What’s New
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Today I selected/photoshopped the images for the Corporal missile and built all of the web page except for the essay. I was about to go to bed (it’s after midnight as I write this) but then had an idea for a note or two to leave myself that I would read in the morning on what the essay might say and, one thing led to another, I have a solid semi-draft ready for the morning.
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The page on the Matador is up. I used the new gallery with captions built-in and I think that is working out well. I’ll await more public feedback before I convert the older pages to the gallery system.
For the essay, I tried (after reading the Joanna Stern article in the Wall Street Journal on how she uses AI as her personal assistant) using ChatGTP 4.0 (the paid subscription version) to act as an editor for my essay. To my astonishment, it gave me quality feedback and seemed to “get” what I was aiming at in terms of style and structure. I didn’t make every change it suggested but I did make a few and rethought one paragraph based on its feedback. It was even able to send me an RTF file with the changes indicated by color (with a before/after section for comparison). I’m on a Mac and not using Microsoft products but apparently, if I did ChatGTP could have sent me a doc file with “track changes” enabled to make accepting/rejecting the suggestions much easier.
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Yesterday I culled images from my collection of Matador photos and selected fourteen, plus two of the German V2 (I seem not to have photographed the V1). Photoshopped those images and added them to the page. Trying a new plug-in for the images–should be much easier to use, especially if the reader is interested in the captions. Today I wrote the “Further Reading” section and added the NukeMap image and link plus filled in the specs. I still have to write an essay and the image captions.
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The Mark 8 page is up. This one was challenging in that there is a lack of material on this bomb. The only unit I encountered was at the Nuclear Museum so maybe it is just obscure. If you have additional sources (videos, online, articles, book references) please ping me.
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Finished the Mark 7 bomb page, except for the essay. Still in draft mode (i.e. non-public). Also made a few interface adjustments over the past few days in response to comments on my post about this site on Reddit/Nuclear Weapons. I’ve added a “breadcrumb” trail at the bottom and a “Home” menu at the top (the “American Nukes” logo serves the same purpose but is not an obviously clickable item).
Considering moving all photo cations to a separate page. As it is it is difficult to associate the caption with the correct image and the reader has to go back and forth again and again. If I go in that direction the new pad will feature a large photo with text beneath, and then the next photo and text beneath that, etc.
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Finished “Post-WWII Fat Man Bomb Design.” This page covers three bombs, the Mark IV, the Mark V, and the Mark VI. My thinking here is that these bombs are similar in design and all were designed during a period of uncertainty over nuclear weapons and thus it makes sense to group them together.
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Fat Man page is now live.
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Finished the essay and updated reading list. Posted Little Boy. Two pages down!
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Modified gallery/lightbox plug-ins to prevent easy downloading of images. Began updating Little Boy reading list.
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Reversed direction and converted all site images to SDR. HDR proved to have too many incompatibilities and partial incompatibilities at this time. Lightroom catalog is ready to convert all to HDR when the time is appropriate. Fixed Youtube video display so that it works on iPhone (before it would display only tiny “play button” icons). Adjusted minor formatting settings on Trinity page. The Trinity page will be used as the template for future weapons pages.
Later: Added a “Details” block under the photo gallery with a link back to the locations page. Used Trinity page as template for Little Boy page. Located and exported all Little Boy images from main Capture One library, and imported selected ones into Lightroom and processed. Replaced all photos in new page with Little Boy images. Updated Nukemap graphic with new link.