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Thanks everyone - had a spectacular day! My daughter, Lizzie, home for three weeks from Australia not only brought me a spectacular bottle of single malt (Balvenie triple cask, 16 year), she'd also organized a cat for me! From a rehoming center that we've had several cats from before. Picked him up yesterday - a super affectionate four year old, initially called Wolfie, but now renamed Oberon. 5.2kg (11.5lb) of muscle. Our previous cat, also rehomed, we had to say farewell to a few months ago aged 19. My son bought the food, climbing tower etc for Oberon. And Carole bought us tickets to see Wagner's Lohengrin at the Royal Opera House in May. The usual 4 hour Wagner epic, And finally my son Rob, Lizzie, Carole and I went out for a meal together last night https://www.brunningandprice.co.uk/greyhound/ So one hell of a good day!!

Thanks all. Crap day at work fighting dry dock struggles but making up for it in Boston tonight - heading to Celtic's game shortly. First, an Old Fashioned with dinner.

Happy Birthday Mr. DIY Drydock!

A little thing, but if you need a 58mm tamper, this is a very good one for the money made by a Ukrainian company. I have one in red. It’s dead on 58, so basket fit is pretty universal (though of course there can be a little ring depending on basket and/or dose).

it was a $400 cup of free coffee

I got a sample of a rwandan coffee from olam yesterday and roasted it. i made a cortado this morning and then immediately ordered a 30kg bag of beans.

Happy Birthday Craig! Brittania waives the rules!

I like the vaguely Flintstones feel to it. 🥴 I'm amazed by the difficult projects you decide to take on as your first attempt to use a tool or learn a skill. I haven't even attempted a curve on my bandsaw let alone a complicated curved box. Give yourself some time to practice before deciding you aren't good at it, and maybe pick something easier to start off.

Some people have been asking for specs on the Aeras, so here they are... Input: XLR – Accepts balanced or single-ended (with grounded RCA to XLR cable) Input Impedance: 50K x2 Gain: 1000x Frequency Response: 1Hz – 60KHz Max P-P Voltage: 1500VAC Max RMS Voltage: 1000VAC Output: Stax Pro-Bias x1 Vacuum Tubes: 6S4A x4 Power Consumption: 100W External Dimensions: 19 cm x 34.3 cm x 14.2 cm (7.5” x 13.5” x 5.6”) – W x D x H Weight: 5.5 Kg (12 lbs) Mains AC: 115/230VAC Switchable

Cheers Nate - Happy Birthday's

Happy Birthday, Vince! 😜

Happy Nathan Day, Birthman! (party favour noise)

Party on buddy! Cheers!

Just wanted to offer a quick update on this...... I couldn't get the "all in one" code from @Kerry to work perfectly with my setup; it always opened up the relays to full volume on power-up, and I couldn't work out why. User fastfwd from SBAF took pity on me and wanted a distraction project, and produced some code for me that did the trick. He took an interesting approach to 'dejitter' that works beautifully, and we also added averaging of multiple pots readings and easy custom mapping of volume knob to attenuation to customise things to my setup. Here's the final code: Everything is now all installed in my Exstata. I didn't originally plan to have these boards in there, so the layout is pretty wasteful, but it keeps clean signal lines away from AC. The digital power is four lines from two Twisted Pear LCDPS fed from two toroids - WAY over the top, but I had them all just sitting in the cupboard, so why not? All in all a great end to a project first posted almost 11 years ago! [EDIT] I should add, I have no idea why this code works great, and Kerry's code was causing my boards to open up full volume on start-up. Such are the mysteries of the universe.

A Night in London (Deluxe Edition) Ophélie Gaillard, Pulcinella Orchestra 2022 Example:

Happy Birthday, Nate!!! Have an awesome day.

Happy Birthday Nate!!

Happy Birthday Nate!!!! Hoping you have a fantastic day! Go and cut some round circle holes!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Nate!!

Happy Birthday, Nate! As a cyclist in the NE ...

Hope it's a joyful, carefree day

Happy birthday, Nate! Hope it isn't too cold out there in the northeast.

Happy birthday!

Happy Birthday, Nate!

Happy Birthday, Nate! Hope it's a great one.

