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These seem to ship worldwide: https://www.audiosanctuary.co.uk/official-sennheiser-hd800-replacement-earpads-ear-cushions.html

I have a new grail: Berneron Mirage. It’s vaguely attainable, as a grail should be. Sort of like a Crash, but boozy instead of Dali-esque.

I bought quite a few titles both Mofi, XRCD and HDCD (before Microsoft screwed up the format) about 14 or 15 years ago before prices went up due to "fiber audiophile". Now that I think about it and see the prices of some of these discontinued CDs, I think that I should have bought some more due to their quality and the love with which they are published. Edit: two of my favourites XRCD: 1812 Overture Tchaikovsky xrcd 24 and The Planets Host (by way I have about 8 version of the Planets if someone has interest I can do a comparative).

Very long term HCers (which most of y'all, TBH) might remember I own a misfit assortment of vintage McIntosh gear. How vintage? 1969. Older than me. For reasons not worth explaining, in 1999 I got two C-22 preamps and one MC-75 amplifier. Two stereo preamps, one monophonic amplifier. Not exactly useful. With that said, I've stubborn held on to them for 24 years and counting. Today I moved them, and the amp nearly killed me. Glamor photo of the boat anchor I took in 2009. One of the pair of C-22s after I had all of the above serviced, 2009. A bunch of the Mac kit and other crap, hanging out in a spare bedroom, 2013. I stuffed the Mac kit, plus a bunch of other electronics, into an upstairs closed before I exited the mainland this past January. It collected quite a bit of dust. The MC75, looking rather grubby. I had a very bad moment getting it down the stairs. I grabbed it from the closet floor, and attempted to stand up. I was not wearing my back brace (100% necessary when lifting things these days.) I could stand up while holding the Mac. My legs said "yeah, that's not happening." Getting old is a real MFer. Eventually I got myself and the amp upright, but at significant cost to my back. After the above photo was taken, I did locate my back brace (stable door and all.) I loaded two pieces of framed artwork into the Fit (not exactly a specious vehicle) and used the MC-75 as a, well, anchor to hold them in place. There it sits. Yes, I straightened the damn 12BH7 once I caught my breath. This is the Fit, mostly packed. In there (besides all the Mac kit) is a Dynaco monoblock (visible behind the lamp), 3 wood clamps, a Technics SL-1200 Mk II, a Symetrix 528E voice processor (direly in need of servicing), a California Labs tube DAC I got from ...one HCer or other (which also needs repair), a Parasound DAC (still running strong, 30 years later), a Tascam 122 Mk III (the greatest cassette deck in history, I will die on this hill) that ALSO needs repair, a shit ton of semi-valuable fabric items used as packing material, my tool chest, and a giant "Ricky Ricardo" style chandelier. My (sainted, octogenarian) mother thinks I'm nucking futs. She's not wrong. My back is killing me.

A friend of mine posted about that thrift find in Discord. Turd in the punchbowl opinion: The Canon 50mm/1.2 is ass. It has remarkably lousy bokeh. It's better than the old Canon 50mm F/1.0, but so is basically everything else. TBH I'd rather have a good 50/1.8 like the OG 1986 Mk I. In the age of modern DSLRs and their insane high ISO settings, super fast primes are really not necessary. The cost and weight penalty brought on by super fast lenses is almost never worth it. Also everything I said above is not true for the the Canon 85L, and as best I can tell the Nikon and Sony 85/1.4s. Maybe I'm biased (I am) but the designs used in lenses longer than 50mm render OOF highlights in a much more pleasing fashion. In the case of the 85L specifically, it has this brilliant property of transitioning from the in-focus area to OOF seamlessly. The 85L paints the background in a way that the 50/1.2L completely fails to do. I have a bunch of photos I took back in the fall of '09 with the 85L and my crappy-ever-for-its-time 30D. I re-edited a bunch in the last few years. I posted some here a while ago, and I'll dig up a few more example later. Right now my (sainted, octogenarian) mother is pestering me to pack the cars to drive back to MV tomorrow.

This instant reaction to catch something is common. Back in the day my soldering iron was an Antex 25W yellow handled one. Astonishingly half a century on, they still make them https://www.antex.co.uk/products/precision-range-soldering-irons/xs25/ . Note there is no stand. So it sat on the table while I was building something - and then the mains power cable pulled it off the bench. Instant reaction - catch the hot stick. Number of times there was the smell of cooking meat when I grabbed the business end as it fell. More recently (couple of years ago) I was stripping ptfe sleeved wire with a scalpel, which skittered off the bench. So some hardwired reaction in the brain caused me to catch the falling scalpel between my legs. I then had the horrid job of pulling the scalpel out of my thigh into which it was embedded. Really makes you wonder why the brain's wiring causes us to do something so daft.

