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Mexican pulled pork is in the slow cooker for pork tacos tonight and for breakfast I made coconut chocolate chip scones. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Went to my niece's wedding last night. It had to be moved because the original venue cancelled with <2 months left, but the new place came through in spades! And it helped being closer to us. Many highlights, including seeing some cousins I hadn't seen in years. The new family is a blend of multiple cultures: we're Jewish, my brother married into an Irish family, and my new nephew is African-American. A simple but truly amazing ceremony, and a great party. Perhaps the oddest but greatest highlight: my nephew (bride's youngest brother) playing Hava Nagila for the Jewish Hora dance....on the bagpipes! This morning, we take my mom and Karen's mom back to the same venue for Mother's Day brunch.

Caramelized baked French toast, sausages, and bacon, among other stuff for mothers day brunch

More roast chicken

Cuban Oxtail stew

An eggs Benedict and a duck confit crumpet, with a cappuccino. Scrumptious.

mole, to go with the pork tenderloin that's in the sauna

Mmm, that look good DOTU! I know what I'm doing for Sunday supper.

I didn't know you could be so mean, Steve! Shame on you! Happy bedbug-free birthday, Shelly! I hope you have good friends and good food and great drinks to celebrate. Cheers!

Karrin Allison at the Green Mill. Really great show in a great venue. https://vimeo.com/165737456

Took Xavier to a charity home run competition at the Lookouts' ballpark. Ryan Klesko is up soon to show 'em how it's done. **BRENT**

Food truck Maine Lobster Taco's And Tater Tots But not from just any food truck, one that's been on Shark Tank!

Guessing it is one that will/might grow on you. For post OK Computer, I would certainly put it above KoL, put below Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief. Waiting for the non-festival tour dates now...

Take the painkiller. Cycle on your bicycle. Leave all this misery behind.

Happy birthday. Here I get crap for being inconsiderate. Nicely done Steve.

Lots more Bavarian pr0n in high def here http://www.my-hiend.com/vbb/showthread.php?10531-2016%E5%B9%B4%E5%BE%B7%E5%9C%8B%E6%85%95%E5%B0%BC%E9%BB%91High-End%E9%9F%B3%E9%9F%BF%E5%B1%95%E5%AF%A6%E6%B3%81%E5%A0%B1%E5%B0%8E-Munich-High-End-Show e.g. as for what this is ... google image search came up a blank .... but it was here with some friends But at the apatura-audio display http://www.apertura-audio.com/EN/index.html not one of their products cable / speakers but their blog http://blog.apertura-audio.com/ said they they had a guest ... And for this 2016 edition we won’t be alone ! Kostas Metaxas fromMetaxas & Sins will join us for unforgetable listening sessions. He will present his brand new line of audio products: Ikarus, Solitaire and Opus. And more surprises also… OK lets look at http://metaxas.com/ Bingo !

OMG OMG OMG! Me too.

Happy Birthday Shelly from Debbie and I. I'll PM you soon to discuss getting together. Debbie is planting all kinds of lovely things that you can look at while we sip drinks on the deck. And Steve, you take tough love to an all new level..

Happy Birthday Shelly! Wishing you many good drinks to celebrate on your birthday, even if they have to be beers.

Happy birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Shelly !

Happy B-Day Shelly!!!

6 Years ago today there was another meet in Atlanta. Here is a 7 year old Zoë rocking out to my HP-1s with 4 year old Xavier hanging out. Slightly scarier, our old pal Ingwe. Lots of good memories; can't wait to make some more! **BRENT**

I couldn't help myself! I love you dearly Shelly! You really have enriched my life...our lives!

Sounds like it was a blast. Congrat on your multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-awesome family!

Happy birthday, Shelly. (Steve, that was awesome.)

Happy Birthday Shelly!!!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Have a truly great one Shelly!

Happy birthday, Shelly!!! I hope the celebrations keep going on till Monday

Happy Birthday, Shelly!

Have a great birthday!

Very funny Steve... oh wait, that is NOT!

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday! (party favour noise)

Nicely done. That one is a small one. But else surface mount isn’t that difficult, with some practice…. and it's fun.

I can't believe I just soldered this - it's unbelievably tiny. Seems to have gone well, though.

Nice, CJ! Hate that it's an issue but that's quicker than the original ETA, no?

Bone in rib eyes I was rushed and hungry and forgot to take pics while cutting them, but here is a half in progress

Thursday Lance fenced the former Russian Federation women's foil team member, and European Champion. Yesterday Lance fenced the University of California, Santa Barbara open foil tournament. The tournament consisted mostly of college students and adult fencers yet Lance took first place/gold medal. It was a good day.

