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Slight health scare. Went down with the "cold from hell" in October last. And it seemed to come back four or five times over the next 5 months. Feeling wrecked most of the time. Considered Covid, so took a test - negative. Eventually made an appointment, and saw the Trauma nurse at the practice. Put a blood oxygenation clip on, and sounded my chest "It sounds really rattley ". So packed into one morning in mid March, I ended up with a course of kick ass antibiotics, a full spectrum blood test, and a chest X-ray. Saw the Trauma nurse again yesterday. Antibiotics worked wonders, so the problem must have been an opportunistic bacteria had moved in. Blood test was all nominal (who knew there were 5 different kinds of white blood cell; not me), and chest X-ray was completely clear. So finally after 5 months of recurring misery, I'm finally firing on all cylinders again! Back in the gym, leading 14 mile walks, and running. Happy days!

Three weeks later, here is the outcome. A single enclosure all-in-one with GRHV and GRLV with high voltage and heater soft-start. The 10M90S is attached to the side wall, and thanks to the large size of the metal, the temp is about 104℉(40 ℃) after 1 hour. The only thing is I made the mistake of the main soft start module(the one on the power outlet), which makes it only functional when you use the back power switch. In this way, I keep the front power switch on all the time to avoid the ripple current. Still have a huge room to be improved. Planning to add a DC power supply for the heater for the DHT version, as well as the flashing soft start indicator.

Today is the day that we bury my brother Tom, which is a hard sentence to type. In keeping with my family's tradition of over-long obituaries, and given the scope of his impressive career, we have created a website to post a memorial to Tom, along with some photos. You even get to see a sullen 12 or 13 year old Voltron on the steps of Congress with Tom and then congressman Leon Panetta whom Tom was interning for. Penetta later was director of OMB, White House chief of staff, CIA director and Secretary of Defense. Obituaries have appeared in AdWeek and other publications, as well as his former agency, but I am not sure which newspapers will run one or even already have run one. For anyone interested here are a few links: https://bedecarre.family/ https://www.adweek.com/agencies/akqa-co-founder-tom-bedecarre-has-died/ https://www.akqa.com/news/a-lasting-legacy/

I went outside today. Chopped some wood, smoked my churchwarden pipe, had a Fremont beer.... So that is what a blue sky looks like. ... cool 😎

Wasn't sure the best place to post, but this is pretty cool. Chris is my nephew, he is brilliant (as is my niece, they met at MIT). https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-astronaut-chris-williams-assigned-to-first-space-station-mission

finally. higher signal to noise ratio, more than 110db. takes signals up to 20 volts peak to peak unbalanced, 40v peak to peak balanced. no input attenuator that adds noise for those stupidly high voltage dacs. ( requires 30v power supplies) (volume control in the middle) thd about .005% no feedback. work in progress 4 layer board. preamp2025f.PDF

Thanks everyone. I appreciate the love and support. I've spent the last few days with my siblings. We are together tonight at my sister's house after going to a brewery this afternoon to drown our sorrows a bit.

The first completed DIY project in 3 years and in my new workshop lives! It's a battery powered Philips TDA1541A based stereo DAC, About 18 months ago I needed something to kick start me back into DIY after breaking down my old setup and moving to Florida. So I built a 10'x11' room in one of the garage bays and proceeded to slowly unpack. I ran across a few threads about the TDA1541 and became curious. This is what I settled on for the first try. It's on a test board I put together so I could mess with different power supplies and experiment with controlling relays to turn the power on and off. It's sounds surprisingly good! Very easy to listen to, the vocals are up front and full of details. It's only been running for about an hour so the highs are a little bright but we'll see what happens after a few days. I'm also feeding it an I2S signal from a PCIE to I2S bridge that's running off the switcher in the PC so I'm hoping a better PSU for the bridge will add further improvements. I have what I need for a balanced setup and then two chips paralleled in a balanced config so that along with a display for the Arduino are coming. Let the flames begin!

it had been a while, I baked some bread.. Simple country loaf, About 24 hour fermentation, and my scoring was crap.

