Craig Sawyers

That is a real bugger - sorry to hear that. When you share your life with an animal it is really bad when something goes wrong. On the upside, higher pets like cats and dogs don't philosophise about illness or worry about the future - they are much better at coping and just getting on with life than we are.

Aah - meetings. I remember meetings. When I was a lad we used to 'ave meetings that went on for days. Or years. In the gutter. Eating gravel. And you say this to lads these days and they don't believe you......

That is a real bummer. Fingers crossed some employment comes your way real soon.

The other really good, and humerous one (not about parents) is Betjeman's poem "Slough". I don't know why he singled that town out for such a literary clubbing around the ears, but he clearly disliked the place in a major way. We live around 30 miles from Slough (pronounced Sl-ow, the ow being the sound you make when punched), and it is a bit of an armpit, but Betjman wrote the poem in 1937! It is just as relevant today. Slough Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn't fit for humans now, There isn't grass to graze a cow. Swarm over, Death! Come, bombs and blow to smithereens Those air-conditioned, bright canteens, Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans, Tinned minds, tinned breath. Mess up the mess they call a town- A house for ninety-seven down And once a week a half a crown For twenty years. And get that man with double chin Who'll always cheat and always win, Who washes his repulsive skin In women's tears: And smash his desk of polished oak And smash his hands so used to stroke And stop his boring dirty joke And make him yell. But spare the bald young clerks who add The profits of the stinking cad; It's not their fault that they are mad, They've tasted Hell. It's not their fault they do not know The birdsong from the radio, It's not their fault they often go To Maidenhead And talk of sport and makes of cars In various bogus-Tudor bars And daren't look up and see the stars But belch instead. In labour-saving homes, with care Their wives frizz out peroxide hair And dry it in synthetic air And paint their nails. Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough To get it ready for the plough. The cabbages are coming now; The earth exhales.

That Japanese manual seems to have very odd wiring for the XLR's. Pin 3 connects to RCA centre pin, and pin 1 connects to RCA outer on the output. The switched RCA inputs effectively short pins 1 and 2 to RCA outer and pin 3 to centre. That is counter to conventional XLR wiring where 1 is shield, 2 is hot and 3 is return. Kevin pointed me at some Neutrix XLR-RCA adaptors, which indeed do the conventional thing of shorting pins 1 and 3 to RCA outer and feeding 2 to RCA centre. Unless I am missing something?

We have an arcane system in the UK. In general ISP's use the BT network - so you need a BT line, which you pay line rental on. The speed of that line is location dependent. Although BT heavily advertise that their broadband connection speed is huge, we are more than the critical 4km from the exchange - so our max speed is 1.5Meg - regardless of how fast your ISP package is. And that is near Oxford - we are not out in the sticks. The alterative is to go to Virgin, who have an installed base of fibre. They supply up to 50Meg with unlimited downloads. But in the small print they say that bandwidth will be limited between 4pm and 9pm and 10am to 3pm to ensure "a consistent user experience". In other words, during normal working hours, only 9am to 10am and 3pm to 4pm are full bandwidth. Plus it ties you to Virgin as an ISP. But it is

If they have that proximity problem, you need to insulate the screw heads too or use insulating screws. Because the screw head shorts to the groundplane, and the thread is still right next to the -400V trace. I built my boards around 4 years ago, before I got heavily involved in head-case - so I used the pdf files on Kevin's site and made my own. Bit of a PITA because the holes aren't plated through of course, so lots of fiddly assembly work. Protected the whole shebang after building with baked-on conformal coating in lieu of solder resist protection. So it should survive being sprayed with salt water......

I actually missed that - so the trace still kisses the hole (as it were...). So I have gone for nylon standoffs with a plain hole. Although I have those fixed at the moment with an insulating washer under the head of steel self-tapping screws, I will probably move to nylon screws and tap the holes.

That good sir will be great timing! Limiting internal dimensions are 12-3/4 x 16-3/8

Hokay - I said I'd report back about the new Hammond cases. Pretty impressive - particularly for a production case. Fits my roll-your-own BH boards a treat (and that was a relief!). I've shoved some images here: http://www.tech-enterprise.com/tekstuff/P7260502.JPG http://www.tech-enterprise.com/tekstuff/P7260503.JPG http://www.tech-enterprise.com/tekstuff/P7260504.JPG http://www.tech-enterprise.com/tekstuff/P7260505.JPG

If you know that the series creator Mark Gatiss is also a screenwriter for Dr Who it explains a lot about the Sherlock character and the overall look and feel of the show.

