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Hank Mobley - No Room For Squares 192kHz on Qobuz Ex.

With leftover pulled pork in the fridge it was time for nachos.

Paul Motian - Paul Motian box set (from the Decca digging). First CD purchase in awhile. Ex.

Death by Lightning Highly entertaining for history nerds (raises hand). I absolutely recommend this. Only four one hour episodes so commitment is low.

I thought it was released in English...

So, funny thing. I checked the "DJ edits" folder on my server. First of all, the last edit I did was July of 2021. Sadge, as the kids say. Second of all, in there is "Hooverphonic - Mad About You (Live at Koningin Elisabethzaal 2012) (no applause).flac" which I did sometime in late 2014 apparently.

I'll take Things that never happened for $500 Alex...

Red Eye (UK) - season 2 brings Detective Sargeant Hana Li (Jing Lusi) back, this time substituting the confines of the US Embassy in London as the locale. Lots of twists & turns, and of course you don't know who is really who. Easy watch, especially if you liked series 1:

The Copenhagen Test (Peacock) - A government operative-turned-analyst discovers his eyes & ears have been hacked to transmit what he experiences to an unknown destination. The government agency he works for tries to make his weakness a strength by putting him back in the field. A "Quantum Leap" sort-of feel (to me anyway), and likeable actors make it an easy watch. Bring along a big hunk of your suspension of disbelief & have fun.

Jenny Lewis @Austin City Limits on PBS

Shot at Lexington Pride on a Rollei 35 using Kodak 200.

Some homemade pizza.

Lets not forget the Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize after destabilising Chile under the socialist government of Allende, and putting in August Pinochet - a torturing, disappearances human abusing right wing dictator. And Chile was a whole lot further from the USA than Venezuela. Slight personal recollection. My Dad was in the Merchant Navy the early/mid 50's to mid 60's in (by today's standard) tiny oil tankers. The ship used to dock at Punta Cardon in North Venezuela to the oil refinery there. So Venezuelan oil was a thing way back

Dead Like Me

Finished watching the Beast in Me on Netflix, I have to tell you a must watch.

Watching on Amazon requires selecting German as the language and English for the subtitles, which is a huge improvement over the trailer of dubbed crap. 👍🏻

Tank. German movie that's been dubbed over and where the captions don't match the voice over....dizzying. Interesting movie overall. HS

2 current sources now. 1 between unreg caps and passfet. other current source between regulated caps and output. kgsshv600vpowerv2 - CADCAM.ZIP circlotronpsupdated2cs.pdf

Ha ha. Baron Trump-konnen. Similar fatness, similar colonial intents with force, taking possession of areas for natural resources, similar survival of assassination attempt(s).

*adjusts tinfoil hat* It's not just about stealing Venezuelan oil (and whatever other natural resources that are a bonus). What we're seeing here is an attempt to "stabilize" the world's oil market using Venezuela as a buffer when we destabilize things by attacking Iran.

I'm rather fond of the panorama modes on the GFX100RF. This is a raw conversion in Lightroom with basic edits. The M4 Pro Mini I picked up chews through the raw files out of this camera a lot more effectively than the base M4 did. I need to try the Ricoh wide angle adapter that I picked up for the 100RF. Somebody did the math and with the adapter you can get the same FOV as an X-Pan, which is exciting (I always wanted an X-Pan).

Higher gain and in my opinion better frequency response. I haven’t tried other than the 100uF electrolytics. With the capacitors the amplifier is an absolute favorite.

'Weeks earlier, U.S. officials had already settled on an acceptable candidate to replace Mr. Maduro, at least for the time being: Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who had impressed Trump officials with her management of Venezuela’s crucial oil industry. The people involved in the discussions said intermediaries persuaded the administration that she would protect and champion future American energy investments in the country. “I’ve been watching her career for a long time, so I have some sense of who she is and what she’s about,” said one senior U.S. official, referring to Ms. Rodríguez. “I’m not claiming that she’s the permanent solution to the country’s problems, but she’s certainly someone we think we can work at a much more professional level than we were able to do with him,” the official added, referring to Mr. Maduro. It was an easy choice, the people said. Mr. Trump had never warmed up to the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who had organized a winning presidential campaign in 2024, earning her the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Since Mr. Trump’s re-election, Ms. Machado has gone out of her way to please him, calling him a “champion of freedom,” mimicking his talking points on election fraud in the United States and even dedicating her Peace Prize to him. It was in vain. On Saturday, Mr. Trump said he would accept Ms. Rodríguez, saying that Ms. Machado lacked the “respect” needed to govern Venezuela. U.S. officials say that their relationship with Ms. Rodríguez’s interim government will be based on her ability to play by their rules, adding that they reserve the right to take additional military action if she fails to respect America’s interests. Despite Ms. Rodríguez’s public condemnation of the attack, a senior U.S. official said that it was too soon to draw conclusions about what her approach would be and that the administration remained optimistic that they could work with her. ... For all her technocratic leanings, Ms. Rodríguez has never denounced the brutal repression and corruption sustaining Mr. Maduro’s rule, once calling her decision to join the government an act of “personal revenge” for her father’s death in prison in 1976, after being interrogated by intelligence agents from pro-U.S. governments.' https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/04/world/americas/trump-venezuela-leader-rodriguez-machado.html?smid=url-share

Picture from work in progress (if there ever was anything else). I can now start the Super-Carbon without using the Variac. Initially, the PSU SicFets blew up during startup when doing a full power on, very similar to what SimmConn reported here: Presumably my SicFets ventured outside their SoA during startup. I'm not using the Cree C2Ms here (though it's a similar spec'd SicFet) and I have the current sources set for 25mA which might be pushing things a bit, so this particular problem may very well be unique to my build. However, since this forum has a lot of clever participants , the solution was at hand in the same thread. As per @Kerry's advice, I wired in the depletion mode MosFet current limiter directly after the pre-reg caps instead of having it after the post-reg caps. Also, I added a Vds clamping Zener as per @simmconn's mod. Not skilled enough to tell which mod did the trick or if both are necessary (and one can of course never exclude the possibility that it now works for some other reason that I have no idea about), but anyway it now starts up without anything blowing up and I can move on to the "oh, I'm supposed to listen to it?" bit. Special thanks to Kerry and SimmConn (in addition to Kevin designing these things in the first place); I would not have figured this out without you! Apologies to all UK members; haven't gotten around to finding a new picture host yet.

I think you mean New Texas.

Hoping for a much better 2026 than its predecessor.

Browsing through the Decca catalog, including titles not on streaming services (at least outside YT and that I can find). PIOMBO – Italian Crime Soundtracks from the Years of Lead (1973-1981)

Upgrading a Silicon Graphics Indigo2: Going farther back - the new Commodore 64 Ultra:

Quite good.

So, funny thing...

Trump told The Atlantic on Sunday that Rodriguez could face a fate similar to Maduro, who is being detained in federal prison in New York on narcoterrorism and drug trafficking charges, if she doesn’t align with U.S. interests. “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump said. The comment marks a stark reversal from Trump’s praise of Rodriguez in a press conference Saturday following the attack. The president said U.S. officials had spoken with Rodriguez, and reported that “she’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.” https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/04/trump-warns-acting-venezuelan-leader-00710314

Trump renews push to annex Greenland after Venezuela strike https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/01/04/greenland-trump-venezuela/88018306007/

I don't think we'll stop at the oil.