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Jose and Nate, I may be at a totally different level of cardio fitness than you guys but your exploits are inspiring to us mere mortals. Keep it up!

I´m ready for my next challenge (1º Oct). Cicloturista de la Gomera 🙂 I have very good friends in the amphitryon team and this year I have managed to square the dates to be with them

Thanks guys, now 96% of the way there! Bonus is there's a $50k match running this week so your impact has been doubled.

This weekend’s project jumped in front of the chairs. Cousin’s baby came early so making a gift that would be strange for anyone but a cattle farmer and large animal vet. Even incorporated the Dad’s cattle brand at the top. Since many of you are city slickers, this is supposed to be an ear tag for cattle.

Some picks of the last week

Wrapped up the flip cart, now time to start on the Rocking chair Adirondacks for the new fire pit platform down by the lake.

Short answer: in almost all cases high accuracy is not required unless specified otherwise in the bill of materials or schematic. Most builders are using 1% tolerance resistors up to about 1W, except in the most critical of uses, and high wattage resistors are usually 5% or so. Longer answer: There are several factors to consider. A "7K" 1% resistor could actually be between 7.07K and about 6.93K and still be in spec. Similarly 4.2K could be between about 4.24K and 4.16K and still be labelled as 4.2K 1% resistor. So if you are lucky with your 4.22K and 6.98K resistors they could fall within the specs of the 7K and 4.2K anyway. If you have a good LCR meter or multimeter you could buy multiple resistors, measure and hand select the closest match to the values you want. But this is usually not necessary and requires a highly accurate measuring device. If you need accuracy without measurement you can go for 0.1% parts but they cost more, typically don't come is as wide variety of wattages and often have lower voltage ratings. Also consider that all resistors heat up when current passes through them and the heat changes their resistance. The amount the resistance changes depends on the materials and manufacturing of the resistor and is usually specified in ppm per degree of temp rise (lower is better i.e. more stable but also more costly). Unless the use of the resistor in the circuit is critical, around 50 to 200ppm is fine for low wattage resistors and multiple hundred ppm is common for higher wattage... So in circuit, depending upon the power the resistor is dissipating, its resistance will vary from that measured when cold anyway... It is vital you don't exceed the voltage or wattage rating of a resistor and it is good practice to operate them bellow their ratings for safety and long term reliability. When looking at the voltage rating look for working voltage - this is the maximum voltage it can handle continuously. Some specs don't tell you working voltage but rather the maximum voltage just before failure which is a lot less useful. Some specs don't tell you if the voltage rating is maximum or working... so assume its maximum and the working voltage will be a lot lower.

Sounds like a job for Steve.

NSFW. This guy shoots Leica and is a spectacular example of why Leica glass just obliterates everything this side of large format. His images are so sharp it's stupid.

Damn, 2x8 cedar rough sawn, $75 a stick. Did Putin cause this? I am going to have $4k Adirondack chairs.

Speaking of pop, I have been listening to a new artist to me, OSTON. She has been putting out a series of short albums over the last few years. Gives me a good Dodie feel and some Lorde, etc. Just Finished both of these. Am I Talking Too Much? OSTON 2021 https://album.link/i/1577449646 I'm Definitely Talking Too Much OSTON 2021 https://album.link/i/1590055069 Catchy well produced but not over produced (there are only a few writers).

RIP to what seems like two very good men.....sorry for you and all his (their) family and friends, Brent.

RIP Matt -- condolences Brent...

Passed the first round of interviewing on my dream job!