I would caution that you don't use that tablesaw. In the hands of an experienced woodworker it would be less than optimal. With an inexperienced person it would be quite dangerous. I can see from the pics that the fence is out of parallel from the blade. Not at all uncommon for that type of fence system. And the older they are, the worse they get. But the most dangerous thing about that saw is the lack of a riving knife. Most saws didn't have a riving knife back in the day, and indeed I used saws without one up until the last 7 years or so. But being aware and being experienced is a giant plus. I wouldn't want to use one today if I could avoid it. The riving knife keeps wood from bending back onto itself while cutting. This happens from pressure in the wood itself, and it causes the wood to bind the blade. This causes kickback which can be very dangerous, even to a very experienced wood worker. No one knows this better than Dr. Wood himself!

I rescued what I believe is my grandfather's old table from my father's barn today: My grandfather went into a nursing home in 1994. My grandmother lived another 3 years but passed in 1997. My grandfather actually outlived my father by 6 months(!) There was a lot of chaos in my life between August of 2000 (when my father died) and uh ...today, really. At some point in the last 23 years I figured out that my father had grabbed a bunch of my grandfather's tools from the Vineyard and dragged them back here to the mainland. I don't think he ever actually did anything with them (he was already sick with the cancer that would take him.) I am far less inclined with anything involving woodworking than the previous two generations of men in my family. My grandfather build this house in the 50s, and expanded it in the 70s: (Seen here in regular digital, HDR, and Velvia 50, because I am a different kind of nut.) He also built this barn he called "The Doghouse": He also built the toolshed we moved next to it. My father, who was inhumanly energetic, invariably the smartest person in the room, and relentlessly competitive, was not going to be outdone. He built barns bigger than most people's houses: This was the "woodshed" he built, but he never actually put firewood in it. It turns out that he was even better at stuffing buildings full of ...shit, really. Meanwhile I'm barely qualified to assemble a shelf. Also I find most power tools kind of scary. Especially spinning blades. On the plus side, I still have all my fingers. Either way I'm dragging my grandfather's tools back to MV where they belong.

a moment between a brother and sister, who also happen to be among the best kayakers in the world. The sister had just come in 3rd in the world among women, and the brother was about to come in first for men.

The family continues to under-consume bananas.

I mentioned Katherine the dancer a number of times, but I haven't posted a photo of her in ages. She was a woman I met in a local nightclub not quite 20 years ago. She was a dancer in the New York club scene in the early 90s. For a variety of reasons she left NYC and now lives in a hill town in western MA. Katherine is ...quite a character, but I always had very good chemistry with her as a subject for photography. I took two sets of photos with her in 2006. The first of which was about 3 days after I got my first DSLR (the never very good EOS 30D) and the second was with the same camera 3 months later. At that time I had bought a 35mm F/2 and 50mm F/1.4. I also had learned quite a bit about taking photos, but still effectively knew nothing. Starting 2020, I began revisiting and re-editing the shots I took during those two sessions. I still pick away at the remaining unedited ones that I think are worth pursuing, but I'm largely done. In '06, I ran a bunch of the photos through the Holga and Lomo Photoshop scripts I liked at the time. In retrospect, it's clear I leaned in to lo-fi nature of the results those scripts produced to mask flaws present in the originals. 14 years later, I had different ideas, software and skills for editing photos. Instead of overly dramatic PS scripts, I've been working the use of lookup tables. LUTs are a thing primarily used in video, but with some careful work they can make subtle but impactful changes in still images as well. This shot always reminded me of the Houses of the Holy album cover. Taken with the never spectacular EF 75-300mm F/4-5.6 USM III. Her face is a bit blurred in this one, but I like the look of determination. A rare B&W conversion. This one just works better without color. Observant viewers will note that while I left behind many of my mid-00s bad habits, I still put a vignette effect on most of these images. I like how it looks on portraits.

I bought a 8 inch thick, 6 foot long plank of London Plane from a guy, and asked if he could reduce the width so it would go through my planer. He fired up the scariest table saw I've ever seen. Three phase, 48" blade "it can take 60 inch" he chirped up, and massive riving knife to suit. It took a good 20-30 seconds to get up to howling speed. He took this monster plank, and it went through the 6 foot length like through butter. He walked away from the machine (still running with the plank in place), I thought to get a push stick. It was to get a wedge to hammer into the cut end to stop it gripping this howling blade and riving knife. The craziest thing is it got towards the end, and he pushed the last bit through with one hand on one side of the blade and one on the other. I could not watch this. I actually closed my eyes when I realised that is what he planned.

I'm doing some changes in my toy room. I need to move a pile of amps.... it's a nightmare 😫