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I could listen to the tone of this instrument all night.

Had not made empanadas in a while. Decided that needed fixing so I defrosted some left over carnitas and that was that. Well, first I made a double batch of dough so I could make them more hand-pie sized. This was half of them.

My plate was almost as decadent

A frendly Head-Caser has kindly lent me four EL156, So, I made myself some EL156 to EL34 adaptors. Here a Megatron SS CCD something with the four EL156. Same friendly fellow has built himself a couple of filament supply for DHT similar to the one in above post.

amp board for single ended. you can run this as low as +/-24v and as high as +/-40v pioneera09amp - CADCAM.ZIP pioneera09pre2gain - CADCAM.ZIP

I had to do it! I had extra shoulder bacon, English muffins, eggs and so on. I did cook more hash browns than intended.

clever huh? first time i have seen this. what it really is, is some local feedback around the current mirror. the lower impedance load forces the current source to supply more current to the drive of the output transistors. all those output transistors in parallel really form an extremely stiff drive current without global feedback. in single ended form, perfect for low impedance ribbons. and 30v/10a switchers are cheap. lot of heat however, 1.5 amp bias current. (total) i have a single ended gain stage to go with it. basically half of the balanced version with a cfa capable input section. input section can have local feedback as shown. or remove that resistor. updated to current version pioneera09pre.pdf

A certain 8TB drive was full, so I got a new 12TB drive, mounted it in a trusty external hard drive dock, connected by esata Ran This robocopy H:\ L:\ /E /COPYALL /DCOPY:T /R:0 /W:0 /MT:12 /XJ /LOG:C:\robocopy_H_to_L_full.log And walked away (without an explosion in the background) To get this Total Copied Skipped Mismatch FAILED Extras Dirs : 1966 1966 2 0 0 0 Files : 7172 7169 0 0 3 0 Bytes : 7.270 t 7.266 t 0 0 4.370 g 0 Times : 309:01:27 21:57:50 0:00:00 1:49:56 Speed : 101043866 Bytes/sec. Speed : 5781.776 MegaBytes/min. Ended : Wednesday, December 17, 2025 6:02:03 PM Some 22 Hours later. Swapped the drives, and now I have to play with, Matey.🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️ EDIT: Of course, if the AI Bubble hadn't made cheap storage and ECC DDR5 unobtanium, I'd be expanding a ZFS storage pool on a NAS by just adding a drive, but here we are.

So sad about the Reiners..... What a legacy Rob is leaving.... RIP as well to the victims at Brown University and in Bondi Australia. I think we need aliens to come and spray the earth with "let's get along" mist. This is a fucking crazy world.....

Ironically (?) on the day that Al was supposed to have Detroit-style pizza, that's what I made for dinner.

Tracey Thorn‘s Tinsel and Lights

We caught up with one of the kids who sang on 'A Charlie Brown Christmas.' He's 72 now. https://www.npr.org/2025/12/19/nx-s1-5640171/a-charlie-brown-christmas-christmastime-is-here-peanuts-schulz

Does Broadway count? New music for this revival by Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA fame, with lyrics by Tim Rice.

Some Anti-AntisocialPersonalityDisorder-ant would be a start

I'm gonna go with the The Princess Bride. Saw in theaters in '86 and have watched it periodically throughout the decades. Andre the Giant said he was happiest on the set of that film. It was the one time he felt normal.

Man. So many classics of his it is hard to pick a favorite. Probably Harry and Sally, but Stand by Me also right there for me.

Windy Folk with a Brit twist. And just to shake things up

Alton back doing Alton things - Alton cooks food...

Al and I just prepared Eggs Benedict for the Mayberry compound. I may have overdone it. See you all after a brief food coma.

YGPM

According to the internets. Another version of the same has a line to the Center as positive. On Ebay - some one is selling one with this wall wart power supply Looking it up on Mouser - it is indeed - Center Positive. (unless he is selling it with a supply that would make it not work) But I think it is safe to say - Center +

Bacon, egg and cheese bagel sandos with potatoes.

