Current status

I had to hear the chaos… it’s possibly loud.

I felt I should make Chua’s circuit. Well, that sort of worked. A bit squishy.

A cat is on my lap so dinner will not be cooked.

I've had "Icing On the Cake" by Stephen Duffy in my head all day so I had to play it. Best Beatles record that the Beatles didn't make?

My HP 3562A and the reason it would not work this morning.

Just witnessed how overstretched the ambulance service is around here. Not good. Take care everyone.

Sudden realisation that Forever Lost by The Magic Numbers has so many similarities with Kid by The Pretenders. That explains why I kept getting the audio equivalent of Deja Vu.

I'm seeing so many takes around parts of the "ID card" melange, I have to add a few. It's not about cards. It's about registers. A register is a definitive 'true source' of data, about people, places, buildings, whatever.

They arrived. oh no. OH NO.

Sudden trip to Selsey and West Wittering completed. Ww has nice dunes.

I don't use an ad-blocker but sometimes this happens and I think about how we got to this stupid web.

got bored. made the test card clown

I made the mixer PLL circuit smaller. The plan was to also make it use 4000 series CMOS but the 4060 doesn’t have enough current output to drive the frequency tripler and the 4040 divides the 10-20MHz mixer output unreliably.

Got back from the vets, Bella the cat has apparently learned a lesson about bees or wasps and has one extra-large front paw.

I used another of my home made double balanced mixers to make a Miller regenerative divider. Here’s the mixer.

We have phase lock! A 43.75MHz VCO is doubled to 87.5MHz and mixed with 75MHz. The 75MHz is tripled from the 25MHz crystal, which is also divided by 32. The mixed output at 12.5MHz is divided by 16 and compared with this 781.25kHz signal and the resulting DC error signal is used to tune the VCO

I spotted some INEOS washing up liquid in Waitrose and was momentarily annoyed that there's no Land Rover washing up liquid but then I remembered that making 4x4 vehicles isn't really what INEOS is known for.

My cat’s face is set to OFF

I'm half way through building a very silly circuit involving a 25MHz crystal. It's really an exercise in getting my RF intuition sharpened up a bit. So far I've made an oscillator (and divider, but more on that later) then a tripler with an effective bandpass filter. Tomorrow I'll add more blocks…

After reading about the Mandela Effect (which I'd seen mentioned a lot because of the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon) I had a dream that in the pilot version of Noel's House Party, Mr Blobby was called "Swollen James". I attribute all this to @mrbiffo.bsky.social somehow. Anyone remember Swollen James?

Today's silent community radio station is Westside on 89.6, still a reasonably strong signal here, miles from its intended listeners. Stereo beacon, maybe there's RDS, I can't tell because SDRconnect is terrible at RDS.

If a company has Faqs on its website one of the questions should have to be "Are these really frequently asked questions or just extra points that marketing want to make sure are mentioned"

This seems like a very early Viewdata/Prestel terminal. Not mine, just stumbled across it. www.ebay.co.uk/itm/17736897...

The important thing when selling mini donuts is to show the machine

That's the news, we'll be back in an hour but you can listen to the headlines at any time, just ask your smart speaker to play endless screaming.

The power of Vectron

Bought a ship’s broadcast receiver at the rally. Exciting full HF and VHF FM. HF has RF preselction in 2MHz steps, which should make it very robust in terms of strong signal handling

Track 4 is nuts, like Jethro Tull and Steely Dan performing a disco version of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, in full. Quality is lovely, too, though it's hard to be properly dull about it with only half a working tweeter between two speakers. I should get new speakers.

Yesterday I replaced some aged electrolytic capacitors with some that were nearly the same age and fixed HP-IB on my HP 3325A which was sending ???????????? on the bus due to 5V being at 4.3V with oodles of ripple

Leaving the 3314A on doing this to see if it eventually reboots itself

The international symbol of car boot sale electronic parts.

appuyez sur le bouton « speak »

The HP-IB works. I only destroyed one PC during the process of testing this.

Couldn't sleep for a while last night because I had "The Carthaginians" by Telefís well and truly stuck in my head.

Serious-ish question, where can I get a good quality ice cream scoop? We had a scoop but it corroded strangely, replaced it with a Joseph Joseph one that was excellent at being a scoop and not corroding strangely until the entire handle broke off, rendering it useless.

Preparing my tuna, ginger and smells-and-tastes-of-soap-allegedly coriander based concoction, at the "waiting" stage where it all sits for a while. It takes around 5 minutes to actually cook it and that includes a final minute of intense activity to make certain that it's just right.

There were a few salvaged XR2206N waveform generator ICs in last week’s random component bag purchase, so I tried one. I can trim sine distortion to about 0.51% at a few kHz or lower. It needs a retrim at different frequencies which is a bit rubbish. Nicer than an ICL8083 though, only using 11mA.

Just fashioned a claw out of Texas Instruments branded antistatic DIP carrier tubes, fixed it to an old broom handle with the same rusty screws that used to hold the broom head on, then used it to reach an inaccessible tap so I could stop a flood.

DON'T BUY TYPEFACES FROM ADOBE OR MONOTYPE. EVER. There are better options, ethically, technically and aesthetically: bsky.app/profile/typo... #typography

Visited Epsom Downs briefly, the view is too much for a photo or three.

I need to find a home for these SN75324 memory drivers because the chances of me needing to drive core memory are close to zero. I've got around 60 of them, not in pristine condition but no obvious corrosion.

The nah-nah-nah part of Icehouse's No Promises matches the tune of Crowded House's World Where You Live. Both from 1986.

What is this thing? I can tell you no more than the picture of the blue multi-leaded hybrid module with markings: BAL CY 1000.A 1 Made in UK

BBC Radio 4 LW and BBC Radio 4 FM a mere crackly button apart thanks to separate tuning dials for each.

Reached the "too hot and humid to wear my reading glasses" stage. You're all a blur now.

AAL56 presented me with a personal flypast, presumably spacing issue causing it to break off the approach.

The front fell off

Falmouth 9-10 January www.flickr.com/photos/synx5...

Weekend rally buys include HP switch, DIY spectrum analyser, intimidating ITT transistor radio and more used EPROMs than anyone needs