The Wild World of TB!

Owners of REDZ International arrested for rape and kidnapping? Interesting to say the least, I am sure that more will come out soon. But until then remember that people are innocent until proven guilty. Now once proven guilty, it is of course game over for these guys in paintball. I wonder if Greg will want his company back? Funny I speak of circular momentum in the coming up issue of Shooting Hot.

Story is here and here (for Dale's Credit)

So some think the site is dead, or I have gotten bored or well maybe I decided to leave paintball. Much to their chagrain, none of the above is the truth. There just isn't much to say these days that hasn't already been said. Viper still sucks balls, Twinkie is still a bitch and well Paintball Woman of the year is still a joke. The only thing worse is the Kool Kat award, I mean fucking really?

But have no fear, I will be writing some new material up here in the next few days (the muse is upon me).

So some of you fuckers, might want to stand the fuck by.

As is customary every 10th of November, I would like to wish my Marine Corps Brothers and Sisters a happy birthday and a big Semper Fidelis! Make sure to get your meat and spirits and raise a toast to the people who have been in harms way, those still in harm's way and those that gave their life to protect all of the rights and freedoms we enjoy.

This was a very touching and moving statement from the Commandant and SGT Maj of the Marine Corps. I do wish that they had gone more into the MOH winners, but I guess that is for the Discovery or Military channels. Regardless, I am proud that I claimed the title 22 years ago. It just doesn't seem that long ago when you think about. I still can smell the swamp and feel the sand fleas bite.

But regardless Happy birthday Devil Dogs!

Been watching National Geographic Channel lately? No? You need to fix that. Hit up Rocket City Rednecks on your On Demand, or online.

They're pretty damn smart, and while they live in the country, they have more degrees between them than you have members on your paintball team. They do some wild things on a shoe string budget, like build a submarine out of a fertilizer container, radio telescope out of an obsolete satellite dish, and more.

On their last episode, they set up an airborne surveillance system, with an eye on a ultra-low-cost military system. They tested it using paintball gear.

For a long time people have talked about having a UAV in the sky. I even wrote on it for Shooting Hot. People have kicked around many ideas. A balloon is always a popular one. Unfortunately, they never tested it un-tethered (it would be screwed in any kind of wind)... but for the price, it may just be a useful thing to attach to your command bunker.

http://www.radpowderball.com/

FREAKIN' DIMPLES! A compressed powder product with none of the bad parts of a paintball. No humidity problems, it's highly water resistant. Consistent size, no swelling. Just fill the loader on your regular markers, unlike First Strikes. Did I mention DIMPLES LIKE A GOLF BALL?!?!

As genius is this is... I have to wonder if the company that makes these sat down and thought really hard about why actual paint ball manufacturers have gone to the extremes of adding staining dyes to their high end fills...

Definitely could have a place in scenario though. Time to replace cheesy sniper cards & running refs into the dirt. This + 300 fps pump = what a scenario sniper MOS should be.

Some people like to say I never have anything good to say about things. Usually, I don't... lots of silly shenanigans out there. There's some stuff out there being done though that I think deserve some mentions.. even if I deliver them with some left-handed compliments... :)

Tactical in Harwood is running a 3 sided game. This is a good idea! Why? Just read my previous posts about why having more than 2 sides is a really, really good thing. Too bad some of the players are timid when it comes to hard nosed competition in scenarios.

Geddon's Games is talking about putting on a 6 sided game! I think it's airsoft, and he'll need a new venue now that Warzones is toast... should set that shit on fire with the cigarette butts from Nudi's yard... but that's certainly an ambitious gaming idea and I wish him the best on it. In Geddon's games, his format actually has generals creating their own missions. I'm not sure if I like that, it's not something I would ever implement, but it seems to work okay.

Amber @ Mad Ivan's seems to have a better grip on technology and how it can apply to events than anybody on the production side I've met so far. It would not surprise me at all to see them run the first Field Day Messenger assisted paintball games.

