Fly Shooting

Yeah, you heard me. I said fly shooting.

Why would I want to shoot a fly? Because they're there. Because they are evil creatures that spread diseases and other nastiness. Because they are ugly. And, mostly, because it's fun to shoot them. Most people enjoy whacking them with fly swatters, but this is even more enjoyable.

All right, now how do I go about this fly shooting? Well, first you procure a fly shooter, kind of like this one.

I got it at Bass Pro shops for about six dollars. Then you put it together, which takes about a minute and a half. When you get it together, it looks something like this.

And also, when you get it together, you push the little white screen onto the pistol looking thingy and there you go. You are ready for action. Locate a fly, aim carefully and pull the trigger. Now you have one dead fly, your mother is overjoyed at the absence of such a creature, and you are ready to look for another beast to slay. Basically, it works like a dart gun, except that it is easier to hit a fly with this.

For your enjoyment here is a video showing the awesome destructive  power of this new wonder weapon.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gerCW4G6rv8

Here are some fly shooting tips in no particular order-

The string that is provided with your fly shooter will not cut the mustard. It is too damn short, allowing limited range. We cut off the string and tied on a six foot piece of fishing line, giving us much more range and more enjoyment.

Flies are best killed if they are on a flat surface and you are shooting straight at them. If they are on a flat surface, such as the side of a refrigerator and you try to shoot them at an angle, they will likely buzz on off on their merry way.

Flies are easily attracted, although your mother may think it is best done outdoors.  To ensure the best hunting conditions for you, you need to set her straight real quick and explain exactly  how you are helping her by leaving all the windows open , so that your targets may enter the dwelling.My nephew likes to hang a piece of ham on the side of the outdoor trash bin to attract them. And he will wait a few moments, then proceed to pick them off one by one as they make their appearance. And he will also toss a piece of ham onto the pavement and shoot straight down at them as they nibble away. Sometimes this keeps him entertained for an hour or so, which is a good thing.

Killing flies will develop your shooting skills also. You can hone your breathing technique, your trigger pull, and if you remove the string altogether, you can also practice range estimation, target identification, and learn your trajectory. If you do decide to remove the string, it will take a little effort to go retrieve the little white plastic dart thingy after you pull the trigger. This is when a dog, a little brother or sister, or a wife will come in handy- they can retrieve your ammunition and bring it back to you after each shot.

Happy hunting!

Testing Candles from Dollar Tree

A couple of months ago I was at Dollar tree and I got bored, so I started looking at candles. Everyone needs a few candles in case the power goes out or in the event of some other disaster. Don't they? Well, I thought so, so I purchased a couple of candles to experiment with, one tall and one short. The short one had approximately 4 inches of wax inside of it, and the larger one had probably 10 or 12 inches of wax. Here is what they look like. In this picture we have already burned the red candle, it is some kind of a cherry flavored candle, but you cannot smell it at all unless you get your nose right over it. It burned approximately 28 hours.

But the white one? It surprised me, , burning for approximately 93 hours total. . I was rather impressed by this,  especially for the fact that you can buy each one of these for one dollar.  That's a lot of candlelight for not much money.

So if you are a prepper or something like that or if you just want some extra candles hanging around ,, you might want to give these a shot.

Crystal Head Vodka Lamp

Have you ever heard of Crystal Head Vodka? If not, then have you ever heard of Dan Aykroyd? He's a little actor type dude, or at least he used to be. He was in the Ghostbusters movies and The Blues Brothers. Now I think he just owns a bar and a brand of vodka. It's called Crystal Head Vodka, and it comes in these really cool looking bottles that look like a glass head. Kinda cool. See?

　

I thought that this would look really neat if we made a lamp out of it. In the photo above the bottle is turned sideways and if you look closely you can see that we have drilled a hole in the side of the glass bottle down near the bottom.

First I ordered a string of 50 white fairy lights to put in to the glass skull. Then I bought a bunch of these red decorative, marble type things that people like to put in vases in order to give them color. After we put the lights into the bottle we filled it up with these red marble type things, hoping to have a really cool looking red skull lamp. And it was kinda cool looking, but it didn't put off very much light and it wasn't really all that red. And we also put black duct tape on his eyes.

