeable LED flashlight…a nice touch..along with a carabiner-style clip to affix the unit to a piece of gear.

Handcrank charger -> smartphone. Yeah, it might work but it’s not a really great Plan A. Beats being in the dark, though.

Here’s where the problems come in. There is no free lunch in power generation. Not only do you have to sit there and crank a lot to recharge a cell phone, but the amount of energy you produce fluctuates wildly unless you keep a steady pace that is rather difficult to maintain. In short, don’t think youre going to plug your phone into one of these, crank like a madman for five minutes, and get a charged cellphone. Nope. You’re going to appreciate how much physical effort is required to generate electricity and develop a new understanding of why hydroelectric turbines and other mechanical-energy-to-electrical-energy systems are so wonderful. Plus, since your electrical output is so wildly varied, your sensitive electrical device is going to freak out in a major way and start giving messages about ‘device not charging’ and that sort of thing.

Solutions? Matter of fact, yes. In the comments/reviews on Amazon a fella noted this problem and said what was needed was some sort of regulator between the charger and the device…a buffer to capture the erratic electrical output and hoard it until there was enough charge to be smoothly and uniformly discharged. A battery. Enter this device: Duracell Instant USB Charger with Lithium Ion Battery. Normally you plug this little rechargeable unit into a USB port, on your computer for example, and it charges the on-board battery for use later when you plug your phone into it. All well and good, but for our needs you plug the battery into your handcrank device and use that to charge the battery as you have your smartphone charge from the battery. The battery smooths out the uneven output from your cramp-inducing flurry of handcranking and your smartphone doesn’t freak out at the uneven voltage.

Handcrank -> rechargeable battery -> smartphone. Better, but there’s a lot of time involved with turning that crank. Battery evens out the uneven output from the handcrank.

Now, as I said, once you try recharging any device with one of these handcrank units you are going to really come to appreciate things like wind and hydro turbines and…small solar panels. Personally, when the apocalypse happens I’m not going to have the time to sit around endlessly cranking a little geegaw to charge a battery so I can use my smartphone to read TM’s, take photos for historical purposes, calculate food rations, track consumables, etc, etc…I’ll be too busy doing all the other things that need doing. So…would my Goal0 Nomad 7M Solar Panel suffice to charge the little Duracell battery USB charger? As it turns out, yes. So, rather than sit around cranking away for hours to get my smartphone charged up I just plug the Duracell USB battery into the panel, lay the panel out in the sun and let it do the charging for me. Tedious, repetitive, physical exertion vs. passive solar charging…..no contest. Let me just lay the panel in the sun and get back to hanging looters.

Panel -> battery -> smartphone. I like this setup. The battery charges as the phone charges, and if the weather is uncooperative I still have a charge in the battery to use to charge the ‘phone. Plus, I don’t have to sit there turning a crank.

Does this mean that there’s no point to the handcrank generators? Not at all. Sometimes there just isn’t any sun to be had. And, sometimes you don’t need to charge a battery..you just need to run a light for a few moments or something similar. Certainly it doesn’t hurt anything to have these options available. Day may come where you’re holed up in your basement for a week with nothing better to do than charge small batteries by hand as you wait for water levels or radiation levels to recede.

Of course, if you’ve got yourself a nice solar panel array already in place, or a happy little min-hydro in your yard, then you can pretty much skip most of this and just add a regulated USB port to your system.

One other thing that I haven’t had a chance to try, and wouldn’t mind some input on, is bicycle-mounted USB chargers. I’ve seen some commercial models that are similar to the old bottle-shaped dynamos that we used to use to run headlights when I as a kid. There aren’t as many out there as I would have thought, but there are a few and also a few DIY plans. I’d be  interested in hearing of anyone’s experiences with ‘em.

More fun with fractions

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Remember those pre-scored silver bars that let you ‘make change’ in 1/4 oz. increments? Turns out there’s also a version that does it in 1/3 oz. as well. My buddy the precious metals pimp got a bunch and brought a few by to show off. While I’d seen the 1/4 ones before the 1/3 were something completely new.

Really, it would seem to me that it makes far more sense to have something like that with gold.

