Craig Sawyers

If you have such a unicorn, send me a pic and I'll send it to Collard. See what he says....

Yup. Was gutted when they killed off Blake and dumped the series. But I don't think I'd watch a re-run - times move on. Now if someone did a re-MAKE...without flapping sets... The big enigma was how the original series of the Prisoner was supposed to end - another 60's classic. ITV pulled the plug, and McGoohan wrapped up the series in a very cryptic way. He always refused to spill the beans of how the story was supposed to end, and took that secret to his grave. Leaving us all to guess. Probably precisely what he intended.

<grin> Reminds me of that episode of Frasier when Niles was trying to communcate to a German sword instructor via someone who was translating from Spanish to German, with no common language. 21st episode, 2nd season (I'm told...). Ended up in a farcical sword fight. Rarely laughed so much. Your evening I take it did not end so eventfully

Yeah - Matt Smith has really developed a Who personality all of his own - hats off. But (pass the walking frame) I date back to the original William Hartnell series, when I hid behind the sofa aged 7 to be secure from the Daleks. It went through a dark period in the 70's when they had no money and the whole effect was completely amateur - but since it was revived in 2008 it has been PDG.

The best I know is BOHICA - Bend Over, Here It Comes Again

Thinking about enjoyable, and often pretty hairy, twaddle - do you guys across the pond get Dr Who? If so hang onto your seats - the new Dr reincarnation is superb. Latest series running now in the UK. And they keep upping the budget, so the quality is near pretty close to cinematic. If you want to watch latest series coming out of the UK on the BBC - check BBC iPlayer - TV Channels . Everything is there from all BBC channels for the previous 7 days at least.

Older seasons vs new seasons. Reks is right of course - it is total twaddle, but fun twaddle. The ex-head of MI-5, Stella Rimington (1992-96), was on the radio recently as was asked about Spooks. Utter rubbish, she said, because any real operation runs over months and years, so the idea that everything happens at breakneck pace over a day or two is very far from reality - but she still watched it herself. In spite of all that it is still a must watch, even if all the recent plots revolve around terrorism and Al Quaida, rather than regular bad guy/drug running/etc plots. Oddly enough, one of the lead guys in seasons 1-3 was played by Matthew MacFadyen. The day before the London Marathon my wife and I went to see Noel Coward's play (a farce) Private Lives, with --- Matthew MacFadyen and Kim Cattrall. Absolutely hilarious. Cattrall kept a perfect plummy English accent 99% of the time, with only the odd word slipping into American.

Nearly fooled me - MI-5 is the US name for the series. In the UK it is called Spooks - and yes, it is a must-watch. It isn't quite as tough as the original series, particularly when one operative had her head pushed into a deep fat frier.

We're well through season 3 in the UK - which is going to be the the last one. I've dipped in and out over the last two seasons, but this one is a real belter and I'm well and truly hooked. The other one I'm hooked on is the remake of The Prisoner, with Ian McKellern as No. 2

Well, I got a response from the P&G factory - the guy I've been dealing with is called Steve Collard. He checked their manufacturing system, and they have no record of ever having made any 20k or 50k audio taper RF15's. The practical limit of 10k is down to their manufacturing process. So no different alas to the response you guys have got via the US distributor.

If you want to have a look at mine (the workbench, that is ), there are links to pics on the woodworking types: old lumber thread

Your neck of the woods too? Been raining stair-rods here for the last two days and 10C; tomorrow supposed to be good though.

That sounds really great - good handmade workbenches are a real heirloom treasure. It is right and fitting that they should go down the generations. I've heard it said that a craftsman is only the custodian of a bench, and I hope your great grandfather's one follows that tradition through another generation at least.

This is really interesting. I'm not a bike rider (well, I was at one stage, but got fed up with how much it hurt falling off), but it is clear how a bike can be instrumented to measure and record a whole host of parameters that describe what the cyclist is doing - including power output. What there doesn't seem to be is an equivalent system for runners - in fact there is very little information on the typical power output of a runner. Anyone know if there is anything equivalent in the running world that I've missed?

Heh. My worst transgression was going to a 9am lecture after an all night drinking session (long story...). I sat plumb in front of the lecturer, fell flat asleep on the desk and snored loudly for the duration. You can bet that I was noticed! Massively amused the rest of the class.

Happens all over the world. The countryside we used to play in as kids and chill as teens first became an open cast coal mine, was infilled, and then a four lane road put through. Life sucks when they erase your childhood.