 

Here it is all lit up. I guess the red marble things kind of muffled the light.

 

So I ordered a string of blue fairy lights, I think there are 40 on this one. We put them into the bottle and presto, we have a cool looking blue lamp. See?

 

 

Future plans call for a string of 40 red fairy lights and we will see how cool that is. They only cost about five dollars, and they come in about six or seven different colors. I guess you could change the color of your lamp to suit the occasion or your mood.

Book Update

I have had my book on Amazon, and for about four months now it has only been available for the Kindle. I have now formatted it and uploaded it to Smash Words. This means that it is available for the iPad, iPhone, Nook, Kobo, Sony e-reader and all of the other types of  e-readers. Here is a link to it, if you wish to check it out-  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/395254

20% of the book is up there for a sample, so you can read quite a bit of it  to get a good feel for it  before you  purchase it.

Another Bottle Lamp

Here is another bottle lamp that we did. It says 1800 on the lid and I think it is a tequila bottle. How did we make this one? Read on.

First you take a bottle, very much like this one.

And then you get  your hands on a glob of lights,  very much like  these green ones.

What?  They don't look green?  Well they are,  trust me.

See? I told you. Okay, now here is the hard part.  You take your glob of lights ,  insert them into the predrilled hole  at the bottom of your bottle  and presto,  there you are.  One green bottle  lamp.
 

Those are LED lights and they are pretty bright,  especially when you get 100 of them going at once.


 

Let's Construct a Bottle Light

Guess what this is? If you guessed liquor bottle, then you would be correct. But it is also a lamp. Or you could call it a light. Or a light emitting device. Hell, I guess you could call it whatever you want, but it will end up emitting light.


See?

Now, how did we go about constructing  such a device?   Read on.

 Obviously the first thing you will need is a bottle of some type.  Coke bottle, beer bottle,  liquor bottle, baby bottle,  perfume bottle,  whatever.  Lots of liquor bottles have unique shapes and designs  and end up looking pretty neat.


The second thing you need is some type of light  to stick inside your bottle. This is what we're going to use, a rope light. See?

 

And we wanted our bottle light to look cool, so we got a blue rope light. Actally we wanted it to be super cool,

so we got a long blue rope light,  a 16 footer.  See?  Doesn't it look supercool?

Okay, now that you have your light, shove your light into the bottle. Hmmm, how am I supposed to go about that, you may be wondering. Well, you need a hole at the bottom of your bottle so that you can push the light into. Kind of like this one.

　

Okay, and just how am I supposed to make this hole? Well, there are several ways to make holes in bottles, and my favorite way  is to use a high velocity bullet, but you can also use a handy dandy  electric drill.  You do have a handy-dandy electric drill, don't you?  Once you have procured your drill,  you can do it the way that they show in this video. (And this video also shows different designs and things on their bottle lamps.)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDCrgQjw72o

Now that you have your hole, start pushing the lights into it. In our case, we had a 16 foot rope light and I think the liquor bottle was a half-gallon one. Have you ever tried to shove a 16 foot rope light into a small, constricted,  half-gallon sized place that was not designed for a 16 foot rope light? Well if you have, you might know what I am about to say next. If you haven't, let me just say that it involves cursing, effort, cursing, sweat, cursing, blood, cursing, tears, a lot of time,  and perhaps some cursing. And what do you get in the end? Two hours later you end up with a half-gallon sized liquor bottle that still has a foot and a half of rope light protruding from it, and when you plug it in to see if the rope light still works after you have been  using a dowel rod  to help you shove and push it into a bottle, you find that it does not work. All of your effort  has now been negated. You have broken your rope light.

There is a lesson to be learned here. Do Not Break Your Rope Light! Not only will you be out $15 for the light, but you may very well have to use a sorry looking, substitute light in its place because your nephew  is the impatient sort and wants to  take  the bottle light home with him right then. Rope lights are not nearly as tough as they may at first seem.

