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Or try Tea! Japanese Green tea is okay. Chinese tea is good (Chrysanthemum tea is very easy to drink). Or a cup of british tea (PG, Tetleys - not the herbal stuff you get over there) and add some milk. Can be drunk with a teaspoon of sugar if absolutely necessary but try to do without.

Thanks for posting this. I found the 'reconcilliation' story very moving.

My impression is the HD800 has more "soundstage" than the O2 too.

The Player of Games is, I think, my favourite story of his. More memorable than Consider Phlebas (discounting the fat cannibal god). Less weird/tortured than Use of Weapons. Not sure I continued reading Iain M Bank's stuff much past that. His non-sci-fi books are quite good if a little weird. They're all a bit grown-up for me I'm quite a fan of Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series. A fantasy tale set on a mythical world, but don't let that put you off. The material does transcend its genre, imo. The author has remained consistently entertaining throughout his run of books in the series, which is an extreme rarity, though of course some stories I like better than others. Excellent world-building and the plots aren't bad either. The first 3 books in the series are collected here: Amazon.com: The Book of Jhereg (9780441006151): Steven Brust: Books I also enjoyed John Whitbourn's 'A Dangerous Energy' A Dangerous Energy by John Whitbourn Inquisitor Glokta reminded me of the main character and worth tracking down if you're able to find a copy. Rosemary Kirstein's first two stories are collected here, Amazon.com: The Steerswoman's Road (9780345461056): Rosemary Kirstein: Books Solidly good storywriting that is, again, entertaining, both in execution and world-building, and going somewhere (good!), if a little too feminist for my tastes. Some non-slimy male characters would have been nice.

"Sherlock" (2010) No not the Downey Jr one. A modern 3 x 1.5 hour episode 'series' on BBC that was broadcast recently and will released on Bluray/DVD on the 30th August Quite recommended if you are able to obtain it. I didn't think I'd enjoy it but decided to give it a try due to positive comments by some friends. I ended up liking it and even laughed a few times (I hardly ever laugh at TV) and found it quite entertaining, if not quite as polished as big budget productions tend to be. I felt this lent the programme a bit of charm and let the focus on title character really shine through, which is good because he's brilliant.

Great work Inu! Good to see you managed to complete it relatively unscathed. Looks fantastic - how does it sound? ) You know you're part of any serious endeavour when a credit card payment is refused and they contact your wife at home to make sure you're not the victim of fraud. "No dear, it wasn't very expensive, I have no idea why they were calling me at home." Hopefully they'll try my mobile number first next time.

32 with shorter thread length please )

Owners of the Senn 800 have reported that the Senn 800 improves when driven balanced. I haven't heard one but perhaps a Little Dot Mk. VI? Will cost around $800 shipped brand new. I believe at least one person on this forum owns this amp and could possibly provide more information about how it sounds.

I would be more than interested!

Looked into the Olympus Pen EPL1 or Panasonic GF1? Close to DSLR quality in a format that is pocketable (if you have large pockets). I've got the GF1 but if I was shopping for a camera now, I'd probably get an Olympus EPL1 + Panasonic 20mm F1.7 pancake and the add-on view finder, as the Olympus has built in optical stabilisation, better high ISO quality and a better add-on view finder for bright light conditions. For depth of field purposes, the 20mm acts like a F3.4 so the focus won't just be on the tip of the nose but should cover the whole face but still allows you to shoot in low iso. You'll rarely need more than 400 ISO indoors and the pictures will look virtually noise-free. I've also taken some very good outdoor pics with the Panasonic 14-45mm kit lens which has silent focus for video purposes, but it's a high F-stop lens so not so great for indoors unless you have a good sensor. I'm seeing what the GF2 will look like - hopefully close to the new GH2 sensor, though I may still move to Olympus because of the superior add-on viewfinder.

I skipped over parts of that video without the sound - probably a good thing.

I'd be in for a pair of mark 2 pads. Real leather - mmmmm......

As an alternative, has anyone checked out Terra Nova's Evo shoe? Vivo Barefoot Evo Running Shoe: Initial Review and First Impressions EVO | Terra Plana I wear a pair of Terra Nova Aquas but they're too heavy to run in. These look much more suitable. I'll wait until these go on sale before I grab a pair. I've bought a pair of Feelmax Osmas and they're similar to their other shoes except with a slightly more durable sole and sporty styling. A good and cheaper alternative.

You're clearly a drug dealer.

They do - it's called a Panasonic G1 / GH1. Supposedly one of the best EVF in its class (1.4x magnication and 1,440,000 dots) and much better than the one that clips on to the GF1. However if you want a view finder in a rangefinder type body, like the Leica M9, it'd make it bigger. I'm not sure Panasonic will do that, for a number of reasons. Olympus might - but it seems they've gone the way of the clip on viewfinder as well.

For action/sports, a dSLR is clearly superior due to the optical viewfinder allowing you to follow the action that you wouldn't be able to with LiveView or an EVF, as well as the higher and longer burst rate of shooting. There are also a larger range of large aperture zooms than currently available to 4/3rd systems. The zooms coming out for 4/3rd systems are quite slow in comparison. An aftermarket optical viewfinder could be used to get around the tracking problem and upgrades via later bodies should narrow the gap on speed and burst rate issues, though to be serious about action, I'd either shoot video or get a dedicated SLR for this purpose. The use case is low enough for me at the moment that I'm happy to settle for the former. Also I've heard another way to get good 'action shots' is to capture it in mpeg and 'pull out a frame' though I must confess to being ignorant of this process. The GF1's top resolution is only 1280 x 720, 30 fps, at the moment, so any captures would only be good enough for a 4x6 print and most likely blurry as well.