I'm starting to get the feeds and speeds dialled in now I have a 1.5Kw water-cooled spindle and some good spoil board bed rigidity, properly levelled and trammed the machine. I'm slowly gaining confidence and beginning to believe the reviews that said the Vasto can cut aluminium... I managed to cut ventilation slots in aluminium using a 2mm diameter single flute DLC end mill with 300mm/min feed rate, depth of cut 1.6mm, 50% overlap, 18000rpm. The test slots were 160mm long, 3mm deep, I tried 2mm, 3mm and 4mm widths.... surface finish is like a mirror, no burs and no chips welding themselves to anything. No cutting fluid was used and there was no finishing pass: Thats so better than my first attempts with the 400W motor and a corn cob end mill which produced garbage surface finish at much lower surface speeds, much lower depth of cut and destroyed the end mill very quickly:

Checking out Eli right now. Thanks Rob!

I had to read through the whole thread after seeing your quote of my post. What is a maniacal bunch of cunts! Claire might actually want that English to Elvish thing.

Built a Megatron. Seems to be the perfect amp to build during the seemingly unending shortage of 10m90s. I used up my final few pieces of 10m90s and C2M1000170D for this simple build, and it gave me some mild anxiety and regret for not hoarding up those sands. However, the build experience and result are worth it. Build process and after thoughts I started off with a pair of generic chassis from Taobao. 32cm wide, 8cm tall, 35cm deep. Silver and black anodised aluminium. They weren't available in other finishes but this looks clean enough to me. They do have some minor scratches and dents if you look hard enough though. The casework was done by a laser etching service provider I found on Taobao. The end result was a clean and modern appearance. Inside the PSU are a pair of +/-450V GRHV, +/- 15V GRLV, delay board and a 270VA toroidal transformer. The idea was to create a PSU that can be used by both the Megatron and the Grounded Grid amp units. These components fit the chassis nicely with little room for a third GRHV board for the 300v rail for Megatron. Outputs are split into AC and DC outputs. Transformer specs: The heatsinks for the amp unit were probably redundant since most of the heat comes off from the top. The amp board could probably fit into a smaller and lighter chassis, but I chose the same chassis as the PSU just so that they can stack. The amp build was straight forward and relatively easy compared to a Carbon build or any of the KG dynamic amp builds, due to the low component count. I did not use any boutique components in this build. The coupling caps are Wima, and the voltage rail decoupling caps are Siemens. Volume pot is an EIZZ-style stepped attenuator, internal signal wirings are pure copper. Special care was taken when routing the heater filament wires to avoid hum. Amp testing and adjustment was simple. Just ensure the all the rails are as spec'ed and that's about it. The voltage offset settles automatically after power on. No need to fiddle with any potentiometer when the amp is powered on, so it is much safer to test than the Carbon or the T2 family. Sound I used the Megatron with ES-1A, and here is my impression of the Megatron after comparing it with GG (on the same PSU), Carbon (450V GRHV 15V GRLV) and Mini T2 (triple GRHV). Currently I am using the Megatron with a quad of Mullard XF2 and PSVane EL34PH. The front end tubes are all Valvos. The sound of the Megatron is warm, slightly thick in the mids, and non fatiguing and airy in the treble. It sounds very natural and the imaging is holographic with good recordings. While it is very detailed, it does not ruin joy if the recordings are of poorer quality. Older or poorly mixed recordings have a smooth timbre and organic vibe when heard from the Megatron. While the Megatron's treble is not as extended as the Carbon's, it complements the overall signature to create a very complete soundstage and convincing sense of separation and space. What makes the Megatron standout from crowd lies in its low end - it is an amp for bassheads. It has by far the most THICC bass compared to my other amps, even more than the Carbon. The bass extends as deep as the Carbon, but the Megatron has a nice lift in the mid bass that makes my ES 1a slam extra hard. Listening to EDMs and fast pop tracks on E-Stats is finally satisfying, and I can finally stash away my planars. Carbon is like an antithesis to the Megatron. Carbon is like a clean cutting razor with little tolerance for inaccuracies where as Megatron adds a lot of joy and flavour into the listening experience. Carbon also sounds a little linear. Although the stage is wide, it is not as deep as the Megatron's. GG sounds more organic than Carbon in general. The GG's signature is quite dependent on the tubes. With the XF2s, GG is warm and clean, but doesn't deviate far from the Carbon sound. The bass isn't as tight and fast, and treble could sound stiff and slightly shrill with the wrong tubes - such as the re-issue Mullard EL34. Mini T2 sounds slightly leaner and cleaner than the Megatron, and has a much smaller bass. It is as enjoyable a listening experience for me, but the Mini T2 was much harder to build - by sheer component count. Tube placement and choices Placing the EL34s in this manner shown below allows one to use two matched quads of EL34 if matched octets are unavailable. Initially I used cheap Linlai tubes for the front end and had issues with sound imbalance and hum - turned out that the tubes were the culprits. Switched to some cheap NOS and the issues were gone. So my advice would be to use well built tubes from reputable makers. The 12AU7s affect the sound significantly. The option to roll tubes makes Megatron extra fun to use. More photos of the internals and the back of the amp coming up soon, when I am more free. I would say that the Megatron is my favourite amp - until I build the T2.