So we used different lights, a string of Christmas tree lights. It is the kind that has a plug on both ends so that you can plug another string into it. Ordinarily it would not have fit into the hole, but we had a three-quarter inch hole to work with and by carefully trimming off bits and pieces of the plug on one end of the string of lights, we were able to persuade the lights into the bottle.

And this is what we ended up with. It didn't look nearly as cool as it would have with a 16 foot long blue rope light, but it will work and nephew was happy. There are all kinds of neat looking bottles out there and there are all kinds of neat looking lights out there. Do some experimenting and see what you can come up with.

 

Happy happy happy!

Check this out.

Do you know any girls like this? Girls that would be perfectly happy getting a gun mug, brick of 22 ammo, a couple of 25 round Ruger magazines and a pair of electronic earmuffs for Christmas? If you don't know any girls like this, keep looking. They are rather scarce, some might even go so far as to say they are an endangered species, but they do exist.

Somebody's Going to End up with a Neat Dirty Santa Gift

                                       




I don't know how well you can see those, so here are a couple of individual photos.

I kind of want to keep these to myself, mainly so that I don't end up with a flower vase,  or a box of chocolate covered pretzels or something.

Heat Your Room for Almost Free!

Know what this is? No, it is not a flowerpot. Well, technically I suppose it is a flowerpot, but for the sake of this post, it is a heater. A candle powered room heater specifically. Want to make one? Here's how. This is what you will need. 

Two flowerpots, a bolt, a couple of nuts and a candle or three.  You may also need a couple of washers, although they are not shown in this photo. And that is it.   Do not use  glazed  flowerpots,  just plain clay ones.

The construction of this heater is a long and difficult process,  consisting of the following:

1.  Take your bolt, put a washer on it , and insert it from the bottom  of the larger flowerpot .

2. Put a washer on the inside of the bolt,  place a nut on it,  and tighten it finger tight.

3. Place the smaller flowerpot onto the bolt, place another washer on the bolt, place a nut on the bolt and tighten it finger tight.

 Presto! You are done.  You have just constructed your very own , high-tech room heater. It should look something like this -

 

 

To go along with your superduper hi tech room heater, here are some high-tech instructions for using it-

Take your superduper high tech room heater- flowerpot thingy and place it upside down on a couple of supports,  kind of  like this-

Then you can also take your candle and light it as shown in the photo. And there you have it, your  heater  is now working. In the picture above you may notice that we have used boards to raise the  flowerpot up off the ground in order to make room for the candle and to allow it to get some air. This is not ideal,  and you should use  something nonflammable. to hold the flowerpot up.


It may take 30 minutes or so  before your flowerpot gets hot and begins putting off heat. And you also may want to put more candles underneath it  in order to make it work faster.  We did some scientific testing  to determine how much heat it was putting off.

 See this picture here,  with the plastic thermometer  sitting directly on top of the flowerpot?  Do not do this!  The bolt gets hotter than anything else, and this thermometer was leaning against it. After a few minutes it melted the back of the thermometer, requiring a different scientific testing procedure.  So what we did was to take a couple of small pieces  of wood and put them on top of the flowerpot, then we lay the thermometer down on top of these pieces of wood.  The thermometer was elevated probably an inch above the flowerpot and after an hour or so  it registered about 115°.  Even after two or three hours,  it never got hotter than that.

So,  does it work?

 Well yes, It does put off heat, but not a great deal of it. It works off the radiant heating principle, and it does take a little while. If you have a small room in your house that is not heated or if you have a room that is not heated well enough,  this may do the job. Or if you scattered two or three of them around the room,  it should work even better.  Candles are cheap , and so are flowerpots. This entire experiment cost maybe five dollars.

Warning! Using open flame like this is not for idiots.  If you do not feel qualified  to do something like this  without running the risk of burning down your house,  don't even think about it.  If you do not have enough common sense and are too stupid  to carry out something like this safely, then don't blame me  if you burn something  that didn't need burned.


 Here is a Short video that shows how to make one of these-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwElWD_qqCc

 The guy in the video got  a lot better results than I did,  but I kind of suspect that he was reading  the temperature off of the bolt. It gets hotter than anything else.  But then again, maybe I should have made a bigger one to start with.