Craig Sawyers

After 20 years of not riding, I fixed up my 40 year old Claud Butler Sovereign a couple of weeks ago. Of course bike technology has undergone at least one and possibly two revolutions since I bought mine. Reynolds 531 tubing and forks, 27 x 1-1/8 wheels, Campognolo changers and downtube shifters. Stonglight crank set with 52/36. At some point I had replaced the rear 5 speed wide ratio rear gears with a close ratio 6 speed. All the grease was like tar (the balls were even stuck together!), so it was a complete strip down and very careful clean, replacement of all balls with grade 10 and relubed with some fancy teflon-loaded grease. New chain - Shimano with some sort of useless quick link which I ditched and just used a chain tool. Replaced the grippy but heavy tyres with a pair of lightweight NOS Continental UltraSport ones from eBay (NOS because of the now obsolete wheel size). Even buckled down to learning how to true wheels, since mine had take a bit of a battering on UK roads when I was still riding. Weighs in at 11kg all up. It is what now classifies as a "retro bike". Anyway - it uses pedals with clips and straps, and I used to have a pair of bike shoes with the correct old-fashioned cleats. But I seem to have thrown them out at some stage. So it looks like the next thing that is needed to effectively get the thing on the road (apart from shaking out rebuild gremlins around the close) is some clipless pedal and new bike shoes/cleats. Any recommendations that won't break the bank would be most welcome. I'm kind of working up to the inevitability of falling off at some point; I still recall how much that hurts.

And silence came the stern reply

That brought me to tears.

Alastair Reynolds worked at the European Space Agency, and wrote novels in his spare time. Once they began to sell big time, he resigned and started as a full time author. Love his stuff - as a hard scientist, his novels reflect that.

That was my introduction to his work, Stretch. A great novel. My other favourite is Greg Bear. Particularly some of his astonishing earlier work like Blood Music and Infinity Concerto. He's gone off the boil a bit, more recently.

Odd factoid - there are more tornadoes in the UK, per land area, than in any other country in the world. Although they are a whole lot weaker than the devastating variety in the US, they nevertheless cause a lot of damage on an occasional basis - like when they touch down in a city. Tornado damage in Birmingham UK in 2005

Working my way through Iain M Banks' back catalogue. Hell of an author in the space opera genre. Also writes non-scifi under the same name without the "M", none of which I've yet to read.

Yup. Cut and paste from What HiFi forums.

So I thought - why has Dusty got a new avatar. Now I know, now I know....

Rockport make exceptionally serious products, mainly speakers now. Only ever heard them (the Arrakis) at an audio show, and it left a lasting impression. But the original product was a phenomenal turntable with parallel tracking arm. When they come up for sale very occasionally the price looks like telephone numbers. Looks like this:

Have a great one!

Just been dipping in and out of Stockhausen's Sternklang. Uncertain if I like it or not, but think it is worth the effort. Possibly.

We were walking precisely along that path last September, when we stayed in Selva in val Gardena. It was just as awesome as it looks. The path does not go up those crags though - it drops down to a slightly lower path that hugs the bottom of the crags. The pink appearance to the rocks is of ancient corals when all this region was under the sea. If you get the chance to visit this area - do so!

Happy birthday Todd - and thanks for such an awesome place!

I am a great fan of Wagner's music. We're lucky to be fairly near to https://lfo.org.uk/ so have seen a splendid complete Ring there, plus Tristan (last year) and Tannhauser (this year). Saw Die Meistersingers in Birmingham with Bryn Terfel too. Very much looking forward to when Longborough do Parsifal. Of course there is the dark, unpleasant side of Wagner. His politics, and views on Jews were not nice at all, which is why his music was passionately admired by Hitler. Wagner hated Brahms with a passion, and put it about that the sounds in his music were based on the sounds of dying cats he shot from his balcony with a bow and arrow. Which may or may not be apocryphal https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/apr/12/highereducation.arts

There are quite deliberate dissonances in Thomas Tallis's Spem in Alium from the 16th century. And Mozart received a really heated letter from his father for using more adventurous anharmonious intervals in his music. So in a sense it has ever been thus, although clearly accelerating in the 20th century with not only Schoenberg but also Stravinsky, Messiaen, Cage and many others.

Oops! Belated best wishes!

Iranian German teenager, later found dead, apparently by his own hand. No known links to terrorism, acting alone the Germans say. RIP the victims of this latest madness.

That is absolutely true. RIP Gary Marshall.

British scone recipe http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/scones_1285 My grandma (1897 to 1986) used to make these without scales to weigh anything out. And used plain flour with cream of tartar and bicarbonate of soda to make it self raising. They are the best scones I have ever tasted.

It was a great, beautiful and good sounding product with two problems. First, the laser machined, triple silk screen printed, and highly innovative (and expensive!) perspex front panel was fixed to the metalwork with double sided tape, and there was no datums to assist, nor any jigs. So it was applied by eye, and needed to be in the correct place and square to better than half a millimeter. There was a massive wastage - until we got a jig designed and made. Second, I discovered that the Lynx designer (and company founder) was dyslexic, so on the (hand drawn) engineering plans instead, for example, of 124.5mm it was marked up at 125.4mm. So there were tantalizing minor fit problems all over the place. In fact, the first time they went bust in New Zealand was because the blind tapped holes in the heatsink for the power transistors were not deep enough for the screw length (so the screws bottomed, and the transistors were not in contact with the sink), so every last product blew up when it got used - I strongly suspect that was also a dyslexic issue - sort of "drill and tap 3.5mm depth" when it should have been 5.3mm. Like many audio products it died not because of lack of passion, hard work and innovation, it died because of minor and avoidable technical issues. And after being acquired by Wharfedale, it died as a result of the near death experience of Wharfedale in the early 90's consumer recession.

Back a decade or three I was CTO of Wharfedale, and we acquired a bust company called Lynx for a tiny sum of money. Run by two New Zealanders; they made a really sweet range of products based around an FET power amplifier. Sounded very nice indeed (even if it was a bitch to manufacture). This is an example http://www.canuckaudiomart.com/details/649106536-super_rare_lynx_nebula_mosfet_integrated_amplifier/images/694258/ . Anyhow, we were sat one day when a return came in - with a letter saying from a guy in Hong Kong saying it had burst into flames and demanding some outrageous compensation. We unpacked it, and sure enough it was a charred mess inside. Smelling strongly of petrol. We got the Chemistry lab at Leeds University to do some forensics and write an expert report. We sent that to the guy in HK - and that was the last we heard from him.

RIP the 84 dead in Nice France when a truck drove through the crowds celebrating Bastille day, watching a firework display at 11pm local time. Bastard drove for over a mile swerving to kill the maximum number of people. More than ten children among the dead. Eventually shot dead by police.