Craig Sawyers

I once got involved in a project for a superconducting gravity gradiometer, around 20 years ago. This was for the GOCE mission (Gravity and Ocean Circulation Explorer). Because the cryogens were the closest uncontrolled mass to the gradiometer, we had to constrain them. One of the design team came up with a cryogen cycle in which there was a solid hydrogen outer shield (which sublimed to space through a capillary, and what was left was held on a wire mesh) and a liquid helium inner vessel that cunningly moved around the phase diagram so it was always full - for the 1 year mission anyway. So no gas-liquid boundaries and uncontrolled motion. I presented this solution to ESA, and they were very unhappy about the solid hydrogen. I must admit I found that puzzling since it was sitting on top of a rocket with hundreds of tons of high explosive propellant in it. Fortunately we substituted solid neon, which worked just as well, but was substantially heavier.

Or high temperature superconducting power and speaker cable? http://www.amsc.com/documents/hts-cable-systems-for-ac-networks/ . Might be a problem in terminating it into Stax 'phones though

OK - I have filed a report with Action Fraud. I spoke to someone rather than do it on-line because I needed to know how to do this under the circumstances of a UK criminal preying on US victims. The way this all works nationally (copied from their website) is: City of London Police The City of London Police is the national lead police force on fraud. It provides a central resource for counter-fraud policing and runs the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) and Action Fraud. National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) The NFIB is where cases of fraud are reported to and was created by the police to help them catch fraudsters. All confirmed reports of fraud from Action Fraud are passed on to the NFIB. I have a case number. NFRC 161 201 671 640, against which victims can report their particular circumstances. So we need to encourage as many of those to go on-line and enter their data. The process for adding victim data is as follows: 1. Generate a new fraud report http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/report-a-fraud-including-online-crime-questions 2. Use the reference number NFRC 161 201 671 640 (not sure where that is added, but I assume it is obvious at some point in the process) 3. The data entered by the victim will be associated with the data I supplied them

OK - there is a UK National Fraud Reporting Service called ActionFraud. That acts as the first point of contact in reporting fraud, and it is then routed to the police force in the area in which the crime has been committed. http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/ . I'll phone them this morning, and find out how this is best reported - whether I can report it, or whether it has to be reported by the victims. If it is possible to report this on behalf of multiple victims, it would sure help if I had as comprehensive list of victims as possible. I'd need a steer on that from someone in the US to unpick this guy's trail of financial destruction. The UK police would ultimately need to phone up victims as part of evidence gathering.

Ran a check on the IBAN code ( GB67BARC20253680571172). It turns out to be a valid code, and refers to the bank account he quotes 805711792, so that checks out. Except the bank that this account is held at is Barclays in Leicester (LE87 2BB)! Now the sort code he quotes 20-25-36, which cross validates with his account number and leads back to an account at the Barclays Leicester LE87 2BB branch. So - Coventry is a scam - the account is actually in Leicester; the IBAN, account number and sort code all lead there. By the way, the SWIFT code he quotes is incomplete. BARCGB22 simply says it is Barclays. There should be an additional three digits that identify the branch - but I guess that he did not want to make it too easy to find out where his account was.

Squirrel is making a comeback in the UK. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2086571/Anyone-grey-squirrel-pie-Victorian-delicacy-enjoys-revival-bid-save-red-cousins-extinction.html . There are even Indian restaurants with curried squirrel on the menu.

Just been looking at the image of the guy's passport. It is definitely fake, as compared with my expired passport from the same generation as that one. If you look just under the "f" of "of" (as in United Kingdom of...)you will see a small typed letter "P". That is in the same font and size as the lettering on the rest of the passport. You can see that the lettering in his fake is much, much larger and the wrong font. Also it is cropped and missing the bottom 20%. So the whole passport image is a complete fake. The utility bill is also a fake. As noted above the address is a fake. The bottom of the page is cropped (the bit where the bank sort code is for direct debit payment). And the last time a utility bill looked like that was more than a decade ago. And even then it did not look like that - they had by law to state the dates for which the bill related. This, from the British Gas website is what a real bill looks like https://www.britishgas.co.uk/youraccount/discover/your-bill/understanding-your-bill.html . Note that there are four pages with an astonishing level of detail. One potential route to tackling this POS scammer is for those who have been ripped off to contact BBC's programme Watchdog. They regularly track down people like that, confront them on the doorstep, and involve the police. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mg74 . And the Police will take this very seriously. Obtaining money by fraud is a crime, and they will prosecute, particularly as this goon is a serial offender. In fact they could probably do him for money laundering too. I feel very strongly about this clown - he is the worst of our country, preying on overseas customers who he can feel confident won't or can't track him down. Let's prove the bastard wrong.

Well isn't that interesting. Kingsbury is in London. Four Pools (Lane) is in Evesham, and has post code WR11 1DJ (not WR11 4TJ - but note the close similarity). And Four Pools Lane is a road through a trading estate with no houses. WR11 4TJ is a tiny isolated development of about 100 houses about 2 miles North of Evesham in which the road names are Byrd Row, St Egwins Close, Heathfield Road, Kings Lane and Lloyd Close. No Four Pools there at all. So it is anyone's guess where precisely he is, or even what his name is - I've seen various versions even from the Head Case threads. The only other slightly obscure reference I found is that someone with the same name on his (perhaps photoshopped) passport was registered as an absentee voter in elections in the Philippines. I noticed that his 100% positive feedback on eBay from 76 sales are not possible to see - he has set his eBay account to be private. So the 76 sales could be all shill bid and entirely fictitious.

