Craig Sawyers

Happy birthday!

Canada's national hair freezing contest. Nuff said. https://hairfreezingcontest.com/

Bloody hell Al. Could have ended much worse with that drain cleaner. Kind of glad that mine is manual (the worst that has had to deal with is cooking fat blockage) I really like the clamp rack. Darned sight tidier than mine.

That is one heavy sucker

68VA would be the rating with free air circulation. In a can with another transformer stacked on top would seriously knock the maximum dissipation way back. I dunno what winding wire SumR use, but it might not have been really high temperature insulation anyway. Some use solderable wire for ease of connection. I had a Weller soldering iron transformer self destruct as a result of that. High temperature winding wire can cope with 180C. All in all I'm not too surprised it cooked. In a T2 the transformers are in the open chassis with ventilation slots in the top panel.

I recently watched The Exorcist (few days ago). It was good, particularly since it was released nearly half a century ago. But a bit dated. At the time, the endless green vomit and rotating head hit the button! And human levitation was reprised in Ghostbusters, when Sigourney Weaver did the same thing when she was possessed. The weird thing I'd forgotten was the end title music of Exorcist was Tubular Bells!

That is something I never new existed - a hot blued cupping spoon. What do you use it for?

I'm using 2x Cardas 33x4 shielded as my tonearm to phono stage cables. The phono stage is balanced, so I'm using the four cores in star quad configuration to Neutrik EMC series XLRs. Sounds great; I have no plans to change it any time soon.

Some anagrams: President Clinton of the USA -- To copulate, he finds interns Mother-in-law -- Woman Hitler Raiders of the Lost Ark -- Ford, the real star, is OK The Towering Inferno -- Not worth fire engine eleven plus two -- twelve plus one

Hot, Steve - hot is best 😁

Have a truly awesome day mate! Happy birthday!!

The London box junction zero tolerance is not automatic. There is a control room with real people looking at monitors. Even if your rear wheels are an inch inside the box - they click a button and bish bash bosh - you're done, matey. It is not rigorously policed anywhere else, but drivers here are pretty good with boxes. I'd not be surprised that the London control room is financially motivated. The more people you nick, the more you are paid. I don't know that for a fact, but they nick anyone for the most trivial of offences.

For us, ANPR offences have the backing of the law. And if you repeatedly ignore them the fine escalates, and then finally you end up in court. Speed and red light cameras similarly. The killer are mobile speed cameras - basically a van with a window in the side. You cannot mess with these - you pay the fine, period. If you repeatedly ignore any of these these you end up in court. Parking offences tend to get ignored. These are issued generally by third party outfits who send increasingly threatening letters and eventually just go away. There are other camera based offences. We have something called a box junction; the rule is you should not enter the box until your exit is clear, except when turning right. So if you have two wheels in the junction - bosh - fine. This tends to be restricted to London. The trap is you have a green light, so you drive ahead. But the traffic in front stops and leaves you stranded in the junction. Also only in London you can be fined for parking on the grass verge. Elsewhere in the country this is allowed. So for anyone from the US or anywhere else and driving in the UK - you have to be aware of the driving rules.

We are looking for you?

Anyone note the triangular lock shape on the box with the stick on pubes?

I bought a job lot of veneer a few years ago. Lots of it. For a whopping £100. It cost me more for the shelving to store it! But all the suggestions regarding the bargain price for all that hardwood are good. Snap it up and then work out which of the suggestions work best for you.

Stick on beavers! The Victorians were nothing if not entrepreneurial. Posted out of order!

Meanwhile, in the UK we have an ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) system for traffic offences. They send you a photograph of the offence to support the fine. This guy got a fine for driving in a bus lane in Bath. Strange, he thought - I've never driven in Bath: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/18/motorist-fined-number-plate-t-shirt

June 6, 1944, James M. Doohan of Vancouver, led D Company of Royal Winnipeg Rifles ashore at Juno beach. He would be shot 6 times, survive and go on to become Scotty on Star Trek.

Well that was a result. We pay for a landline phone from Virgin Media. We have been paying £27 a month for a long time. I decided to look at alternatives, and Direct Save Telecom came up with £19.50. So I phoned Virgin Media, quoted the alternative prices to them - and with zero negotiation the slashed the charges by £10 to £17 a month. And because of where we are in the billing cycle, they will refund £9.60 and only charge us £7.40 for this month. No idea why I haven't done this years ago!

Look at the raw hatred on the face of the girl following

That is pretty impressive! Are you going to get a tree surgeon in to remove it? This isn't a problem so much in UK properties, where the garden is like a postage stamp by comparison, even on otherwise impressive properties.

Well we went to the theatre this week - a matinee performance of The Mirror and the Light. This is the last of a trilogy of plays about the life of Thomas Cromwell, based on Hilary Mantel's books. The play was awesome. But the theatre was packed to the gunnels, no need of proof of vaccination or a negative covid test. So if the national average was present, one in ten was not vaccinated. And since the government has abandoned mandatory mask wearing (as a courtesy to others only), only half the audience were wearing masks. We found the whole experience very disquieting. Going to the theatre was very much our thing pre-covid, at least once a month. But the gung-ho attitude of our idiot leader regarding public safety makes us very wary of repeating the experience any time soon.