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Gangstagrass

Or becoming a Knight of Infinite Resignation

Hey, y'all. Remember this thread? So, funny thing... Since moving to MV, I ran out of blades. The stack of Astras I bought in 2013 are long gone. I went through the small stash of Sharks I had earlier this year. Sharks are good for like 2 shaves and miserable thereafter. I will never buy them again. The box of Feathers I had (sharp AF blades, but very unforgiving) is emptied. The Personna blades, which are nearly as sharp as Feathers but much easier to control are doneski. It's more or less impossible to find blades locally. I called around to half a dozen shops on MV that might carry safety razor blades and got either a firm "no" or similar answer, or no answer at all (it is high summer here and the population is 10x that of the winter.) I'm going to have to put in an order this week. Problem is, I have several events where I need to appear reasonably presentable, including one this afternoon. Also, as I mentioned, it's summer and I find stubble to be insufferable in the humidity. I had an impulse to rummage through my travel bag and I found an unopened 5 pack of Lord brand blades. A Lord safety razor was the first one I bought. I (re)learned how to shave with it back in 2013, but I haven't used it since. The handle is too narrow for me to grasp comfortably. It must have come with a couple packs of blades and I forgot about them for a dozen years. So I did my first shave with a Lord blade today. Lord is not exactly a premium brand. TBH, the shave was great. Far better than a shark (damning with the faintest of praise), not as high risk/reward as a Feather. Maybe a step below a Personna. They'll do until I can order some "real" blades.

Every time I listen to this song I think about how very barely I can, in fact, keep it all together. 🤷‍♂️ Maybe that is just the experience of becoming old, jaded and dissolute?

Ottolenghi's cheeseball lemon rice with chile butter, which is very much as it sounds and is delicious as well. Served with grilled asparagus for a delightful vegetarian meal.

Pelegeya is like the Russian Floor Jansen - she can sing pretty much any song in any style and make it sound good.

ECP audio/Nitsch and our own @dsavitsk is your man. His stuff has been bullet-proof for me and sounds so good I haven’t been remotely tempted to upgrade since.

Hi Everyone, Just got promoted and my Birthday is coming up soon, So I’d like to treat myself with a new Amp. I've just bought a Sennheiser HD 800s Headphones and I'm looking for an Amp to pair it with. Please note the following before answering my question. 1- I have a Marantz Cinema 30 AV Receiver supposedly a top-of-the-line unit that has a built-in DAC. 2- I will mainly use the Headphones for 80% Watching Movies, Football, Sports & 20% for Music " Heavy Metal, Rock and Movies Soundtracks". My Question, 1- Which Amp do you recommend to connect to my Marantz Cinema 30 and my Sennheiser HD 800s Headphones? 2- Is the DAC in the Marantz sufficient or I will need a separate DAC? I don't want to pay over the odds, yet I want one that has the power to handle the Marantz and Sennheiser and blend well together. Kind regards

These were made from 1985 to 1990. Here is a link to one guy's experience in rebuilding one of these. https://www.facebook.com/groups/242963289391919/permalink/2153779211643641 I've decided against it. Thanks for the input!

This might be good:

Man, this one hurt. I grew up 2 hours from where the Braves played and I watched virtually every game on TBS. When I wasn't watching the Braves, I was watching the Cubs on WGN. RIP, Ryno. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/28/sport/hall-of-famer-ryne-sandberg-dead-spt

NYT distinguishes itself. https://theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527/

In an earlier era, I was a regularl reader of The Online Photographer. I haven't kept up with it in years, for a host of reasons ranging from lack of interest to not really gleaning much worthwhile info to entirely too many Amazon affiliate links. One of the entries on TOP from 15+ years ago was "No one cares how hard you worked." I took that one to heart. I've spent ages editing a photo only to earn a collective shrug. Conversely, I've had SOOC jpegs from years ago that get attention to this day. With that in mind... OnnnnOn two occasions recently I've had the hood on my 17-40mm misaligned and not realized it. It's not super noticeable in the viewfinder and I don't chimp (stare at the LCD like a monkey) much. The misaligned hood only shows up in super wide angle shots, say 17-20mm. On Saturday, I had that problem for the entire shoot and didn't noticed until I was done. I have had quite a job with the Healing Brush and Spot Healing Brush tools in Photoshop, painting out the upper left corner of dozens of photos. When that doesn't work, I have to crop. Sometimes, both are necessary. Also, as was the case last year, the lighting conditions were harsh and difficult. I'd already edited 30 or so photos in Photoshop before I decided I was unhappy with the results and ran them through Luminar 4. Let's talk about Luminar for a moment. I pirated it 5 or so years ago. I liked it enough that I bought it. It does a lot with pseudo HDR math, similarly to what smartphone cameras do. The advantage Luminar offers is that it has sufficiently deep granularity in its controls that it's possible to reel in the more cartoonish aspects of HDR. With careful tweaking, Luminar allows for improvement of the dynamic range of images without looking like Photomatix vomit ca. 2006 or Facebook family vacation photos. L4 is no longer updated and in its final state is a quirky and buggy app. I have to make a copy of every photo I feed it because if I use the original, L4 will delete it. I learned this hard way and had to do serious work to replace all the originals Luminar deleted when I discovered this "feature." The app dev Skylum is now pushing the successor, Luminar Neo. They want it to be rentware like an Adobe product, but they don't have ADBE's clout. There is a lifetime license. I bought it on sale months ago for like $120. I am ...underwhelmed. Some of the UI is better than L4, but Neo is enough different that my workflow is much slower in it. Also, said UI is basically a new coat of paint on the same old engine. I find this displeasing. So far I have edited 102 photos (ya rly) including in a number of cases several edits of the same image. If you're really impatient, they're on my Flickr page. It has been been uncharacteristically hot and humid here on the Vineyard, and I swear I can feel my brain swelling. I went over my work earlier and found I had uploaded dupes of at least four different photos. Then there's the issue of figuring out which photos to post here and arranging them. It's exactly like a DJ set in that regard. Anyway, here's a nice bright rear end to tide y'all over while I finish editing The truck. I'm talking about the TRUCK. Stop looking at me like that.