Joni Mitchell - Ladies of the Canyon Hiromi - Out There

From buns to bundts... A Midori bundt cake. I used to make these in the 80's. I'd kind of forgotten about them. Made one Friday evening, for the Saturday crew. Now baking this one for the weekday crew tomorrow. Remember Midori? Well, the cake is a very lovely Green as well, especially since it also contains a package of Pistachio pudding mix. It's quite good. I'm glad that I remembered it.

A.I. Hot Cross Buns Influenced by Paul Mary A bloke called Jake And The NYT Changes? To cater to the the lapsed/recovering Catholics amongst the Brits (Joanne included) the raisins were soaked overnight in Bullit Rye to "plump" them. No candied peel at short notice so similarly soaked dried cranberries. Same story for "mixed spice", so mostly Sri Lankan Cinnamon, with a bit of Garam Masala. Orange and Lemon zest in the dough. Glaze was (homemade) orange marmalade diluted with the left overs from the soaking. Using the oven with a pan of water filled from a kettle worked well as a proving oven. Turned out nice.

The pcb's showed up and the "unfuck" mod has been applied. The grill does help tame the top end a little bit and the end result is quite good. Still some irregularities but I'm not bothered enough to spin up a couple of new plates to try and change that. Now would I recommend this mod to anyone? Yup, the Corina sounds like shit in stock form and this totally transforms it to something not quite perfect... but far superior to stock. Now would I recommend anybody actually being crazy enough to do this... no! The plastic discs are really glued in there and getting the shards of plastic out there... well it isn't pleasant work. Some blood was spilled and injuries sustained plus some nasty chemicals used. Now I'll go back to listening to them which I'd never want to do in stock form

Heart Like A Wheel by Linda Ronstadt (1974) https://album.link/xzjmctstnw69b Example: Just admiration of talent....

More Than A Feeling by Boston (1976) Because: There is a lot going on, and it was all done in the analog domain. impressive. So crank it up, and sing along like no one is watching / listening. You know you want to. Tariff Free!

There is clearly some upper midrange/lower treble weirdness going on but to cover ca. 40% of the driver face in solid plastic and then obstruct the rest of it makes zero sense to me. I can take a bit of that odd behavior on some tracks over having headphones I just didn't want to listen to at all. Btw. driver cover whipped up in 3 minutes and already ordered. Naturally in black and gold... Not looking forward to removing the rest of the plastic crap in there though.

Now that the prices of used Corina's seem to be crashing hard, I picked one up. I have the impulse control of a fly when it comes to electrostatic headphones but this set was like new and way less than half price... Overall impressions match those from when I tried them at CanJam NYC in 2023, some parts look great while others feel like a 100$ "GAMING!!!" set for ROG or Razer. The housing is well made and I do like that back design. The headband is utter trash, the earpads feel high quality - yet at the same time extremely cheap and that blue stitching... who signed off on this? Worst yet... what the fuck is this?? I will refer to these in the future as "coRRRRRRRÍÍÍÍÍna". Seriously though, why? This horribly offends my nordic sensibilities. Last year I've also picked up a used Voce, a set I hated when they came out. Put those stock earpads trash where they belong, fit the angled Ether pads and they are quite enjoyable. They are also touching 1k$ in terms of price so for that money, they are a nice set to have. Voce naturally had the same issue as the Corííííína, DCA always has the worst headphone boxes ever. They keep trying to make headphone stands in boxes which make no sense. Now for the sound... I just don't understand why these were made like this. They are like the headphones for people who hate how electrostatics sound. Do you like your headphones to sound expansive with a nice solid soundstage which goes outside of the head? Nope, you can't get that here. On some tracks they are simply claustrophobic, almost if you are listening through thick cloth. Sure, it sounds inoffensive compared to something super forward like the X9000 but compared to something voiced correctly... yeah it isn't great. ere we can see the culprits, mesh on the back on the driver and that stupid damping they put on the earpad side (faint circular holes through the earpad mesh): Why they did this, I haven't got a clue. Electrostatics don't need this level of damping so it could only damage the sound. The Voce was initially supplied with a bunch of damping pads to put inside the earpads so they might think this is necessary... I didn't find an easy way of opening the headphones to check if this could all be removed easily. Now we come to the major issue though... what all this damping does to the midrange. Now this is really compounded by two parts, first off the headphones are rather inefficient and they sound so fucking dull. That means the volume has to be pushed to try and get something out of them... and that's were nasty midrange artifacts pop up. I picked up on some of this at Canjam NYC'23 but in my own system this is very apparent. It gets worse and worse, the more you push them which only goes to show how bad the driver setup really is. That also means I turn down the volume so now they just sound dull, not involving and I wonder why I'm not listening to something else. Now rant over, would I recommend these? Nope... not a chance, even at half price they are horribly overpriced for the performance they offer. On my desk now is the ES Lab ES-2a and the Audeze CRBN2 and I kept wondering why I wasn't listening to either of them instead. The Corina isn't even comfortable so yeah... nothing going for it really.

