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i wasn't expecting 2022 to have some personal bourbon renaissance but that's how it broke. against extremely long odds i was selected a month ago with 9 other folks to do Four Roses first ever barrel selections for their official Mellow Moments club. event was on Thursday then bottles sold yesterday. made some bourbon friends amongst the group and imbibed considerably. felt like an HC event. picked top 3 out of 10 barrels. i am happy to report I thieved everyone's samples on the top choice, 11 year OESV from north side of Warehouse P. heavy pours on a fucking belter. ^Brent the master distiller and Mandy who runs the program ^magnificent 10 for selections

So if there's one thing I learned from the headphone hobby it's if you don't have too many headphones and amps you're going to have to collect dust somehow else. With the addition of the CV 50mm f/1.0 arriving yesterday (and today a blah and rainy day to test instead), doing more buying than selling during the pandemic, and knowing that has to change (I have lenses that have no corresponding bodies at this point), decided I needed to lay out the worst offenders to survey the damage (and offer you a laugh). I'm pretty much a prime, "normal" focal length shooter. Prefer 50mm to 35mm, though have drifted somewhat to 40mm over time. Well, 40 is the cine's normal to photography's 50 after all. Anyway, including only lenses at these focal lengths, not 35s or wider or 55 or above teles or any zooms, this is what sickness looks like. 17 lenses covering the same-ish view. "All the shots look pretty much the same!" Yeah, kinda, mostly, not completely, but I know. Don't harsh my buzz. A purge will come. Left to right and front to back... Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1.0 (m-mount) Sigma dp2 Quattro [Foveon] camera fixed 30mm (45mm equivalent) f/2.8 Asahi Pentax SMC-M 50mm f/1.7 (k-mount) Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 (m-mount) Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1.2 (m-mount) Voigtlander APO-Lanthar 50mm f/2.0 (m-mount) Voigtlander Heliar 50mm f/3.5 (m-mount) Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1.5 mkI (m-mount) 7Artisans [Photoelectric] 50mm f/1.1 gold-baby! (m-mount) Sigma Contemporary I 45mm f/2.8 (l-mount) Sigma Art 50mm f/1.4 (sa-mount) Sigma Beyond Art 40mm f/1.4 (l-mount) Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 (e-mount) Zeiss Loxia 50mm f/2 (e-mount) Mikaton Zhongyi Speedmaster 35mm (50mm equivalent) f/0.95 (x-mount) Contax Zeiss T* Planar 50mm f/1.7 (c/y-mount, thanks @dsavitsk) Fujinon GF 50mm (40mm equivalent) f/3.5 (g/gf-mount) sd Quattro H and Fujifilm X-pro2 cameras not shown for those lenses. And here's a quick shot of a diarrhea sign testing the new lens last night before the sun went down. Buy high, sell low. I do love those Noktons. Maybe just settle on the CV 21 f/1.8 Ultron, and Noktons CV 40 f/1.2, CV 50 f/1.0, and CV 75 f/1.5 and one system? But the GFX is so fun with those Lomo lenses and color manipulation. Maybe two systems? And a basic zoom for each? Oh, that GF35 is so light, basically a X100 on steroids. And that CV f/3.5 so fun at that aperture. And I still have film aspirations. And I'm not going to get much cash at this point for those Foveon cameras anyway. I dunno, is minimalism still in?

If you want to test at full load for the Carbon, it would be around 6K at the full 450V. I would parallel at least two resistors and mount them on a nice big heat sink... Here's a test load I use for the T2 supplies. Even with a very large heatsink it will get hot pretty fast. You can certainly test with less current (recommended), which should expose any issues with the power supply. Also, I agree with James on testing first with low voltage. I typically do 30V - 60V on the input of the HV supply and then put a temporary resistor across the set string (excluding the first 20K or 14K resistor - depending on the vref used). This way you know the power supply is regulating (figure on about 15V - 20V of dropout in order to regulate). After that, it's unlikely that there will be any issues. Good luck

you can also try preinfusing then holding it for 10-30 seconds before pulling your shot.

Lumber Dungeon doesn't quite have the same warm fuzzy feeling as indoor Tree House.

Hate to tell you this, but it isn’t a tree house once the tree is turned into lumber.

Indoor tree house in progress.

All of those and not a contax g 45mm in the bunch? Do you even like photography?

Putin 'in better shape than ever', Belarus leader says. That means he's probably terminally ill.

I've definitely heard from people who know more about espresso than me not to worry about the spent puck. It does however seem like you're going too fine -- I forget whether the Flair 58 has a bottomless portafilter stock but even if it comes with a spout, you can still tell that there's major channeling if the flow stops and starts. Ultimately when there's channeling it manifests as bitterness in the finished shot. Assuming good distribution, most of the time your espresso tastes too bitter, it's due to grinding too finely. Now, it sounds like the grind is too fine regardless of distribution but I would recommend looking into that a bit. A common "go-to" response would be WDT (Weiss Distribution Technique) plus an appropriately sized funnel -- I have the Levercraft WDT tool and that works like a charm. I do think that if you can get a Weber Blind Shaker (works with the 58mm baskets), that will be quicker than a WDT, which can be a bit inconvenient for morning espresso. I'm sure Jacob has some insights regarding the particulars of a Niche -> Flair 58 setup. Good luck!

Looks like it was a good time. Hopefully the kick in the nuts wasn’t to bad.

That's awesome Bryan! What fun.

Some of the parts suppliers have the Mk2 headpad for sale and it should be direct replacement. Now if the old elastic has streched then I'd just cut a bit off it. Works a charm

Somewhere they don’t want to leave?

Is this the long-rumored “CatBear?”

Humble has a $40 bundle with 123 games in it to support Ukraine.

Carbon is getting a sister. Had a few holy crap this is good moments.

Especially when you consider the crossroads they were at without Syd. An astonishing accomplishment.

I can't think of anything else that so successfully escapes the "contempt of familiarity", or captures so successfully both the disenchantment and enchantment of an era.

Photoshop battle!

Itch.io has a huge bundle of games for $10. Proceeds go to help Ukraine.

Well it seems microsoft has done it again to me. For years off and on I have had problems whenever microsoft has done an update and it would screw up everything. This time in early February there was some type of update that FUBARed my whole computer. First I suspected it was the NORD vpn update but I deactivated it and there was no difference. The problems are- I cannot access any apps. The startup icon and search bar do not work, When I hit startup button+R, I can see the HDs with some documents but no apps, MS Office, Windows Accessories etc do not appear on the HD tree, When attempting to pull up saved docs I get error messages which makes me think that somehow the links to the apps were corrupted or vanished, What "fixes" I have attempted so far- Since my computer skills are as limited as my woodworking and amp building skills I have just stayed with the basics. Restated the computer, shut the computer down and turned it on, attempted reloading Win 10 Pro from disk. I cannot roll back the computer updates because I am unable to access any apps which limits options for further trouble shooting. Screen shot of error messages - When attempting to pull up old jpgs from my desktop I get this error message causing me to suspect the link to my apps was corrupted. Any ideas or suggestions? Hopefully there is a solution other than doing a complete wipe of the main drive and reinstalling Win 10. BTW when I searched MS they stated that my system was not compatible with Win 11. Thanks for any advice.

About to (finally) begin testing the pair of GRHVs (and a Carbon) I built. Do I need any sort of load for testing the power supplies? I seem to recall seeing Kevin recommend a 16ohm x W load resistor.