Friday, August 12, 2005

the spell check irony

I just notice that the word BLOG does not exists in the spell-check dictionary lexicon used by Blogspot. It will prompt you to change to another word.

Irony?

posted by the spear carrier @ 5:26 PM 0 comments

Thursday, August 11, 2005

the NDP Aftermath

National day is over.

My prediction weather broadcast was spot-on, there was many pockets of rain in the days before NDP and it did not rain a single drop during NDP afternoon/evening at all. On Thursday afternoon, 2 days passed National Day, there was an ultra-super-duper thunderstorm rain at my workplace in the east. And there was heavy rain on Friday early morning too. The weather are screw up, so try not to plan any outdoor activities, especially sun-tanning.

On another note, I was watching the NDP parade on TV. Half-way through, I spotted a misfire. Either the camera man was damn sway, never bathe for many many days, to capture it or one of the Gunners did not bathe for many many days.

It happened during the 21 Gun salute while the 81-years-old-but-still-healthy-enough-to-be-YOUR-President was inspecting the Guards-of-Honours and at the background, there is a 21 gun salute being fired off by 6 25-pounders. The 21 shots was to be fired one shot at a time, which starts from the first step taken by the President till the last step of the inspection. And so it happen that out of 21 shots that was rotated by the 6 25-pounders guns, the second close-up shots that they choose to pan over to, they kenna a misfire.

I have captured the screen shots from the NDP video they uploaded. It happened at 1 hour 27 mins in the video, if you wish to see for yourself. Else, I have attempted to post the first picture in my blog. Amen. Amitabha.
Shit. I cannot capture the screen shot from the video. Sorry, u got to go to the video clip yourself to see it. It happened at the 1 hour 27 mins.
I managed to capture the screen shots after googling for help when my print screen method turn out a black image only. Here it is.





How do u tell? Easy, the screen was pan to that particular 25-pounder during the President inspection walk. If you observe the gunner sitting on the side of the 25-pounder, his right hand that was resting on the gun actually moved to strike the firing lever. But nothing happened, and 2 seconds later (I actually timed the delay) the 25-pounder on the left fired off one round which u can see by the smoke that was blown over AND then the stunned camera man desperately tried to swing over to focus on the 25-pounder on his left then.


Luckily, the gunner of the next 25-pounder was quick-wit to fired off. Of course, they are supposed to be prepared for such misfire drill, that is the next 25-pounder gunner is to immediately fire-off if there is a misfire. But you do not get to practice such drill hands on. It really boils down to the alertness and smartness of that gunner to instinctively hit the firing lever.


2 seconds delay should be negligible but then again we are talking about SAF. I hope that the misfire was due to damage charge (there is actually no round loaded, not even dummy round, only the charges is fired to create the boom sound) or firing lever faulty instead of human error. And the other quick witted gunner was praised and the incident is put to rest.

Because the 25-pounder battery was tasked to fire off the 21 rounds with precision where each boom is timed to sound off according to specific steps taken by the president. If you missed the timing too obvious, u will get into big shit. If you missed and only fired off 20 shots in the end, God bless the whole battery including the CO, cos they will really get it up down left right.

It shouldn't be so when they have to burnt consecutive weekends for 6 months of practices, even though, they do have the easiest task after the mobile column troops.

posted by the spear carrier @ 5:31 PM 0 comments