Craig Sawyers

Hey - don't beat yourself up. Cats are really tough cookies - they have to be in a pretty bad shape before you even notice anything is wrong.

Last night to Chichester to watch two one-act comedies. Stoppard's "The Real Inspector Hound" and Sheridan's "The Critic". Both were plays within plays, with a bunch of first rate and well known actors who were in things like Notting Hill, Fierce Creatures, A Bridge too Far etc. Studio theatre with around 200 in the audience. The cast member you might recognise by name is Una Stubbs who was the slightly dotty landlady in Sherlock (and also back in the 60's and 70's in Till Death do us Part). A fine afternoon (we went to the matinee), in tears with laughter.

Cats are amazingly tolerant and tough critters. We had one cat that became semi feral (Tipsy; perhaps it was the name). She developed quite badly matted fur, and when we tried a two-person job to cut the mats off, we took a chunk of skin off with the scissors. Cat behaved like she never even noticed. Wracked by guilt we went off to the vet. "Oh don't worry" she said as she stitched away "I've done precisely the same thing myself - very easy to do". Which at least made us feel a little better. Large wallet evacuation later, she was as right as rain.

I'm a great believer in more-is-less. That is why (some) classical recordings from the 1950's are so terrific - a couple of stereo pair mikes, two or three triodes, straight into a reel to reel. Eg Mercury Living Presence's 1812 and Beethoven's Wellington's Victory. Or the similar era Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique recorded in Walthamstow town hall with Barbirolli and the LPO in 1962. Or a staggering Der Rosenkavalier with Schwarzkopf in 1956 on EMI (stereo pair for the orchestra, a pair for the orchestra and a pair for the choir). Knocks many modern versions that go through a room-wide mixing desk and umpteen amplification stages into a cocked hat. So if a digital remote of whatever flavour screws the sound up, lets have a knob.

I'm with you on this deep - I'm not a luddite, but there is something so "right" about a hefty remote - like the Meridian one that they ship with their high end 808.3 CD player. You wouldn't want to leave it on the floor, because you'd break a toe if you caught it wrong.

It was only a matter of time until a software jockey started talking dirty

On a scale of disturbing, this is worse though. Only in NY....

Found this, which I can't work out whether I find disturbing or not...

Agree entirely with that. Hope things work out without the yelling.

That, alas is precisely where cats attack during a fight - biting the back is out of reach for a cat to groom, so the wound gets infected. It is deep rooted in the instinct of cats to fight that way. How do I know? Talking to the vet while she patched up precisely that sort of wound on our current cat Cleo.

The normal time for a fuse to blow is at switch-on. Depending on where the mains is on its cycle, there can be a huge inrush current to build up core mangetisation, or capacitor charge up. Big power amps with 500VA - 2000VA transformers often have a soft-start circuit. A relay with N/O contacts and a several watt power resistor in parallel in the live. A timer circuit wakes up after a second or two, energises the relay and shorts out the series resistor. Clearly not necessary wit the T2.

I'm sure that is the right decision - awful though it is when it finally comes down to it, you do get a real 6th sense of when it reaches the end of the road. And that is not where either of you are at this point. Take care - tough times.

I recall a fast pulsed laser, where the storage capacitor was made of parallel plates in DI water charged to many kV. The idea was that it behaved like a matched transmission line and politely dumped its energy quickly into the laser plasma.

Luckily it was I that took the fraud call - triggered by buying the casework from KG! But that just put off the evil moment when that card bill arrived.

No - but his shunt regulators are amazing - I'm using one on a KG Dynalo. I've actually mailed him to find out what sort of deal he wants to acquire his designs; no answer yet.

It's often the bright ones that get the worst of times in school - he'll be much happier with peers in the same mental league.

That is because practically noone in Britain knows anything about firearms. Military, police, the shooting birds brigade, and a handful of crooks.

No-one needs that sort of shit. I've chased SOB's that gave me the finger from the safety of their car before now - but we don't have easy access to guns in the UK, so the risk is not high. One guy ended up so worried after I chased him for 5 miles he drove into his open garage and closed the door before I got out my car to confront him. Bet he was reluctant to poke a gratuitous finger after that. The bastard. Feisty, me?

Sherlock. Each episode gets better - but this first series is only three, so that'll be the last for a while. Was also listening today to Benedict Cumberbatch on Radio 4 in a series damatisation of John Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey, with Timothy West playing the older Rumpole and Cumberbatch the younger. And very very good Cumberbatch is in the role.

OK - I've talked myself into buying the uncut miniseries version of Das Boot - 2 DVD's worth - from Amazon.

What I didn't realise, but now do, is that there are several cuts of the movie and *two* miniseries (a 3 x 100 minute one from a 1984 BBC screening, and a 6 x 50 minute version from 1988 - that is the one I recall seeing). I watched the 3h29m directors cut last year. Any and all are well worth watching.

That is really shitty Brent - hope things settle down real quick and you can move on.

How about Das Boot? The German movie, not the series. Absolutely gripping - and long - the Director's cut is well over 3 hours. Watch it in German with subtitles (athough there is a version dubbed in English using the real actors to dub themselves).