It is a wonder we persevered in WW2 with muppets that are so naiive running around. The ship was a lot tighter back then - as an example Bletchley Park, the cipher cracking place, had 10,000 staff, most of which commuted in special trains laid on for the purpose. And said nothing about it to anyone at all; in fact they kept quiet about it for the rest of their lives, until the remaining few opened up about it in the last decade or two. Churchill said of them "The geese that laid the golden egg, and never cackled". And it worked the same way in the US back then. At least that era was when Russian spies were real spies, like Klaus Fuchs on the Manhattan Project and the Russian cell in British Intelligence (The Cambridge Five). And now, on both sides of the pond, when cyber war is the way a county will be brought to its knees (no power, no transport, no petrol/gas, no water, no food, no hospital care etc etc) we have critically insecure data systems, staffed by clowns and blithering idiots.

Both the above

Got it. He looks like a real piece of work that needs to be taken down. Where he allegedly lives is about 70 minutes drive from where I am. If anyone knows where and if he is auctioning something, I'll contact him and ask if I can drop in to inspect the goods

I read that three times and still don't have the foggiest clue what it is all about.

Because I'm a grumpy old git, I got my university education entirely free of charge. In fact the UK government *paid* you a (means tested) grant, in today's money about £6-10k per year for living expenses, books and hedonism, and tuition was free. And that was both degrees. But in those days back in the mid 70's (pass the walking frame...) only 6% of school leavers went to university in the UK. Fast forward. John Major introduced the concept of tuition fees in 1997 at a low, £1k per annum, and means tested level. Then Tony Blair set a target that 50% of all school leavers should go to university. Why 50%? Who knows. But it had two effects. First the government could not possibly fund that level of university places, and upped the fees. When my kids went through 10-13 years ago it was £3000 per year for tuition fees plus a "student loan" for all other exenses. But under Cameron's government it was increased to £9000 a year for tuition fees, plus an annual student loan of £3575. Second effect is that in order to cope with the massive influx of students, universities went into a huge building programme, and generated all sorts of strange courses like Ethical Hacking (University of Abertay Dundee), Brewing & distilling (Heriot-Watt University), Applied golf management (University of Birmingham) and International Spa Management (University of Derby). There are endless examples. And those who currently emerge from a UK University owe around £40k + compound interest, and a payback time of typically 25 years. So you could be pushing 50 before you're free of the University financial yoke.

Ayre are a very interesting company. Their preamps in particular sound glorious, and are works of art internally (the KX-R). Can't afford one, but that is a different story.....

Saw him with Carole around 25 years ago in some London arena (forget where), and maybe four years ago in Birmingham with Lizzie - front row seats right in the middle bang in front of the keyboards (20 feet away) and the laser harp even closer. Much longer ago a good friend made the trek out to London Docklands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtTsCbfXZuQ in the pouring rain for one of his greatest outdoor extravaganzas - I unfortunately missed that one. But that was a great heads up Dusty - cheers!

Well that was truly awesome - absolutely fantastic. Seen him live twice, and this was the next best thing.

Designing support circuits, voltage references, precision clocking, and above all board layout is critical to get true 20-bit performance from such a DAC ( AD5791, according to Schiit's site). Given that, the Yggdrasil seems to be something of a bargain. But on R2R (a technology I haven't looked at for a looong time) I might spring for a Soekris just to find out what the fuss is all about.

I see your Casio PT-8 vs Virus Ti2 and up you the Adagio für Glasharmonika by Mozart. And sorry about the rubbish video.

What are you doing to wear the gladiators

Sad times. RIP Pongo.

Wow - I had no idea he was still alive. That is a great age - happy birthday Kirk!

Steve, FWIW I use blades from this outfit http://www.awsaws.uk/home_page.html . They do mildly custom stuff at not a lot more; my Wadkin RAS is old (the original round arm BRA), and it has an odd imperial diameter shaft. They modify by adding a pressed in feature to suit whatever diameter shaft your machine has. I recall that the blades that I have were the equivalent of $120-$140 each. Not cheap, but they are superb blades. I see that they do blades with anti-kickback features (page 5 of their catalogue http://www.awsaws.uk/ELECTRONIC CATALOGUE.pdf ), which I urge your cheapskate boss to invest in. And a riving knife, which I would have thought was essential for a table saw. Like everyone else, I'm massively impressed with how chilled you are about all this!

Not what I meant. I meant the angle the tooth makes with the radius. I use the term rake angle, but the alternative name is hook angle. I use a triple chip blade with negative rake in my radial arm saw - in that machine a positive tooth angle grabs the stock and the blade tries to climb out of the wood; that is not a good outcome. A negative rake gives much more control. The choice will definitely be different with a table saw, where the blade has to act to hold the piece firmly on the table.

Bloody hell Steve. A whole new definition to a hand job. As a user of woodwork machine tools (planer thicknesser, band saw, and an entirely lethal Wadkin radial arm saw) I can visualise precisely what happened. Here's hoping the tannin in the oak had a natural infection control. Let us know what the hand Doc says. Thinking of that table saw Steve - what rake angle is your blade?

RIP John Glenn - a guy made from the right stuff.