Tuesday 31 May 2011

A shameless pug for me!

In case everyone missed it I build catapults. Not metal spring powered devices, historical reconstructions based on primary texts and artifacts.

Joesphus, Tacitus, Heron, Polybius, Plutarch etc. know them all. Even L. Sprague de Camp was a catapulting enthusiast. Over the last eight years or so I've built over a dozen large scale machines funded entirely out of my own pocket and with a number of very generous donations from people I know. Mainly milbloggers.




Well my efforts have grown into an academically viable thesis and I've applied for a local scholarship. This particular scholarships comes with a popular vote option. Consequently i'm usruping Theos site for shamless link whoring. We kiwis are like, shamless yet lovable rogues who expect to get paid for smashing stuff. Its the cute accent that allows us to get away with it.


Anyway if you want to know more about what I've done you can visit my Facebook page. As for what you're voting for I am asking for $10,000 NZD to build a large scale ballista named Agrippa. Using this machine and some of the other smaller machines i've built I will be gathering data looking at things like rate of fire, efffect of fire, mobility, durability, crew fatigue, training and maintainence issues. All for the purposes of a 100,000 word thesis on the impact of the torsion catpault on ancient warfare. The machine will then be used to go on school visits and teach kids about really boring old history, math, physics, statisitics, trig etc by smashing the living hell out of things.

So if you find this to be a good idea please feel free to stop by the AMP website and vote for me.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled guns and semi-naked babes programming. Hmmm Ballistas N Babes, there's an idea for a magazine cover.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I voted for you, you might want to point out how difficult it is to find you on the website. I tried to sort the names alphabetically but it didn't seem to work very well.

Larry Sheldon said...

What kind of dog would NOT be shameless?

TheBigHenry said...

Did you mean to write "shameless plug"?

richard mcenroe said...

"Did you mean to write "shameless plug"?"

We're not discussing what he uses for ammo, let's leave it at that.

SOYLENT GREEN said...

Our mostly-gone-from-the-net friend Steamboat McGoo often talked of building trebuchets, but said he never found any (cheap) plans. He would love this. I'll send him an email.

Murray said...

He can get plans from me for free btw.

I've helped dozens of kids with chool projects and my small trebuchet plan has been downloaded over 4,000 times.

I am a menace to liberal pussification.