Craig Sawyers

Like the grotesque Mrs Gamp in Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit. An alcoholic and abusive nurse/midwife/undertaker who kept gin in her teapot, and was permanently sozzled. "Mrs Gamp stored all her household matters in a little cupboard by the fire-place; beginning below the surface (as in nature) with the coals, and mounting gradually upwards to the spirits, which, from motives of delicacy, she kept in a teapot"

Ah yes, I remember it well

Ours is a SEBO upright. Just keeps going - maybe ten years or more - and never missed a beat. Two filters, one of which I rinse out with soapy water maybe twice a year, and the other I take outdoors and beat the dust out. And the bag of course - everything that goes in stays in.

And here was I thinking extreme ironing was weird

This highlights Emerson's earlier reincarnation - keyboard in the Nice. In my original home town of Newcastle, the town council sponsored a piece of music called the Five Bridges Suite (since at that time Newcastle had five bridges across the river Tyne. It was semi classical with the Northern Symphony Orchestra and the Nice. Totally awesome. The cover image is of the Tyne Bridge that was used as the basis of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The highlight is the Sibelius Karelia Suite, with Emerson in full flight (might be on disc 2)

Oh bugger. That is another major blow. RIP Keith.

That'll teach me not to read back in the thread Seriously though - good luck Jacob. These tests are a weird thing though. And old friend (older than me) and work colleague Paul went for a job in AEI in the UK in the '60s when the Rorschach ink blot test was in vogue. You had to say what the ink blots reminded you of, and there was a hokum idea that this gave some insight into your character (like handwriting analysis). Paul wrote down "Naked lady" for every single one. And then they offered him the job - which he promptly turned down. But hey - it's Friday night and way past wine o'clock

<soap box mode> = on I'm sorry to be anal (but not really) - it is fewer people (not less), since people are countable. Less is used for uncountable nouns, like less bright. So in the context of Jacob's test, his is competing with fewer people, because most are less bright than him. Which is both an irritation to many, because I'm anal about grammar , and a complement to Jacob at the same time <soap box mode> = off

Have a great one Laura!

Is that another David Cameron initiation ritual?

That's a place called Port Isaac in Cornwall UK. Have holidayed there several times way back when our children were small (so maybe 25 years ago). Famous for being the setting for the sitcom Doc Martin, with Martin Clunes (created by Dominic Minghella, brother of the more famous the late Anthony). Also the place that has been major league flooded when apocalyptic rain put surges down the two valleys you can see, and prone to big seas too.

At least George Martin was 90 - so not a bad innings at all.

RIP Sir George Martin, record producer - the "fifth Beatle" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-35761464

Happy birthday - have a great one!

Fingers firmly crossed for you! Dr Edipis sounds even more evil. Mwah ha ha.

And a rotten way to go - bloody cancer.

You have to be pretty determined to eavesdrop on emails in transit - Snowden blew the whistle on government-sponsored programmes to do this, but it is hard to do so. With Mouser, transactions are done via https, where public-key encryption is used to secure sensitive data. The likely routes are: 1. A member of staff at Mouser selling information 2. A hack of Mouser's computer system 3. A trojan on the local machine sending sensitive information to hackers 4. An unsecured port on the local machine that is open. 3 is unlikely because up to date virus software - which we all have, right? Port security can be checked by going to https://www.grc.com/intro.htm and running shields up to probe to first 1024 ports.

I shudder to think how they datamined the order number. Either Mouser has a massive leak, or what else?

Depends on the size of your ears

Here in tiny island Britain, this was a scary time. Very locally we had an airforce base called Greenham Common, where nuclear tipped cruise missiles were stored, as part of an agreement between Thatcher and Reagan. In the heat of the cold war (ie early 80s), launcher trucks with these on board were driven around the lanes locally to provide a moving target. All part of the Thatcher-Reagan era. There was a permanent Peace Camp there, staffed uniquely by women for decades. In US terms this is the equivalent of driving nuclear weapons around a thirty mile radius of, say Boston. If Boston was a few hundred miles from the USSR. Back in the real world, Greenham Common is a business incubator. But close (in UK terms, within 30 miles) to Greenham Common, near Reading, is AWRE - the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. Plus ca change etc.

I'd forgotten that there was a kit. I've bought things from these guys before - and they are very cheap and exceptionally high quality. Multilayer 4 oz copper is kind of standard. And they do the lowest noise variant of the Jung super-regulators.

A DC offset on the mains can cause hum. Usually caused by a local industry pulling power out on half cycles, so either the top or the bottom of the mains waveform is flattened (but not both, or not equally). What happens is that the effective DC offset biasses the core of the transformer, and you hear harmonic distortion through magnetostriction in the core. There is a good article, and method to remove it here http://sound.westhost.com/articles/xfmr-dc.htm Basically two big electrolytics in opposed series, or back to back parallel, with diode clamps across them. In series with the live power. Worth a bash since some have silent transformers and others don't, which could well come down to local variation of mains quality.

Well the hum thing is pretty disappointing. Every transformer that Paul has wound for me is as silent as the grave - including the T2 ones. When he was head designer for Avel Lindberg in the 1980's through to mid 1990s he designed transformers for Krell and umpteen other high end and pro audio companies. If you are getting hum, seriously please take it up with Paul - he will be more than keen to sort it out. I'll mail him and let him know that there is a problem in advance.

Woah - apologies for the lateness - I was away celebrating my own birthday Nate - hope you had a great one!

A good mate called Bob Wightman, that I've done a lot of running with on the fells, did a lot of major league climbing when younger. Have a look at the picture galleries here http://bobwightman.co.uk/climb/climbing_gallery.php I was one of his pacers on his successful Bob Graham Round (67 miles and 29,000 feet of ascent in less than 24 hours) in 2005.