Craig Sawyers

And Earth imaged by Cassini during its mission to Saturn

"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." Carl Sagan

That is some hard yards! Nicely done.

Happy birthday! BTW I thought at one stage to buy a bottle of 1956, and realised that it was either that or a new car 😁

To a harrowing play yesterday at the Bristol Old Vic. A stage adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel of the same name "Never Let Me Go" Children are brought up, cloned, so that as adults they can be harvested for organs. None of them remotely question this. That is the basic plot, but it is completely brought to life by the script and wonderful acting. Even if they survive three "donations", they never survive a fourth. The word die is never used, when they do inevitably do so, they are "complete". https://bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/never-let-me-go

I also bought a pair of ESP6's again back in the day. Sound quality was great, but each cup had an energizing transformer in it. So the weight was again head crushing. I got rid of those at some point. But a rush of similar blood, I bought a pair of ESP9's. Tarry goop in the cups etc. But at least they come with an external energizer, so the weight is manageable. Sound quality is great. Still not at the heights of my two Stax systems, but pleasing non the less.

Those were my first headphones, bought new in 1974. I got rid of them at some stage. But during a rush of blood to the head, I bought a pair from eBay for not much. The fluid filled earcups were as hard as biscuit, and the foam damping in the cup has turned to tar. Lots of clean up and fabric/foam pads later, I suddenly remembered how god awful uncomfortable they were/are. You head feels as if it being crushed in a vice, and the top of your head is almost bruised by the weight. I would not have cared so much if the SQ was great. But it isn't either. How Koss sold these things defeats me. Koss remanufactured them for a while, but seems that they have stopped.

And that, gentle folks, is precisely why I invested in a lid for my deck. Our monster 5.4kg cat could have endless fun precisely as above!

I was surprised recently to find that the average pooch can recognise over 150 human words. It has the vocabulary of a toddler. Police and search and rescue dogs get up to 250 words and up. A record breaking border terrier got up to over 1000 recognized words. Cats on the other hand rely on their chimp to recognise what their vocabulary of meows, chirps and grunts mean. Basically feed me, cuddle me, play with me. Then once those options are exhausted, sleep for 18 hours a day.

It hit the UK news within hours. A year's rain in 8 hours; absolutely nothing can prepare a population for that, even if forecast.

Woah - how did I miss this? Happy very belated, Peter!!

As compare with Max Headroom

Yesterday to London to see Oedipus. Astonishing, modern version of the Sophocles Greek classic with Mark Strong and Lesley Manville. Two hours without a break. If and when it gets to Broadway, go and see it. Write up is here https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/oct/16/oedipus-review-lesley-manville-and-mark-strong-electrify-ancient-saga-turned-political-thriller

Isle of Wight 1970 https://ultimateclassicrock.com/isle-of-wight-festival-1970/ I've walked across that area a couple of years ago - and it is just a peaceful field with fences, cows and sheep. Absolutely no evidence at all that this happened!

I though - I must have seen Sabbath. In the early 70's we as a bunch of lads used to see bands at Newcastle (UK) City Hall - just a regular size city hall. Anyway you can easily find gig listings for that City Hall from that period. How about Elton John, Pink Floyd, Sabbath, Zep, ELP and many others. Ticket price? Well Elton John was quite expensive - 90p (so less that £1!) Most others were typically 60-70p. This was in the very early days of outdoor festivals. The first Woodstock was in 1969, and the first Isle of Wight festival was 1970 (and still has the record attendance of 750,000). So landmark bands played small venues and Universities. I saw AC/DC in the University dining room at Southampton! A golden age to see these bands close up. Ear bleedingly loud. Even at head banging 16 with my long centre parted hair and denims I used to shove cotton wool in my ears. Very weird back in the day, but at least my hearing is roughly intact.

I thought that the Arkansas goat festival was a wind up - until I found that it is a serious event https://www.arkansasgoatfestival.com/ And yes - there is a "Goat Lingerie Show (Nannies at Night)" https://www.arkansasgoatfestival.com/schedule1 That is the single most weird event. Makes chilli pepper eating contests seem sane.

