Craig Sawyers

I've been trying to find out why those hats are called Derby on the US side of the pond. In the UK, where they were first produced in the mid 1800's they have always been called Bowler hats, after the company of hatters who invented the thing. Anyone any idea where the name Derby came from?

Paul Houlden hand delivered my transformers on Friday. Awesome - as a supplier to high end audio, what he does not know about toroid design is not worth knowing. These have additional insulating taping between layers to hold off inter-layer voltage - which considerably complicates manufacture. Wind a layer, take off winder, terminate wires and shrink wrap, put on taping machine and insulating tape layer, back onto winder; repeat as necessary. These things are specifically designed for ultra low stray field and imperceptible mechanical hum irrespective of power line fluctuation. The good news is that they nicely fit the chassis piercings. They are higher than the originals at 60mm (2.4 inches c.f. 1.6 inches), and are a thing of beauty. I'll take some photos and post them - link supplied later. Paul says that building identical units (physical size and secondary specification, except Paul's design is 7% regulation) for different primary voltages is trivial. Since he had to buy a quantity of cores to build mine, he is set up to build more.

Too right. Ben, Abigail, Sadie, Tipsy, Pickle. Three lived to a ripe old age, and two were victims of cars. Current cat Cleo is in rude good health.

Heh - we took our son to Australia when he was a few months old. Now imagine what you've just experienced for pretty much 24 hours solid on a full 747. We were sitting next to a couple whose kid had projectile vomit. We've been good friends ever since - friends made in common adversity. Fast forwarding 25 years, he is a great fella - living with his partner of 9 years (Helen), and phones in maybe three times a week for a chat. Couldn't wish for more - parental job well done

Holy shit Brent. I'm shaking just from reading your mail. Shit.

Don't think that I haven't considered white slavery. On a related note, daughter is working in a bar while waiting to join acting school. So today she has a day off, and fazed out with lack of sleep throws a buring hot cup of cocoa over herself. Side and thighs mostly. So much of today was spent with ice packs, cold baths, cold towels, ipuprofen and TLC. She was beside herself with pain to start (nothing is more painful than a scald), but fortunately the cold treatment meted out by her dad sorted things out - she is now fine, some remaining minor red patches, but nothing like the square foot of livid skin at midday. Phew. Bit of an emotional ball breaker of a day for us both. We're now completely knackered.

When that hit me, I learned to play the clarinet. Kids were still young-ish and we still had a mortgage so the Porche was a non-starter.

Hey - don't beat yourself up. Cats are really tough cookies - they have to be in a pretty bad shape before you even notice anything is wrong.

Last night to Chichester to watch two one-act comedies. Stoppard's "The Real Inspector Hound" and Sheridan's "The Critic". Both were plays within plays, with a bunch of first rate and well known actors who were in things like Notting Hill, Fierce Creatures, A Bridge too Far etc. Studio theatre with around 200 in the audience. The cast member you might recognise by name is Una Stubbs who was the slightly dotty landlady in Sherlock (and also back in the 60's and 70's in Till Death do us Part). A fine afternoon (we went to the matinee), in tears with laughter.

Cats are amazingly tolerant and tough critters. We had one cat that became semi feral (Tipsy; perhaps it was the name). She developed quite badly matted fur, and when we tried a two-person job to cut the mats off, we took a chunk of skin off with the scissors. Cat behaved like she never even noticed. Wracked by guilt we went off to the vet. "Oh don't worry" she said as she stitched away "I've done precisely the same thing myself - very easy to do". Which at least made us feel a little better. Large wallet evacuation later, she was as right as rain.

I'm a great believer in more-is-less. That is why (some) classical recordings from the 1950's are so terrific - a couple of stereo pair mikes, two or three triodes, straight into a reel to reel. Eg Mercury Living Presence's 1812 and Beethoven's Wellington's Victory. Or the similar era Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique recorded in Walthamstow town hall with Barbirolli and the LPO in 1962. Or a staggering Der Rosenkavalier with Schwarzkopf in 1956 on EMI (stereo pair for the orchestra, a pair for the orchestra and a pair for the choir). Knocks many modern versions that go through a room-wide mixing desk and umpteen amplification stages into a cocked hat. So if a digital remote of whatever flavour screws the sound up, lets have a knob.

I'm with you on this deep - I'm not a luddite, but there is something so "right" about a hefty remote - like the Meridian one that they ship with their high end 808.3 CD player. You wouldn't want to leave it on the floor, because you'd break a toe if you caught it wrong.

It was only a matter of time until a software jockey started talking dirty

On a scale of disturbing, this is worse though. Only in NY....

Found this, which I can't work out whether I find disturbing or not...

Agree entirely with that. Hope things work out without the yelling.

That, alas is precisely where cats attack during a fight - biting the back is out of reach for a cat to groom, so the wound gets infected. It is deep rooted in the instinct of cats to fight that way. How do I know? Talking to the vet while she patched up precisely that sort of wound on our current cat Cleo.

The normal time for a fuse to blow is at switch-on. Depending on where the mains is on its cycle, there can be a huge inrush current to build up core mangetisation, or capacitor charge up. Big power amps with 500VA - 2000VA transformers often have a soft-start circuit. A relay with N/O contacts and a several watt power resistor in parallel in the live. A timer circuit wakes up after a second or two, energises the relay and shorts out the series resistor. Clearly not necessary wit the T2.

I'm sure that is the right decision - awful though it is when it finally comes down to it, you do get a real 6th sense of when it reaches the end of the road. And that is not where either of you are at this point. Take care - tough times.

I recall a fast pulsed laser, where the storage capacitor was made of parallel plates in DI water charged to many kV. The idea was that it behaved like a matched transmission line and politely dumped its energy quickly into the laser plasma.

Luckily it was I that took the fraud call - triggered by buying the casework from KG! But that just put off the evil moment when that card bill arrived.

No - but his shunt regulators are amazing - I'm using one on a KG Dynalo. I've actually mailed him to find out what sort of deal he wants to acquire his designs; no answer yet.

It's often the bright ones that get the worst of times in school - he'll be much happier with peers in the same mental league.