Jimbib

If you read the original document, you'll see that one of the main, new initiatives for all three branches of the forces is to defend the UK and its South Atlantic Territories. Argentina won't be laying a finger on the Falklands again in a hurry.

I would be begin by rounding up all the benefit scroungers who can't be arsed to get a job and one by one, punch them straight in the face. See how they like it. Anyways, not even going to comment on the decisions made, some of them beggar belief. However if anyone is interested in reading up on this travesty from the horse's mouth, here's the SDSR... http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/@en/documents/digitalasset/dg_191634.pdf

I can haz cheezeburger?

I'm surprised Alice Cooper wasn't in there already. Good to see Bon Jovi there, Richie Sambora deserves recognition.

I use a Sony A200, with the stock 18-70mm kit lens, a Tamron 70-300mm and a Minolta 70-210mm F4 Beercan. Went for Sony in the first place due to the plethora of old Minolta AF lenses available, that share the alpha mount.

Every now and again you see something a little bit sneaky on Flight Radar 24, the other night I watched an Omni Air 767 going into Shannon, from "somewhere" in the middle east.

I would have no problem with him being kicked the f*ck out of the country. He's not some stupid kid, he's an adult, he should have known better and there's no excuse for what he did.

Wait, your sons get to wear polo shirts to school? Completely not fair at all, shirt and tie every day for 13 years was not fun at all, especially when it was hot in summer.

This is simply more hot air wafting from O'Leary. He's done it dozens of times before, and he won't stop doing it. Why you say? Everytime he says something that is deemed unorthodox or tabboo in the world of airline travel, the media screams their heads off until their blue in the face about it.This translates into completely free advertising him. He knows exactly what he's doing, and to be fair, it's working quite well for him so far seeing as Ryanair is the largest low cost airline in Europe, (even beating Queesyjet) and the third largest airline in Europe based on pax numbers alone. The thing to remember with Ryanair is if you can get away with using them as ruthlessly as they operate, i.e. short hop flights, no baggage; quick on and off, then they're great because they're dirt cheap. However this is not the airline you book with if you want a nice, relaxing, trouble free start to a family holiday.

Happy Birthday Mike!

Uploaded by LM yesterday, this was a bit of a surprise.

I want 12 ponies. Now.

That article has stated some very bizarre ideas... I highly doubt the J model Hercs will be retired at all, they're only 10 years old. No doubt they will work alongside the A400M when it arrives in service. I do not see the GR4/4A being got rid of, they would lose one of their best all weather, day and night ground reconnaissance assets, not to mention it's ground attack capability. Same goes for the Nimrod MRA4, not only will it delivery all sorts of recon capability, but like has been said, the Government have already ploughed so much money into the program, it would be foolish to back out now. (Especially seeing as the RAF have already taken delivery of one) A couple of things in this article were even more remarkable... 107 Typhoons at a single base? That's just absurd. Not happening. What twat thought that up? But this last one made me chuckle the most... That won't go down too well with either unit. I have to say though, I've been impressed with how the RAF have managed to acquire "special" assets under the radar and generally keep publicity to a minimum, their Shadow R.1's, Diamond Twin Stars and Britten-Norman Defenders spring to mind.

Here's how I make my aluminium in Photoshop... Create a new file, with whatever dimensions you want, set the background to transparent. Make a new layer on top of this so you have two active layers, both transparent. Then, using the colour palette, select two different greys, one dark and one light. Something like these: Now with the dark grey selected as the foreground colour, fill the bottom layer using the Paint Bucket Tool. Now hit "x" to swap the background and foreground colours, so that the light grey is the foreground colour. Now fill the top layer with the light grey using the same tool again. Should be like this... With the bottom layer selected and the top layer invisible, go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and using roughly the following settings: Now make the top layer visible and select it. Go and add the same Noise filter to this layer using the same settings as the last one. Once this is done, again, make the top layer invisible, and select the bottom layer. This time go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and use the following settings. (Note - the direction is key in which way you want the "brushed" effect of the aluminium to be. Usually, this is horizontal, so a direction of 0 works just fine.) The bottom layer should now look like this: Go ahead and apply the same Motion Blur filter with the same settings to the top layer. Now comes the part where you want to blend the layers together a little bit. I have found that changing the blending mode of the top layer to "Overlay" works okay: You can play with the opacities to fine tune it to achieve different types and grades of aluminium. You can always take this slightly further by going ahead and applying a texture on top of what you have just created. This may give it a more realistic appearance. Copy a metal texture aluminium (I now get all of mine from http://www.cgtextures.com (thanks Julhelm)) into a new layer on top of the two existing layers: Now you can play with the blending mode and opacity a bit to make it look a bit better: You may want to play with the scale of the aluminium texture in order to make it look more authentic.

For anyone in the UK, I highly recommend the Gurkha museum in Winchester.

^ Want that! ^

There's only one way to deal with a caribou nibbling at the hoops!

100% spot on, I saw this at RIAT in 2003, knowing I'd never see it again... http://www.airliners.net/photo/USA---Air/Lockheed-F-117A-Nighthawk/0600507/L/

Many happy returns mate!

Great shots mate, you've captured both aircraft wonderfully.

My Condolences X RAY, rest in peace.

Happy birthday!

Many happy returns!

Epic song, but in the immortal words of Eric Cartman... "He's cheesing his f**king balls off dude."

This isn't usually my type of thing, but this song is massively "summer". Perfect for relaxing in the sun.