Viper had a... somewhat strange... idea he floated to me before the last event of his I attended (deadlands 3 or some shit). The idea is/was 2 different scenarios, running in parallel at the same venue, with the main field split in half. You can't cross into the other game. The entire field swapped at half time, so you basically played 2 different 12 (13?) hour scenarios, with storylines tied together via Stargates or something like that. It doesn't exactly fix the game mechanic problems of scenarios, if anything it multiplies them by 2, but I still think if implemented properly, it's an idea that would be worth playing at least once. What would have sunk it is the propensity for players to go to bed early that's been en vogue since I stopped playing actively. Trying to have a proper balance of play time on the different fields over different segments would be a nightmare.

The guys over at LCP are starting to get on the right track. Right idea, wrong implementation. They put up an obstacle course that's the basis of some competition. Great idea! Maybe not the implementation that could put on the best event though...

Anybody else a fan of the toughness challenges that are on the rise all over the world? Iron Man, Tough Guy, Spartan Race, Military Combine, and more. Never heard of them? They are some of the most ferociously tough competitions available. Most people do not finish them. Some people have died trying. It's like a small taste of BUDS for civilians (and no SEALs talking shit to you). I'm willing to bet there are enough hardcore paintballers to bring those elements into a proper big-team (50+ per side) format competition that would be appealing to the hard-nosed scenario, milsim, and even tournament players.

Now, I've been talking about Augmented Reality for some time. Recently, I read an article that reached off the paper, and slapped me across the face with its genius. A company used one of my favorite bits of software called Layar, which works for iPhone & Androids. What did they do that was so genius?

Well.. they took the 22 most popular shopping districts on the planet, and built virtual t-shirt stores at each one that can be seen through Layar. Virtual stores superimposed over where real stores are.

The remix of that for paintball is blatantly obvious. Instant access to company stores at every major paintball field. Virtual tent exhibits at World Cup, D-Day, the college series, etc, etc, etc. Want to talk about marketing? What if I just looked at a tournament field through my phone, and it told me exactly which Pro player that was, bio, statistics, and sponsor links because it could recognize his jersey and rough size? The ground work is there. When will somebody, besides lowly little me who has zero money invested and doesn't really give a shit if paintball disappeared tomorrow, start utilizing it?

Another month and another issue, and yet still again no half naked hotties. One would think that Shooting Hot is trying to like go all legit or maybe the prudes finally got their way. I have lodged yet another complaint with the hairy one (Furby) to try and get some more wimmins in there. I mean I thought this was supposed to be the Maxim of paintball, what happened? Well outside of the glorious editors GF showing off paintball pants, that is about the only woman fix in the mag this month. However there are some other interesting articles there to be sure. I have actually written a positive piece and talked about something most would not even begin to believe I know anything about; weight loss. Reviews on the Splatrack and the Shank V2 Pants. Event coverage of the 2011 Paintball Business Festival and other events.

Like always a very good read for those that are looking for a different point of view or spin on things. I am wondering what happened to the hotties and I can't seem to get many answers on that. I will be going more into the weight loss thing in the next few months unless somebody says something that pisses me off enough to write an editorial about it there. But I think people should write in to the editor and complain. I mean, what is more American than a half naked woman and paintball gun?

Go HERE to take a look at this and the other issues, all online and all free.

So I waited a few days, but the emails and IM's have been flowing back and forth. Now I am not trying to besmirch the life of Danijel Jagodic aka BORG or the sad fact that he decided to end it. I have been at the end of the suicide solution and it really solves nothing for anyone but the person who chose to do it. It is as many people have said the cowardly way out of problems. And I understand people's grief and that in their grief they tend to remember nothing but the good times. I mean what person would show up at a funeral and talk about all the dick things someone had done (Ok maybe at my funeral but that is another story). However, some people took it over the top. I mean really, you would have thought the man who invented paintball had died. Oh yeah. that's right the man who did and is fighting cancer didn't get the kind of treatment that Borg did. And what did Borg do? He made Youtube videos in Croatia.

