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I could listen to the tone of this instrument all night.

A frendly Head-Caser has kindly lent me four EL156, So, I made myself some EL156 to EL34 adaptors. Here a Megatron SS CCD something with the four EL156. Same friendly fellow has built himself a couple of filament supply for DHT similar to the one in above post.

Ironically (?) on the day that Al was supposed to have Detroit-style pizza, that's what I made for dinner.

amp board for single ended. you can run this as low as +/-24v and as high as +/-40v pioneera09amp - CADCAM.ZIP pioneera09pre2gain - CADCAM.ZIP

I had to do it! I had extra shoulder bacon, English muffins, eggs and so on. I did cook more hash browns than intended.

He'll be missed. Dancing With Strangers has a song called Joys of Christmas (with a B-side: Driving Home for Christmas). Listening to them now.

A certain 8TB drive was full, so I got a new 12TB drive, mounted it in a trusty external hard drive dock, connected by esata Ran This robocopy H:\ L:\ /E /COPYALL /DCOPY:T /R:0 /W:0 /MT:12 /XJ /LOG:C:\robocopy_H_to_L_full.log And walked away (without an explosion in the background) To get this Total Copied Skipped Mismatch FAILED Extras Dirs : 1966 1966 2 0 0 0 Files : 7172 7169 0 0 3 0 Bytes : 7.270 t 7.266 t 0 0 4.370 g 0 Times : 309:01:27 21:57:50 0:00:00 1:49:56 Speed : 101043866 Bytes/sec. Speed : 5781.776 MegaBytes/min. Ended : Wednesday, December 17, 2025 6:02:03 PM Some 22 Hours later. Swapped the drives, and now I have to play with, Matey.🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️ EDIT: Of course, if the AI Bubble hadn't made cheap storage and ECC DDR5 unobtanium, I'd be expanding a ZFS storage pool on a NAS by just adding a drive, but here we are.

Cats, squirrels and other critters will have to wait. Let's talk about using an unnecessarily shallow depth of field. Last night it was cold AF, especially by Vineyard standards. In spite of that, I picked one of my new lenses, bundled up and went downtown. Zero points for guessing which one I chose. As I have said repeatedly, the list of things that have encountered in my life that lived up to the hype were (in no order): Citizen Kane, Ardbeg Uigeadail, Biosphere's Substrata, Tapatio hot sauce and the Canon EF 85mm F/1.2L (II). I last shot with the 85L in 2009, when it was a relatively new lens. Also, when I was a young, spry man in his 30s who had no problem lugging around a glass boat anchor + camera body for hours on end. The 85L is so comically fat, it changes the entire shooting experience. The balance of the camera feels different. Every shot takes just a bit more effort. I actually find it easier to hold things steady for longer exposures than with some lighter lenses. Of course, the depth of field is (to use the technical term) non-fucking-existent. I'm not old. You're old. (This joke works a lot better on places that aren't Head-Case.) Shot wide-open because I can. Downtown EDG's Christmas decorations (which are so famous, people come from all over the world for the "Christmas in Edgartown" first lighting.) TBH this is not a terribly compelling shot. It does look a bit like a still from a movie. Same idea, reflected off a truck. There's no real artistry to the wafer thin DoF, but it looks neat. It actually takes a fair amount of work (and some luck) to use such a shallow plane of focus effectively. I actually really like these two. The ornaments are sufficiently in focus, and the background is a warm cozy dream. The way I describe the 85L's handling of OOF highlight is that it paints them. It looks like a less cloying version of a Hallmark card. That's about it from an hour's walk. My hit rate was abysmal. Not terrible surprising, as I was shooting in Program mode with auto ISO. The 5D kept the 85 at max aperture and 1/80th shutter speed, while it adjusted auto ISO on the fly. Most of the Christmas lights are LED, and strobe at 60Hz. This effect is noticeable to the naked eye and super obvious in photos. I have two shots of the same doorway where one strand is out and then other. It looks comically bad. Also, while the 85L's shallow DoF is amusing, it's not reliably useful. It turns out that having more than a paper sheet's worth of a frame in-focus is good idea. Who knew? If it's not so ball freezingly cold, I'm going to back out and shoot more lights. I won't lug the 85 again. 35 years ago I dislocated my left shoulder and it never healed correctly. It was in absolute agony by the end of last night. If I'm smart, I'll take my OG 50mm F/1.8 (arguably the best lens I own for actually taking photos and not dicking around.) The 17-40mm is also a great walkaround lens. Modern bodies have sufficient high ISO performance that it's F/4 aperture is not a problem. I also have a strong notion to make use of the 135 F/2L. It's not as over the top as the 85L (what is, this side of Leica?) but its optical qualities are legendary.

