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After about a year of work, I've finally finished redesigning the PCB layout for the original T2. The new layout supports several different active battery implementations, as well as multiple CCS options, making it much more flexible for different builds and future experimentation. I've also completely redesigned the chassis. Like the original concept, it will still use a two-chassis configuration, with the power supply and amplifier housed separately. It's been a long project, but it's exciting to finally see it coming together. I'll share more photos and progress updates as the build moves forward.

Marin Metric Century done and dusted! That was so much fun. Cool to ride with thousands of people. The stretch along Tomales Bay is A++ riding. Those of you who have been out to Marshall for Oysters know what I am talking about. I am soooo glad I trained for the climbing and held some back for the final hill. Next year we do the 100 miler!

Wasn't today, but my nephew returned from the ISS last week....! Long read, but pretty cool.... NASA Astronaut Chris Williams Closes Out Space Station Mission - NASA

Joined the "crowds" at Did what it said. Also: (Bonus Points) London And (Water) Lilies. Not shown: People taking selfies with the (Celebrity?) Artwork.

Did a final big shakedown ride before the Marin Metric Century in two weeks. I didn’t want to see the hardest climb (Wilson Hill) for the first time on Fondo day. It was indeed a bear, but I am ready for this. The training has paid off. Should be a fun century. West Marin is pretty damn good riding when you aren’t on the major through roads.

Found some motivation this morning. Weather was fantastic. Calories were burned so beer will be drank.

Properly slammed, and with fresh bar tape. She is ready for the Marin Century tomorrow… hopefully I am too!

Quiet birthday dinner for Melissa before larger plans, including a comedy show, this weekend. Speaking of comedy we strangely found birthday Covid cards in 2026.

OMG, Mike! That must have been scary! Glad ya'll are ok! I hope your place was not damaged. Looks fantastic, Grahame! I've been in pocking/moving hell for the last month but the movers came on Monday and we are both in Denver (though some of our stuff is still in Durango). It's nice to be back in a place where I can walk to things. :) Having coffee at a nearby place and try to catch up a bit with work (and head-case).

Did the non Big Sur part of our trip with Joannes Sister, Sue, and took in the sights and wildlife of Monterey, Pacific Grove and Carmel (by the sea).

I wasn’t able to photograph the "buck moon" earlier because of the heat and heavy dust in the air. But this weekend, the conditions cleared up, and I managed to capture something. I’m happy that the different colors on the surface are visible. PD. Until they install fiber optic cable at my house in the South, my internet access is limited, and I can’t connect very often.

The Weather and the parking gods smiled on us as we got to show Sue why Big Sur and Highway 1 have the reputation they do.

It's late and I'm tired, but here's a start. Needs a new seat post and seat. I'm going to update the cockpit properly. Already have a different wheel set for it, which is why I didn't bother installing the rotors.

Lately, a few cattle egrets have been wandering around my house.

Two nights of Jason Isbell in Knoxville

^ Agreed and nice fall off. Visiting my dad and hit a nearby car show last weekend. And by car show I mean a car. Rain threatened the event so only a 1974 Challenger 383 Four Barrel was left when I showed hours before the scheduled end. Quick tests of the used Hassy 55v f/2.5 I recently picked up. Much to learn.

Unfortunately, the dusty haze kept me from capturing the full moon. It's normal here ☹️ I had planned to go to one of the highest points on the island on thursday to try and take some pictures of the Milky Way... I have confidence in my equipment but not in my abilities. Some photos with the RF 35mm F1.4L usm. I really like how this thing catches the light.

You can't fool me, that isn't a woofer.

The revivalists - Get It Honest A new album by a band I never heard before. I could sense some genuine enthusiasm from online comments, and I'm glad I checked them out. Three listens in, and I can say every song on this album is good. Endless hooks, rich sound, great vibes the whole way. YMMV. Ex.