Sorry to chime in a little late. I have a Nikon D70, bought about 5 years ago (that long?). It's a bit long in the tooth but still a very capable camera. I bought a Panasonic GF1 a month ago. Our baby was born late November and the majority of her early photographs were using a Canon IXUS P&S. Since our baby girl spent most of her first month asleep, this wasn't a problem. I did shoot a couple with the Nikon, but I kept the kit zoom on most of the time - I should have switched to the Sigma 35mm F1.4 at the earliest opportunity. Anyway, since getting the GF1 and the 20mm F1.7 pancake, I've taken a few hundred of the baby and gotten quite a few very nice ones. It's noticeably better than the P&S and the wide aperture means I can stick to ISO 100 most of the time. One "advantage" of the micro4/3 is that the aperture reflects the amount of light hitting the sensor and not the depth of field that is being achieved. The depth of field on a micro4/3rds is double that of a full frame, so in effect it is the same as shooting at F3.4 wide open so you get more depth of field wide open than you would with a full frame or a APS-C sensor. Sometimes desireable, as close up shots sometimes have the nose out of focus relative to the eyes, the depth of field is so shallow. The point is, all my favorite photos are using the GF1 and 20mm pancake. It's a very handy system that is much more portable and easy to use than a SLR and provides a noticeable improvement to the Canon IXUS, especially in low light. I don't think I've taken a single picture using the flash on the system. I read the relative reviews between the GF1 and the Olympus PEN and the GF1 is very fast - it takes a second from start up to taking a shot. It focuses quickly enough and you can take about 5 to 6 pictures in a couple of seconds before the buffer is full and it needs to slow down to just under a second to take more. In normal use, it's fine. Another great feature is the press to record video button. Makes it very easy to capture a few seconds of video by simply pressing the button if there's a moment you want to catch. I love the footprint, image quality, speed, not as fast as a DSLR but not so slow that I can't get the shot I want. Most importantly, I can hold the baby in one hand and the camera in the other with relative ease. I wouldn't even think of doing that with the dSLR - I'd rather switch to the cheapo P&S. I wouldn't bother with the zoom kit lens (14-45), at least to start with. It's a nice lens but very few of the pictures I've taken with it are worth post-processing unless they've been outside or in great light. The 20mm is brilliant indoors and I think would make a good walk-around lens as well.

I love that dog!

That was freaking awesome!!!!!!!

Thanks for digging out that article. Putting hard numbers to the extent and length of Sachdeva's embezzlement is quite breath-taking. How anyone can feel that they deserve that much money or be that greedy is beyond comprehension. She's got to be mentally unwell on some level just to perpetrate that level of fraud or am I being naive? That must have been some extremely inventive bookmaking on her part. I guess 'the recession' has become the new catch-all excuse to replace 'terrorism' for irrational and egregious actions.

Can't believe I missed that - looks awesome.

As much as I'd like an Omega or Rolex or other Swiss prestige watch, I'd consider it to be more as a piece of jewellry and so treat it as an item for special occassions rather than every day use. For every day use, I was a fan of Casio G-Shocks because they can stand up to years of abuse and still keep on ticking. It's cheap so I didn't particularly take great pains to baby it and it started to look battered. The thing was almost comically huge. So I decided to change to something a little more 'grown up' and smarter looking and bought one of the newest Casio Oceanus models ( Oceanus: OCW-T600TD-1AJF Watch Detail ) when I was in Japan in August this year. I consider it to be smart enough to be a dress watch as well as being "to the second" accurate (if within range of an atomic clock), low maintenance (auto adjust and solar powered), tough (titanium case, sapphire glass, 10 bar waterproof) and with some features (alarm, stopwatch, count-down timer).

I read about those - I believe they have a smaller anode and so cannot handle as much power as the EL34 (18W max). However I don't know how hard the BHSE runs them. I believe the EL60 is supposed to be electrically identical to the EL34 - I just wondered how hard the BHSE runs the tubes. I hear 25W is the max these tubes should be run at and even then they might start to drift. Part of the reason why I like the EL60 is they seem to be better constructed (round plate, supporting rods and ceramic spacers) than EL34 types. Also apparently some of the earliest EL34 were just EL60 with an octal plug soldered onto the end of the loctal base.

Would an EL60 be a 'drop in replacement' for an EL34 as long as a suitable tube adapter was provided? Seems it was a precursor to the EL34, but with a loctal rather than an octal socket. Spec sheet: http://tubedata.milbert.com/sheets/030/e/EL60.pdf

I hear the Philips Brown Base are close in sound to the metal base ones? Would they be between the Metal base and Mullard xf2's? A quad of philips brown base seem a lot more common and cheaper than the metal base. A set from Hong Kong just went for $856 but I tend to think anything from that place is suspicious so I didn't even try to bid (plus the pics didn't show the pins or the getter). Is metal base worth investing $1200+ vs a set of philips brown base for half the price? Are they supposed to last appreciably longer than a normal set? And how do they compare to the GEC KT77?