Culture.

Friday Volcano check... Yup, still there.

RIP, to an actor who deserved an Oscar for his one. Total snub, didn't even get a nomination. By all accounts, a good man as well, and that's more important.

mini T2 board prepared for octal or UX4 sockets. Octal socket overlapped with UX4 (red arrows). If EML 20B-V4 or 300b/2A3 remove components at red arrows. If 300B/2A3 tie pads in green boxes together.

When Pope Francis was visiting America, he told the limo driver that he had the sudden urge to drive. The driver was a good Catholic man and would never dream of questioning the Pope’s authority. So the Pope sat at the wheel, while his driver got in the back. The Pope pulled out safely onto the road, but quickly revealed himself to be quite the adrenaline junkie when it came to driving. He was soon whipping in and out of traffic and speeding down roadways, easily doubling the speed limit. He was a wild man behind the wheel. Eventually, a policeman spotted this limo flying down the road, flipped his lights on, and pulled the limo over. Before approaching, he called his chief to warn him about a limo he'd just pulled over with a VIP inside it. Chief: Who is it, the mayor? Cop: Nope, bigger. Chief: What, the governor? Cop: Even bigger. Chief: Wait, did you pull over the President??? Cop: Nope. Bigger than that. At this, the chief ran out of patience. "Okay, I give up. Who is it?" And the cop answered, "I think it's God." "What in the world makes you think that God is riding around in a limo?" the chief exploded. To which the cop lowered his voice and replied, "Well, who else would have the Pope as His chauffeur?"

I keep my (now nearly 20 year old) Nikon D200 and 300mm F/4 on a lowboy chest in the kitchen, ready for whatever fauna shows up. Mr. Cardinal, being his usual show-off self. The pond froze for a preciously small period of time. Missing from these photos is the excited "roof roof roof!" noises that green sweater dog kept making. The sounds echoed off the ice and trees surrounding the pond. It was quite a scene to behold. Tune in next time for a 2006 logging camp!

We finally got to see a local band that hadn't played local in a couple of years or so after they grew quite popular. Khruangbin...very eclectic, groovy music. Great show. Helado Negro opened. Pretty cool act I was not aware of previously. HS

This AI stuff may be worth looking into, er, for science!

After watching this: I thought I might try to make my latte look like something. I have never really cared in the past. After a two failed attempts during the week, I didn't have my foam right. Today I made a thing. Not great - but still drinkable... that's all...

Remember Şirin/Cutiepie? She is 9 years old now and still as energetic as she was.

Hi! i iz bak. Gonna bombard you with pics of kitties soon. <3

Breakfast at Marvin's in Novato. Cheers Mikey!

Time to watch Kiss Kiss Bang Bang again.

Trey Anastasio at the Tennessee Theater in Knoxville

New Union Station. Impecably recorded, as always. A good system tester.

PSA for Protesters.

Kate Liu, Piano (2025) https://album.link/es/i/1791052895 It's her formal solo album debut. A friend put the focus on her for her playing in some competitions and recitals. Some available on YouTube. I've liked it a lot.

Pavement’s Spit On A Stranger EP ex.

I'll post some CRBN2 impressions soon, might even make a video about them. I've had the idea for years now to document all the weird and wonderful electrostatics in my collection and some impressions in video form.

chicken pot pie was on the menu tonight so I figured what else could go wrong?

I do like me some space documentaries. I was at Vandenburg, CA during this period as an Air Force brat. I followed the MMU progress closely at the time.

