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Happy 21st birthday to my daughter Zoë! I know I've known a lot of you since she was around 2-3 years old, and somehow she made it through to adulthood. Here she is at her birthday dinner with her future MIL, having her first legal drink! (And one of the very few she's ever had.) I'm really proud of her, and she had a good day. Her past two birthdays have been bad (tested positive for COVID in 2021 during her fall break an hour before she was leaving for the airport to fly home, and her now fiancee (Michael, above) had just driven home to CO, so she wound up in AZ all alone on her first birthday away from home. Today? Today started a new trend in her having good ones. ❤️

Karen has been bugging me a bit about my speaker volume, so getting a tiny bit back into some headphone listening. I ended up ordering one of these....coming this weekend I think. My Orchard streamer (newer one using AKM chips) has RCA and XLR outs, so driving a small Stax setup RCA, and will use the Midgard via XLR and drive Sennheiser HD660 v2's via the Halo XLR output. This amp is getting some pretty good reviews, especially at the price. Thinking the Halo feedback process will work well with the Senn's.

thanks, gang! 🙏

Thanks MLA and Kevin for your help. I got the player up and running yesterday first using the variac to slowly ramp-up. Later tested it without the variac and, fingers crossed, it's working fine so far. The device in question is a Marantz SA-1 SACD/CD player which uses linear power supply based on what I can see in the service manual. To expand on a long story made short, it powered up but was unresponsive when I first took it out of the box. After consulting with the service manual I dissembled the unit and found a blown fuse inside. Instead of the factory spec'ed 1A/250V slow-blow fuse, whoever last serviced the unit put in a fast-blow 2A/250V fuse. Which likely explains why it's blown upon turn-on. I replaced it with a proper slow-blow 1A/250V fuse. This is when I posted my question thinking I should play it safe given the age of the unit and suspecting why the last person serviced it put in an out-of-spec fuse. By the way, this thing is beautifully built like a tank and getting to the fuses take some work. A few photos from the web and of the exact unit. It's wonderful sounding especially with the SACD.

I visited my Mother for Thanksgiving and she's offloading. She gave me a decent Nikon digital camera that she gifted her Husband. But both of them are legally blind now, so photography is out, as well as game playing. My family has always enjoyed playing games together. In Texas my Mom, her Husband and I had several Winter Texan couples as friends. They all lived in motorhomes/fifth wheel trailers in RV parks. There was a game popularized in RV parks called Pegs and Jokers. It's kind of like Sorry, but played with cards on homemade game boards. I thought the original boards were quite fugly, so I designed my own version. The boards join together, so you can accommodate different sized groups. These are the original style boards, that are usually made by retired RVers. Anyway, she gave me the board set that I made for her, which is the first set I ever made. I've made dozens since then, but still like that set a lot.

Yeah, with you on that one. So thanks guys. I still doubt that I'll be able to produce a great picture, but who knows, maybe I'll take more time to learn. It'll actually be nice to have a camera other than my cell phone.

It uses AAs??????? What a fucking find! I'm not joking, proprietary batteries that will all eventually die on you eventually, and be expensive to replace make me very sad. Especially since I think Sony just locked out all third-party batteries too.

Have a great one and maybe today you can have a dram to grow on! Cheers!

I would think for that application it would be the same as how you would wire an SE headphone jack. L+, R+ and PSU gnd for the - for each channel (L and R). For example, look at how Kerry did it for the SS mini dynalo.

Don't have all the fun on your own. Post those pics.

Super cool! Yeah it’s all about the 8’s and 9’s (well and the Jokers).

I have seen that one before. The individual boards make more sense to me, as you can adjust for the number of players. And it's easier to store. I had a custom leather bag made to hold my set. And my Mom's old set fits in there perfect, as all my boards are the exact same size. Al's Sister wants my own previous set. She probably wants to practice to be able to beat me!