I wasn't sure where to put this either but this should be rare enough, the Sony ECR-800 energizer or the ECA-80 to be precise. Now there is a bit of a backstory to this one, I've never found a ECR-800 but I found this one for a song in China so I had to snap it up. It was in a bad way when it arrived, damage all over and the back sockets all a bit crooked but the worst was inside. See, Sony in their infinite wisdom, used a mercury switch for the input switching and that had broken in shipping. There was mercury all over the inside so I had to clean everything and dispose of it properly. It's a shame as its a very early unit with the custom Sony sockets, they later moved onto using Stax 6 pin sockets with these. I let it sit for probably a year before I decided what to do with it as so a full rebuild was in order. These are 100V only so for my use I need a new transformer, I fitted an IEC on the back, new binding posts with the switch function bypassed and all caps replaced. I also fitted a 6 pin Stax socket to the front as I don't have an ECR-800 and if I ever find one, odds are it will have that plug. Plus this works nicely with Stax normal bias sets. For the circuitry as it is a bit odd for 1978 or so. Most of the what's there is a protection circuit and output relay but the gray brick on the bottom is the bias supply, a DC/DC converter. It has clearly seen some use as there should be paint on there but it seems to work fine and there is clearly a ballast resistor in there too. It's also odd that the transformers have two sets of wires so each socket is fed from its own set of wires. See the 4 purple bias wires too, they are all common on the bias supply.

Read this a few months back, but as Beinart is making the rounds.

I like that riser for the power switch and the tubes visible through the front.

x2 I'd consider it a gamble and not put any more into it than you can afford to simply lose. Keeping in mind that if it breaks within that warranty period, the person providing the warranty is the same one who failed to fix it in the first place.

After around 7 years away from DIY, I got back into it a few weeks ago and finished this KGST. It’s been nice reconnecting with the bench. I still have a Carbon and a BH waiting to be finished (PCBs are populated, just need to design proper enclosures). Hopefully it won’t take me another 7 years this time...

Picked up another classic Kona.

Nice Obit on Tom L in el reg Including this gem "He remained active and engaged even later in his life. Rapper Tauheed K. Epps, who records as "2 Chainz", sampled Lehrer's song The Old Dope Peddler [PDF] for his track Dope Peddler, asking permission to use a snippet. Lehrer wrote back: As sole copyright owner of 'The Old Dope Peddler', I grant you motherfuckers permission to do this. Please give my regards to Mr. Chainz, or may I call him 2? " https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/28/tom_lehrer_dead_at_97/

You must have been very, very tired...

That looks rather old and not fun at all to work on. When was this made, the 90's?

I currently have an Odyssey Stratos Plus power amp which I have used for I guess going on 20 years and have been pretty satisfied with. I was thinking about upgrading it as these have gone from the Plus model to Extreme models. Klauss of Odyssey is now offering a Kismet amp. I can get my Stratos upgraded to the Kismet pcbs with a larger power supply for a fairly reasonable price. However, I ran across an opportunity to get a Mark Levinson No. 23 for around the same price as upgrading the Stratos. Reliability is a large factor in my decision. I've read a number of threads on diyaudio related to repairing Mark Levinson gear, and most of them seem to be a massive PITA to work on. This amp is no exception. The amp I am being offered would be coming from a Chicago dealer. It was repaired by Stereo Rehab in Chicago with some thermal issues (one bad channel). The explanation given doesn't really make a lot of sense to me, and I can post that if anyone wants to see it. Stereo Rehab is not an authorized ML repair facility; they do warranty the work done on this for 1 year. My only interest in this amp relates to the superlative reviews it got, and thoughts from some that these still hold their own with pretty much anything on the market. They apparently were very well built (and designed), using high quality parts, but the parts and architecture of these is jam packed together. Cosmetically, the amp looks virtually new, at least outside. Any thoughts on this appreciated. Right now, I'm leery and leaning against going for this.