Two things: (1) This time of year (we're picoseconds from the solstice), the sun does some funny things. (2) My CZJ 135mm F/3.5 Sonnar is one of my favorite lenses, full stop. I describe the images it renders as "handsome." Everything is sharp, colorful, and has the right amount of distance between subjects. In a different universe, I might use a 135mm on a medium format (Hasselblad makes a neat 135mm that'll set you back about 5 large.) It is not the narrow FoV that I like, it's what is to my biased eyes the "correct" amount of telescopic compression. To wit: Note the birds in the upper left corner. Earlier, I was capturing fall colors with the Sonnar: Also this photo got into Flickr's "Explore" section: Nearly 5000 views and 150 favorites later. TBH I find the whole thing kind of silly. Longtime listeners may recall me mentioning that Explore is heavily botted and most of the photos that end up in it are eye catching, but not particularly good. TBH that's what the above is, I think. The Sonnar's bokeh is quite good and the little cedar tree is tack sharp. With that said, the framing is nothing special. It's just a snapshot with a shallow DoF. The Sonnar is a great lens. Flickr is dumb. Bonus, previous photos of mine that I have made it into Explore: The pond next to Edgartown harbor. 2020 rework of a photo I took in 2006. IR version of the same area, 2013. A bungalow, across from Cannonball Park. As I said, eye-catching but not necessarily good. Next time: Cats, squirrels and whatever I get up to with some new glass (more on that later.)

50th Anniversary of Vince Guaraldi’s Jazz Mass at Grace Cathedral Part One Part Two

@

Something I noticed the other day - Qobuz has tapped into Gramophone and a few others like 4F to add Editor's Choice and the like. Not that big of a deal, but a nice addition.

Free endorphin shots here

It's probably a sort of pilot project - if they don't lose their shirts on Type I, maybe they'll fire up Chromium and Metal cassette production later. And what is this stuff for, anyway? Hobbyists, or real music production work? Will most of these tapes go into cheap Tanashin-knockoff Chinese cassette players? Are we playing with analog for analog's sake - should a new cassette transport include noise reduction like Dolby S or is it a solved problem already (Digital Compact Cassette)? Wouldn't it make sense for a new cassette transport to use direct drive instead of belts and fewer parts for reliability? I'm putting this Nakamichi Dragon vs. LX-5 comparo and a boombox review below just for reference - there is a small niche market emerging...

R.I.P. Meathead. He sure brought joy to my life.

RIP Marty DiBergi...

(waits for another Alton Brown post before posting another American Gods post)

Alternating subjects continued. I liked American Gods as a bit of a guilty pleasure kind of show, but I'm not sure if we finished it or not.

Was just reading that in the news. Pretty crazy, apparently someone disliked it way more than you.

What the actual fuck? https://people.com/rob-reiner-dead-all-in-the-family-director-8653589 Just watched Spinal Tap II last night and was disappointed. But I didn't do it. ☹️

Glad to see Alton Brown is back. Was a big fan of his original show.

Finally getting around to American Gods, picking up where I left off (starting season 2).

This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas

Brent is going to be so pissed off that you used his Olivia Newton John sweat bands. Keep up the good work! Also...

I think most sound cards are ok. I haven’t researched much because I trust apogee and my main concern is capture, and I have the best in the world for that

Other people play music and I record it for the kind of recording I do this is in the running for the most d-_-b way to do it outside mics are dpa 4015 sub cardioids mics at a 90 degree angle to get room “space” next in are schoeps mk41v HyperCards at a 110 degree spacing to catch clarity and make up for being a little farther back than is ideal the football is a schoeps surround setup called double midside. It has a front and rear facing mic and then a 3d mic to add sides i can blend them or isolate any of them depending on how things turn out Sonosax recorder and preamp are basically the best battery powered options on the market, 12 channels of 192/32

With Martin Parr’s recent passing, articles have resurfaced, including on a single vote getting him in Magnum. See how angry/joking photographers can get. “The other person to avoid was Martin Parr. As he put it, he was photographing a Magnum Annual Party for the first and last time – using a flash with a thing like a Styrofoam coffee cup on the end of it. My penile extension, he explained hopefully (but unsuccessfully) to any lady who passed by. I mean if Magnum had to hire someone to do the party pictures, did it have to be Martin? He’s clearly not as successful as we all thought, if he needs to do birthday parties, Bar Mitzvahs and weddings. I sincerely hope the Magnum blogsite goes down before he has a chance to post. I mean, if Magnum wanted to hire a party photographer, why couldn’t they have selected a nice ‘concerned photographer’ like Philip Jones Griffiths or Ian Berry to do them – photographers who photograph you with dignity and humanism and make you look good – instead of the appallingly ‘cynical’ and ‘ironic’ Parr? Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus did enough pictures at the MoMA of people looking demented without Parr adding to them.“

Violin repair: Winter Wallace & Gromit: BBC Planet Earth II:

My reward for getting up and getting my laundry done early. A scramble of orange bell pepper, shallot, tomato, avocado and eggs. Bacon, biscuits and fried potatoes with shallots. Iced coffee with Irish Cream Liqueur.

Easy Fish Stew With Mediterranean Flavors

What else on a night like tonight. https://www.kqed.org/news/12014852

Orange glazed, pan seared salmon. Scalloped potatoes and steamed broccoli.