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We went to see an absolutely hilarious new comedy at Chichester, in the tiny 300 seat Minerva theatre. Called "The Unfriend" https://www.cft.org.uk/whats-on/event/the-unfriend This was directed my Mark Gatiss (Mycroft Holmes in the series Sherlock), and had a cast of 7. Including Amanda Abbington (Dr Watson's assassin wife in Sherlock) and Reese Shearsmith (Inside no 9). It was belly laugh funny.

I'm really fortunate to have the Trackhawk, TMoney...thank you. Liking how low maintenance it is especially driving it around TX and not having to worry about potholes nor clearing parking stops, etc... It's funny that you mention the Porsche Turbo.... I'm starting to fall in love with a 2007 Turbo stick car. It's a bit of a project...60k miles and a lot of love bites. The interior is a bit of a mess and I'm working on sorting it out...got a used passenger side door card I need to install. The car is a lot more enjoyable than I expected... HS

^^^ You, my friend, are bananas. And it is awesome. Naaman, you are also bananas for buying a 700+HP truck and thinking it needs more. If I had access to that much HP I think I'd be featured in a different thread here. Also, who knew that the forum software had embedable stock GIFs? Huh. Learned something new today.

It's more power than BHSE, but not by much. There isn't really much point. There are already several competing tube amps that put out less voltage swing than STAX's entry level amps. Pushing the envelope on component specs to achieve another fraction of a dB more output wasn't the goal. as for the price, well over 10k. there is absolutely no way this amp wouldn't be. I could exceed that in bill of materials easily. How much is the MSB, 40k? The Sennheiser HE1 w/ headphone is $59k. The Shangri-la Sr w/ amp is $50k. This will be much, much less than either of those and sound better with SR-X9000 or CRBN.

What about Sandblast(ed)?

I'm adding a few images of the TT kit on my old car. It went through a lot of iterations power adder wise, but this was by far the most efficient and powerful. It was a PITA to change oil... The turbo kit was literally my K-member...the plumbing took place of the stock one. In the square piping facing the reader you'll see two hose ends...that's the oiling box. Really slick kit. You can see how much is going on. Even the frame had to be notched on the passenger side to clear the turbo which wasn't small but it was huge either. Compromises... HS

I'm so hetero when I'm in Alaska. Yes, that's me manning the grill. Fake it till you make it!

It's been years since I listened to it, but Justin's beast is really quite outrageously good sounding, I can't wait to hear what it does with the CRBN's big ol' drivers. I just remember being floored by what an improvement it was over the BHSE with the 009/S.

Lovely ep/small album, by ex-lead singer of Sixpence None The Richer, Leigh Nash. Does a nice version of "Kiss Me" on this. She's playing locally this weekend, may go see her as well as long I test negative; venue has good vaccination and mask policies. Also, her web site has a background pic of her in water, and the water moves a bit; kinda neat.... https://www.leighnash.net/

