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Upcycled redwood siding from the former house on the lot where my brother's new house is. This is the tack room in my sister in law's new barn. It's looking very sweet for a rustic utilitarian space. Still need to finish the ceiling and trim around the doors and window. And then there's another tack room in the garage, aka the tacky room.

Had a most excellent hike today out to see the waterfalls of Al’s back yard Tam. Flows are awesome after all the rain we’ve had. Dam at the bottom was spilling at full speed.

DIY JBL 4355 home cinema soundbar.

Hope it's been a great one Grahm! 😁 I'll be joining you in 60 club in a couple of months... Cheers!

Me: ramen I do love me some of my baby bok baby bok baby bok choy

Nailed wood onto walls with Al and Alden.

Great news! Our friend and Lance's former coach had his fencer take Bronze at the Paris world cup. Lance fenced Cheung, the bronze medalist years ago with Lance getting his ass kicked but it was a good high level almost Olympic ass kicking. Of note, while training here a few years ago we had all three of these guys plus the rest of the Hong Kong team over to the house for some post training 12 hour braised short rib tacos. The coaches and their wives loved my wine, what a surprise.

I cannot offer comparisons, but the two IMS's that came with my Lelit Bianca have been great. I only bother with the 20g basket these days as I shoot for a 2:1 20 to 40ish when I'm pulling. I always watch with one of those little mirrors and it does a great job based on anything I've seen on videos or in person unless I screw up which fortunately doesn't happen much any more unless I just happens to have a fresh batch of beans I am figuring out. On a separate note, I keep meaning to post about the Acaia Pearl scale that the shop tossed in where I purchased the espresso machine. That thing really makes life much better / efficient. It's more robust than I care to admit as well (incident teaching my sister's kids how to make coffee...let's just say it was the only time my Niche ended up on its side...). HS

Curry!

What's better on cold wet and windy evening, than a warming curry. Before After

GRLV noise frequency graph.

that board was designed for a specific chassis. which one, i no longer remember. i could make it fit a current chassis if that is what people want.

It started with repairing a badly damaged shangri la jr driver 2 years ago, I almost rebuilt the set from the diaphragm to the stators，and of course the dust cover😦 The first thing I discovered is that the 'nano-technology' used by hifiman actually comes from the covering used by indoors aircraft model enthusiasts，the name is OS film and it is still available on ebay or https://www.indoorffsupply.com/shop/os-film-25ft-roll-1 the driver of the hifiman estats is completely glued which is similar to the early stax lambdas, but hifiman glue is significantly worse...after opening the driver i found that they only use OS film for their dust cover, the diaphragm is another PET film ~ a little bit thicker but with much better strength. In order to repair the diaphragm, I found a seller on Alibaba who can provide samples of Toray PET film with thickness below 2 microns at an acceptable price，and use the inner tire stretcher to stretch the film like any other diy estats ，Then test it with a 10" subwoofer and minidsp umik-1 to find proper F0. conductive coating is another serious problem，I've tried quite a few methods including antistatic agents like licron crystal, ANTISTATIK100，floor cleaner，carbon-based coatings such as graphene, and alcohol-soluble nylon, even tried nano-silver wire solution and metal evaporation...Some of them are sensitive to humidity, some arcs，some are ridiculously expensive, some have uneven surface resistance distribution, and some are sensitive to temperature changes. Yah~ finding the proper conductive coating is the most difficult part especially for a layman. unexpectedly, I tried to search for hifiman patents, hoping to find something useful... here's a patent showing that they used some kind of metal oxide nano particles as conductive coating for their estats. emmm，very interesting...🙄 By consulting with chemistry professionals, I decided to try a solution called ATO (antimony doped tin oxide), there are many antistatic agents I have used before have ATO ingredients though. I got some ATO alcohol solution at concentration around 10~15%, it works really well, and coating appearance is somewhat identical to hifiman diaphragm! The last thing is to repair stators. hifimans probably use #150~300 brass mesh and solder their edges to a 2mm thick aluminum base plate PCB board, then glue the rest of middle part. I've tried tensioning those brass mesh with embroidery frame and manual screen stretcher，but it is not tight enough to stretche brass mesh in this way, the mesh itself is too strong to tighten it up... then I found some brass sieves with different meshes on taobao and these machined copper screens are perfect for making DIY mesh stators... after everything's ready，i desoldered OG brass mesh, cleaned the copper foil, applied low temperature solder paste, and carefully soldered the new brass mesh with a heat gun. During the process of repairing shangri la jr, I started planning to make some bigger mesh stator estats... of course，the target is its big brother shangri la SR😈I received a set of the first batch of shangri la sr made in 2016，here is the headphone inside，yap~inherited the tradition of hifiman with such horrible workmanship...😱 however，SR sounds not as technical as the X9000 though，but with more pleasant and passion. SR uses 3mm thick aluminum base plate PCB instead of 2mm on JR version，2 black things in the middle are to prevent the diaphragm from attaching stators，The D-S gap is around 0.7~0.8mm(thickness of glue included) which is identical to JR version，active area is close to 6400mm² ，that is pretty large diaphragm size for a commercial product though，but less 5300mm² of area on stator allows air to pass through. I tried to use the 3mm FR4 board as mesh holder at first time，however，mesh stator disassembly is not an easy job...therefore，I changed to use 1.5mm brass plates as the mesh holder and glued the copper mesh to it , brass mesh is also replaced with higher # red copper mesh for more convenient adhension. I spent most of time adjusting the tension of the diaphragm and finally found the tension needed for F0 similar to OG SR ,the clone driver has a slightly enlarged diaphragm(6839mm²) ，0.73mm fr-4 pcb spacer， and everything is screwed to the housing cover. The frequency response of clone and SR are generally similar，but the sensitivity difference between the two is about 1.5dB actually，SR is more diffused...clone one sounds a bit more clearer. SR has obvious recession between 1-2kHz，it may be caused by a sealing problem in the space between the driver and the earcup.... It's unlikely to be solved without EQ, but it doesn't sound as bad as it looks from the graphics. one more thing... Every shangri la must have a throne , so I made one for my mutation🤣

RIP Gina Lollobrigida. She died today at 95. One of the very few icons from the golden era of cinema that were left.