The nails were the right diameter.
The inspection axe fell promptly and I wasn't ready. All of management's worries were unfounded. The inspector did chat about the electronics, maybe to satisfy himself that I do know what I'm doing. I have to finish cleaning up before I leave tomorrow.
And I have to change my no-inline-review request. The X-line format is usable.
Review done. Warning: when I review you I beat you up pretty hard. I hope some of it helps.
Mobile doesn't have those links. "READ" is under the menu button, and brings you to a tabbed page. None of the tabs is for contests.
The problem with mobile interfaces is that they often seem to use a different code base entirely, so you can't make any assumptions about how one side works based on the other.
On the Home Depot web sit, if you want the aisle and bay for an item, you need the not-for-mobile website. At Lowes, to get the same info, you need the mobile site.
Vicious! Acts is very, very good now and you're going to have to work hard to avoid marring it as you seek to improve.
Oh, and if you're thinking about more side-stuff for Kat, I'd suggest instead finishing out Mantle and adding prequels for Anver (what happened to his eyebrows!) and Katerin.
If you can find used copies, you might look at Elizabeth Willey's neglected trio: The Well-Favored Man, A Sorcerer and a Gentleman, and The Price of Blood and Honor. The titles of the second and third books are wonderful.
Note to Janet R. and other reviewers: I do want details to support my narrative.
The example that comes to mind is in Trouble With the Curve (a great date movie, I think, half baseball and half chick-flick), when Amy Adam's character discovers the pitcher. She dons the catchers' pads, takes the glove, and crouches to receive a pitch. She sets a target near the bottom of her chest, but the pitching prospect's fastball comes in off her shoulder. Is he wild?
No. His fastball stings his little brother's hand, and he's not going to fire one at this lady until she shows that she can handle it. She flicks the big glove out and the ball hits it "with a pure sound" that knocks the glove back--but she keeps the ball in the glove. Then she throws it back and the next pitch bull's-eye's her target.
How much does the viewer have to fill in? All of it. But it holds together when you work the logic.
njc wrote:I don't see those links.
Do you see a menu button on the top right? On my ipad, I have a menu button and if I click on that and scroll down there is a link for contests.
But it doesn't show the master contests page, only my entries. There's no way I can find to get to the master Contests page, or to any particular contest.
I don't see those links.
Q? to check: If you have a too-short-no-points inline review and put in a long conventional review, does the long conventional review get points. What if the types are reversed.
Okay, the problem with the head amp is that I'm only getting a gain of 2 instead of 20. I'm feeding the thing through an attenuator cable so I can turn the input down far enough, and it's easy to forget that the attenuator is 1/100, not 1/1000.
That's why I didn't see the problem. Now, what's causing it? Maybe my voltage stabilizing network. If so, I think I know how to fix it ... but I'll have to find room on the circuit boards. I need to test it on the breadboard.
First sleep, then the first set of shelf mods. The second set I can do or hold, but I'll need to see if I need the third set. If so, it's a trip to Lowes or Home Depot to get some melamine-covered board cut -- and get some 8d common nails, hoping they're the right diameter to cut for pegs on those shelves.
Sol, how do I find the contests page on the mobile site? The menu button's link take me to my entries only.
And I just had a talk with my brother. I need to find a way to visit my mother soon and regularly. The doctors say that they don't have anything more to help her weak heart. They are guessing weeks to months.
Coffee break's over folks, back to standing on your heads!
The inspection is back on, for next Wednesday OR thursday OR Friday.
The head amp works, and doesn't. It works on the bench. I didn't get it working in actual use, and I have no idea why. Nor do I have much time for it. I wanted to take today off, and may do it, but I have so much to do ... two computers to put in proper cases, the shelves they're on to help clean up my lab ...
I have to see. I hope that we get an inspector who realizes that my little lab is safer than frying chicken.
Have to think about it.
By the way, GKC is the most quotable writer since Shakespeare. You can find a bunch on the site of the American Chesterton Society.
I refer you to G. K . Chesterton's The Curse of the Golden Cross:
"Not at all," replied the priest calmly;"it's not the supernatural part I doubt. It's the natural part. I'm exactly in the position of the man who said, 'I can believe the impossible, but not the improbable'.''
