Craig Sawyers

Go easy on the recovery, and do whatever god awful exercises the physio tells you. I had a knee op three years ago, and it was scary how the leg that was op'd on lost muscle tone in spite of lots of single leg strengthening. I've got back to running, but it has been a long journey. Folks I know who have had knee ops (and there are quite a few) either had to stop running and take up biking or swimming, or got away with it and still run. Do whatever works and have a really speedy recovery.

I gave up bike riding - I got fed up with how much it hurt falling off. Now I stick to running - you go slower and can't fall off

The raw feed in the road here is actually three phase (ie each phase being 120 degrees from the other two) plus neutral. Every third property is connected to the same phase, so approximately balancing the phase currents over many properties. The voltage between any two live phases is 415V (240 x root 3). So the 240V that comes into each property is fundamentally unbalanced. And yeah - if you have a piece of gear that uses three phase, or even wierder two out of three phases, there is nothing much you can do except use a transformer. Craig

We've exactly the same system on UK 240V. Neutral is grounded (ie connected physically to the soil) at the electricity substation, and at regular intervals underground. Only two wires come out of the ground to the electricity meter (live and neutral), with the domestic ground wire attached to neutral at that point. Since the neutral wire inside the house takes the return current, it floats an unspecified and usually horribly distorted ac voltage above house ground as a result of wiring resistance and ac impedance. I've been thinking about a balanced isolation transformer for the audio system for some time, so interesting to see that you have gone a similar route. Craig

Rare commodity. Fill up stations and supermarkets no longer take cheques (in the UK anyway). It is only a matter of time that cash goes the same way. Craig

A mix of doing some circuit board layout and running. For my sins (they must have been bad) I'm in the London marathon this year. Done it many times before, 8-ish but I've lost count, but I'm way behind with training. So 13 miles yesterday and 5 today - and still lots to do in the next four weeks. Plan for another 10 or so tomorrow. Permanently knackered. You'd think I'd know better in my mid fifties, but hey, what the hell. At least I'm fit and well. Craig