Yeah they were funny, and yeah they were informative and yeah some people felt a connection. But what did he really bring to the game? What changes were made? What innovations brought to the table? I mean he played two scenario games in the US, and both of those were gratis of a community that he did videos for. Ok, maybe the goodwill from that extended to his status or maybe some people just didn't want to feel gipped by their contributions. The community had been collecting money just to help pay his bills. That isn't even paintball and it still wasn't enough to keep him around. They played his thank you video and how he thanked everyone for all that they had done, but then why didn't he truly thank people and take their investment in him and use it to help himself. I just don't follow the train of thought. I have been depressed (divorce, loss of mother and a brother in 3 years time) and I have depression in my family. My son is diagnosed with depression and my brother took his own life, a little over a year ago. So forgive me for not jumping on the oh what a 'Legend' and that is what has me more at a loss.

I am not angry because so many people don't consider me one, but I am pretty miffed that one of the true legends, Glenn Palmer, got 1/10th of the credit he deserved or concern over his accident that Borg got. So many people have no idea who Glenn Palmer is. I mean that guy is a legend. Tom Kaye is legend. Wayne Dollack is a legend. Hell even though I cannot stand them, people like Diane 'Mother' Howe and Kerry 'Viper" Rosenberry are legends. Even though he is disgraced in the sport, Patrick 'Packman' McKinnon was a legend. Spiro 'Black Cat' Mamligas was a legend. And hell there are quite a few more. But to just scream that because someone was up on a stage at a Living Legends event that they are legend, besmirches all those people who are true legends. I was brought up on stage with all the legends that was at LL 1. And you know, I knew I wasn't one and I was humbled to be up there with them. I was up just because I was the XO. And while those people close to Borg may feel better with all this out pouring, the sad fact is that they know he wasn't a legend. In the end, he will be known as the youtube guy, who hung himself.

Now I am sure that pisses a lot of you off, and you have that right. But I have a right to right your sense of what the hell a LEGEND and a ICON. See there are others who are those as players, Chris Lasoya, Ollie Lang, Rocky Cagnoni, Mike 'Blue' Hanse, Greg 'Red' Hastings to name a few. Others as magazine ICONS, Jessica Sparks, Josh Silverman, John Amodea. Even more as other media, Dale 'Furby' Ford and Wayne (from Blast Radius). And then you have the industry people, the guys from Planet Eclipse and JT and Tippmann and Kee. Simon, the man who behind Tom Kaye is one of the foremost inventors of paintball equipment out there. I mean these people are ICONS and LEGENDS. I don't even consider him a legend but at one time I guess you could consider Ed Rieker and ICON, and well Mike Phillips has built enough momentum to probably inherit that status as well. But really look up the definitions of those words and then look at the kids on Tech PB who posted it. It just doesn't match up. And of course, the fan boys ran all over every forum and posted that Borg was dead. The simple statement that so many put back of "Borg who?" should have told them all that they needed to know. Don't believe me? Go look at all the other forums about the Glenn Palmer accident and the amount of people who knew about that and their reactions. That should tell you all that you need to know about a LEGEND or an ICON. He was very well known on Tech PB, that is to be assumed. He was one of Mike's favorite people and pushed by him and his admins as a good dude. I assure that a lot of the momentum that Borg saw came from riding on Mike's coat-tails. Maybe Mike should have cut him on Markerbids, who knows.

In the end, it doesn't much matter. I just felt like someone had to be the voice of reason. Someone had to stop the revisionist historians who were putting Borg on some kind of pedestal instead a realizing that while celebrating how the man lived, they have to acknowledge that in the end he was a murderer. He 'KILLED' himself. Now that may not matter to a lot of people, but your impressionable youth need to keep that in consideration. Every damn little video or blurb or post by 'responsible' adults should include a link to a crisis hotline, or a phone number or a disclaimer that suicide should never be an option. I haven't seen that. All I have seen is the canonization of someone who might have deserved had he not wrapped something around his neck and ended his life. But that is just me, I guess.