I worked on Eleanor's 31st birthday present today. It's a beefy garden shed made almost entirely of reclaimed materials, and I think I'll get the roof finished tomorrow. She'll be 35 this year, so it's about time I wrapped it up.

My reward for being the Dark Lord Day chauffeur for Debbie, her nephew and bro-in-law. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That's racist!

My vantage tonight, seeing Hilary Hahn. I could have taken the 'leper colony' seats, again, but decided to chance it. It was fine. The young lady next to me didn't take her shit out of my seat when I got there, but there was no-one on the other side of me, and it was kind of a bench, so I sat between two seats, sort of. It was fine at first, but I was sitting right on the seam, so it got kinda old. At the intermission I was going to ask her to keep her shit, but they never returned, so no problems on either side of me for the rest of the show. She played a solo violin piece that one of her patrons had commissioned for her that was just fantastic. Show opened with the first part of that, then it was her and the pianist Cory Smyth playing Mozart, then she played the second part of the new piece, intermission, third part, then the pianist returned for a Sonata by Copland. This was a much more Hilary-centric concert than the last one, so I was happy.

Current world pi memory record 70,300 digits http://www.pi-world-ranking-list.com/index.php?page=lists&category=pi took more than 17 hours to recite it. I actually saw a guy back in 1976 who only had only 10,000 digits, but had it in random access - given any three or four digits at random from the number he could continue from that point immediately. Same event (at CERN) that Wim Klein extracted the 73rd root of a 500 digit number in a little under 3 minutes. Klein's party trick was going out for a beer, and walking though the car park would memorize all the number plates and make/colour of each car. People in the bar would test him - he never got it wrong. He was employed by CERN to debug computer code - he was capable of doing a mental dry run to find tricky errors. Good heaven - I found a photo of that event on the web. I'm five rows from the front, 3rd from the right, checked shirt. Klein is standing, and the guy sat next to the projector is the pi man - totally forget his name. http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/december-2012/%E2%80%98human-calculator%E2%80%99-wim-klein-advanced-physics-inspired-others

Nope. The active device, we'll use tube for simplicity, should be relatively low output, but because the headphones are so high in impedance, even an output of 5-10k is adequate - in fact the Stax headphones all have a 5.1k resistor in line between the output device and the headphone to protect the latter. Being high in impedance, the headphone needs large voltages but relatively low currents. Hence, a 6SN7GTA with its DC voltage limit of 450volt and running 7-8 mA makes a good output device - IF all its output current goes to driving the headphones. But, if you waste a good proportion of that current in the amp load, it isn't nearly as good. Remember that the output tube drives the headphone in parallel with its load, whether that be a resistor, a choke, or a constant current load. This means that the music signal current is distributed between the headphone and the load depending on their relative impedances. On the other hand, the output impedance is the impedance of the tube and the load in parallel. With a tube plate resistance of, say, 8k, even a perfect constant current load with an infinite impedance results in a combined output impedance of 8k. With a resistor load of, say 50k, the output impedance is about 6.9k, a negligible difference. With a choke load, the output impedance varies with frequency, being higher as the frequency rises, but mostly dominated by the plate resistance. So the output impedance is pretty similar regardless. In order for the tube to have a reasonable standing current, the resistor has to be around 50 kilohms unless you have a very high voltage power supply. Since the impedance of the headphone is much higher than 50 kilohms, this means that most of the music signal current is wasted in the resistor. With a choke of 100H, the impedance is only 12.5 kilohms at 20 Hz, and only gets to 50k and above at 80 Hz and above, and doesn't exceed the impedance of the headphones until you get above 1 kHz. With music signals, about 1/2 the power is in the range below 300-400 Hz. Again, this means that the majority of the music signal current is used to drive the choke, and the leftovers go to the headphone. This is not only inefficient, it causes more distortion because the tube has to supply much more current. With a really good current load of very high impedance, there is practically NO current going to drive the current source, so nearly all the current goes to drive the headphones. Do a search for the thread "Output Stage Current Requirements for Electrostatic Headphone Amps" for my full technical discussion. The bottom line is, the output load is the plate resistor/choke/constant current load in parallel with the headphone. A perfect constant current source needs no current drive so it is invisible to the output tube, which sees only the headphone load. This is the best possible situation for the output tube. On the other hand, the output impedance is the impedance of the plate resistor/choke/constant current load in parallel with the plate resistance of the tube. Since the tube plate resistance is much lower than that of the plate resistor, etc., the output resistance is primarily the plate resistance. So a constant current load has no significant disadvantage in terms of output impedance compared to the other two options. Finally, a constant current load does require a heat sink, so it is more expensive than a resistor, but still significantly less expensive than a good plate choke. So, the constant current load is by far the most efficient in directing the signal current to the headphone, resulting in the least distortion and most output, has no significant disadvantages, and reasonable expense.

It is...