Bloody hell. That was a deeply disturbing. What a god-awful mess.

Having just been to see Coriolanus (Shakespeare), we went through the list of Shakespeare plays we have seen. We've seven yet to see. But the most memorable productions were: Merry Wives of Windsor. David Troughton (son of Patrick Troughton, one of the early Dr Who's) Much Ado about Nothing. David Tennant and Catherine Tate. The Winter's Tale. Kenneth Branagh and Judy Dench. Titus Andronicus (a gore fest revenge play; blood and guts from beginning to end). David Troughton Julius Caesar. Ben Wishaw. Hamlet. Michael Sheen. King Lear, Four notable productions. Frank Langhella (excellent), Ian McKellen (superb), Glenda Jackson (RIP, but was superb), and most recently (this year) Kenneth Branagh (surprisingly superb). Macbeth. Patrick Stewart (the definitive play! For a treat watch this on You Tube), Sean Bean and Samantha Bond, Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff, and by far the worst one Christopher Eccleston. Have tickets to see David Tennant this autumn. As you might tell, we like this play! Othello. Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear.

RIP Kristofferson. At 88 - how did that just happen? What an icon.

First off - we were lucky enough to see James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave in Driving Miss Daisy in 2011. From row 3 in a West End (London) play. Vanessa Redgrave is still alive and voice over acting still at 87. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/oct/06/driving-miss-daisy-theatre-review We were not lucky enough ever to see Maggie Smith on the stage though - although that is how she started out as an award winning stage actor in the West End and the RSC.

Have a great one Wayne!

And walkie talkies. So far with exploding pagers and walkie talkies 12 dead, including an eight-year-old girl who went to pick up the pager for her father, and an 11-year-old boy. Around 2,800 others were wounded, with hundreds needing surgery. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c781d8y397do And even worse estimates https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz04m913m49o

The current spec sheet just says 5cu "on disc". But the old specification, on stereophile, makes the 100Hz explicit https://www.stereophile.com/content/denon-dl-103-phono-cartridge-specifications No idea why 100Hz, but this is not uncommon. Perhaps it is easier to measure?

The compliance is an interesting number, if only because it is frequency dependent. The quoted DL103 compliance is at 100Hz, which is useless for calculating arm effective mass/compliance resonance at around 10Hz. So a compliance at 10Hz is a much more relevant number in this regard. As far as I can find, and I failed to find a proof for this, you multiply the 100Hz compliance by 1.7 (root 3?) to get the 10Hz compliance. So for the DL103, you get 8.5 x 10^-3m/N. This means you need a total effective mass of around 30g to hit the resonance sweet spot at 10Hz. Now I use an SMEIV arm, which has a rather light effective mass of 10-11g. So the regular DL103 with a total effective mass of 22g, giving a resonance of 11.6Hz. Now I use the heftier Zu Audio DL103, where they take the motor out of the plastic bit, and precision glue it into an aluminium housing. That has a mass of 14g, which with the SMEIV puts the resonance at 11Hz Because all this is a square root thing, you'd have to add 5g at the headshell to my set up to get to 10Hz, or with the regular DL103, 8g. I use the SME cartridge spacer (because it is needed anyway for the tall Garrard 401) but that adds a useful 3g, getting my effective mass to 11+14+3 = 28g, putting my resonance at 10.3HZ, which I'm very happy with. All that is with the SMEIV. If you had deep enough pockets to go for the SME M2-12R 12" arm, with an effective mass of 18g, that would hit the 30g effective mass sweetspot of 10Hz right on the button with the regular DL103 and DL103R. Oh - of course you have to add the weight of the cartridge screws too to get the total effective mass!

Predates the Republicans and the entire USA by a handsome margin. Listed in the Domesday Book in 1086 as Wochinges. Going further back, the first part of the name derives from an Anglo-Saxon individual called Wocca and the Old English ingas, which means the family of. So Wocca and his family lived there sometime between 450AD and the Norman invasion in 1066. Factoid # 23A