***************EDIT 08/31/2011********************************

As someone sent me an email it appears that I didn't follow my own advice so here it is. If you are depressed or feel like you might hurt yourself there are places to get help. Nothing in this life is insurmountable and nothing in this life is unique, someone somewhere has had the same shitty thing happen to them or possibly even worse. That is why they are there to help you provide a stopgap until you can get clinical help. Suicide is never really the answer for the living that you leave behind. If you go to the 'dark place' then pick up the phone and give these people a call, they can help.

http://suicidehotlines.com/ And look for your state and city if you want to. Or you can email me at TB@worldoftb.com.

From Fox News:

A woman’s breast implant ruptured after she was shot in the chest last week with a paintball pellet, The Sun reports.
The 26-year-old’s soft-gel implant ruptured when the paintball hit her breast at 190 mph.
The injury is believed to be the first of its kind, according to the paper.
A spokesman for UKPaintball — which runs the Paintzone Paintball Park near Croydon, South London, where the accident happened — said: "Part of the fun of paintball is that it hurts a bit when you get shot, but in all the years we've been going we've never seen an incident like this.
"It came as a real surprise to hear that a woman had her implant burst at one of our centers."
The spokesman told The Sun that women with breast implants will be given extra padding in the future to prevent similar injuries.
Douglas McGeorge, the former president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, revealed the bizarre injury could cost the woman £3,000, or about $4,900.
Click to read more on this story from The Sun


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/08/28/paintball-ruptures-womans-breast-implant/#ixzz1WLq77cRo

There have been several articles about this in various magazines over the years. I know Scenario News ran one on women getting shot in the breasts and their are several protection devices that women should check into whether they have breast implants or not. If you have a female that means anything to you and she play paintball, you really might want to check into these devices. Who knows, maybe Shooting Hot will run some articles on protective gear for women, hint hint.

Everybody ready for a World of TB exclusive?

It's the Field Day Messenger 0.1 beta release. YAY!

Okay, here's the deal... I've chopped down the full Field Day Engine. It's a simple & easy to use implementation of that "tool" that I discussed in the "Do we really need generals?" thread that Delta inspired.

In case you haven't been following, Field Day Engine is the full blown game server with 3D clients for producers & commanders, smartphone apps for force tracking, email/sms notification system, extended rules, etc, etc, etc.

This is the the Field Day Messenger 0.1 beta release. I've taken the email/sms notification system, respawn timers, scheduled missions, and put them in a small package that average users will be able to handle.

Anybody can now put on a basic event, delivering spawn timing and missions via email. Any team, player, promoter, etc, is welcome to use this. Airsoft, Paintball, LARP, whatever. If you can make it past the install, you are good to go. From there, all you have to do is setup an email address to send from, and fill out a pre-formatted database of your event criteria. It is free, all of the software required is free.

The destination of all those emails are disposable pre-paid cell phones players are willing to carry (and smart phones for those with insurance). The messages are sent via email, which some phones can receive directly, and others can receive as text messages through their provider's "SMS gateway".

If you already have a method, you don't have to change. This can run in the background, as just an extra channel of information, hands off. If you don't have a system, it is just fine to run standalone, however you must remember it is a beta release, this is purely at your own risk. No warranty or guarantee of any sort is express or implied.

* You must read and follow the installation instructions or you will fail. Horribly.
* This is not a single-click install. It assumes some computer knowledge.
* Once you're done with the install, read the User Guide. It explains the database.
* For tech support, post here, I'll get to it as I can.

The initial distro is 201mb and available via torrent:

edit: 8/29. torrent updated.
newtorrent.zip