Marbles Pursuit! I like this version a lot: https://www.etsy.com/listing/913172025/jokers-and-marbles-board-game-sorry-game?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_a-toys_and_games-games_and_puzzles-board_games-other&utm_custom1=_k_CjwKCAiAvJarBhA1EiwAGgZl0AcUYhegY69WSIj1Hpc0ppqqcXexmGECxVuRn8sIanJ7dY5e2ukwCBoCMWkQAvD_BwE_k_&utm_content=go_12569403118_122509904147_507439707086_pla-314262775187_m__913172025_12768591&utm_custom2=12569403118&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADtcfRJ52yD0d1ekRgOxnuTJJtHUx&gclid=CjwKCAiAvJarBhA1EiwAGgZl0AcUYhegY69WSIj1Hpc0ppqqcXexmGECxVuRn8sIanJ7dY5e2ukwCBoCMWkQAvD_BwE

Happy Birthday!

Belated Happy Birthday, Bryan! Hope it was a great day.

Happy birthday!

Happy Birthday!!!

Happy (belated?) birthday! (party favour noise)

Happy Birthday, Bryan! Here's to (more / less wee?) drams Next year.

Visited my Mother for Thanksgiving. She had saved a camera for me that she wanted me to have. I'm not much of a photographer, and an expensive camera would be wasted on me. But I'm completely ignorant to what I have here. Is this just junk, or will it be a decent camera that I should hold onto?

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Bryan!

Happy Bourbonthday!

Happy Birthday Bryan! I hope you have a great one!

Happy Birthday Bryan!!

Happy Birthday Bryan, Good thing you got the DYA in before today... :} Cheers

Soar on your birthday!

Happy birthday, Bryan! Hope it is a fun one and you aren't too hungover from that whisky marathon yesterday.

For those in SF, there’s also a Sugimoto exhibit at the Fraenkel through next month. https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/a-closer-look-hiroshi-sugimoto-brush-impression

I used to work for an Israeli company, I loosely keep in touch with several folks there. The "average" Israeli, according to most of them, wants peace and would gladly accept a two state solution. The key as to why many still hesitate, and don't want to just make a formal state of Palestine, is that the Palestinians have proven NOT to be able to push out the violent part of their population. There is a history in Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt, and I think even Saudi Arabia, where Palestinian populations - or that extreme element at least - incited violence, caused strife, and celebrated local Arab deaths. There is a reason that Palestinian refugees are not being taken in by other Arab countries.... These Israeli's I know agree that Israel will gladly give land for peace (TBD about Netanyahu), but still would need proof that Palestinians would be peaceful before allowing them to be a formal state. Self-govern is indeed one thing, and in the case of Gaza (which has self-governed since about 2005) it has not proven peaceful at all. One person I know was in tears over the bombings, for the civilian lives lost, and as Iain says will be propaganda for Hamas recruitment. But he also echoes others' thoughts that Israel almost has no choice. If they give in too much without the promise of peace, they will be seen as weak, and others will repeat what Hamas has done. I just saw a picture by Banksy which showed a small Jewish and (I assume) Palestinian child watering/caring for a small tree that seemed just planted. That made me sad...if one generation can be taught that peace is an option, there can be hope. But so far, I'm not seeing it....

I have the IQ360 for hats. Also working on 3D images for the back of Aluminum business cards. Not bad on the RF laser but probably better when the Fiber gets here. Still need to actually build that jig since I never set up the camera in the laser.

Chassis Mocked up. Still mostly empty. Definitely will need to trim the lips of the top and bottom plates of the PSU chassis to fit the IEC block's trim, but otherwise extremely happy. Not sure if I've mentioned but this is just a one-off for personal use. Definitely a huge setup, and doesn't come close to the refinement of many of your amazing builds, but for the first headphone amp I've built from scratch, (RIGHT to the deep end, haha!) I'm pretty content so far. haha! Not pictured, JAE DC connectors, Neutrik XLR inputs, CMC Rhodium 5-ways.

HC’ish Ornaments.

All Christmas all week here as the orders are piling up.

Spent the morning sort of woodworking. Thinking of selling these as a craft kit, as the cutting is by far the easiest part and the painting and gluing is a pain in the ass.

^ What's the worst that could happen?