Craig Sawyers

These to replace the ones you stood on? I put a scratch clear across my new pair yesterday, so I'm royally pissed off.

I certainly had a deep memory that it was something to do with Magnepan. A google search for "magnepan vs apogee patent" turns up quite a bit of stuff that supports that, this being typical from newaudiosociety.com: "I believe there was an issue with a lawsuit from Jim Winey over at Magnepan....it seems he had a patent on the planar design and the Apogee version was a little too close to the patented version. Also, the head designer at Apogee croaked-it, which didn't help. What gets me is why Magnepan didn't incorporate some of the Apogee methodology into their designs. The Apogee's seem to be better integrated in the lows and highs, and I think that's partly due to the dual purpose midrange/tweeter, partly due to a better XO design and partly due to a much more rigid mechanical construction."

Well, I've worn specs since I was four, which is a cool half century ago now. Eyes went through some changes from 45 to 50 and have settled down again. Use the latest ultralight (read: ultraexpensive) varifocals, which are superb.

Maybe they are Pass at that. The big problem with the Apogees in general was the exceptionally low impedance. The original Scintilla in the early 80's was 0.5 ohm and low efficiency, and Krell got established when trying to develop an amp that would drive that sucker. Sounded bewilderingly wonderful - as fast as an electrostatic, but with real low frequency grunt and loud (if fed with enough current!).

Those are inspired by Siegfried Linkwitz's Pluto speakers Linkwitz Lab - Loudspeaker Design

Those are Apogee's fed by a Krell set up. Classic in its day. Apogee got killed by Magneplanar (or Magnepan as the company is known) going for their throat as infringers of their planar magnetic driver patent.

Flew back from three days (business) in Finland. It's colder in the UK than it is in Helsinki. At the moment.

Awesome!

Digitally remastered, final director's cut of Blade Runner. One of my all time favourite films/movies. Ridley Scott actually comes from my neck of the woods - Seaton Carew on the North East coast of England. I saw him once explaining that the opening scene of Blade Runner with fire belching out of the tops of buildings owed itself to his childhood walking to school in the dark past the ICI chemical plant, with gouts of flame bursting out as excess gas was burnt off. The perpetual drenching rail is also true to fact for that area of the UK.

You've got to feel kind of sorry for Guido Fawkes - after they caught him (in 1606) he was tortured so badly that he could barely sign his name to his confession. He managed to foil the drawing and quartering part of the execution (along with having his "private parts" cut off and burnt in a brazier before his eyes) by timing a jump from the scaffold and breaking his neck. Much to my surprise though, hanging, drawing and quartering was only removed from the British statute books in 1870.

Is that Uncle Pass with the quest to use up the planet's supply of FETs?

YouTube "VH1 Anti Rockstar". This is my daughter's latest best beloved Eric. He's a stand-up comedian, does adverts (of which this is one), and voiceovers. Since she's an actor-in-training all this works on a number of levels. Mind you, the end of this particular advert is exceptionally disturbing - be warned.

Well having just sprung for the 007 Omega2, and had all the softening up necessary domestically for a pair of headphones that are more expensive than any loudspeaker I've bought, I need to play the long game for the next 6 months or so to get an even more outrageous pair - I reckon a full thousand UK pounds on top of the 007 price. Or maybe I need to make a trip to Japan for some business excuse, and sneak them back in through customs.....shhhh. Mind you the 007's sound glorious driven by a Blue Hawaii. I can hardly wait....

I'm just catching up with the new and shiney thread - but I thought Omega was used for the last letter in the Greek alphabet - in other words the last word in headphones. Until the C32....

Now that was fuuuu funny

Wrong list - but.... Glad I'm not alone. I cleared the attic of hoarded boxes last year. Scary stuff. My Dad seemed to collect bottles (he used to home brew beer and wine). When he died I cleared out the cellar with my Mum and found well over 200 empty bottles. I did however find that my Dad had got from somewhere a box of thousands of tiny silver parts (14lbs of them!), which I have just sold (bullion prices are peaking) and bought a pair of Stax SR007 with lots of change left over. Thanks Dad!

