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I wasn't good about before and after photos but many of you have been here. We ended up taking down the garage door and cutting it into pieces. We kept the center section as a @guzziguy memorial right at the point it cracked under BMW pressure. 🥴 By getting rid of the garage door and all the oddly beefy structure supporting jusGara at door, we gained 100 square feet and a whole lot of headroom in the now 425 square foot shop. Very excited to get the slab redone and the new outer wall framed in, let alone the Oneida dust collection system put in... IMG_4965.MOV

No worries Brent and thanks to everyone that has supported this. The team is currently the fourth highest fundraisers having met our overall goal and the event itself is doing amazing. Training continues to go well although it was a light week this week with multiple work events and remnants of a hurricane pushing me indoors. Still, I'm feeling well prepared and will spend part of this weekend making sure the bike is good to go for next weekend.

Cyclone Al, cleaning up after a long day of wood shop demo.

I just started the demo a little early.

Thanks to folks here, https://ultimae.bandcamp.com/album/border-50 I also just posted something rough, long, and experimental. This is just raw output from my modular through a CXM 1978. It could definitely benefit from a real mix, but here it is anyway: https://cutestory.bandcamp.com/track/under

Yes, I'm Thor all over! He says in his best gay lisp. I'm not a straight man, but I play one on TV.

Is that Thor?

The Ascension Sufjan Stevens 2020 Example:

A blinded (I think it has been attacked by something) 6 week or so old stray tuxedo kitten found itself on my patio. Currently at the SPCA getting medical treatment. I guess my good deed for the year. I have the cat’s number, so I can keep track of progress.

Some progress on my end, the amp is up and running now. It only took a new KGSSHV psu, new transformer, new power switch and I also swapped out the Stax socket as that nylon one just bugged me. I also dropped the voltage from +/-400V to +/-350V as hacking up the amplifier boards would have been a lot of work and the lower voltage negates most of that. Couple if funny things, the sheer number of misspellings on these boards is hilarious, bias is always written "Bisa" and look carefully at the text on those amp boards for some hilarity. One other thing, I was going over the PSU board and noticed one thing, the caps for the bias supply are 630V rated... now to generate the bias this is a voltage doubler, it takes the raw AC input (which is 325V or so) and doubles it. For that the parts need to be rated at least double the input voltage and guess what... 2*325V is more than 630V. That is assuming the line voltage remains stable and there are no spikes. Yeah everything done to save just a little bit of money.

FWIW, this is a really nice TV. Picture, out of the box with no calibration, looks better to me than the plasma. Sound is at least as good as any soundbar I was likely to buy. I've heard speakers that cost about as much as the TV itself that sound worse. The interface works great. I'm not happy I needed to buy a new TV, but I am definitely happy with the one I got.

Once again this year I'm prepping to ride a century in support of the Kelly Brush Foundation. Between indoor Zwifting, the MTB, and multiple road bikes I've been pounding (or is it prancing?) on the pedals this year. I've amassed some 2,600+ training miles already with a goal of getting as close to 3,000 before the event as possible. This year marks a return to the in-person ride up in VT, with friends mostly coming from near by to do this as a group as safely as possible. For me this is the 10th century that I've done in support of either Northeast Passage or Kelly Brush and I'm looking forward to enjoying it. A bit about KBF - they are a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting individuals with spinal cord injuries in finding ways to get out and enjoy an active lifestyle. For me, this is a cause close to my heart. I love the outdoors and the freedom to explore it in a variety of ways and have worked with organizations like the KBF for the last twenty years to help others do the same. So the mission remains the same, 'm trying to raise a bunch of money again this year with a goal of $2,000. As usual, all of the donations are tax deductible and maybe some legislation will get passed this year to make that more meaningful but really, I'm hoping the motivation isn't just to get a write off. So for those that are interested, here's the link to my personal fund raising page - https://kbf.akaraisin.com/ui/2021KellyBrushRide/p/59fc933a03a54ed49869208beac367ff Any donation large or small is very much appreciated.

