Craig Sawyers

This http://www.lfo.org.uk/tristan-und-isolde/. Awesome.

Or along the same lines, a campground is a good place for sex because the excitement is in tents.

Happy birthday!

Never seen those beasts, but apparently British, The price in US-speak - in the region of three quarter million. Depending on finish. Now where is the cheque book

In the UK I use these guys to buy black high tensile metric screws. http://www.modelfixings.co.uk/ht_metric_countersunks.htmand http://www.modelfixings.co.uk/high_tensile_steel_caps.htm In general it seems that high tensile screws are black. Or black enough. Powder coating has the problem with paint build up - so you can't get a socket or driver in the slot anymore. Or if you do, it damages the powder coat and the bare metal shows thought. Got the badge on that one.

That is old King's Cross station in London, probably around late forties. It was massively remodeled in the 1960's through to present time and now could be a station just about anywhere. Looks like this now But at least it boasts platform 9 3/4 from the Harry Potter movies.

I've just sprung for an LDR passive attenuator, having looked at and tried various standard rotary (TKD etc), switched resistive attenuators, and flirted with tapped transformer attenuators without trying them. We'll see once I get them boxed up.

Ah - goddit. Must have had brain fade. Alternative way of doing it is to get matched pairs from Spencer and mount them in an isothermal housing. Something like the old 2SJ75 package of two discrete matched J74 that predated the funky plastic packaged dual 2SJ109. I just got four J74BL quads matched to 10mA. Each quad is matched to the second decimal place, so easily good enough for a roll your own 2SJ109. 2SJ75GR available from the usual source, but at $32. Or buy a bunch of LSJ74 and match. Not cheap at $6 each. Basically the cheapest way is to buy matched from Spencer at $9 each and then pair them to give a cost of $18 per pair.

Linear Systems LSJ109 is fairly easily available. In the UK https://www.micross.com/ecommerce/for about UKP1.30

I bought J74BL's from him a month or so ago with tight matching. Excellent service, and warp speed shipment. But he was about out of K170's when I ordered the J74's.

I've just done precisely that. I needed four quads each matched to 10mA +/-0.25mA and he said no problem. Since his prices seem so good, there is no major loss if they turn out to be duds. But with 100% positive feedback I have some modest hope they will be OK.

Have a few beers on me. In addition I'll have a few beers anyway and think of you on your birthday A great birthday to you sir.

I thought this had to be a spoof, or an April fool joke - but no http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/05/microwave-oven-caused-mystery-signal-plaguing-radio-telescope-for-17-years

May your functions always converge - happy birthday Shelly!

Having suffered a 6 week election campaign with wall to wall media (they are usually 4 weeks) I can't tell you have much I enjoyed that Grahame! I'm going to vote for the wolves.

This http://www.cft.org.uk/way-upstream

Mezzanine boards are sometimes a smart idea. One amp I did had one board full of voltage regulators. The amp board plugged in a bit like an old 7000 series Tektronix scope, so each regulator had a direct feed to each stage of the amp. It meant that each element could be optimised without compromising the other.

Actaully on Saturday, but this http://www.lovetheatre.com/tickets/4132/American-Buffalo?gclid=CJv5sbL3lcUCFSWWtAodSDEApgwith both Damian Lewis (Homeland, Band of Brothers) and John Goodman (more movies than you can shake a stick at, including Argo). An awesome afternoon at the theatre.

^ Let's hope he doesn't want to get anything in the boot (trunk)

It was absolutely clear that all the filmed stuff - like the road trips - was staged and scripted when you can do lots of takes and then edit. But the studio sections with the audience (for which there was an 8 year waiting list) were too - and since none of them are actors it remains exceptionally clever. The appearance of spontaneity in front of cameras and an audience to a basic script with non-actors is very difficult to get right, and not seem like the worst sort of ham acting. May has a music degree and is a performance grade pianist. Hammond and Clarkson are journalists and writers.

This is all being really well stage managed. They meet at Clarkson's for a couple of hours and pow! a posse of the media magically arrive and follow them to the pub. Really? Who tipped them off - Clarkson or his school buddy Wilman? Even May and Hammond's Twitter feeds are very, very carefully pitched, May with his cookery lessons on YouTube and hang-dog wine swilling demeanour, Hammond on a road trip to pick up some sheep (Herdwick - I come from that end of the country) in the Lake district, very carefully and professionally edited. And Clarkson saying - well nothing at all, other than a single tweet to advertise his article in the Sunday Times. So yes - very very carefully managed. But since they are clearly off to do something somewhere else, I think that any attempt by the BBC to reinvent Top Gear as-was with an entirely new trio is a dead duck. I read today that all the banter and personas is scripted; it looks spontaneous (Clarksonian pause) but it isn't: the old Top Gear was basically a sitcom about three middle aged blokes with an interest in cars.

Proud to be a brit! Defy you not to laugh out loud

Just about every useful piece of audio silicon is obsolete. Low noise bipolar (at lease those with sensible noise specs like contours and rbb' spec) are dead, such as 2SB737. Low noise FETs - although LSK170 are now easily available LSJ74 are only sporadically available. Original 2SK170 and 2SJ74 are like hen's teeth. A shed load of silicon for the T2 is now obsolete, as with original Blue Hawaii. Low noise dual FETs 2SK389 and 2SJ109 long dead, although at least LSK389 is now available. This often happens when companies merge or are acquired, and product ranges are "rationalised". A prime example is one of the lowest phase noise SC-cut ovenised clocks on the planet was made by Oscilloquartz - the BVA. Lower phase noise than rubidium and deployed in space missions. Also used by high end digital audio nuts with deep pockets. Taken over 2014 by ADVA a year after the highest spec ever BVA-C was introduced. The BVA has now been discontinued. http://www.oscilloquartz.com/textes-history-563. For the comfort and convenience of - er - the shareholders or private equity piranhas. Boy oh boy does this grind my gears.

Yeah - that is the way to do it. I have a box of different size centre drills depending on the final hole size. But since I don't have any NC malarky and only have a precision drill press it is important to mark the hole centres accurately. I use a digital height gauge with hardened spur to scribe lines in precisely the right place. I then use a magnifying glass to get a centrepunch right on the scribe marks. Then the centre drill and final drill size. Time consuming, but it sure is nice when everything fits together just right.