Craig Sawyers

Blimey - you wouldn't think she was 62!

Great actor - RIP Ian Holm.

Apparently We'll meet Again was recorded with accompaniment from a Hammond Novachord, a 163 tube polyphonic synthesizer. Only manufactured from 1939 to 1942 (because the supply of tubes dried up as the War progressed) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novachord (A positively petite instrument as compared with the 210 ton, 67kW power consumption Telharmonium at the turn of the century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telharmonium )

Have a great day - happy birthday!

Even though she had got to 103, it was still sad that she had eventually gone. And indeed Grahame, a symbol of resilience and hope.

We saw Hugh Bonneville, post Downton, in a play in the Chichester Festival Theatre. In Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. He was excellent.

Nope https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

Astonishingly 43 years after they were launched, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are still alive and broadcasting back to earth. NASA have progressively turned instruments off that are irrelevant at the enormous distance they are now is at - 17 light hours for 2 and 20 light hours for 1 - to conserve energy. It looks like the power sources (radioactive) will eventually peter out in the next year or two. They are based on early 1970's technology, to the extent that the data store is a tape recorder! Of course since the *nearest* star to us is 4.3 light years distant, the Voyagers would take 75,000 years to get there (even if they were headed in that direction).

Haven't come across these guys. Seems to come from India. Nothing the matter with that. After all they have particle accelerators and an active space programme. The thing that determines the quality of a stepped attenuator is the resistors. For surface mount they ought to be thin film, which are quite pricey - typically 25c each in 1000 off. There are 96 resistors in that attenuator, so $25 for the resistors in 1000 off quantity. Now they say they use thin film resistors and quote the resistor spec. But the price is ridiculously low. These guys are the place to go for switched attenuators https://khozmo.com/index.html . Note that they specifically use Vishay thin film resistors. This https://khozmo.com/ladder_khozmo_attenuator.html is the equivalent of the allo one and is $259 - so ten times the price. I'd say of allo - too good to be true.

Carl Sagan in 1994 after Voyager took a similar image from even further away: "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam." Looking at the numbers, Voyager at the time of the Pale Blue Dot image was 1.5 times the distance to Pluto away, 5.5 light hours distant, 4.5 time further way than Saturn.

Nice kit, good record.

I expect they made a very great amount of money from the producers of Downton Abbey, plus the hordes of tourists coughing up £24 each. But yes - the upkeep of something so huge, and the grounds, is massively expensive. Most big palace sized buildings were given to the state for that reason, with most now maintained and run by the National Trust or English Heritage. Interesting post - she sounds like a pretty smart woman. There is also a recipe sections where she cooks to camera.

The pile that is used as the set is Highclere Castle. Apart from Downton Abbey, it is most famous for being where Earl Canarfon lived - the guy who bankrolled Howard Carter during excavations that found Tutankhamen's tomb. It is around 20 minutes drive from where I live (Highclere Castle, not Egypt that is!) In fact it is still owned by the Canarfon family, and they open the grounds and house tours (when not closed as a result of Covid-19) for UKP24 each. https://www.highclerecastle.co.uk/ . A real tourist magnet. When there were tourists, that is. Here you go - the two Canarfons who own the pile https://www.ladycarnarvon.com/ .

Alternatively

Even worse than that. Estimated 75-200 million at a time that the world population was 450 million in the mid 1300's. It took 200 years for the population to recover. And severe outbreaks continued periodically to this day; the last major outbreak was in India in the late 1800's killed 3% of the population. But even with modern antibiotics the mortality rate is over 10%. And earlier than the outbreak in the 1300's was the plague of Justinian in the mid 500's - again killing half the world's population. All due to the Yersinia Pestis bacterium carried by rodent fleas. By "world" that means Europe, the middle East and Asia at that time. Bring out your dead!

I really like McIntosh gear. It has always been stylish, and they have never deviated from the characteristic appearance as the decades have rolled by. Their latest stuff has eye popping performance too.

The Satanic Exorcism and Fried Chicken image is a brilliant bit of photoshop editing. It started life as the much more boring:

When I was building my KG T2, I bought C3675's from Nikko. There were actually sparks from the board. Testing one of the unused devices on the curve tracer revealed they broke down at half what they should. Collateral damage was extensive. The horror story is all buried deep in the T2 thread.

Any long obsolete silicon will ultimately be fakes now. And still I occasionally get suckered.

I feel the need to gag.

Immoral and Lardy! Brilliant! For those that have not picked this up, "Immoral" is Dominic Cummings. Who drove 270 miles with his wife and child to their family estate when they were coming down with Covid-19 so that his sister could look after their son. He then drove them all 30 minutes each way to a beauty spot "to check my eyesight". During lockdown, when the instruction was to stay home and isolate for 14 days. Boris refused to sack him in spite of a back bench revolt, one minister resigning in protest and the media going for his gonads for ten solid days. But Cummings is the power behind Johnson, the master strategist behind the scenes. If he were sacked, or fell on his sword and resigned, Johnson would be exposed for the incompetent blusterer that he actually is. or "why would the puppet sack the puppet master". Well, that has nailed my colours firmly to the mast...

A real pity these bastards have pissed in the cookie jar for the rest of us.

Was lucky enough to see Ian Mcdiarmid (Emp Palpatine - as above) in his own version of Dr Faustus (Faust X2) in a tiny theatre called The Watermill near Newbury UK (one of our favourite local theatres). A couple of years ago. https://www.watermill.org.uk/faust_x2

Meanwhile: https://mcphee.com/products/tin-foil-hat-for-cats