Congrats Kerry! The small form factor will appeal to many, for sure.

Hah! I haven’t thought about Martinelli cider in a long time, but I sure tasted it as soon as I read that line! That’s certainly a strong endorsement!

Happy Birthday, Craig!!! I'm a bit late, but hopefully it was a very good one.

Happy birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Hope you had a great day, Craig Cheers!

Cheerio, guvna, glad you're still hanging on in quiet desperation, as it were. (party favour noise)

Happy Birthday!

What is that, the TiVO logo?

Mini-review of Colombia Decaf Rainbow by Metric Coffee. On the bag they put notes of apple cider, caramel, and citrus. At first blush it seems like "just another Colombian EA decaf" but I think it's in the leading 30% or so. As a pour-over you can expect a fairly interesting decaf, with all of those aforementioned flavors. It's not particularly complex but is a very approachable coffee, great for sipping. As an espresso, the most accurate form of apple cider I can think of is those Martinelli's apple ciders -- very apple juice-like, with some spices but definitely mostly the former. If you want shots redolent of apple juice and don't want extra caffeine, this coffee is hard to beat.

Figured out I am just as bad at bandsawing as I am at the other sawings. Tried to build this but found even with the 1/4” blade I could not cut smooth curves like the YouTube guys. Also managed to combine CA glue and wood glue when mounting the handle, then walked away without cleaning up squeeze out and left myself with a glue line I cannot manage to sand or chisel.

Photos from Inside the Russian Invasion of Ukraine https://petapixel.com/2022/03/01/photos-from-inside-the-russian-invasion-of-ukraine/

Yup, I can imagine a few people proud to wear that sheet of art as a tattoo in the back.

Had the first parent visit on school campus since things got bad with the pandemic today. Saw the classrooms, met some teachers in-person, etc. Good to see Esmé is paying attention in music class.* * BTW, Adopt Me is a favorite game, though I guess it could be a cry for help.

Well with the $700 loyalty discount and the $400 trade in for my old Note 9, this phone was $100. That made it a no brainer for me.

Good choice! I cheaped out and got a Samsung S21 FE 5G. It's more than enough of a phone that what I really need.

Got my new Samsung S22 Ultra and I'm learning the new features. So far I'm really liking it.

Leave it to Naaman to have Walnut cabinets in his shop. When do the Wenge floors get installed?

Fancy. One wall is done in the garage. I now have 23 outlets on that one wall, where I had 2 to begin with.

Thanks. The Aeras will sell for 5,995 Euro and $6,695 USD. The euro fluctuates against the dollar, but we'll keep the pricing as is, unless there are some larger swings. We're going to offer a show special of 10% off which I can extend here as well through mid-March

Tossed together a Valentine’s Day box.

I meant to post this last week when I actually built it, but forgot to. I also forgot to take finished pictures with the newel caps in place, but use your imagination. A couple of weeks ago one of the bosses told me that he forgot to call the stair guy to build railings at the new addition of a smallish job. By the time he remembered, the stair guys schedule was too far out to meet our deadline. The railings needed to mimick the existing railings of the San Francisco Victorian home. He asked me if it was something I thought that I could do. Stairs and railings are usually a specialty, and as such are usually subbed out. A sub genre of finish carpentry, if you will. I haven't actually built indoor railings before, but I knew it was something that I could accomplish. There were no solid newel posts available in the size that I needed, so I built my own. As these will be painted, I used Poplar. It's a good, stable wood that doesn't have the most beautiful color or grain pattern, but is easy to mill and takes paint very well. The exception are the pickets, which are Alaskan Yellow Cedar. Kind of felt right using a wood from my home state. It's not soft like the usual Cedars, and has a very unique smell when cut. I got to use a lot of tradesman tricks and practices, and a lot of the math that I told my teachers I'd never need. Yes, they we're right. I did a lot of good preparation, so it wasn't just dumb luck, but it did fall together beautifully. The absence of a lower rail that the pickets sit on is a bit unique, but the existing rails pickets also connect directly to the stair treads. It actually works quite well at tying the newer, somewhat modern addition to the classic Victorian style. The caps not pictured are a pretty simple double cap design, with the bottom cap being 5/4 material, with a smaller top cap of 3/4.