PTR/HK-91 BattleComp = not happenin’

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Well, getting a BattleComp for my PTR ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.
——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Version for 15×1 HK thread?
From: Commander Zero <zero@commanderzero.com>
Date: Mon, August 13, 2012 9:53 pm
To: “info@battlecomp.com” <info@battlecomp.com>
Shot a buddy’s AR with one of your BattleComp devices this weekend. Really impresive! Any chance you make a .308 version for the HK/PTR series of .308 rifles? Or, if not, any chance I can get one of your .308 ones before it gets to the threaded part of the production process and have my guy thread it for me?
And the unfortunate reply:
Unfortunately, we are completely tied up with current product manufacturing.  If we are able to do more custom work in the future we will post it when available.  Thank you for your support.
John
John M. Stankewicz, Account Manager
Battle Comp Enterprises, LLC
101 Hickey Blvd. Suite A455
South San Francisco, CA 94080
(650) 678-0778 Main
(650) 403-4527 FAX
john@battlecomp.com
www.battlecomp.com

Life Liberty Etc closing up

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Well nuts….Life Liberty Etc, the makers of my WWRD shirt, are apparently folding up their tent. Closeout sale but most of the common sizes are already long gone. I mention in case theres any 3XL or XS people out there who want some fun shirts.

I usually wear that one to the local organic hippie mart when the missus and I are shopping for overpriced, organic, free-trade, socially-conscious… actually, you know what, I can’t even type all that without my eyes rolling. Let’s just leave it at “I wear it to piss off  hippies”.

So….one is none, two is one. We fade back and go to our backup supplier of annoy-the-left t-shirts – Those Shirts…. the source of my fabulous “excuse me, where did you get that??” Reagan shirt.

Kinda sad about Life Liberty Etc. Fortunately, another outfit that sends a message using cotton also exists: 1791 Apparel. You gotta believe theres one of these and these in my future, size L. Although, I like the selector switch ones too.

Rather silly to be thinking of t-shirts now, though. Today is the first day where it isn’t in the mid-90′s…..fall is still a month and a half away but, as I am reminded, hunting season is only two months away. I should be thinking less about t-shirts and more about wool.

Gear – Marker Panel, Individual, LW (MPIL)

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Got a cool little piece of gear for my birthday…a small ‘marker panel’. I was gifted with one of these “Marker Panel, Individual, LW (MPIL)“  from Battle Systems. Although you might ask yourself, what would a person possibly need with something like this I have exactly the perfect use for it. See, most of my gear is either OD or some form of camo. When I go hunting I wear an orange vest, but I wear a camouflage backpack which covers the orange on my back. This thing will be perfect for affixing to the pack to keep my “don’t shoot me” factor high. Also, if I dump my pack or gear somewhere so I can travel lightly for whatever reason, I can find my way back to it a good deal easier. There’s a review of it over at Jerking The Trigger. I like that theres a section of velcro for attaching a glint patch of some kind…makes things a little easier at night and in the falling light. The whole thing folds up to about the size of a book of matches and weighs less than an ounce. Coverage is enough to easily meet the mandated minimum square inches of orange cover for hunting season.Given the small size and high visibility, I’ll probably stuff this into the little wilderness survival kit I take with me hunting and fishing.

As I was playing with this, it got me thinking of the original marker panels this was based on..the VIS-17 panels. Never seen one before so…ordered a couple to play with. Hey, if small is good then bigger is better, right?

BattleComp

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Had a couple of friends from out-of-town visiting the last week. Always nice to get to spend time with Like-Minded Individuals. One of them brought along his AR which had the most amazing compensator/brake/supressor I’ve ever experienced.

The AR was just your standard carbine in .223….nothing remarkable. But the ‘muzzle device’ from BattleComp was amazing. There was virtually no muzzle rise at all. In fact, I’m tempted to say there was no muzzle rise because I sure didn’t notice any. This thing just gave the rifle a bit of a push straight back and that was it. If I were going to be engaging multiple targets quickly this thing would be just the ticket. If I ever put together a close-quarters carbine this will be the thing that goes on the end of the barrel. It isn’t really a compensator, isn’t really a brake, and isn’t really a flash suppressor…it is apparently a combination of the three. But, whatever, it was awesome.

They apparently make a 7.62 version and I would love to have one on my PTR-91 but apparently they only make ‘em threaded for a few .308′s and mine ain’t one of ‘em. Gotta send ‘em an email and see if I can get something done about that.

In the meantime, these things aren’t cheap but, wow, I was way impressed. Didn’t notice any real increase in noise, although Im sure there must be a tradeoff somewhere…no free lunch and all that. Go check ‘em out.