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RIP Renay Mandel Corren El Paso, TX—A plus-sized Jewish lady redneck died in El Paso on Saturday. Of itself hardly news, or good news if you're the type that subscribes to the notion that anybody not named you dying in El Paso, Texas is good news. In which case have I got news for you: the bawdy, fertile, redheaded matriarch of a sprawling Jewish-Mexican-Redneck American family has kicked it. This was not good news to Renay Mandel Corren's many surviving children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, many of whom she even knew and, in her own way, loved. There will be much mourning in the many glamorous locales she went bankrupt in: McKeesport, PA, Renay's birthplace and where she first fell in love with ham, and atheism; Fayetteville and Kill Devil Hills, NC, where Renay's dreams, credit rating and marriage are all buried; and of course Miami, FL, where Renay's parents, uncles, aunts, and eternal hopes of all Miami Dolphins fans everywhere, are all buried pretty deep. Renay was preceded in death by Don Shula. Because she was my mother, the death of zaftig good-time gal Renay Corren at the impossible old age of 84 is newsworthy to me, and I treat it with the same respect and reverence she had for, well, nothing. A more disrespectful, trash-reading, talking and watching woman in NC, FL or TX was not to be found. Hers was an itinerant, much-lived life, a Yankee Florida liberal Jewish Tough Gal who bowled 'em in Japan, rolled 'em in North Carolina and was a singularly unique parent. Often frustrated by the stifling, conservative culture of the South, Renay turned her voracious mind to the home front, becoming a model stay at home parent, a supermom, really, just the perfect PTA lady, volunteer, amateur baker and-AHHAHAA HA! HA! HA! Just kidding, y'all! Renay - Rosie to her friends, and this was a broad who never met a stranger - worked double shifts with Doreen, ate a ton of carbs with Bernie, and could occasionally be stirred to stew some stuffed cabbage for the kids. She played cards like a shark, bowled and played cribbage like a pro, and laughed with the boys until the wee hours, long after the last pin dropped. At one point in the 1980's, Renay was the 11th or 12th-ranked woman in cribbage in America, and while that could be a lie, it sounds great in print... https://www.fayobserver.com/obituaries/m0028451

Finally I got round to getting some time in the workshop: the DC protection circuit is up and running! I decided to do a prototype on my CNC. Converted Gerber files to Gcode with a software called FlatCAM - free, full of features and easy to use! Quite pleased with the result... Assembled and tested: - power on delay ist about 2.5 seconds. I might want to increase that a bit. - The voltage divider for the reference voltages is a bit off: +410mV and -620mV. Not to worry... - Applied a 1 kHz sine wave with 1 Vpp to the inputs and used the DC-offset adjustment on the signal-generator to tease the circuit. The relay clicks off at the exact values as set by the reference voltage divider. Both channels fine! That's it for today - next step is to hook this up with the amplifiers and finally take a listen... looking forward to that!!!

My speaker is called the Square One and the more recent one is Square Two. Both run the compression horn down to 1kHz with very shallow filters. I've seen people using the same driver down to 500Hz, but the horn needs to be pretty massive and you need steeper filters to stay out of trouble. Mine has F6=35Hz while the Square Two seems around 40Hz both in free field. In living room conditions with boundary gain help mine can do 30Hz pretty decently. At the same time there's plenty of headroom for something that's essentially a 12.5" cube. Help it down low with a decent sub and you have almost PA-like SPL capabilities.

The drivers are actively filtered, so the slopes must be rather shallow to get no phase shift. I have listened to the prototype which had different filtering and power electronics. The sound was superb! The mains in my system are of similar principle, only they use Scanny 15MU midwoofs and the same Faital HF1440 CD. The mids are nicer on mine and they go louder - circa 120dBSPL peak at 1m. Got their acoustician to come to my place and dick around with SMAART to tune them to my subs and room. Haven't heard this kind of percussive transients outside of [very few] pro studio control rooms.

Just six years later than Colin, I have now made this cheese buldak recipe twice and love it.

Is it possible that nobody made any Mattnog in 2021? Seems like a tragedy. The Mason jar sidecar shown above in my 2020 nog pics was consumed last night with some freshly whipped cream and it was delicious. Reposted here for the sake of the historical record. We'll need to do better in 2022... In looking for pics of ironbut Steve, I happened upon this one of Matt and me in SF. By very random coincidence, I'm wearing the same t-shirt today. 😏

Maybe get these instead for work 😁 Cometeer - Earth’s First Hyper Fresh Coffee

Chemex is sort of special for me and Heather, so Esteban Garcia it is before I go see her for the first time in a month. 16:1. I do the chopstick trick with Chemex. Bloom, draw, then fill to desired water weight. This is some active coffee! Ground off frozen on the SSP. I seem to have finally gotten a good grind size with Chemex though: usually it’s either slow or fast. I don’t time Chemex. It’s also a fucking good cup of coffee. Lemon and cream and chocolate for miles. Super clean (Chemex, after all). Chocolate (again). No bitterness. The lemon brightness is not acidic at all. Soft on the palate. Sweet. I’ll miss this coffee when it’s gone. SSP burrs a little coarser than I do V60.