Probably a good idea - you've seen the movie Fatal Attraction?

During measurement of the bass, and curing the various buzzing and rattling in the earlier post on this, I found out why although the imaging in most of a female voice was perfect, sibillants were skewed towards one speaker. Very careful measurement revealed that although the response of both treble panels was very close in shape and extension, one of them was between 4 and 6dB lower in output. I'd got a pair of old-stock panels from One Thing Audio near Coventry UK to replace the burnt out ones originally in there. So I phoned them up. Yes, he said, that can happen - there is a progressive degradation of the coating on the mylar (perhaps through sunshine?) that leads to panels of different vintage having markedly different sensitivity. So they are building me a new pair of panels, built onto original stators. They are going to charge me the difference between the price of the old panels (

Have a good one, Kevin!

I've used these guys before Stainless Steel Fasteners, Microscrews, American Threaded Fasteners . They are extremely responsive, and cover all the head styles and lengths in both metric and US thread sizes. If you don't see what you want, get in touch with them - not everything they have is on the website. I'll be using them once I decide what I need specifically in US thread sizes for the T2. Craig

London Marathon day yesterday. Well actually a personal worst time, but I'm massively pleased with it. This was the first race I'd taken place in since a knee operation three years ago, so it was a real journey into the unknown. 58 minutes slower than my PB. The good news is that there was not so much as a single twinge from the knee. Plenty of twinges from elsewhere, of course! 19 miles onwards was the usual mind over body battle, where the body keeps telling you to stop this nonsense and stop hurting it, and you have to play all sorts of mind games to keep going. This clearly worked, because in spite of feeling really bad my five k split between 35k and 40k was my fastest at 27 minutes (you have a tag that registers your time every 5k, plus half way and at 26 miles). So flat mile splits by the clocks, flat 5k splits - pretty much mission accomplished. Feel like I've been beaten with a length of lead pipe today of course

Ditto Craig

The el cheapo WM61A (a couple of dollars/pounds each - in fact you buy ten of them and have plenty to play with) does not come with any calibration data, other than what is in the datasheet. In any case, measuring in a listening room renders any quantitative measurement meaningless, which is why it is appropriate to use a cost effective measurement method rather than a calibration standard mike. The best you can hope for is a subjective peer at the data and look for obvious problems. I was actually more interested in the bass end since I'm building subs, and at least doing the measurement identified a few rattly/buzzy problems (now cured).

Did some sine wave tests with the ESL57's in preparation for designing the active crossover to the dipole subs. Microphone was a modified Panasonic WM61A (Digikey plus many other places). Flat from 10Hz to 20kHz+ and pennies each. Mod is on Linkwitz's site. Anyway, even measured in-room at 1m they were astonishingly flat - within +/-5dB from 55Hz to 20kHz. Drops like a stone below 55Hz. But - quite a few buzzes and rattles from 300Hz and down. Turned out to be two things - wiring behind the signal transformer in contact with right hand bass panel dust cover, and the hessian mat stuck to the rear grille sagging into contact with the bass panels. Wiring was easily sorted out by unbolting the transformer, moving foward and pulling the wiring well out of the way (tucking down the side of the transformer). The hessian was more interesting. Originally it was stuck on with dobs of pitch/bitumen, presumably applied hot. In my case it has lost grip over the years at the top - hence the sag into the bass panels. I took the mats out of both speakers, carefully removing it from the bitumen dobs with a craft knife blade. I then hand washed them gently, since they are rather fragile (unbelievably filthy) and dried on the washing line and airing cupboard. Cleaned the rear grilles (unbelievably filthy). The hessian mat was then attached to the grille using spray carpet adhesive. I sprayed that onto the rear of the grille, and then applied the mat. That has sorted the problem a treat, and has the added benefit that now the mat is firmly stuck over its whole area onto the grille, it damps it nicely. Craig

Thanks guys! The interesting conundrum was that to build a bench, you need a bench. Problem is, the other bench is a metalworking bench, and the only way I could handle the size of timber was to take the metalwork vice off. So everything was constructed by making endless holding jigs to clamp the pieces to the surface of the bench while handplaning, routing, mortice chiselling etc. Plus the shed is 8 foot x 11 foot, into which is squeezed my machinery (on wheels so I can pull it out when needed). God knows how I managed to build the bench in that space from raw lumber. Needed careful planning for sure. Next project is to convert the garage into a half way decent sized shop - the shed is just too small