I did some further digging: Drivers are accessed from the back and this is a nice piece of aluminum. The driver is in a plastic carrier but somehow the dust cover on the front is not included and was just loose. I was told that these drivers were supposed to be easy to service in the field but that is just a flat out lie. I lifted the cradle out of the aluminum shell and the dust cover was left behind... how does that make any sense? Dust intrusion is a major issue so if somebody is going to replace a driver the first thing you do is expose it to dust. Makes zero sense to me... You knew it was coming, I went all viking on its ass... I simply used a flatblade screwdriver to vedge underneath the lip of the plastic and slowly the adhesive gave up... most of the time. The other channel was much more difficult though so this is not easy. Plus I left the driver in there so exposed face of the driver means one slip and you've done some major damage. There is still some remnants left over but I'll likely design a simple PCB that I can glue into place to protect the driver. Let's call this the un-fuck mod... Now for the sound, it is a definite improvement. Is this sound staging I hear... in an electrostatic? Perish the thought... Much better bass too and everything sounds more alive. There are some midrange issues present in drivers though, especially on voices when I push the volume up a bit (remember these are roughly 6dB down from the Stax norm) but it is still a stark improvement over the stock headphones. More listening needed and a quick PCB session...

There isn't enough room inside the earpads to do any real repositioning for me , maybe 10mm back and forth max. I didn't spot any meaningful difference. The headband is just horrible, too much clamping for me and no good way of adjusting that out of fear of breaking it. It rings and it always wants to twist on me I grew to hate the Voce over time (well a couple of good listening sessions) and the earpads were huge part of that. I heard them again at Canjam with the angled ether pads and they are much better. I told the people manning the DCA booth that "wow, there were utter trash but now they are good" and they didn't like that comment all that much. If I remember correctly they replied in a fit of rage "they won awards!!!". Yeah as if anybody puts any stock in that trash. No major failure point them that I can spot, nice materials and all that Edit: Okey I got fed up and ripped off the earpads. Just look at this stupidity!!!!! The only thing that springs to mind is why on earth would anybody do this? I'm going to dig deeper and see if this trash can be removed. Btw: The earpads are simply glued in:

🐔 🍛

Lucy Dacus' Forever Is A Feeling Ex.

Hayes Carll and Corb lund

Thanks everyone. We went out for vegetarian Korean food (I know this isn't really a thing) my second favorite food, but it leads to my favorite food which is leftover vegetarian Korean food on a tortilla for lunch tomorrow.

^ It was really hard to unsee that.. but I thought I was hungry, maybe not so much..

Yes, the Shangri-La Jr. is trash. It is just a slightly warmed over Jade with a worse headband and all the same issues. There is no proper baffle seal on them so it is as if the sound just hangs there, just so ever slightly out of reach. Very much lacking in engagement and any real presence. If it were 500$ or less, might have some slight merit but at the current price you can do so much better. The EX-1a is for instance at a similar price point and difference in sound quality and build is miles apart. I've been spending a lot of time with them over the weekend (as the next big purchase is incoming today... ) and they are excellent. The headband isn't exactly comfy but as a homage to the older Stax style (similar to the SR-X1) they succeed nicely. They don't have the bass of the ES-2a due to the much smaller drivers, but at not lacking in anyway. Similar, slightly laid back, presentation and far more neutral than any of the recent Stax stuff. The closest set that springs to mind was a few sets of Pro bias SR-5's I built years with Gamma Pro drivers. Excellent extension, very good midrange and an ever so slightly euphonic sound signature. The Stax SR-X1 goes after that same sound signature but the EX-1a just does it better.

It's no secret that I'm not a big fan of Texas. It's political opinions or their antiquated ideas of what a man or woman should be. Austin being an exception. However, I am grateful for my Texan parents. Meals at my house were quite different from my friends. My Mom could cook! And my Dad could grill! Even simple, cheap meals are still some of my favorites, like pinto beans and cornbread. Another staple at my house was my Mom's chili. It's the best I've tasted, and tonight I'll be taken back in time. Gotta let it meld in the fridge for several hours. Then I'll make a pan of cornbread and be transported.

Sick space heaters.