Craig Sawyers

Another one I nearly missed! A very happy birthday!!

We've been re-watching The West Wing. I'd forgotten how really, really good that series was. Tightly scripted, excellent cast of superb actors, and fine storyline. Currently half way though series 2

How did I miss this? Apart from the Vertigo scare I hope you had a very happy birthday Steve!

Darn. Pretty good innings though. Back when I was working for PA Technology in the early/mid 80's, Neve's design and manufacturing unit was directly in the dead end road across from where I worked. The name lives on in a road in a new housing development called Rupert Neve Close almost exactly where the factory was. neve close.pdf

The 1970 festival resulted to serious problems with the inhabitants. There are only 120,000 (at the time) living on the Isle of Wight, so 700,000 stoned, drunk and rowdy festival goes were really a bit of a problem. The festival has been revived in recent years, but is much smaller - 50,000 or so, and it is much more tightly organised and managed. Also, locals have now entered into the entrepreneur spirit and put their fridge and freezer outdoor and sell bottled water, beer and ice cream to festival goers.

Found the pic. This is looking down the bank towards the site of the festival And this is from the same viewpoint fifty-one years ago

Jimi Hendrix set at the 1970 Isle of Wight. Guinness Book record for the largest festival ever with 700,000. Only a few weeks before he died at the age of 27. In full, completely amazing flight here. Funnily enough I've walked across the area that that iconic festival was held, now totally rural with a few cows and sheep. Absolutely no sign at all that it was ever anything other.

It made the main news on the BBC here in the UK - so yes. I came to serious grief myself on black ice thirty years or so ago. I was on a busy freeway early in the morning, and braked into slower traffic. Car broke away, and went into the rear wheel cluster of a truck. So hard I blew his tyre and buckled his wheel rim. Then my car hit the barrier, and that pulled me out of the truck and I hit the barrier hard. Fortunately nothing else hit me. The French truck driver was very helpful and poured me coffee to help me calm down. Of course we'd blocked the road totally. Next the police turn up, and put their vehicle a good distance back with the flashing lights going. While I was talking to them, a small truck went out of control and hit the police car "oh bugger" said the policeman "you just can't believe how many forms I'm going to have to fill out now!" The road was pretty much a skating rink. Anyway, recovery vehicles arrived and pulled my car and the truck off the road; they took me and my car to a local scrap yard, where they showed me the wreckage of several cars and trucks that had hit black ice that morning. I ordered a hire car and went, a bit shakily and with a touch of whiplash, on my way. But the kicker was - the French truck did not have girders between the front and rear wheel clusters. So if I had been 10 feet further forward, I'd have gone underneath him and decapitated myself. And it was a petrol truck - so (a) there would not have been much of me left and (b) it would have hit the news for sure. When I got to the hotel I was staying at that night I awarded myself a steak dinner and good bottle of wine, as a cheating death award.

RIP the dead in the horrendous pile up on a freeway in Fort Worth. Black Ice was apparently the cause. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-56035298 Very much hope that no HC folks were involved in that.

Have a truly superb day!

I have certified four LSK389A from Micross, and are definitely Linear Systems products. Because I'm in the UK I had to sign all sorts of export waiver forms to get them out of the USA. They all measure bang on and are very well matched and very close to Idss of 5mA. I've just looked at the package markings, and there is nothing to say that they are A grade. They are just marked with LSK389 1509C, and "Philippines". So LS either send their bare die to the Philippines for packaging, or use a foundry out there. I also have similarly certified LSK489 and LSK689 and both of those are marked Philippines too. These were purchased after quite a long discussion with Linear Systems by email. Anyway, if you have bought a few of different grades, don't mix them up - you have no way of telling from the device markings what grade each one is. A bit like Z-foil resistors; no markings at all. So you have no idea what the value is, or the tolerance. Deliberate error - LSJ689

One of my all-time heroes is Krenov. Now he had a surface planer, and a really big bandsaw to do rough preparation of stock. But after that he went across to hand tools, many of which he made himself. He's now long dead of course, but he lives on through his excellent books.

I have machine tools to take the hassle out. But there is a quiet joy in using sharp and finely adjusted hand tools, instead of the screaming of machines.

Maybe Bannon saw this (note the date: 37 years ago), and added his own conspiracy version

The sublime Joni Mitchell, now age 77. Currently releasing her unheard back catalog on CD and records. Before lockdown we went to see Graham Nash in concert; In his words "a night of recollections and music", and it was clear he has never really got over breaking up with her after two years of living together way back. And the regret has defined his music ever since.

Sony founder Akio Morita would have entirely appreciated something as weird, quirky and innovative as that. He called the company Sony because, when he founded the company just after WWII, anything with a Japanese name had a very negative connotation elsewhere. Back in the early 70's I worked on a Saturday in a hifi store in Newcastle (the UK one) when I was a school kid.. A man and his wife came in to buy a TV; I immediately tried to sell them a Sony Trinitron. He looked at me and said "Is this Japanese?" "Yes". Turned out he was a POW in Japan, which was not fun at all. Turned out selling him a Dynatron, which was a Philips chassis inside something that looked like a piece of furniture. With picture performance that was really poor as compared with the Sony.

Have a truly great day!

Good grief - you're both going through the dental wars. Hope you both get through it just fine, and your wallet recovers. That is if they don't get you both confused and give you a cat's tooth implant and fit Dunhill with human dentures....

Getting past those, the equipment and the cables to safely get to the CD's and records, seems somewhat hazardous

A genius record producer who turned out to be as mad as a box of frogs, and died in prison for murder.

Marilyn in 1949, age 23. Kodachrome.

Have a spiffing day, old chap! Happy birthday Grahame!!

These were the original Aerius, and when plugged in to the mains power were energized all the time - so 24/7. And that was the process that killed the connection to the diaphragm. They never admitted there was a problem, but the Aerius 2, and every ML since, goes into sleep mode and turns off the HT energizing voltage until an incoming audio signal turns it back on again. But it nevertheless is a technology that I wouldn't mess with. Electrostatic panels are fragile period. UV radiation kills them, so a location near a window (yes - window glass attenuates UV quite a bit) is not a good move, neither is thermal radiation that heats up the black painted panel. Not just a problem with ML; other E/S speakers are likewise fragile.

Hmm. I don't know how sensible it is to put a light behind a pair of ML's. I know from bitter experience how fragile that curved electrostatic driver is. Mine disconnected themselves just sitting there. I repaired them by putting small discs of conductive foam through the holes at one side in the front cover, then a thin wire contacting the foam, then Kapton tape. The wire went inside and was hard wired into the energizing transformer. They were out of guarantee, and there was no way I was going to pay for a new set of panels so I got creative. I was not impressed with their reliability, candidly. Sounded great when they were working though. All the repair was behind the wooden trim strips, and so was invisible.

That was a hell of a series, made more relevant because I am the same age as the group that Apted followed from age 7 in 1963 through to mid 60's now. But until I read the obituary I did not realise he was a movie director too. RIP Apted.