Craig Sawyers

Not attended live, but I've been watching Glastonbury on the TV. Octogenarian Rod Stewart in the Legends slot on the Pyramid. His voice is nothing like it used to be. We saw him live when he was a mere 65 and he was great then. But given his age he still managed an hour and a half. He had a personal trainer back stage the he kept going to from time to time while the band played stuff. And a last night a stunning set by Olivia Rodrigo - a real tour de force aged 22, She has crammed a whole lot into her young life (check Wikipedia) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lekyx02j4o . Young enough to be my granddaughter, I had to remind myself that Mrs S and I were married at Rodrigo's age!

https://www.burwenaudio.com/Sound_System.html

We had a drooly cat who used to sleep on the amps. Every now and again I had to take the perforated covers off and wipe of the dried drool. Long gone alas - she got to a decrepit 19 and we had to say goodbye. In her heyday she was the scourge of the rodent population, including a family of rats that had defeated every other way of killing them.

We had a holiday a couple of months ago in Japan. Fed up with sticky rice and lotus root in all its forms, we cracked in Tokyo and found a curry restaurant. This is quite a big thing in Japan, with endless options. Base curry. About 20 additional things you can add. Five quantities of rice, and heat level. So I had seafood (tick), no additional options (tick), standard quantity of rice (tick). Which left a choice of heat level. This went from 1 to 20. 1 was base level. I chose 5, reckoning that would be a bit hot. Now I can take heat. But a 5 was right on the hairy border of heat. In the UK, where you are never more than a few miles from an Indian restaurant, anyone having a Vindaloo is worthy of respect. Well a 5 was way, way beyond Vindaloo heat, and at the level where you just shovel, and under no circumstances touch the water or beer until you have finished. Now bear in mind that the heat index went up to 20! We joked that anyone ordering a 20 would be issued with a health warning, and an ambulance ordered to take you to hospital! I have to say that a Japanese lady on an adjacent table ordered a heat level 6, and ate it like it was nothing to write home about. Respect.

Happy birthday!

Quite a large German outfit, that also has a major vinyl record and music division. https://in-akustik.com/about-us/our-team/

Those insane phallic speaker cables are these https://in-akustik.com/ls-8005-air-pure-silver-007714683par To you sir, $89k for a 3m pair.

Who was responsible for the partitioning of India into India and Pakistan? Mountbatten, last British Viceroy of India (the same guy blown up by the IRA in 1979). The British Government in 1947 decided to partition India into a predominantly Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan. Mountbatten rushed it through, announcing the partition in June '47 and the partition border put in place and the new states established on 15th August '47. With as usual little thought for the consequences. That rush to partition by Mountbatten caused mass migrations and hardship, with roads packed with people heading in both directions. And like all partitioning exercises - Gaza and Israel is another example - they inevitably end in tears.

Re-reading a chunk of Isaac Asimov's stuff - Foundation series, Robot yarns etc. The Foundation trilogy was published in 1951-3 and have really stood the test of time. I became curious how Asimov died. Turned out a too early 72. But in his early 60's he had a triple heart bypass (in 1983), and was given a blood transfusion tainted with AIDS - and that was what killed him in due course. Same thing happed to the tennis player Arthur Ashe aged 49 - again following heart bypass surgery in 1983.

I'm so sorry Steve. My condolences - it is tough. Very tough. May she rest in peace. My Mam went quickly at age 85 in 2008 after breaking her hip in our hallway. I still miss her.

Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd. Un put downable. Although recently published it is the first in a trilogy.

There are stories both ways about electrolytic capacitors. As an example, I have an AVO transistor tester (just for historical curiosity; an early 1960's beast). The large circuit board is rammed full with Plessey axial electrolytics, and had not been powered for decades. They all measured just fine with my PEAK ESR meter (it also reads capacitance too). So I just fired it up - works perfectly. But the dreaded power supply and output electrolytics in the old Quad 303 power amp were arranged so the vent faced downwards towards the circuit boards. Quad got steady returns as a result of rotted circuit boards because of electrolyte venting, eventually doing what they should have done originally and put the vents upwards. And the old Sprague "twist-lock" electrolytics eventually disconnect themselves because of the outer foil being crimped into a steel closure - so the foil suffers from dissimilar metal corrosion. Modern electrolytics are physically much smaller for a given voltage, capacitance and ripple rating. This is really a mix of more highly etched foils and improvements in electrolyte chemistries. But they tend to be more highly stressed - and lifetime goes as the Arrhenius equation. The lifetime of the capacitor halves for every 10C increase in temperature. The flip side is that if you conservatively rate the capacitor, its lifetime will exceed the lifetime of the engineer. As an example, suppose the capacitor lifetime at 85C is 2000 hours (about 3 months). If it is run at 35C, being 50C under the maximum increases the lifetime to 2^5 x 2000 hours, or 64,000 hours, or 8 years if turned on permanently. If it is turned on say 3 hours a day, the lifetime of the capacitor should be 64 years. By which time I would be 123 years old and long being with the choir eternal. Of course this is a idealistic calculation, and rubber seals will have degraded enough to cause the capacitor to fail much earlier than that.

Um - where's the speakers? Not the bijou bookshelf ones, surely.

Happy birthday from across the pond!

I've seen similar stickers in the UK.