Well done buddy. I've done 11 of the buggers, plus a couple of 40-milers. Doesn't matter how much you train, if you get the pace *right* you feel wasted from mile 20 onwards in a marathon. A real mental battle. From 13 upwards I count upwards to 20 "7 to go to 20 - 6 to go, 5 to go". When I get to 20 I count down. "6 to go to the finish, 5 to go - I know I can run 5 miles, 4 to go - no problem, I run 4 without breaking a sweat" and so on. On a 40 miler and over, you adjust the pace. I remember getting into the 26 mile checkpoint on the last 40 trail race (The Compton 40, including 20 mile fun run) and thinking "Hokay - a marathon down, and a half marathon to go. What's the fuss?" At the moment, recovering from achilles problems, so a stone overweight. Over weight and under fit. 6 miles and I'm toast just now.

With muscle soreness (which could be either lactic acid, or injury) I'd beware of exercising again until it has eased off. Whenever I have had a break and run into this problem, it always seems more sore on the second day.

I once carried out a citizen's arrest in Cambridge. My (then) young son had just had his tonsils out, and I had taken my lunch break to look for a cuddly toy for him. Guy sprints out of a jewellers just in front of me followed by two guys in suits - they guy had just grabbed a bunch of expensive stuff and run out. So I chased him at a safe distance - for me just a trot. I reckoned that if he stopped, I'd stop. If he pulled a knife I knew I could run away faster than he could chase. Eventually ran him to a standstill in one of the colleges, and the police took him away with "We've been trying to nail this SOB for months!". Got a modest reward from both the police and the jewellers, which was nice, and a slot in the Cambridge newspapers. You can get away with this sort of stunt in the UK because opportunist thiefs don't have guns. In fact no-one is allowed handguns in law here, so shooting crime is vanishingly small. Knife crime is more common, because any knife will do.

Bizzarely there is apparently no difference to the incidence of sports injuries by warming up or cooling down before a session (as compared with just getting straight down to it) of whatever your personal endorphin fix comes from. That, along with all sorts of other myth busting stuff comes from the book "Born to Run".

The most common way of saying it is "Do you fancy going out for a curry?", or "Do you fancy an Indian take-away". Most restaurants in the UK are either Pakistani or Bangladeshi - so Northern India. They have adapted true cuisine for Western taste, and invented a few new ones, but that is fine. We were on holiday earlier this year for two weeks in India, and true Indian food is different and equally delicious. Of course most Indians are vegetarians - mainly because they are Hindu, and because meat is rare and risky (food poinsoning). There are specialist vegetarian restaurants in places with really big Indian populations like Birmingham, and they are worth seeking out.

Pretty much. You are never more than a short walk or 5 minute drive from an indian restaurant. There are 1000 of them in London alone, and 8000 in the UK . That equates to one indian restaurant for every 7000 of the UK population - which is exceptionally high. The corresponding number of indian restaurants for for the US would 37,000. It is 7 times the number of McDonalds in the UK. We certainly eat indian food once a week or so, although we usually either cook it ourself or have one delivered - there are five restaurants in Abingdon (population 25,000) that deliver to your door. At the weekend you often have to book in order to get a table. I buy my ingredients from the Eastern and Continental store in Cowley, which is where the restaurants buy their stuff Shopping on Oxford's Cowley Road

The other main applications were in golf, where a "wood" used to have an LV head, and ship's propellor bearings. Because of its self-lubricating properties and complete imperviousness to continual immersion in salt water it was used extensively in the days of steam. Better wear properties than brass bearings. It was also use in woodwork for mallet heads because of its density. Of course, that meant that the relatively small global stock of this very slow growing wood is nearly depleted, meaning it is not easy to get hold of in decent sizes.

Looks like you've found a local supply at reasonable prices. You'll know if you've got the real mckoy with LV from the perfume. Ones that you have absolutely got to have in your basket are: Burmese Paudauk Cocobolo Macassar Ebony Honduran Rosewood Kingwood Olive Purpleheart Zebrawood Ziricote I keep a small stock of turnery blanks (which is what this supplier provides) for small parts - contrasting through wedged tenons, knobs, decorative inserts, bow tie inserts etc. The thing to absolutely watch about these things is that most are not as stable as LV - many are prone to splitting if you take them straight into a dry heated or air conditioned house. You have to slowly acclimatise them to the humidity in which they will finally be used - reckon on a year or more per inch of thickness.

Dunno. I've had my Selmer Prologue for around 20 years now. Cost