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I helped make some juicy IPA with a teacher friend of Claire's. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out after dry hopping in a few days.

Inside bathroom + bathtub + mattress + alcohol = makeshift tornado shelter. Living in shitty college apartments during central Illinois tornado season tests your creativity.

Sorry for the delay, but here is Gene's morning update: All ok here, Al. Irma took last minute veer to the east (inland) and spared us the worst. No damage, flooding or injuries. Just shrubs, branches, small trees, and litter to clean up. Very lucky. Powet expected to be out for a while, but we have water service. It was an adventure for sure. Also, Steve is back "home" at the trailer park but he is staying in another person's trailer because they are out of town and Steve's trailer would be rather breezy (big hole in it). He has no power or internet so he is not likely to be here much for the moment. He wanted me to let everyone know he is good and I'm excited that he is seriously considering moving back to the Bay Area by November. Woot!

Texted Raffy. He said that he is fine and waiting for the power to come back on. Vicki posted on FB that she is safe. Raffy also thought Carl was ok. Al, any word from Gene?

Everything is fine here. Had lost power between 11pm yesterday and 9 am this morning. Spent the day raking and cleaning up relatively small debris. Some minor damage to the porch screen door was the extent of the physical property damage. No flooding at all by us but I saw pictures of some locals water skiiing with a pickup truck in downtown Daytona Beach. Glad everyone else is also OK.

Went out in my back yard to view the moon, glad I saw it instead of felt it-

I checked in with Gene again and he is fine for now but will be spending the night in a windowless hallway six floors up. He is comfortable with their safety but worries about the aftermath, obviously. I love this picture of Carl and Bonnie hunkering down on FB:

Now here is something fun... a new electrostatic set from Russia. I do read the Russian forums a bit and I've been following the semi-DIY stuff going on over there. Seeing that this one had matured I decided buy one. Here is the website for anybody interested: http://phenomenon.su/ I ordered it directly and this set was custom made for me. They have two versions available and I picked the Libratum as I prefer circular transducers. Cost was less than 2k$ with shipping here. As you might tell from the pics, the build quality is super impressive and makes most other headphones look like toys. I for one like the Russian utilitarian style where it is all about the function but they can just be described as pretty. Comfort is also pretty good though the non adjustable headpad might be a tad shorter as it touches the arc for me and the hard metal pokes through it. The earpads are super nice, thick leather and attach to the baffle with magnets. The phones are heavy but not a problem for me. Smaller heads might have some issue here as adjustment is limited. So an overview of the design, these are copper mesh stators attached to pcb's with PCB material holding the diaphragm in place. Not sure how thick it is but it might be 2um as the top end is slightly rolled off. I ordered the set with dust covers on both sides but these are just woven material and caused some issues. The resistance on the diaphragm is high so they take a while to charge up but this is something I'll likely improve. More on that later... The housing a single piece with the driver all the way at the back and a thick baffle next to the ear. The screws on the outside go all the way through the set and have heatshrink on them or the drivers might short out. Small nuts hold them underneath the earpads. Take those all out and you can pull the baffle out of the shell to expose the drivers. Thankfully there was adhesive here so I could add solid dust covers with ease. Any claims that these "reduce clarity" are just nonsense. There was another adhesive ring on the back of the driver so I added a second cover there but forgot to take a picture of it. So how about the sound...well first off the major issue I had with the set. So this thing uses a super high resistance coating on the diaphragm which shouldn't be an issue but it isn't hydrophobic...i.e. it changes with humidity. Now this with the lack of a solid dust cover next to the ear is just trouble. The volume level of the set drifted like mad with use as the humidity next to the ears affected the charge. It got so bad that it just went into a mess of distortion. Leave them sitting on their own for a while and the volume would rise again. Simple solution to that...add a solid screen between the ear and the diaphragm so the humidity there isn't an issue. I will likely clean off the diaphragm in the future and add my own coating as it is simply superior to this. Another small gripe I have with the design is the cable. Well it is a Stax extension cable which is excellent but there is no strain relief at all. The cable is firmly anchored in place but it could use some heatshrink or something to take the strain. Now for the sound...well after a number of small scale 'stats I've had here over the years this is a welcome change. This is nothing like the King Sound or HE Audio Jade which were both badly made garbage and sound like lukewarm shit. While these aren't going to topple the 007's it's a damn good try using similar design elements. The sound is super balanced but just a tad rolled off in the top and bottom end. Bass lacks some impact and substance too but nothing to worry about really. The midrange is super nice but slightly "lost" as with the SR-Omega and HE90's. This ties into the soundstage which is projected slightly front of the head and is just a little bit hazy. They lack the super focus of something like the SR-007 but for some that would be a welcome change.

Tahoe Beach Front Fish & Chips

he wasn't in the storm path, to my knowledge, and was active on facebook yesterday.

I am at the hospital. Neighbor's tree fell on my parent's home. Julie has no power at her place. Everyone is safe, thankfully. Hoping for no more damage. Stay safe everyone else.

Made some ~22 hour sous vide ribs finished off under the broiler. Gonna try some different things next time, but these were really solid.

Gave a big speech at the rehearsal dinner for my sister's wedding last night. Boy, I have nothing but respect for you guys who have to get up in front of crowds all the time and speak. It is hard! Everyone said it went great, and I got a bunch of laughs, but despite all that it is hard not to feel like I could have done a better job. Maybe I'm just being to hard on myself. In any case, glad to have it behind me! Wedding tonight should be a blast.

So... Last night around 1-2 a.m my next door neighbours got into fight. It was extremely hard, she was screaming and throwing things against the wall. And as I heard later she hit him a lot, especially she slapped him hard over his ears. Then she went to the hall of building, screaming for help... I was naked but I quickly wear things and got out after them. The scene was extremely nerve pushing: she was sitting on the floor and he was trying to make her stand by pulling her. I was about to punch him to senses but she jumped between us. I got him to my house for seperating them and called the police. While I was calling the police, she was begging me for not to but he wanted me to call. Police never showed up btw. After some time I let him go. He is a body builder and she is as petite as one can be but as it appeared she kicked his ass off and smashed half of the house to the ground/walls. She is extremely neurotic. Boy seems a nice fella. I felt sorry for both of them and went to sleep. It became like a diary entry but anyway...

This is actually yesterday. I went on a one-day advanced navigation course in the (English) Lake District, in Langdale. This was navigating with contours only, and the trainer provided maps that only had contours, and the symbols for cliffs etc. But nothing else - no roads, paths, streams etc etc. So the focus was in knowing where you are - where were you last, where are you now, and what will you see next. A further key learning point was how to move efficiently - basically I didn't - so I have a whole history of walking to unlearn. Fascinating stuff And this is the map. contours map.pdf

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that the name of this headphone sounds like a medical term for a vaginal birth defect?