I've hardly taken photos in the last however many years, but what I have been doing since I got this shiny M1 Macbook Pro is blowing the dust off my editing skills. July 1, 2006, the first week I had my EOS 30D and its "better" kit lens. October 4, 2006. Taken by a friend of mine with his Kodak V570 panoramic camera. A photo taken by an unknown person with an Olympus C3040 Zoom point & shoot, sometime in 2001. I found it in a folder of images all from the 00s that I had not thought about in over 15 years. I'm not entirely sure how I ended up with this one, but I suspect the woman in frame sent it to me in hopes I'd clean it up. Well, here I am a decade and a half later. The original jpeg was quite a mess: low resolution (far below the C3030Z's native 3.3MP), poorly exposed, set to sepia tone (ugh), and with a couple digital glitches in it. I fixed ...most of the problems. I ran it through Topaz Labs' Gigapixel AI software, which upscaled it hugely, then converted it to black & white in Photoshop, manually adjusting the settings. Finally I did a bit more work on the levels. I did not attempt to fix the jpeg glitches, but a friend of mine stepped up and made use of his Photoshop skills. I actually like the photo now, as a character study. May 26, 2008. This chucklefuck destroyed a tube guitar amp he borrowed from me. May 26, 2008. The fella on the left is now a moderately famous YouTuber, known for his extended reviews of the Disney Star Wars films. July 19, 2013. Taken on the side of the road in Hadley, MA. A farmer came by in his tractor, stopped it, got down and yelled at me for trespassing (I was 5' off the road.) I told him I was leaving and got TF out of there. May 19, 2019. IR 5D + 17-40L @25mm. I spent considerable time editing this photo then prompty forgot about it. November 6, 2021. Two antique lamps I restored plus a network switch. iPhone 6S. December 21, 2015. Same lamps during the day. May 18, 2019. IR5D + 17-40L @25mm. April 27, 2022. iPhone 13 in an Aldi Parking lot during the golden hour. July 6, 2008. Taken at a party in a club in Springfield, MA where I only worked once. April 25, 2019. Taken with my IR-modified 2001 vintage Canon PowerShot G2 and a wide angle adapter. I cleaned it up using Topaz DeNoise AI then loaded it into Luminar 4 where I made a bunch of tweaks and applied a lookup table. Lastly, I did a bunch of further editing in Photoshop. I did not attempt to correct the somewhat comical fisheye effect caused by the wide angle lens. It doesn't bother me too much. April 17, 2019. iPhone 6S. No edits at all. Februray 18, 2019. Very odd light in my yard. iPhone 6S. May 6, 2019. IR 5D + EF 50mm F/1.8 (Mark I). The sleepy little street I live on. Oct 9, 2009. The absolutely ancient mixing console from a now-closed nightclub. A re-edit of a photo I took with the mighty Canon EF 85mm F/1.2L USM that a friend rented and let me borrow for one evening. The 85L is one of those magic lenses that lives up to and even exceeds the hype surrounding it. Revisiting the image, I de-noised it using a Topaz plugin in Photoshop, made adjustments and applied a lookup table in Luminar 4. Then I imported the photo back in to Photoshop, further adjusted the levels and did a de-noise pass to remove posterization artifacts. There is "narrow depths of field" then there's "85L depth of field."

Always need moar power, though I’m not sure how far I’m going to go since it is my daily driver. First thing I need to sort out is the garbage HK stereo that came with it. Sadly I dropped it off at the dealer this morning because they forgot to seal up the firewall somewhere. Terrible wind noise coming from under the dash. Dropped it off at 0730 and they have yet to look at it 😡. Glad I waited two weeks for an “appointment”.

I think similar to Megatron output, so still a lot. max output on the market wasn't goal, more about the DHT sound. if there's an electrostatic headphone that needs more power, going from one of those amps to the other won't be enough of a difference. you may have 1dB, 2dB max more headroom

Great question. When I was tracking the Challenger I ran Hoosier R7's for the standing mile as they were rated for north of 200mph. Really a great tire. On the quarter mile stuff I'd run Mickey Thompson drag radials. Surprisingly good and way better than a slick IMO. In the Jeep I run the crappy Pirelli Scorpion Verde runflats at the mile as they're speed rated. Loud, hard as marbles...a miserable tire but the only one rated for the speeds the brick has gone. I did by a used set of drag radials and wheels form a friend for the quarter. I can't do a burnout with the AWD so I just kind of scuff them to get the gravel off them. They are more forgiving than the runflats but my sixty foot times are still pretty crap. 5617 lbs of love off the line is comedy. HS

Out of curiosity, do you run any special kind of tire when you are going for times?

Still can't believe you drive a 10 second jeep around, HS! I was just watching a Matt Farah vid while I was eating lunch where the 911 Turbo S only gets 9.9 with the lightweight package. 911 Turbo S speed, in a jeep!

Compound boost isn't my jam, but it can be made to work. Otherwise a manifold will need to replace the blower which to me is the correct way. A lot of power can be made with a single large snail or twins. I used to run twin 6766's sitting low and there are a few challenges to doing so. Access for maintenance and oil management to the turbos are the two biggest issues. I prefer the idea of one large snail sitting higher. Plumbing won't be simple with that engine bay being what it is. Swapping spark plugs now is nuts as it stands stock. I'm avoiding going down the rabbit hole with mine. It make pretty good power and is very driveable (it's my daily). I'm hoping I keep it that way. The add'l wheel HP and torque really have made it so much more fun and the AWD just makes it an urban assault vehicle and faster than it should be at the track. If going the blower route I'm a big believer in beefed up cooling and the Aussie Interchiller setup is surprisingly effective particularly if you're hot lapping it at the track. Much less of an issue with turbo's IMO. HS

Kids today: TIKTOKERS ARE BAFFLED BY A VIDEO SHOWING HOW VINYL RECORDS WORK https://www.intheknow.com/post/how-does-vinyl-actually-work-tiktok/

This album is growing on me.

