Craig Sawyers

Not sure where to put this, so it is going here. My wife is the CEO of the charity Brendoncare Foundation, which owns and runs residential care homes throughout the South of England. One of people in their care, Bob Weightman, is now the world's oldest man. He will be 112 on 29th March. He lives in his own flat, and carers pop in twice a day just to check he is OK. He has absolutely all his marbles intact. The video here is on his 111th birthday. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-51656545 Worth playing the interview. And this is a guy who was born 6 years before the start of WWI in 1908.

Thanks everyone! Had a day that involved a walk with Carole over what passes for paths in the UK at the moment (miles of extreme mud and standing water). Then we went out for a curry, which was exceptionally good, then to an excellent play adaption of Dickens' Bleak House https://www.creationtheatre.co.uk/whats-on/bleak-house/ .

Sure is. This is York. Settled 8000 years ago, resettled by the Romans as Eboracum in 71AD. And currently looks like this Same here. No snow or frost. So insect heaven. Gonna have to take care of ticks, which are becoming a real problem in the UK now. The UK Government said three days ago "use hand gel to clean your hands to protect against Coronavirus" so everyone in the UK went absolutely nuts, and the only remaining stocks are being sold for 10 times what they were at the end of last year. Even professional suppliers have run out - even the options of 5 liters (over a gallon) containers have run out. Yes - we had to stump up to buy some. Seller's market though, so it is what it is.

In the UK it is still stiff upper lip. We were in London yesterday (at the National Theatre on the South Bank). No sign of anyone in face masks, crowded tube, no panic buying, supermarket shelves fully stocked. But will we be flying anywhere on vacation this year? No chance. And from what the airline companies are saying, we are not the only one by a long shot. And climate change? We have had a conveyor belt of storms coming in from the Atlantic for the last three weeks. Whole slabs of the UK are flooded with towns and cities essentially underwater. We're OK, by the way - we are well above the Thames flood plain.

I wouldn't trust what is in those bottles

Happy birthday!

I have to take my helmet hat off to those creations Grahame

OK - I threatened some time ago to show my signature penis latte art. Here we go:

Looks like a belated - happy birthday!

Happy birthday!

Ah well. That would darn well explain the mobile phone size screen

Well it is showing Eric Clapton Unplugged live in concert. So not just for menu use. The DVD case is in front of the microscopic TV.

Happy birthday!

It is either a room made by giants, or that is the smallest flat screen TV possible. My computer monitor is larger that that.

Speaker porn? Amplifier porn? Lots of porn.

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday Steve - have a spectacular day!

Thirty years ago today, Carl Sagan showed images of the earth from 4 billion miles taken from Voyager: the "Pale blue dot" He said: "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."

This has also been posted before, and these guys do it for a living. There is no spoon....

Have a great day Jeff!

RIP Kirk. There was an interview on the radio this morning with someone who interviewed Kirk Douglas when he was 100. He said, to the effect "I don't know any actor now. All the greats - Laurence Olivier, Burt Lancaster - they are all of them dead. I'm pretty much the last one left". There is a sadness to that that quite chokes me up.

I was lucky enough to have a long email conversation with him around 10 years back. That was where he shared the bet with Widlar. He actually contacted me, because he worked out that (feel sorry for my wife at this point) I am a Tektronix test gear collector and restorer as a hobby. The conversation moved progressively to AI, which he was agnostic about - but he reckoned the future was in Augmented Reality, where embedded computer systems would elevate our processing power and intellect. And here we are thinking 5G is a shiny new thing... A hell of a thinker was Barrie Gilbert.

RIP Barrie Gilbert, analog design titan. Brit who moved to the US to work at Tektronix. He was responsible for the on-screen readout in the 7000 series scopes, and the Gilbert Cell that was used as the core of the Tek custom amplifier chips up to and beyond 1GHz. Is also used in every 4-quadrant multiplier chip out there. He was so good that Analog Devices hired him from Tek by agreeing to build a whole facility out in Beaverton for him to play in. The story was that he had a bet with Bob Widlar to design a minimum component constant current source. Gilbert lost (he came up a three transistor one) when Wildlar came up with a 2 transistor one. The Widlar source is used in just about every op-amp, and every AB power amp that has been built since. In full flow in 1991 describing what is known as the Gilbert Cell "The translinear amplifier" Aged 83 - RIP Barrie Gilbert.

Makes you feel kind of horny