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Dropped Peter and Karen off yesterday for their four day backpacking hike up a chunk of the Long/Appalachian Trail

Here's one of Dukei's he sent me. Primo work as usual:

Who said that sport is health? 😁

Leftovers Le Ren 2021 https://album.link/i/1577419184 Example: Some more female vocals. I seem to be on a kick. Unknown to me but really was lovely. It gave me a Trinity Sessions vibe from Cowboy Junkies, with touches of Simon and Garfunkel. I know those are all really big shoes, but just to say I really did enjoy this set.

I gave up hand grinding once I got married.

As the zoomers say, that last one hits just right. Serious purists would grouse about "nisen bokeh" but as most photographers eventually figure out, faults can make a lens interesting. I haven't taken too many photos since moving to MV, which is silly as when I lived off-island I took photos like mad when I visited here. I mentioned a while back I bought the Moment and Hipstamatic apps for iOS: Hipstamatic is never not silly, but I actually really like the framing of this image. The faux vintage effects add nothing, TBH. This one actually works pretty well as a photograph, hipster or not. Not hipster at all. The Edgartown docks. IR 5D, 17-40L at the wide end, F/4, 1/60th, ISO50. Straight out of the camera with no edits at all. This happens remarkably never. There are two types of photographers: those who have no idea about metering for infrared and liars. My street. IR 5D, 50mm F/1.4 @ F/8, 1/200, ISO100. I ambled around the neighborhood with the 5D and faster 50mm. The latter is actually a terrible match for the former, for a variety of reasons. The biggest one is that the 50/1.4 has a huge bright spot dead center in infrared that doesn't appear at all in the visible color spectrum. Curiously, my older 1987 50mm F/1.8 doesn't have this problem at all. Of all the photos I took this afternoon, this was a last minute one as I was crossing the road. At the time I remember thinking "well, there was no effort in that one so it will suck." It was the best of the bunch, by a huge margin. South Beach, EDG. Moment app on iPhone 13. I adjusted the EV down a bit. I do not get along with touchscreen controls. Some days I wish I'd sprung for a 13 Pro, but the price difference could get me a Canon 35mm F/2 IS. The gateway to South Beach. Also Moment on the i13. I got the sea horizon reasonably straight but that didn't stop be from loading the image into Photoshop, pixel peeping and getting that MFer as level as I could. I do like the framing on this one. About 5 feet ahead of the previous photo. I adjusted the horizon and fussed over the levels of this shot quite a bit. It looks remarkably non-pseudo-HDR, and I consider that to be a success at this point. Missing from this image: the cold AF breeze coming off the Atlantic. EDG harbor again. Taken right after the IR photo at the top. The late afternoon sun was gorgeous and the iPhone was the best (visible spectrum) camera I had on hand. I did correct the horizon but didn't make many adjustments otherwise. I like it. Throwback Thursday: ("Knuckles, it's Wednesday.") Truly a monstrous edit. I started with a not very good photo I took and had previously edited in 2005 and rand it through Topaz Gigapixel AI, upscaling it 6x. Then I loaded it into Luminar 4, where I made dozens of tweaks and applied a lookup table. Next I used Topaz DeNoise AI to clean the image up and remove some of the posterizing effects brought on by Luminar. Lastly I dragged into Photoshop, used QuickMask to select the sky and denoised and otherwise cleaned it up (it needed a lot of work.) Then I straightened out the horizon and adjusted the levels. This was a project I worked on and off again for a week. Was it worth it? Probably not. I find the end result kind of amusing.

I think pickleball players keep repeating that.

Happy Birthday, Chris!

I¨m changing the pulley on my Perspex6 and doing some adjustments,: Jimi Hendrix: People, Hell & Angels,

Eydís Evensen

Just an FYI, the diyaudio store has Toshiba matched quads and octets of J74/K170. Octet is US $90 or $100 depending upon IDSS. These are BL devices. Good luck on the tube input, and if that is what you really want, I'd agree; go for it. I'm sure Dukei will be much help here.

The Amphenol's don't have removable pins, so no crimping possible and also no variable size pins available as well. It only has one 18 AWG pin (and all the others are max 20 AWG wire pins), so not really suited for a high current class A amp. A much better connector is the AMP CPC shell Size 17, p/n 206043-1, 206044-1 (PSU side), 183040-1, 183039-1 (amp side), as used on the BHSE or the Dark Star. Pins are removable and all sorts of pins for crimping (as well as soldering if you wished) and sizes for 16...26 AWG wire are available for the same size 17 connector. Very nice modular and serviceable system. It is HV rated and the 16-18 AWG pins would be perfect for the beefy GRLVs. Really nice.

If it were me, I'd source 2 quads of Toshiba 2SK170/2SJ74 from punkydawgs on ebay, and just do the SS bal/ubal board with JFET input. But that's me. It seems like someone on HF has a tube input CFA3, but I didn't see any pics or direct posts by the person who supposedly has it. I know dukei has been talking about it. Kevin would probably know. A lot of the HF crowd seems to run a tube preamp into the CFA3 and use that to get their "tube" sound. I guess you could do that if you wanted. I used to have a tube pre, a Counterpoint SA5.1, which used 6922s and sounded good. It had a slight hum to it which took me about 6-7 years to find (PSU board layout error), and I sold it right after that and never listened to it after I fixed it, other than to verify it was now dead quiet. I feel like I need a shower now after being on HF for a few minutes

Well, they clearly stole everything they did! 🤣

My Father moved to Vegas in 1980, and I joined him there after being accepted to UNLV. I spent my Junior and Senior years there in '81 and '82. I've told stories about waiting on Sinatra at the restaurant I worked at. Biggest asshole I've ever met. And I've been acquainted with a lot of assholes. Anyway, my Father was making a living playing poker. Mostly playing with retired old men at Circus Circus. But there were a few times that he played with the big boys. He played with Doyle a dozen times or so. I'll never forget one particular time when he shut my Dad down and took him for all he had put aside for that night (my Dad never played for more than he could afford to lose). I had the car that evening and took my little Sister to go pick him up. This particular night was at the Flamingo, and Brunson decided to treat my little Sister, myself and my Dad to banana splits at Lindy's (an ice cream parlor in the hotel). He had one too, and was just a really nice guy. My Sister was 12, and he treated her like a little Queen. R.I.P. Mr. Brunson. You were a class act Sir!

Never too old to have a heart attack, break a bone or fall into a bush @MexicanDragon

45

Interesting designs. I need fewer coffee things on my counter vs more, though. Ask the wifey...LOL. HS

To the right is a just finished mini T2. Transistors mounted direct onto heat sinks. Inner width is 159 mm (6.26 in). Most of the components are moved from my first amplifier with in kitchen made boards, including the small LEDs and diodes. Heat sinks, all connectors (STAX, Neutrik, Amphenol) are from one of my full size DIY T2 (RIP – I’ll build a new one with all original parts) This is my third mini T2. The building process has been straight forward. The only thing is that left channels of all the three amplifiers have a bloody annoying hum during the first minutes after start up. I’ve no idea what causes it.