Bands waking up to the cat content we are all looking for?

1. Not hardly in charge, but we’ll see what the next few months bring for change around here. I have full faith and trust in HR’s ability to completely fuck it up. 2. I think we’re giving the surplus to Australia so you might have to fight a dingo or a kangaroo for one. Does head control work on non-native species? 3. The cutting board came out beautiful, which makes sense given it’s deadly nature. I would love to have a shop big enough to house a planer and jointer but that’s not in the cards. So I’ll have to keep ping ponging for a while and having fun with that.

I love these types of speaker designs. 1.4" compression driver is a nice touch. I assume Reflector Audio and this top module can be used without subwoofers, in which case what are their useful low frequency response?

I assume with all these retirements you must be in charge of everything by now Nate. I would like to chat with you about surplus nuclear subs that might be available for a plan I am working out. Put the Walrus Wax on the board and threw it in the kitchen as Kasia decided to keep this one.

The milling machine has been busy today. Width is same (to the last decimal) as Kevin’s original DIY T2 board but only half the length. Transformers for 4 direct heated triodes (each). Need a hair cut.

I love oat milk. I don’t drink regular milk any more.

Thanks, Jacob! The timer on the Lelit starts when I pull the lever. I have the Pearl set so it kicks off when it senses liquid. So I can time the pre-infusion via delta. I can lengthen it with the paddle. I took your advice and am leaving the paddle static for now. Once I'm a bit more confident I'll start swinging it again....before the pre-infusion was 9 sec's or so using the recommended approach on Clive Coffee's vid. I'll play around soon enough. Too many variables and I won't have a clue what's going on which I believe was your point. Highly caffeinated listening to good music out back...first world problems. HS

I think I'm beginning to find a groove that I can build on. I tried the 20 gr in and more out...stopped at 36. It takes approximately 7 seconds to see liquid out of the portafilter (machine shoots up to just over 10 bar). Flow begins with multiple small streams and then centers out into a single stream which is a nice improvement (good recommendation in the Crema distributor / tamper Jacob). The time it takes to get to 36 grams of liquid varies...once it was a total of 33 seconds and once 27 seconds including pre-infusion... I have no clue but that's OK. By the time I had my steamed milk/froth done the crema was down 0.5 oz and I had about 1.5 oz into my cappuccino. It was delicious. Steaming the milk now that I have a proper stainless pitcher is not difficult. I have no clue about latte art but I have all the milk and froth I want which is nice. I'll want to try a latte soon. Thanks to ER and grawk and others I may have left off for your generous pro tips! Sam

Making me sad as I sip my K-cup at the office...LOL. OK...for those other sad souls that are stuck with K-cups at work, etc... I'll offer a few of the ones I prefer. Sipping Gevalia Columbian and it is good for what it is. Gevalia's Signature Blend is better IMO. My favorite when I can find it is Laughing Man Ethiopian Sidama. Hugh's Blend and Dukale's Blend and Columbian Huila are pretty good as well. HS

A little late with this one but I admired him as a fellow countryman and was lucky to meet once in person in London. He was very gracious and genuine. Obituary: Sir Antony Sher, a giant of the stage https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-58601697

RIP Anne Rice....read some of her earlier books and enjoyed. Couldn't get into as much later, but she basically kicked off a major genre of Romance-Horror. She was also a fan of one of my favorite musicians, Mary Fahl, and chose a song of Mary's to use in one of her Audiobooks. Also RIP to Al Unser....used to watch racing more in the 70's and he (and his whole family) were among the best!

I am wandering when people here assambled T2 and use it with Alps RK50 potentiometer from past age. Some years ago I inverstigated question about volume controls. Looked even on Bridged-T attenuator: https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/attenuators/bridged-t-attenuator.html And as a conclusion: best attenuators are transformer TVCs. Until some music level resistors (even z-foil) is the best. But for Ultra HiEnd is TVC. In attachments is mine. FR @1kHz=0db almost flat up to 1MGHz. It is better then Stevens and Billington TX-102 TVC, Music First Audio - Passive Magnetic Preamplifier and so on. Even this not the toppest one, but it is very very pleasent for hears.