Very nice bikes around here! This is my commuter Gazelle T10+ with the battery off mounted on a 1up rack. And my wife's bike also

I got bored waiting for the replacement bolts to arrive and so purchased my own and finished installing the missing bolts. Here is my first CNC project: Making my own Stax 5 pin sockets using ptfe design in vectric vcarve desktop: making some (ptfe) chips and no router bits broken... final result after deburring and running the drill holes all the way through: overall I am happy with the result. The tabs holding the piece into the material could have been smaller and after test fitting the pins the holes should have been 4.6mm rather than 4.5mm but I don't have a 4.6mm drill yet. other than that I have a working Stax socket 🙂 This first version uses 3 tools: 3.175mm end mill, 3mm drill and 4.5mm drill.... its slow and boring changing tools, so I remade the tool paths only using a 3.175mm end mill, ran the code and found the drill holes were smaller than expected. I measured the 3.175mm end mill... 3.13mm... hmm... so I updated the tool data base with the correct diameter and re-ran the cut again.... I realise now I have to measure all my tools and not rely on the size they claim. I could not find any metal m3 nuts that fit the threads but are small enough not to touch each other so I used nylon nuts instead. I tested the insulation between the closest pins pairs to each other and got 300Gohm at 5.5Kv.

I forget to hang some photos of this amplifier. Sorry, I did not have any GRLV at that time ready.

RIP Joey D. That's sad and way too young. We saw him play several times and he could swing. 😢

I've just known that Joey DeFrancesco died yesterday. 51. Rest in peace and thanks for the soulful music

Is this thread indexed by google? I forget. I had a dualski colonoscopy and endoscopy yesterday. The prep work was gruelling in extremis. The good news is that I don't have any obvious symptoms. The bad news is that there's no explanation as to why I'm sick so severely and so often. Today I am operating at like 1/10 power. Unsure if I'm doing my radio show tomorrow or not.

RIP to an old friend of mine. We'd known each other since somewhere between 4 and 6 years old. Not really close anymore, but he was a fire dective (or something) when Kristen's mom burned down their house. We had Kristen's step-dad's ashes (Emma, the kids' aunt's father) inside and I was able to catch up with him and get him to go in and retrieve them. They were in a bag inside a cardboard box. He was able to save those before the fire reignited and would have taken the ashes (and some other things we got out with Matt's help.) His mom was my 2nd grade teacher back when my dad was principal. I heard a lot of chatter about the two who passed away, but woke up this morning to a message from my mom who let me know it was Matt. He's at least the 2nd or 3rd from that friend group who's died in the past few years (the other being my best friend growing up.) He left behind a wife and I believe two young kids. As someone who lost his dad when he was 10 (and my dad was just a couple years older than Matt and I were/are now), this one was sad. https://newschannel9.com/news/local/communities-mourn-loss-of-thp-trooper-marion-county-commissioner-in-helicopter-crash RIP Matt Blansett.