To keep us suspending disbelief when we must, you have to let us work from what existing belief you can.
Be sure to read up on the Principle of Parsimony. That's why everything is interrelated.
Don't worry about 'owing' me stuff. I'm glad for your help, but also honored that you think so highly of my kibbitzing.
And I think I see a clearer way for me to approach the rapid changes in attitude he experiences. While I'm at it, I would like to drop in a little backstory (there is no such thing as a little backstory) and flip a fillip at some of my reviewers.
Posit that the modifications came in steps, each dependent on a breakthrough in understanding and technique. By the time of the fifth or sixth step, they were doing things that would be fatal to unmodified humans. For example, the ability to detoxify various natural poisons relied on new liver pathways to handle the unused detox enzymes. Or enhanced hemoglobin-oxygen transport relies on improved detox in the liver.
And the various parts of each step are closely intertwined, too, because of the Principle of Parsimony (see which), which you can invoke yourself.
If you're positing genetic enhancement, you can make up almost any problem you like You could, for example, decide that the enhancements overload the base design and that problems result from imbalance. You could have certain problems, like synesthesia, relatively common and no question of shame. You could extend that to sensory experience of abstract reasoning, again moderately common. What mores do you want the shame over the aberration to reflect? Is it shame at being different, or shame at weakness (an inability to learn arithmetic?) or is it a moral failing, or perhaps something like Multiple Personality Disorder? Or maybe a version of MPD where all the 'personalities' share the same memory, but their evaluation of it (happiness, sorrow, ...) differs?
I've been making notes on Erevain, and will contine to do so.
Okay, moving back here. The two soldered-on-board amplifiers are working, so far as I can test them without closing up the box. I was just working on the battery-holder assembly and found that I'll have to start over again. More drilling, tapping, and cutting. The mending place I'm using for stock is a second-tier brand and not nearly so hard as the Stanley/National versions, so it's not quite so bad.
I was hoping to get to the point of testing this with the turntable today. (I've hoped that for the last seven days.) Well, sleep now, then errands, then back to the battery holder.
njc wrote:... Neither end of the battery is referenced to ground. The two amplifier transistors (stacked at left) have their bases referenced to AC ground through capacitors. ...
So here comes the dumb questions ... .
Why do you have to use batteries i.e. can't connect to a power outlet? That way you don't have to account for different voltages. And is there any specific reason why you're building one from scratch? I'm guessing it's because you can't buy already built head amps anymore. Not sure if it has ever been a stock standard item that could've been bought.
I grew up with vinyls and turntables, my dad used to have one. But when I left home, CDs were already in play and I never owned one, so I know very little about them. And yes, I'm using ignorant as a valid excuse!
Not dumb. Just not attentive enough 
Ignorance of vinyl isn't the issue. The key point is in the box above. The two sides of the voltage source that powers the thing float. Neither is fixed with respect to ground.
This means that the left and right channels need separate power supplies. Can this be done off the AC mains? Sure, using transformers. And as Leach explains, someone built and sold a version powered by photovoltaic cells illuminated inside the box by an incandescent light.
But you need two separate supplies and you have the additional problem of keeping the 60Hz hum out of the amplifier and also keeping external rf noise from creeping in. It can be done, but it's more engineering, and mmore time. And there's something audiophile-appealing about a circuit so exotic it -must- be powered by batteries. Even the little regulating stuff I added will raise the noise floor a bit.
Not too much, I hope. I'm building one channel on the final board now. I also have more physical design work (and 30 minutes or so with a cutoff wheel, and more time with a drill and taps ...) before I can close the box up and try it for real.
Well, I changed the resistor ratio on the regulating transistor to 10M//1.8M . That puts the current where I want it and gets me a gain of 20. The current regulation isn't so good. Over the full range, it's 9uA off center, but over the 5.6v to 8v range it's about four times better, and that's the most important part. If the gain tails off as the battery is in its last few hundred hours, I'll live with it.
Now I have to build a pair on a real circuit board and seal it an aluminum box with the batteries, and then risk my cartridge and phono inputs on it.