This was great, thanks for posting it! I'm listening to some ancient electronic music from the 70's with tasty tasty analog synthesizers -- Space Art Also listening to Portico Quartet's upcoming album, Monument -- RIYL post-rock. Look for it in November: https://porticoquartet.bandcamp.com/album/monument

It is a copy of the SR-Omega so it has all the same issues as the Omega... i.e. a headband which Stax should never have used for them. They break... a lot... and have since 1993. As for the ES-1a, i have been using my set pretty much daily for 18 months now and they are still perfect, no issues at all and always sitting on a Stax stand... even with a couple of tumbles to the floor as I pulled on the cable.

Hmmmm... looks like a good idea for upgrading the audio on mobile Zoom events

I just got word that he's cool with me quoting it. He did specify the timeline and it truly was about a year that it took for JR Audio to repair a defective HEV70 from him. Kinda sad and unfortunate that it got to that point. I also recently found out that JR Audio doesn't like to play nice with any of the competition and and doesn't appreciate talks of other diy'ers and other amp builders out on his forums. I think this speaks volume of his character. From ES Labs owner: "I build my own KGSSHV, and speaking of JR audio, I have a problem with him too. Once I shipped a HEV70 amp to him for repair and it took him around a year. When I receive it the amp does not work. Then I send him a message and ask for help, I am told to do the troubleshooting myself since '' You are an amp builder anyway''. Upon investigation there is a loose solder point on the board. So I do not recommend JR audio product and service based on my own experience and many others who bought faulty amp from him." In the end, I honestly don't think anybody respectable in the community would recommend JR Audio products, and this quote just reaffirms that. On an unrelated note, I've been looking far and wide for a new electrostatic headphone and Spritzer mentioned to me that he enjoys the ES1A from ES Labs. This is how I got into contact with him in the first place. Thanks to Spritzer, I think this is going to be my next purchase.

Plays a straight man very well.

U.S. Open (ESPN) - some great tennis so far this week. More to come.

We have a similar game in the gay community. Dungeons and Masters.

I love it in the right dish. Fried up with mac and cheese? Yes please. 90% of the time I eat spam these days (which is still only once every six months or so) I'm eating a Hong Kong-style spam and egg sandwich. Something about junk food being from a foreign culture allows me to rationalize it as haute cuisine.

if (echo "Grahame" | egrep -i "*Ray*") { echo "yes" }

If you want to let it go then I'd love to mess with it. Having these basket cases around is just so much fun... Something like that could work as a helping hand (similar to what we have in Spice and other simulation software) but it's no replacement for the human mind. The issue with everything is that building stuff (as in physical stuff) is hard and you run into issues that nobody thought of. One thing comes to mind, my very expensive office chair at home failed this week. It basically split in half where it was attached together with 4 M8 screws. Now they were large torx units and the head was only about 10mm in diameter and with the deep torx head, there was not a lot of material there to actually make the connection. Add to that they had not been properly tightened at the factory and bam... the heads broke off. If they had been torqued to spec then it would have been fine but just that little bit of play (plus I'm a mountain of a man ) was enough to make them fail. We've had similar stuff happen with the PCB's we've used and parts that should work just fine but are marginal. Then we have the issue that if you were to design like that, that means trusting datasheets etc. and well no... just no.

Yesterday I Had The Blues - The Music of Billie Holiday José James

Not any more.

Just got this new seiko SLA021J a week ago was worried it might be to huge but I think it works well.

For what it's worth I found this multipart interview interesting. It's Chord-centric, but could apply to other FPGA implementations, including PS Audios. It’s also a comparison across DAC types. I don't know enough to determine the accuracy of the comments.

Mine arrived broken day one.

Hey guys, let's thread necro! At this juncture I can say I'm quite happy with BackBlaze and plan on extending my subscription shortly. Their backup widget for MacOS has a small footprint and is reasonably configurable. The only real issue I've had is that it's impossible (as best I can determine) to back up my Time Machine images.

Done in honor of Steve's #2

Just picked up Lance at LAX returning from his short visit with friends in Italy. He comes bearing gifts- Note one was lost to the assholes in customs and their sloppy methods of inspecting luggage for weapons, human trafficking and drugs.