Planning on options for both, with the compound being offered initially. Rippa currently has a twin turbo option that puts down about 1000whp. but they are mounted really low.

Seriously. There were at least three that I saw: dunes, donuts, and the high-speed run. Was sort of shocked that they weren't in helmets or any gear given how hard they were pushing it.

Just be sure and wear a helmet when you go out jumping dunes and doing desert blasts. It looked like Mr. Block-enspiel was a half-second away from rolling that thing more than a few times in that video.

Satera is working on a single 80mm turbo set up that should do 900whp on E85 and 700whp on 93. Might be a good option.

That’s going to be a self serve thing IMO. I don’t see Stellantis offering a lot more power on such a heavy vehicle although it’s not out of the realm of possibilities. My suggestion is an upper pulley swap supported by a “cracked” and tuned PCM and bigger injectors…poof a good bit more power. Warranty on motor and possibly trans voided, but such is the price of vroom vroom… HS

New war of Northern Aggression? Alaska v. Texas - this time, for all the oil.

Savage Steve, savage. $7.2M dollars seems quite the deal, surely Texas could have swung it themselves?

This one was a strange cut as it was the for the plug of an inlay. In VCarve Desktop I cannot see any way to change the depth in the VCarve function by adding passes so I just went with it. Did the top of the clear out and then went to the middle and was not set to ramp so it plunged and started doing its loops and snapped off. It was an Amana Spectra Coated 1/4” down cut which had a nice clean shear right at the collet mark on the bit. Collet should have been pretty damn tight as I tend to be paranoid about random flying 19000 rpm projectiles. In better news I finished the carve of the next yard sign with no drama. This one has such interesting grain, I am not sure if a basic brown text resin will even stand out. Going to paint the Texas, as I was not smart enough to come up with a way to carve it that I could fill with three different resins without having a big purple Texas.

Those are really nice treatments. Especially love that first shot. Also 👏 on the C3040 and G2 mentions.

Prince and the Revolution - Live Recorded at the pinnacle of the Purple Rain tour. This one rocks.

Well I think we are already Vermonters as we went shopping in New Hampshire today.

Not today, but yesterday: Yumi accepted a job in Durango and we are under contract for this place. Higher interest rates and COVID pricing is a bitch but at least we’re not buying in CA. Time for another HC meet? We got a big basement god people to crash in. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/96-Walker-Ln-Durango-CO-81303/13939794_zpid/?utm_campaign=iosappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare

I have been getting back at this..working up to a limited run of these as the STAX SR-X9000 and Audeze CRBN have made that need to happen. But the chassis is extraordinarily expensive and difficult to produce, so I am working at ways to fix that. Also need to put it on the scale, thought it was 45lb but feels more like 60lb haha. It's really not that big of a footprint (13.5x18), but it makes the BHSE look like a toy. Power consumption is 190-200W depending on tubes, with 90-100W of that being heaters. The bottom of the amp is ice cold and the top is pleasantly toasty. The first 3 stages have recessed slide switches on top to switch 6.3 to 12.6v heaters, so common tube types are: 1st: 6SN7/12SN7, 12AU7 and many others w/ 8 to 9 pin adapter 2nd: 6SL7/12SL7, 12AX7 and many others w/ 8 to 9 pin adapter 3rd: 6N6P, ECC99, 12BH7A, possibly others such as 5687 w/ pin-out adapter 4th: Emission Labs 20B-V4

Finally done! I regrettably sold my previous KGSSHV Carbon a while ago, this one’s not going anywhere soon. This is a 400V, 19mA version, using the ground plane amp board, Sumr transformer and Goldpoint V47 attenuator. I bought the heatsinks from China and had all the drilling and panels done at Front Panel Express. I pulled out the Canon 5D from the cupboard for some tasty shots.

I hear you on dealer/appointment troubles. I've had a lug nut (technically a lug stud) stuck on the BMW for the last two weeks. The previous shop installed them to what I'd guess was well north of 200ft-lbs of torque. I got 19 of 20 off with only minor problems using an 18" breaker bar and a 3' extension. The 20th, it's still on there and no amount of heat or other method will loosen it. It's now well and truly stripped. Yesterday's adventure was to heat it as hot as I dared and drive a 16mm socket on it (it's a 17mm head) and let it cool for more than an hour. Still wouldn't budge. So I tried JB welding a socket on. Nope, the glue broke before the socket moved. So now I wait over a week to get a tire shop to look at it and probably spend several hundred dollars having it drilled out or who knows? Maybe I just trade the car in...