Category: Uncategorized

Yes, I won the auctions and the tubes have started to roll in. I got a bunch from a guy in Australia, turns out he had a bunch of other audio tubes that he’s having trouble getting rid of, so I helped him out:-) I also got a bunch of 16gk6 tubes, a 16 volt(!) rebased 6bq5. They were only a buck a piece, so how could I lose? I now have more small signal tubes than I know what to do with, so you’d figure I’d stop right? Why stop now?:-) They don’t make them like they used to and the prices keep going up. I figure that these will continue to accrue value as time goes by. In the meantime, I can build some pretty nice amps with them!

Isaac

Woohoo! I got the cameras, and after some initial confusion over little things like how to focus them and how to open them up and load film, I got pretty comfortable with them. I’ll say this, this is the lightest 4×5 camera I have ever held, and it’s rangefinder coupled too!!! The 6×12 finder will take some getting used to, but it’s also a real winner, I’m really excited about these, should be lots of fun! Now I gotta get a meter and do some tests!

Isaac

I’ve changed the sizing of the site. let me know how it looks and if there’s any particular problems. Thanks!

My Site

Isaac

Went to the Cezanne exhibit at the National Gallery yesterday. Overall I’d say “eh…” He’s not really my cup of tea. His stuff shows a great use of gesture and he was very concerned with color as well. Unfortunately, gesture doesn’t mean much to me and I don’t really care for his use of color either. Overall I think his paintings are rather flat. It’s as though he didn’t pay much attention to light which seems odd since he was predominantly a landscape painter. Many of his paintings have the same brightness range across the frame, there is no change from light to dark. This kills any potential interest I might of had. Not surprisingly, I consider Renoir my favorite of the impressionists because of his acute sense of light.

I think the better exhibition is over in the east wing. They have a collection of “Small French Paintings” that are very very nice. Plus it isn’t a mob scene like the Cezanne show is. One of my favorites is in there, by Tissot I believe called “Hide and Seek”, Check it out

There’s also one by Villard entitled “Woman in a Red Dress” that is quite interesting in person.

There’s a bunch of others too, go see them!

Isaac

In a rather bizarre twist, both parents were up in the DC area this weekend. Mom took me out for a birthday dinner on Sat. night and on Sunday Dad, Butler and I went to the Cezanne exhibit down at the national gallery. I’ve been eating nonstop, a great Indian meal on sat. and my favorite Afghan place on sun. I still have leftovers too:-) That includes a birthday cake, perhaps the most important part of the birthday! Mom got me some pretty nice Ray Ban sunglasses in anticipation for my trip to Yemen. I think I’ll have to take them back though. I haven’t worn sunglasses in 15 years or so but I thought I’d give these a try. They are a swept back sort of style, but they are far too small on my head, I’ll need something with larger frames if I’m going to not look silly wearing them. I have the same problem with hats, my head is so big (literally thank you very much) that most hats look odd on me. I’ll go see what they have as substitutes, the last pair that I bought were wayfarers back in 1987 or so. Not sure how kind the years have been to that design, I’ll see what they look like…

Isaac

I’m curious who you are. I see that someone from Carbondale checks up on my blog pretty regularly, drop me a line sometime and introduce yourself:-)

Isaac

I’ve had two very coherent dreams the last couple of nights. That’s a rarity for me, usually my dreams are jumbles of stuff that don’t make much sense. I had hoped that I would get a message from God or something but what I got instead was a Dr. Who episode and a fantasy/horror story (although it wasn’t scary to me).

The Dr. Who episode was rather good I think, but it had all the trademarks, goofy acting and dialogue, a ridiculous villain, and even mini cliff hangers between each installment. The other one was a little looser but it involved a main character that had the ability to move between host bodies. He discovered this ability when he was trapped by a bunch of vampires on a cruise ship that was very TARDIS-like now that I think of it. It was larger on the inside than on the outside and there wasn’t any consistency to the internal layout, it would change on you as you walked through it. The vampires were using it as a floating feast and recruitment center. The main character managed to get out of his body and into another before being made into a vampire, he then proceeded to go into space and under water with various adventures. There were several instances where he didn’t know how he lived through the experience and started to wonder if he had escaped being a vampire after all, or if he had already died, etc.

The last time I had dreams this cinematic is when I was in film school. I got a kick out of identifying the various editing techniques (gaze-object-gaze was a favorite of mine), lighting, and even camera angles… It was a little weird, but in a good way, if I’m going to do the equivalent of watching TV, it might as well be in my sleep:-)

Isaac

Got my variacs in today and hooboy are they big and heavy. Turns out I got the 20 amp models instead of the 10amp ones that I thought I ordered. These things are about 10lbs a piece. They’ll do the job, just hope I have enough space on the table to use them…

Isaac

Ebay is such a dangerous place… I now have bids in on several lots of old, funky vacuum tubes. Part of me hopes that I’m outbid, but it would be such a deal if i won them! I should have the rest of my audio building stuff coming in within the next several weeks and I can get down to building and experimenting in ernest. I do need some output transformers, but those will have to wait until next payday… I’ve got a pretty simple design in mind, a single ended 12av5 being fed with a 12sl7. I’ll have to do some figuring to get the passive parts correct, but that’s where the fun lies, right? Anyway, should be fun/frustrating just like any hobby should be:-)

Isaac

Well I think that it’s safe to assume that meta data tags work well, my hit counter on my site has gone up noticeably since i added them. My most popular page is still the one on downwards sloping demand curves. I am now getting daily hits on it from all over the world, today I had people from Nigeria and Bangladesh find it via google. Turns out that there was a rather serious error on it involving the elasticity of demand, I wonder why no one pointed it out to me, it was obvious enough…:-) I have also added quite a bit more onto the page since the time I first put it up. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Isaac