[teiferer]

Of all the things one can automate in this whole journey - he chose the ring counting on the shooting range? I don't get it.

I totally see the programming challenge there, but it's in no substantial way making the journey any easier. Any somewhat working human brain can count this quite quickly and then move on with other things.

Really, I don't get it.

[rmunn]

Because he kept hitting his head on the low ceiling beams as he walked over to look at his target.

If he had been shooting at an outdoor range, or even an indoor range with a higher ceiling, he probably wouldn't have been pushed to automate the process.

[valzevul]

Counting rings is easy indeed, but scoring borderline shots without a scoring gauge is not, because the visible bullet hole is often smaller than the bullet itself.

[teiferer]

But why would he care about this millimeter precision? His objective is not to participate in the Olympics but to shoot deer. He wants to improve general shooting abilities, not sub-millimeter accuracy. If he now and then counts a ring wrong, then what's the problem? That's what I don't get.

[Ancapistani]

> His objective is not to participate in the Olympics but to shoot deer.

Where do you see that?

The article is about someone in Scotland who took up marksmanship as a hobby.

[krisoft]

> Where do you see that?

There are multiple mentions of him being motivated by wanting to shoot deer for meat. It is a through line via the article.

> The article is about someone in Scotland who took up marksmanship as a hobby.

I wish it were so. With a bit more self awareness the author could have said “initially picked up a rifle to learn to hunt deer, but doing so i learned how targets are scored and become interested in automating that process.” There is nothing wrong with that. But pretending that someone is doing all this coding to get better charcuterie is where it becomes frustrating yak shaving.

[throw310822]

The guy is clearly an obsessive hyper-perfectionist- he's telling (or boasting) of taking a culinary obsession from reproducing fine-dining dishes (when most people are content mastering a few decent recipes) to building automates curing chambers and butchering whole animals. It's kind of obvious that this personality leads from any random objective to into the deepest of the rabbit holes where everything is studied and annotated with the utmost precision. Funny as a clinical case, not sure I'd like to be around someone like this though :)

[teiferer]

Point is that sub-millimeter precision when measuring rings is doing absolutely nothing to further his shooting skills to take down a tasty deer. To the contrary. Time is limited, and every minute spent perfecting this automation was not spent improving shooting skills by, you know, shooting. In other words, this may well have made him a worse shooter than he could have been. Nothing wrong with it, but let's call it for what it is.

A perfectionist defines a goal and then finds the perfect path to get there. He was just giving in to distractions and "perfectionist" is the wrong label.

[teiferer]

The article literally starts with "I wanted to cook venison from scratch, which meant learning to shoot"

[Ancapistani]

Maybe it’s just that I identify so strongly with the author in that way, then - I saw that, but didn’t see it as a rationale for the rest of the article. It was just “here’s the path that led to my picking up marksmanship as an interest”.

[valzevul]

No, that's fair (OP here) - I went to the range to learn how to hold the rifle in the first place, but indoor shooting with .22 from 25 yards in a stiff shooting jacket is as far from shooting a deer with .243 as it gets, so I stayed for the fun of it and the community around it.

I would definitely get to the point of stalking deer faster if I were to book a few 1-1 sessions at an outdoor range instead, but "faster" was never the point.

[jagged-chisel]

Now that the software exists, one can use it from a mounted camera and provide immediate scoring. No need to wait for the human and the target to be in proximity.