Yup - this for reasons.

I read "Imbibing" "Spirit" and "Scramble"

Tracey Thorn‘s Tinsel and Lights

Two things: (1) This time of year (we're picoseconds from the solstice), the sun does some funny things. (2) My CZJ 135mm F/3.5 Sonnar is one of my favorite lenses, full stop. I describe the images it renders as "handsome." Everything is sharp, colorful, and has the right amount of distance between subjects. In a different universe, I might use a 135mm on a medium format (Hasselblad makes a neat 135mm that'll set you back about 5 large.) It is not the narrow FoV that I like, it's what is to my biased eyes the "correct" amount of telescopic compression. To wit: Note the birds in the upper left corner. Earlier, I was capturing fall colors with the Sonnar: Also this photo got into Flickr's "Explore" section: Nearly 5000 views and 150 favorites later. TBH I find the whole thing kind of silly. Longtime listeners may recall me mentioning that Explore is heavily botted and most of the photos that end up in it are eye catching, but not particularly good. TBH that's what the above is, I think. The Sonnar's bokeh is quite good and the little cedar tree is tack sharp. With that said, the framing is nothing special. It's just a snapshot with a shallow DoF. The Sonnar is a great lens. Flickr is dumb. Bonus, previous photos of mine that I have made it into Explore: The pond next to Edgartown harbor. 2020 rework of a photo I took in 2006. IR version of the same area, 2013. A bungalow, across from Cannonball Park. As I said, eye-catching but not necessarily good. Next time: Cats, squirrels and whatever I get up to with some new glass (more on that later.)

We caught up with one of the kids who sang on 'A Charlie Brown Christmas.' He's 72 now. https://www.npr.org/2025/12/19/nx-s1-5640171/a-charlie-brown-christmas-christmastime-is-here-peanuts-schulz

@

Does Broadway count? New music for this revival by Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA fame, with lyrics by Tim Rice.

Some Anti-AntisocialPersonalityDisorder-ant would be a start

My plate was almost as decadent

Zwift supports motorcycles?

Right now? The Road to Hell. In general? Lots and lots of Chris Rea. Tasty guitar playing, tasty guitar tone, tasty singing (Ohmigosh, that voice...), tasty songwriting. Just...tasty everything. Dude was peak.

As if I needed more of a reason to like Cup Noodle.

There may have been rain and wind in Marin, but at least there was power, so Quite the performance

YGPM

According to the internets. Another version of the same has a line to the Center as positive. On Ebay - some one is selling one with this wall wart power supply Looking it up on Mouser - it is indeed - Center Positive. (unless he is selling it with a supply that would make it not work) But I think it is safe to say - Center +

Bacon, egg and cheese bagel sandos with potatoes.

50th Anniversary of Vince Guaraldi’s Jazz Mass at Grace Cathedral Part One Part Two

Something I noticed the other day - Qobuz has tapped into Gramophone and a few others like 4F to add Editor's Choice and the like. Not that big of a deal, but a nice addition.

