Craig Sawyers

Yeah - with Alan Davies. He's been in a number of things - his current series is called Whites, in which he plays a chef. But if you watch him on QI (the celebrity quiz show with Steven Fry as cerebral quiz master) you will see that Alan Davies only plays one character - Alan Davies. Made a lot of money that way though. Driving toward my village yesterday, saw a very nice Rolls Royce in a traffic queue in the opposite direction. Wonder who is at the wheel? - James May. As Bill Bryson's book "Notes from a Small Island" indicates - we are truly titchy, and spotting celebs is fairly frequent in cars, restaurants etc. The next X-Men movie is shooting at the moment in Oxford, for example.

Oxford Audio Consultants . Made the salesman's day - I walked in, payed him a lot of money and walked out. Five minute deal. The price in the UK is

Running new Winged C EL34's at the moment. Showing up the limitation of the CD player (Tube Technology CD64) at the moment, so will correct that first, and then try out the NOS Mullards. I'm going to have to tear myself away from listening to the BH + O2's and get the T2 up and running now that I have repair parts. I bought 20 K216's on the basis that these seem to be the thing that goes phut in quantity if anything else goes wrong in the T2.

Pocket now duly evacuated on a pair of O2's. OMG - can't write - have to go listen more.

You prof needs a good kicking - he/she is clearly a bio-luddite. The bio-sciences have a strong statisitical element, so stochastic modelling is entirely a valid approach to data and meta-data analysis.

I know that feeling Started running again after four months being plagued with an achilles problem. Poured some money into my sports physio, who put me through physical hell, and I seem to be over it. Reduced from marathon and beyond distances to 2 miles with aching quads. Hey ho.

I've got the advantage here. Worn specs since I was four - so half a century on now. Always wear until falling asleep - onto the nightstand. Wake up, put on face. Repeat. When I take them off to run, I have to remember where I put them - cause as sure as hell I can't see them.

One of the guys on the space instrument project I'm managing went back to Italy to visit his mother for a few days. Felt a bit unwell and went to the doctor. Bam - cancer. He's 26. Not sure what sort, or what the outcome is, but when it happens to someone who is the same age as my son.... I'm still reeling a bit.

Because the UK is truly tiny, everyone is pretty close. Clarkson lives around 30 miles away, Richard Branson less than 20, and at Henley-on-Thames 25 miles away it is a veritable who's who. George Harrison used to live there (before he smoked himself to death), and the Leander Rowing Club is the source of the clutch of UK Olympics gold medals over recent decades.

Ah - the Bigg Market. Never, ever under any circumstances go down the Bigg Market at night at the weekend. You'd be asking for a "Byker kiss" - being nutted in the face. Byker is a rough area of Newcastle (there are others).

Cheers! I'll take some pics soon and post them somewhere. I managed to scare up enough 2SA1968's, but I wonder whether a T2 style anode current source could be substituted; but is that what is already in the BH-2? Yeah - the next pocket evacuating exercise will definitely be O2's.

Well, it'll come as no surprise that I understood every word of that. It wasn't particulary heavy dialect either. True Geordie phrases include the memorable "Divvent cowp yer creels bonny lad" and "you lookin' for a cleb roond the lugs?"

The accent you are recalling (my accent) is called Geordie. It is actually a bastardised ancient Norwegian/Swedish from the dark ages Viking invaders. There are whole chunks of Geordie that bear a strong link to modern Scandinavian languages. Remarkably persistent dialect that has its roots back over a thousand years. It is no wonder you have trouble with it

An excellent semi-fact-based series. The Yorkshire Ripper was a real guy Peter Sutcliffe, who went on a serial killing spree of prosititues and other women from 1975 to 1980. Serving life in Broadmoor. The corrupt developer played by Bean was also a familiar thing in the North of England (where I come from) at around that time. The most famous pair were T. Dan Smith (Head of Newcastle city Council) and John Poulson (the developer/architect). Vast bribes (we're talking many hundreds of thousands - worth perhaps ten million today) passed to ensure a contract for building a vast mall in the city centre of Newcastle (Eldon Square). T Dan Smith was the invited speaker at one of my school's academic achievement prize events - I remember him calling making Newcastle the "Brasilia of the North" - he was arrested less than a year later. T Dan Smith was also a central character in another excellent series called "Our Friends in the North" made in 1996. If you enjoyed Red Riding, it is worth looking this one out. Just as dark.

Well, OK - I've now got the BH sorted, and truly awesome it is too. Takes a long time to warm up and get on-song - but what a song! Clear that the limitation is the source (TT CD64) and phones (lamdas). Now on to repair and get the T2 working...

Blimey - the Pikes Peak! For those not in the know, this is like no other marathon on earth. Well over 6000 vertical feet (actually over 7700 feet of ascent), with 2000 feet in the last three miles, involving rock scrambling. Best time for the full marthon (ie up the Peak and back down) is around 3h30m. Which is about my best marathon time **on the flat**. Most times are way, way longer than that. But the real ball breaker is that it starts at well over 6000 feet - so the Peak itself is at 14,000 feet - and oxygen starvation becomes a major issue. One of the planet's ultimate challenges. So hats off Tyrion!

Got my Blue Hawaii up and running. Awesome.

I think that is probably the problem with sensing the inside of the block. LV is one of the half dozen wood species with a density greater than water - LV is around 1.3. It is also full of a type of gum which both smells like strong perfume when you work it, and makes it self lubricating (it was used for propellor bearings in steam ships for that reason). So it is very homogeneous, which makes it difficult to sense internal structure.

There is no spoon

Lucked out and inherited a large and hefty box of flight grade components that were originally used for the JET-X satellite. Date coded 1991, and past their flight grade expiry date. Nicely stocked up the resistor and capacitor racking, and there is still the diodes, transistors and IC's to work through.

I say using intuition and making a cut is the only way to go. You win some, you lose some - but it is always exciting. I think Kevin got a win.

Doh! Been there, done that - in a remote and deserted car park in January in near darkness having been for a long run, soaked with sweat. Eventually found someone with a cell phone who called rescue for me. I recovered from near hypothermia in the rescue truck while their guy took nearly half an hour to break into my car - it was not easy.

I moved off TKD because there is not a good electrical connection between the shaft and collar. The net effect is that you get a crackling or whooshing sound as you turn the shaft. Mine was so bad that I returned it for a replacement - which was exactly the same. Eventually bought a DACT from Justin, which is a sonic source of joy. Somewhere lurking aound in the head case threads is talk of dismantling the TKD and putting silver loaded grease on the shaft to get a better connection..... My TKD sits in the spares box, and might possibly be used in some other, non-audio project eventually. An expensive addition to the spares box....

The Zen-like cabinetmaking books by Krenov talk about the risks of cutting into a piece of wood. Even with his legendary intuition of reading a plank, he would often get it wrong. At one stage he almost paralysed himself with the fear of cutting or planing incorrectly and missing that perfect effect. That is the risk and the joy of working with wood.

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