Craig Sawyers

Agreed. If it were possibly to kill yourself with a 9V battery, there would be hazard warnings all over such batteries and they would come with shrouded terminals. Imagine the lethality of a 12V car battery! That would drive enough current through you to vapourise your head instantly

Indeed - the combination of high DC voltage (around 1000V from + to - rails) and high current (many tens of mA) is quite lethal if between one hand and the opposite, or one hand to the opposite foot when the current runs across the chest. Across a single hand, say from palm to finger, it is bloody uncomfortable and gives quite a fright (experience of years of fiddling with tubed gear). So for anyone that is new to dealing with this sort of thing PLEASE read up (as suggested above) about the techniques of building and testing such gear safely, or at least non-lethally. And don't work on it when tired - that is when most dangerous errors happen.

Check.

I just use regular dried yeast in my Panasonic. Works fine (provided the yeast is not too old; I had an old pack I tried to use up first off before buying new stuff). I can't make the extra large loaf size because it rises so much it hits the inside of the lid, so now only make the large size setting. I now get through a pack of yeast every two weeks - so now there is no expiry problem.

Ha! You too, eh? Sort of think you only do once - the resulting stunted warty high density loaf was a true thing to behold.

Deep enough to be a visual irritation. The damned domestic plant watering can had been put on the shelf (um - not by me) with the metal sprinkler rose sticking out. It was that that got me. Suppose I ought to be thankful that I was wearing specs - would sure have made a mess of my corneas.

These to replace the ones you stood on? I put a scratch clear across my new pair yesterday, so I'm royally pissed off.

I certainly had a deep memory that it was something to do with Magnepan. A google search for "magnepan vs apogee patent" turns up quite a bit of stuff that supports that, this being typical from newaudiosociety.com: "I believe there was an issue with a lawsuit from Jim Winey over at Magnepan....it seems he had a patent on the planar design and the Apogee version was a little too close to the patented version. Also, the head designer at Apogee croaked-it, which didn't help. What gets me is why Magnepan didn't incorporate some of the Apogee methodology into their designs. The Apogee's seem to be better integrated in the lows and highs, and I think that's partly due to the dual purpose midrange/tweeter, partly due to a better XO design and partly due to a much more rigid mechanical construction."

Well, I've worn specs since I was four, which is a cool half century ago now. Eyes went through some changes from 45 to 50 and have settled down again. Use the latest ultralight (read: ultraexpensive) varifocals, which are superb.

Maybe they are Pass at that. The big problem with the Apogees in general was the exceptionally low impedance. The original Scintilla in the early 80's was 0.5 ohm and low efficiency, and Krell got established when trying to develop an amp that would drive that sucker. Sounded bewilderingly wonderful - as fast as an electrostatic, but with real low frequency grunt and loud (if fed with enough current!).

Those are inspired by Siegfried Linkwitz's Pluto speakers Linkwitz Lab - Loudspeaker Design

Those are Apogee's fed by a Krell set up. Classic in its day. Apogee got killed by Magneplanar (or Magnepan as the company is known) going for their throat as infringers of their planar magnetic driver patent.

Flew back from three days (business) in Finland. It's colder in the UK than it is in Helsinki. At the moment.

Awesome!

Digitally remastered, final director's cut of Blade Runner. One of my all time favourite films/movies. Ridley Scott actually comes from my neck of the woods - Seaton Carew on the North East coast of England. I saw him once explaining that the opening scene of Blade Runner with fire belching out of the tops of buildings owed itself to his childhood walking to school in the dark past the ICI chemical plant, with gouts of flame bursting out as excess gas was burnt off. The perpetual drenching rail is also true to fact for that area of the UK.

You've got to feel kind of sorry for Guido Fawkes - after they caught him (in 1606) he was tortured so badly that he could barely sign his name to his confession. He managed to foil the drawing and quartering part of the execution (along with having his "private parts" cut off and burnt in a brazier before his eyes) by timing a jump from the scaffold and breaking his neck. Much to my surprise though, hanging, drawing and quartering was only removed from the British statute books in 1870.

Is that Uncle Pass with the quest to use up the planet's supply of FETs?

YouTube "VH1 Anti Rockstar". This is my daughter's latest best beloved Eric. He's a stand-up comedian, does adverts (of which this is one), and voiceovers. Since she's an actor-in-training all this works on a number of levels. Mind you, the end of this particular advert is exceptionally disturbing - be warned.

Well having just sprung for the 007 Omega2, and had all the softening up necessary domestically for a pair of headphones that are more expensive than any loudspeaker I've bought, I need to play the long game for the next 6 months or so to get an even more outrageous pair - I reckon a full thousand UK pounds on top of the 007 price. Or maybe I need to make a trip to Japan for some business excuse, and sneak them back in through customs.....shhhh. Mind you the 007's sound glorious driven by a Blue Hawaii. I can hardly wait....

I'm just catching up with the new and shiney thread - but I thought Omega was used for the last letter in the Greek alphabet - in other words the last word in headphones. Until the C32....

Now that was fuuuu funny

Wrong list - but.... Glad I'm not alone. I cleared the attic of hoarded boxes last year. Scary stuff. My Dad seemed to collect bottles (he used to home brew beer and wine). When he died I cleared out the cellar with my Mum and found well over 200 empty bottles. I did however find that my Dad had got from somewhere a box of thousands of tiny silver parts (14lbs of them!), which I have just sold (bullion prices are peaking) and bought a pair of Stax SR007 with lots of change left over. Thanks Dad!

Well done buddy. I've done 11 of the buggers, plus a couple of 40-milers. Doesn't matter how much you train, if you get the pace *right* you feel wasted from mile 20 onwards in a marathon. A real mental battle. From 13 upwards I count upwards to 20 "7 to go to 20 - 6 to go, 5 to go". When I get to 20 I count down. "6 to go to the finish, 5 to go - I know I can run 5 miles, 4 to go - no problem, I run 4 without breaking a sweat" and so on. On a 40 miler and over, you adjust the pace. I remember getting into the 26 mile checkpoint on the last 40 trail race (The Compton 40, including 20 mile fun run) and thinking "Hokay - a marathon down, and a half marathon to go. What's the fuss?" At the moment, recovering from achilles problems, so a stone overweight. Over weight and under fit. 6 miles and I'm toast just now.

With muscle soreness (which could be either lactic acid, or injury) I'd beware of exercising again until it has eased off. Whenever I have had a break and run into this problem, it always seems more sore on the second day.

I once carried out a citizen's arrest in Cambridge. My (then) young son had just had his tonsils out, and I had taken my lunch break to look for a cuddly toy for him. Guy sprints out of a jewellers just in front of me followed by two guys in suits - they guy had just grabbed a bunch of expensive stuff and run out. So I chased him at a safe distance - for me just a trot. I reckoned that if he stopped, I'd stop. If he pulled a knife I knew I could run away faster than he could chase. Eventually ran him to a standstill in one of the colleges, and the police took him away with "We've been trying to nail this SOB for months!". Got a modest reward from both the police and the jewellers, which was nice, and a slot in the Cambridge newspapers. You can get away with this sort of stunt in the UK because opportunist thiefs don't have guns. In fact no-one is allowed handguns in law here, so shooting crime is vanishingly small. Knife crime is more common, because any knife will do.