DakhaBrakha....holy shitballs were they great! Highest recommendation! Great musicianship, and a massive connection with the audience (they played a small space in Portsmouth NH, they've played here before and a good chunk of the audience had seen them before). I didn't know they did this, but they auctioned off two paintings (and a pair of drumsticks) to benefit Ukraine. I won one of the paintings, and got backstage for a pic with the band and to tell them of my partial Ukrainian heritage! A wonderful night, filled my heart!

So Saturday we smoked spare ribs and a brisket in our new smoker This was early in the smoking before the ribs were sauced and wrapped in aluminum foil and before the brisket was swaddled in butcher paper.

Last night's fresh caught walleye fry. My sister in law and I caught them and cooked them up.

Bill Evans - Suicide is Painless (from You Must Believe in Spring)

I’m still working on the above. It’s sort of a known issue (main page image funkiness) but the posted solutions don’t work for the specific issue that we have. I need to join the support forum for the software platform and I’ll see if anyone there can point to an actual solution. What is supposed to work is at the “user level” where if you click your own name at the top of the main page you’ll see a Theme Editor option which is supposed to allow you to be able to configure what you see/don’t see. I haven’t found a way that productively helps with the mobile version of the site and can’t find a way to set a tiny image as the stock forum image so at least the view might condense down while we find a better solution.

Tuesday sourdough za. Tried something new and baked it on the pellet smoker.

Condolences, Todd. The more I live, the more convinced I become that life is often complicated and rarely simple. People are often seen as one thing but that is seldom, if ever, the truth.

Giving the Everybody STILL Digs Bill Evans CD box set a listen.

All day Radiohead with OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017 and KID A MNESIA releases.

Tried a relatively new restaurant near us, Kirkwood. Short rib and old fashioneds very respectable. Service was super. HS

I’ve just finished binge watching Ann Droid. More than entertaining, I’d say.

Here’s one of my secrets - I’ll take Coltrane and Bill Evans over Miles Davis any day. That’s probably little to do with the artists, but damn is this album great (the cover art is not)

Unholy carp!

Ojas and Klipsch colab - kO-R2

A few years back I discovered a newish country singer named Charlie Crocket. I've become a big fan, and today I went to see him play at Stern Grove Festival in San Francisco. It's an outdoor, kind of natural amphitheater. Nicki Bluhm opened for him and both artists were great. It was a long day but well worth it!

The Breeders - Pod

I can't believe I'm going to bore you all about Newton. Although English, he wrote Principia and Optiks in Latin. An that is a real problem - translating back into English is a tickly thing, particularly the more fundamental stuff which is to do with what we learn as Newtons laws of motion at school. What is the precise translation of momentum for example? After that the translators have an easier job. Newton derived all his proofs in his long book Principia geometrically, step by step. He finishes off by meticulous measurements of the motion of the planets etc. At one stage he says that a chunk of the measurements was lost, but he can recall the basic idea behind the measurement. By "lost" he actually meant that his dog ate some of the sheets, or knocked a candle over and set fire to some sheets. Accounts vary. As professor at Cambridge University, his lecture course was so unpopular that no students attended. But part of his job was to give lectures. So he'd turn up and give the lecture to an empty theatre. In later life he spent most of his time studying alchemy. I'll shut up now

A.I. Enhanced Costco Brownies ATK Enhanced Banana Bread.

Finally... I can't resist.

Wayback playback:

Glassworks - Expanded Edition by Philip Glass (1981) https://open.qobuz.com/album/0827969039427 Example: It has been some time since I have listened to this. It occupied a bit of my brain in the 80s.

Similarly we skipped Mountain View & the San Francisco Symphony and Santa Clara & the World Cup stragglers to head to the occasional DMZ of Milpitas. Not sure the band’s horns to pants ratio was correct.