Free endorphin shots here

It's probably a sort of pilot project - if they don't lose their shirts on Type I, maybe they'll fire up Chromium and Metal cassette production later. And what is this stuff for, anyway? Hobbyists, or real music production work? Will most of these tapes go into cheap Tanashin-knockoff Chinese cassette players? Are we playing with analog for analog's sake - should a new cassette transport include noise reduction like Dolby S or is it a solved problem already (Digital Compact Cassette)? Wouldn't it make sense for a new cassette transport to use direct drive instead of belts and fewer parts for reliability? I'm putting this Nakamichi Dragon vs. LX-5 comparo and a boombox review below just for reference - there is a small niche market emerging...

clever huh? first time i have seen this. what it really is, is some local feedback around the current mirror. the lower impedance load forces the current source to supply more current to the drive of the output transistors. all those output transistors in parallel really form an extremely stiff drive current without global feedback. in single ended form, perfect for low impedance ribbons. and 30v/10a switchers are cheap. lot of heat however, 1.5 amp bias current. (total) i have a single ended gain stage to go with it. basically half of the balanced version with a cfa capable input section. input section can have local feedback as shown. or remove that resistor. updated to current version pioneera09pre.pdf

Al and I just prepared Eggs Benedict for the Mayberry compound. I may have overdone it. See you all after a brief food coma.

Sapphire Sandwich arrived. I neglected to make sure the stock bracelet had enough links, so it’s a good thing I had a Forstner Flat Link (which was a bear to size) ready to go. I’m very happy with it.

When it is cold and wet outside, Zwift is just the best. Also, good news. @MexicanDragon will be joining the HC-Zwifters soon!

As a friend once said, "With a voice like honey, poured over gravel". Or the M25's unofficial theme song RIP, Chris.

At the United States Air Force Museum. I am going to need a faster computer, as the base M4 Mac Mini chugs on the files out of the GFX100RF.

The Prisoner (1967) Brilliant show...

Saw some talk about this and decided to make a new version. use either the tube unbal/bal to bal board, or the solid state version result is about 125 watts rms into 8 ohms at thd of .005% will definitely drive 4 ohms with suitably large power supplies. transistors are standard pinout, so pick your favorite output transistors. the to220 transistors are mje15034/mje15035 perfect for so many things, including esl boost transformers. pioneera09.pdf

^^^ Glad I got my first NAS updated to 40+TB (!) before the AI component craze......

But only Type 1 / Ferro ? "The cassette tape used is the latest production and is manufactured exclusively for Revox. The excellent analog sound of the new Revox cassette tape is made possible by the legendary Grandmaster formula. This Revox cassette gives the best results with the Ferro/Normal Position Type I setting on your cassette player." https://www.horchhouse.com/en-us/products/grandmaster-c90-empty-cassette Disappoint. No Metal? Compact Cassette tape types and formulations - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette_tape_types_and_formulations tapeheads.net/threads/cassette-type-1-2-3-4-strengths-evaluations.2999/

The Mavericks - What a Crying Shame RIP, Raul Malo

Robert Earl Keen's Greatest Christmas on Earth John R Miller opening https://archive.org/details/rek20251209 https://archive.org/details/jrm20251209

New Tricky album I got for my bday... feels like I'm in Highschool

I'm not even a watch guy, but that is a sweet looking watch. Congrats!

Do other people hear those McCartney quotes in a bad impression of his voice, or is it just me?

Carol Kaye Is Being Honored by the Rock Hall. She Doesn’t Care. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/arts/music/carol-kaye-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok8.jc_B.uWHtQAZ4VieQ&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare (gift article) The first time Paul McCartney played the Beach Boys’ 1966 album “Pet Sounds,” he was struck by the grand ambition of the music as well the intricacies of tracks like “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” “And as I was a bass player,” McCartney noted in a recent interview, “I listened closely to the bass parts.” Like most people, McCartney assumed the song’s melodically affecting rhythms were the work of Brian Wilson. “Then later I looked at the credits,” he said, “and I saw it wasn’t Brian on bass, it was this girl, Carol — Carol Kaye. That was quite a shock to me. I started looking into what else Carol played on, and she was on everything.”