Repeat after me - I must watch Top Gear... Not only were the stars in the reasonably priced car Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise, but they did a test of the new Bugatti Veiron (

Went to a wedding yesterday. Everyone else staying locally and was drinking like you do at weddings. Including the wife. So I was the only sober one there (on driving home duty) which was intensely irritating and boring. People, including me I assume, talk all sorts of shit when ratted and believe themselves to be interesting. My better half also has the even more irritating ability to drink copiously and wake up the next morning without a trace of a hangover. Unlike me, who needs a fair chunk of a day to get back into the land of the living. So at the moment, I'm just tired and pissed off.

Mmm - gazpacho. Needs enough time in the fridge. Given the 105, maybe you should join it in there

The IT crowd. They end up next to a bomb disposal robot. To the bomb disposal robot operator, whose control software had crashed - "What operating system does it use" - "VISTA" - "We're going to die!".

I use iso-propyl alcohol (or propan-2-ol in modern parlance), which I buy in litre bottles from Farnell. For the big board I used a large baking tray with half and inch of IPA in the bottom, dipping one edge of the board into the tray. Then repeated use of a small stiff brush dipped into the tray every couple of seconds, finishing off with an aerosol alcohol spray. Dry board with paper towels to blot off the excess (it will come off brown to start with). Repeat a couple of times until the board is clean and free from flux streaks. Never used compressed air. Bit of a fiddle, but you get excellent results with a bit of patience.

Heh - I could wish!

Power outages are good - makes you get back to the basics of life. Food, sleeping and sex - not necessarily in that order. And possibly a bit of booze thrown in for good measure.

You'll have great fun! Takes a while to stuff those monsters. Mine are finished now and all components are in. Just waiting for transformers and casework. Defluxed both boards a couple of days ago - quite a job given the size, but worthwhile since flux is not consistent with high voltage gradients long term. Even sprung for a set of four xf3 Mullard tubes and Pearl tube coolers. Means you can't see the glow, but reduced envelope temperature extends tube life by a factor of about 2 times, allegedly. Getting a woodie thinking about it Using the waiting time to get on with finishing off a stalled Blue Hawaii. Like most stalled projects this was down to casework. But Hammond have fairly recently introduced some really sexy 19" cases. Extruded side panels, black powder coated, everything 1/8inch thick, and with perforations on top and bottom towards the rear of the case - so right over the heatsinks. Rack mounting ears are separate and so can be removed. I've ordered one and will report back on how good it looks. I'll need a second one for the PSU of course. Their part number RM2U1913VBK.

It's reassuring that this phenomenon seems not to be a speciality of Leicester University. I'm sure it does not help with it being during vacation season - if the papers are in someone's in-tray and then they go for two weeks holiday - that is where the papers stay.

HR functions are a law unto themselves. I'm moving from a contract to a part time employed situation at a UK university. Contract ran out at the end of May. So we are now 7 weeks and counting. Progress has gone beyond glacial to geological. Don't expect to be in post until start of September - which means that a Euro14m multinational project has been without a Project Manager for three months. Go figure.

I remembered that my 1987 Lambdas came with a step-up transformer based driver. It connected to the output of a regular loudspeaker amplifier. The bias came from voltage multiplying and smoothing one of the output drive signals. Called an SRD6SB. I pulled it out the attic and took the lid off to see how it limited the bias, and what the voltage was. One of the headphone drive signals connects to a 100k resistor with a 100nF in series, with a 100V Zener to ground. So that limits the bias at that point. It then goes to a voltage tripler with 100nF caps, and a final 1uF across the output. Then a 4M7 to the diaphragms. So I reckon this unit provides a bias of 300V. The tolerance of the Zener is 10%, so the voltage could be between 270V and 330V. Seems a bit high as compared with the above, and circuit losses and leakage might limit the voltage to a bit lower. Might shove it on the sig gen and a random power amp and see what I get at the bias output.

Driving along on Monday with the cruise set to 85mph, I was passed by a monster black BMW or Audi land cruiser as if I was stationary. Reckon he was doing 140mph. His license plate was F1 ASH, arranged so that it spelt "FLASH". Oh dear oh deary me. What a clown. Anyway, justice was done - five miles later he had been pulled over by the police. Heaven knows how they caught up with him. He'll lose his license for sure at that speed.