I'm looking forward to those as I'm slowly working on my own version just for me, i.e. fixing how they sound. :) I got these recently: https://poloyoaudio.store/products/hongshu-eh1 It is my third one of these as they design has been maturing over the years. I'm waiting on a replacement set as mine had some noise issues in one driver so I'll do a proper write up as they arrive but I do like them a lot. The earpads are crap but there is a lot of potential there.

This one is for @MexicanDragon - we’ll see if I made a good decision a week from now.

Here are some photos of the SS/ZF switch board I have been using in my CFA3 build. The original SS/ZF switch board, designed by ang728 & vwvwbg, uses a ULN2003 as a relay driver. The mode-control input drives several ULN2003 inputs in parallel. When the control line is high, the corresponding Darlington outputs sink current through the relay coils, so the relays energize. When the control line is low, the ULN2003 outputs turn off and the relays release. The relay coils are tied to +5V, and the ULN2003 provides the low-side switching path to ground. Its COM pin is tied to +5V so the internal clamp diodes handle the relay flyback. I have been using this SS/ZF switch board for about a year and a half without any reliability issues. The only thing I noticed is that switching modes produces a small pop. Even with headphones on it has been acceptable, but recently I started wondering whether this could be improved. . So I added a small Arduino Nano interlock board in front of the existing SS/ZF control input. The Arduino reads the front-panel SS/ZF switch and outputs the required mode-control voltage to the existing ULN2003 relay board. The sequencing is: 1. Detect SS/ZF switch change. 2. Assert mute. 3. Wait briefly. 4. Change the SS/ZF relay control output. 5. Wait for the circuit to settle. 6. Release mute. The mute control is done through a PC817 optocoupler. On the Arduino side, one digital output drives the PC817 LED. On the protector-board side, the PC817 transistor pulls the existing protector MOSFET gate node toward the protector board’s -12V rail. This mimics a fault condition and forces the headphone output protection relay to open during the SS/ZF transition. So the Arduino does not touch the audio signal path. It only sequences the existing relay-control line and temporarily forces the existing KG protector circuit into mute during mode switching. In the installed photo: The top connector goes to the front-panel switch. The switch controls whether Arduino D2 is grounded or left open. The middle-right connector outputs the mode-control signal to my SS/ZF switch PCB. This is the 0V / control / +5V connection. The lower-left connector goes to the KG protector board: one wire to the 2N7000 gate node, and one wire to the -12V output of the 7912 regulator. The lower-right connector is the 5V / 0V power input for the Arduino interlock board. Arduino code attached below: const int SWITCH_PIN = 2; const int MUTE_PIN = 8; const int MODE_PIN = 9; const bool MODE_INVERT = true; // if SS/ZF mode inverted const unsigned long MUTE_BEFORE_SWITCH_MS = 250; const unsigned long SETTLE_AFTER_SWITCH_MS = 700; const unsigned long POWER_ON_MUTE_MS = 1500; const unsigned long DEBOUNCE_MS = 50; bool currentMode; bool readMode() { bool sw = digitalRead(SWITCH_PIN); // HIGH = open, LOW = grounded bool mode = sw; if (MODE_INVERT) mode = !mode; return mode; } void forceMute(bool on) { digitalWrite(MUTE_PIN, on ? HIGH : LOW); } void setMode(bool mode) { digitalWrite(MODE_PIN, mode ? HIGH : LOW); } void setup() { pinMode(SWITCH_PIN, INPUT_PULLUP); pinMode(MUTE_PIN, OUTPUT); pinMode(MODE_PIN, OUTPUT); forceMute(true); delay(100); currentMode = readMode(); setMode(currentMode); delay(POWER_ON_MUTE_MS); forceMute(false); } void loop() { bool newMode = readMode(); if (newMode != currentMode) { delay(DEBOUNCE_MS); newMode = readMode(); if (newMode != currentMode) { forceMute(true); delay(MUTE_BEFORE_SWITCH_MS); setMode(newMode); currentMode = newMode; delay(SETTLE_AFTER_SWITCH_MS); forceMute(false); } } }Some pics: