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The sublime Joni Mitchell, now age 77. Currently releasing her unheard back catalog on CD and records. Before lockdown we went to see Graham Nash in concert; In his words "a night of recollections and music", and it was clear he has never really got over breaking up with her after two years of living together way back. And the regret has defined his music ever since.

I actually slogged through all of the sequels and it was rough. I got on such a roll that I read his son's cheesy prequels and such. In my defense, commuting on the streetcar was a painful slog at the time and I fully associate the sound of the MUNI announcement chime with Dune and the Guild.

I think it's fair to say you'll get a wide range of opinions on Zu speakers, but I still love my Zu Gloss Prismatique Orange Souls. Hardly listen to Rock or Metal though. Due to a few reasons other than sonic, I may eventually switch to KEFs, but I'm a fan (especially with vinyl).

It took me a while to get into The Wire when I first started watching since they do develop the characters slowly. But then I was hooked. One of the best tv series ever! Now I just need to get Yumi to watch it. Omar!!!

fiona apple - tidal forgot how badass she was/is

After years of only Headphone listening, I'm finally jumping on the speaker party. Coming from the headphone hi.end I must say it has been pretty disappointing on the performance side with speakers..Most need to get the volume up to lvls where it gets shouty or annoying to get some kinda engaging sound and most just sound thin.. specially if music is not perfect jazz records, some get crazy details but again, music is nowhere engaging. Enter the Zu's, I heard the Zu Omen Dirty Weekend II on the dealer(have never heard of them) and loved the sound, totally different from most known brands, this speakers can truly rock. They have such a dynamic and forward sound, the mid range is a bit in your face. All this without sounding too aggressive or bright, paired with an Hegel. Also heard them with the Leben tube amp and the system just turned to a very sweet tone while still keeping all that force. Very engaging speaker, it kinda reminds me the type of sound of the HP1000 which is my favorite headphone for the kind of music I listen mostly, rock and metal. Now I'm curious about the higher models, unfortunately the dealer has no stock and is only ordering after purchase. So I'm wondering if any of you have any experience with this brand models, or know other speakers with this kind of sound? btw, to my taste they look rather beautiful specially for such entry price:

I listened to Dune this year and enjoyed it thoroughly. The sequel, no thank you. It was a total struggle and it'll be the last of the series that I bother with. In other news I (unsurprisingly) took @en480c4's recommendation and have now listened to Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth. The former is effing fantastic. The second was more difficult, for reasons I will not divulge (spoiler) but finished incredibly well and has me looking forward to the final book in the trilogy to see where the story goes. The audio books are highly recommended, the narration and narrator are brilliant.

John Waters was my favorite thing about Baltimore. I met him at a screening of the Hateful Eight.

Nothing Lasts... But Nothing is Lost – Shpongle

Jeff, Sony came out with a new camera for your podcast: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1619483-REG/sony_alpha_mirrorless_digital_camera.html?sc_src=email_2476&sc_lid=355549&sc_uid=pcBxVCbSGr&sc_llid=557541&sc_customer=A8DF96A8D886A83B07ABE6FC9C1EA2897E0CADC5A4EE30BD3F3C007F6EFDF313&utm_medium=Email 2476&utm_campaign=Announcement+Emails&utm_source=210126_ANN_ANN_Sony 20210126&utm_content=&utm_term=IMAGE+Sony-01-26-2021-hf_04-02.jpg&encEmail=A8DF96A8D886A83B07ABE6FC9C1EA2897E0CADC5A4EE30BD3F3C007F6EFDF313

In that cover photo she reminds me a lot of Nick Cave.

Good choice. My short list for my next set of speakers includes the Zu Omen Def, and it is near the top.

I have a reworked board layout of t2hvandlvpsukgsshv2 to a golden reference style T2 power supply.

Damn! Season 3 has the "big man", Clarence Clemons.

One hundred precent, Tyler. I am in total agreement. That is part of why I have zero interest in Herbert's sequels. He caught lighting in a bottle once, but trying to stretch it out beyond the one book has no appeal to me.

Not related to Lloyd Cole, but re: the shifting music income model I found this NYT piece illuminating: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/arts/music/hyperpop-spotify.html TL;DR A lot of burgeoning hyperpop artists are destitute teenagers and Spotify's inclusion of their home-produced music on the very influential Hyperpop Playlist represents an unbelievable windfall for them. When their music falls off the top of the playlist they scramble to do whatever they can to stay relevant and keep the tap open.

I read it for the first time a few months ago, and I found it very similar to you. It was really well-paced, I felt propelled from one plotline to the next, my unhappiness at leaving one storyline outweighed always a little by excitement to revisit another. It's really a great story, laid out well. The discussions about reading order and canon are impenetrable and detract from the experience somewhat, but what can you do? I highlighted the above because I think the sort of Arab fetishism the writing about the Fremen exhibits did not age the same way the rest of the book did. Obviously public conceptions about the Middle East have shifted greatly here in the West, and I'm personally very fond of the kind of romanticized Bedouin culture seen in works like Dune and Lawrence of Arabia, but I also think it's a little skin deep. The noble savage thing is a well worn trope and it fits the larger hero's journey nicely, but it does feel like a bit of moralizing on Herbert's part. It also removes me from the fantasy somewhat, as the other major factions don't seem to have the same obvious real-world counterpart.

Absolutely wonderful. This is a great complimentary read to those who have watched the show, or a wonderful journey for those who have not seen it yet. I'm really impressed by Tevis as a writer. Ender's Game is one of those books you give to precocious young people who might feel ashamed of being smart. Maybe it is time to re-think that default option and give them this classic instead. Best compliment I can give the book is I read it in a single day. It hooks you and won't let you go.

Ugh I’m entering the old dad phase of my listening habits nowadays

Joanne and I finally watched the entire 16:9 run thanks to HBO. Plenty of Brits in the cast, trapped in "The Game" and the system. As I may have mentioned, Charlie "Black Mirror" Brooker was a big fan. "A searing work of bloody genius, yeah"

bdent.com has 83 pieces of 2sc3675. Grab them before they are gone.

And Steve Earl! Damn!

I finally started watching this series, and there are a lot of faces I didn't expect to see. Michael B. Jordan, Idris Elba, but the one that really surprised me was Ashy Larry from the Chappell Show. It started a bit slow, but I like the steady climb as apposed to just blowing shit up and shooting people. Good characters.

The original design of Blue Hawaii uses 2SK170 BL grade which has the IDSS grade in the same range of LSK389B. Double check the data sheet to confirm. 2SK170/LSK389 are JFET so using either 10K or 50K volume pot should be fine. 10K pot may be more ideal if your source can drive it.

Late last year I was reading a feature (maybe it was a profile of the movie coming later this year?) where the author made reference to Dune as being impenetrable to a lay audience and full of gobbeldy-gook. I first read the book about two decades ago, so I figured it was a good time to pick it back up and re-read. I'm happy to say the opposite is true. Far from being impenetrable, I found it all but impossible to put down once I got momentum going. I think it has aged beautifully. I think it is well deserving of its "classic of the genre" status. Dune's brilliance, to me, comes from the combination of its world-building, characters, prose (better than I remembered), and plot (schemes within schemes). I think Dune ends up as more than the sum of its parts. In not being overly reliant on any one aspect of story-telling, it succeeds in a way that a lot of classic sci-fi does not under contemporary scrutiny. Herbert's focus on character and location give Dune timelessness in ways that sci-fi novels overly reliant on cool/novel technology can never be. I also can't believe how middle-eastern the book is having re-read it after travelling to the region. -- I'm not at all excited about the 2021 movie. I get wanting to bring this story to a wider audience who is never going to read a 600 page sci-fi book from the 60s. Dune is just so fulfilling to those of us who love it. However, even with low expectations for the movie I fully expect to be disappointed. The Lynch movie at least nailed the production design and a lot of the casting, even if it ended up a colossal mess. The story is just very difficult to cram down to a 2-3 hour script without losing a lot of the richness that makes Dune what it is. But hey, paging @cutestory! When was the last time you (re)read it, Jeffy who is known to us as Maud'dib, and how did it hold up for you?

Grahame?

Here are some distortion figures and harmonic analysis up to 50Khz. Test setup groove tubes el34 matched, electro harmonix gold pin 6922 matched, 1Khz sine from a 192K 24bit rme soundcard spdif out to a v90 dac to the mini t2 inputs, measured on a keithley 2015thd. distortion graph is the average of 20 measurements. All other readings are not averaged: Distortion is less than 0.02% up to 500V rms output with second harmonic being the highest and a little bit of third above the noise floor. At just under 500V the 4th harmonic is above the noise floor, above 500V rms clipping starts and at 600V rms distorion is ~2.5% with the second harmonic at -36db relative to the 1khz signal level. On the right hand top side of each graph under the measurement section is the measurements for the 2nd harmonic in db and mVolts average, min and max over 20 measurements. Noise is the ac voltage not in a harminic bin (i.e. a bin which is an integer multiple of 1Khz). Analysis is with 749 bins going from 20hz to 50khz. A full fft with all bins is included for the 100Vrms output only at the bottom of the post. I wrote the software myself, its very much a rapid prototype kludgy mess but I hope to make it available to community members with keithley 2015 when the code is not so offensive. At the moment there is no guarantee that it will not open up a dimensional hole and make all your original NOS Japanese transistors disappear. FFT analysis 1Khz 100Vrms output. 20hz to 50khz

I used two transformers. both with electromagnetic shields, static shields and potted from http://www.mueller-rondo.com/kontakt.htm . (The low voltage transformer can be used for the blue hawaii - the 6922 windings are just not used the other voltages and currents are fine.) low voltage: transformer two windings 6.3V 4.5A for EL34 heaters one winding for each channel NOTE these windings are -400VDC to ground two windings 6.3V 1.5A for 6992 heaters one for each channel and my HT delay board two windings 15.5V 0.4A for golden reference LV board + and - 15VDC high voltage transformer one winding 365V 0.2A for dual golden reference HV board -460VDC. NOTE 365VAC gives 516VDC which gives less than 10% margin before reaching the 550V limit of most high voltage 550V 470uF input caps on the golden reference HV... so be careful if your household mains voltages are usually higher than spec. one winding 322V 0.2A for dual golden reference HV board +400VDC and +580V stax bias one winding 192V 0.18A for golden reference HV board +220VDC The blue hawaii just fits in a single 2u case 400mm deep, using 1 transformer with less windings - one less high voltage and two less 6.3V, golden reference LV board and golden reference HV board. The mini T2 has two transformers AND an extra HV board so the issue is not height but depth, to give you a size idea the transformers are Low voltage diameter 105mm height 55mm High voltage diameter 115mm height 65mm not having shields in the transformers will result in some hum and electrical interference if you turn the volume all the way up if you go single case. Not potting the transformers might make them a little smaller. putting the transformers into a separate case makes both the blue hawaii and mini t2 absolutely silent. you cant easily use the space bellow the mini t2 amp boards because they have 4 pillars which screw into the bottom of the case so you don't bend the amp boards when inserting or removing the valves. Neither the golden reference LV or HV boards will fit bellow the am boards because of this. for both my blue hawaii and mini t2 builds I went with the following case https://modushop.biz/site/index.php?route=product/product&path=102&product_id=195 its 2u, 400mm deep and has large heat sinking and is fully aluminium so fairly easy to drill. The heat sinking is overkill for the mini t2 - which runs quite cool, but the blue hawaii needs those large heat sinks, For the umbilical chord I used 1KV silicon rubber multi-strand copper hookup wires (https://www.mouser.co.uk/Search/Refine?Keyword=CT2956) for good flexibility and Russian 19 pin military connectors (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/19-pin-Soviet-Military-connector-Female-Male-Set-Oty-1/254196620095?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649). I then covered the bundle with expandable nylon braid and tested the leads with an insulation tester and they passed 5 minutes at 2500V with 20+Gohm resistance. They failed insulation at 5KV. P.S. if you build golden reference HV boards kemet do 550V 470uF caps which are 65mm high and will fit in a 2u case https://www.mouser.co.uk/Passive-Components/_/N-5g73Z1yzvvqx?Keyword=kemet+550V+470uF&FS=True. Be careful Kemet also sell 680uF 550V caps that are 80mm high and will need a 3u case to fit . (https://www.mouser.co.uk/ProductDetail/KEMET/ALC10A681EL550?qs=%2Fha2pyFadug678O2NPlQ%2F8WMW0dBZWV2y30oREQu6XgezeenvV90cA%3D%3D). for the +220VDC golden ref board you can save some money and go kemet 470uf 450V or even 400V. I didnt simply because I might re-purpose the 220V board to a higher voltage sometime.But the 550v 470uF kemet caps are not cheap. P.S. the golden reference LV board is not necessary, only the servos are run from the + and - 15V lines so you could just populate the low voltage section of the GRHV board. However, if you don't want thumps on switch-off the + and -12V lines require large capacitors so the servos stay powered while the HV lines fade. I found ~15000uF to 22000uF is required but these caps are physically too large to fit in the simple LV section of the GRHV board. They fit fine in the GRLV board, but a full GRLV board is extra expense just to avoid switch off thump. I use GRLV boards in lots of projects so again they can be repurposed...

Junior Mance, Jazz Pianist and Educator, Dead at 92 | Pitchfork Junior Mance, Jazz Pianist and Educator, Dead at 92