Craig Sawyers

The sad demise of Florian Schneider prompted me to listen to the astonishing 22 minute version of Autobahn - for the first time in decades. They were so superb - there was nothing to compare to their electronic minimalist, almost Philip Glass musical style - in the early 70's. RIP Schneider.

My maternal side grandfather would have been about 13 years old, living in fairly squalid Bayeswater London at the time that movie was shot in Paris.

Thank you! Using hide glue is actually a darn sight easier if you make a mistake - plenty of water and a clothes iron (I have 2 really cheap ones in the workshop) re-liquifies the glue and the veneer can be peeled off. If you use regular white wood glue, the only way to recover is to sand the veneer off with a belt sander. If you look closely you'll see the veneer is book matched too. That involves making an invisible seam right down the middle of the baffle. That is standard everyday practice for a professional cabinetmaker. It is more of a difficulty for me as a trained amateur who veneers infrequently.

Not only own - built from first priniciples. The bridge and baffle are traditional hammer veneered using hide glue, and then French Polished. The dark wood around the forward tweeter and the baffle support is Cocobolo, and the bridge feet are Goncalo Alves. The bass unit is spray painted satin back, and then coated in buffed in wax polish. I was going to just paint the whole thing black, but Mrs S said she'd like wood finish - so I used that as an excuse to learn traditional veneering and French polishing.

Wasn't sure where to post this, but this amused me in a toilet humour way:

One of mine

How clean and non-RFI free the mains power regenerator in the Powerwall is will be the kicker for the unit in high end audio. As far as I know, a user cannot access the 48V battery as a DC source. It is one hell of a chunky battery though - 125kg (about 275lbs)!

Apart from the fact they take the battery supply and put it through AC regenerators (the things screwed to the wall). They go to the sockets supplying power to the wall sockets, and go to the power transformers in your audio gear. The only benefit is a pure 50/60Hz sine wave rather than the grotty looking thing that comes off the grid, with flattened tops and spikes.. The real way to do it of course is to use the batteries as the DC supply to the amp and dispense with all the AC stuff. As some serious DIY'ers have done for decades, powering their gear directly from a rack of car batteries.

How about a battery supply from Living Voice (the same outfit that make the Vox Olympian speaker)? https://www.livingvoice.co.uk/lv-battery-power-supply.html I get the impression that is not a cheap supply...

Machine cut dovetails. I'd be more impressed if they were hand cut. Nice though, and very high standard cabinetmaking,

I don't fortunately suffer from coulrophobia, the morbid fear of clowns - I just find the shower really really creepy. I only once saw someone with a real phobia - gephyrophobia - a surprisingly common morbid fear of bridges, We were doing an organised 20 mile walk for charity a few years ago, and caught up with two ladies, friends, at the start of a long footbridge crossing a four lane road. One of them was in an awful state. Pale, dilated pupils, sweating, breathing rapidly and pacing around. Quite prepared to turn around and walk 10 miles back to the start. We eventually got her across, with us and her friend in front and behind, shouting "la, la, la ..." and leading her by the hand. When we got her to the other end, she turned into a regular person almost instantly - and with a real sense of triumph at actually getting over the bridge. So we might be uncomfortable with creepy clowns, spiders or snakes - but a true phobia is something else entirely.

Trust me - that is no consolation at all.

Having seen that clown shower for children I will have nightmares

Happy birthday!

That was awesome. And apart from dirt roads back in 1903, you had to fix your bike if you had a mechanical. If you had assistance you were given a time penalty. There was a famous incident while descending the col de Tourmalet, recounted here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugène_Christophe when he walked 10km down the descent when his forks broke, found a forge, and set about brazing his bike back together. But he had the blacksmith's son pump the bellows. In spite of losing a massive amount of time, he was given a 10 minute penalty because he had assistance from having the forge pumped. He still finished in 7th place.

I've been thinking about this too. There is a good review of the various types on the Global Cycling Network (GCN) you tube channel. Actually for all things cycling it is excellent, run by a couple of ex-pro British cyclists. Turbo trainer vid Their training turbo training vids are a thing to behold - they reduce themselves to sweat pouring exhaustion. Heaven knows what power they are putting in. There are a number of different length and duration sessions to watch.

Another possibility as a 2SC3675 replacement is the BUL216. Vceo of 800V. Since it is a switching part rather than an amplifier part the specs are a bit sparse. Current part and cheap.

My only visits to Madrid went along the lines fly in to the stunning airport, have two days of meetings (at INTA), fly out. I had very little opportunity to enjoy Madrid itself, or really even see it in daylight hours. Other than get really hungry because the restaurants (remember those?) didn't open until 8pm.

It is truly amazing what dramatically reduced road use and no airplanes has made. It is a real shame that the cause of all this low pollution and clean air is a worldwide lockdown to combat the spread of Covid-19.

Somewhere I have a CERN report from the 1970 about a 13kA pulsed magnet power supply. That used 7,200 2N3055's as output devices driven by another 360 of them. All of those were in massive 19% racks mounted on cooling plates with forced water cooling. Might be interesting or relevant. This was for the 28GeV Synchrotron. Eventually that was used simply as the injector accelerator for the SPS (Super Proton Synchrotron), and of course that has been superceded by the Large Hadron Collider. The current acceleration scheme is Synchrotron - SPS - LHC to get 13TeV Found the power supply paper. Attached. CERN-70-20.pdf

Those casters don't look like the type that lock in place. What happens at full tilt when a kick drum happens - where do those monster JBL's end up?

Happy birthday!

I ate his liver ... oh hang on just a minute, thrash metal! Lockdown is clearly having an effect on 82 year old Sir Anthony

Nice - but musical instruments in the same room twanging away resonating to the music? Using a swept sine at decent volume soon finds things rattling and buzzing in a room. All happening in the background while you listen to music.

Happy Birthday!