Test Equipment Anonymous

There's only one thing that can be said when you see kittens playing... Awwww!

Glad to hear Motley has turned up. One of our previous cats got locked in a neighbour's garage for several days. He was very keen to be back and be reunited with his food bowl. Twenty years ago, I broke my back by stepping on a cat I don't have going down the stairs. It wriggled and I went flying. I...

That doesn't sound good. Although we have a road going past our back garden, it's pretty quiet, so our previous cats died of old age. I worry a bit about Heidi because there's not a lot between her ears, but she's 7 now, so she probably knows what she's about. I hope.

Zenith wrote: ↑Fri Jul 03, 2026 10:29 pm In the same vein, David Suchet is Poirot, but before and after there have been a string of pathetic imposters.

Agreed. And there was a ridiculous mini-series on a few Christmases ago purporting to be a Poirot prequel. Complete nonsense and virtually incomprehensible.

Dually says, "Stop wriggling and look straight at the camera."

I've just been alerted by a shriek that one of our treasures had brought a rat in. Quite sizeable; about 6" long body and quite weighty. Thankfully, very dead.

Sorry to hear about Dually. Our two cats go outside, but Binx doesn't venture out of the back garden. Her mother, Heidi, ranges far and wide, particularly into the stables across the (quiet) road. You haven't lived until you've woken in the middle of the night to a strong smell of horse shit and dis...

Interesting and well argued points (which I accept). What I was intending to draw attention to was the way DAB was promoted in the UK. Terms such as "crystal clear" and "perfect sound" were touted for a system relying on lossy compression, and politicians in particular wittered a...

Thank you for that. A knowledgeable government would have worked out that broadcasting is cheaper overall. And might even have argued for a quality criterion. As for lobbying, everybody has been persuaded that digital is superior, so that they just parrot that, yet all data starts analogue, whether ...

They look so innocent when they're little; no hint of clawed carpets, disembowelled rodents, distributed feathers, or casual puddles of cat sick.

I'm sorry to hear your CBC has the same problems ( and shoots itself in the foot). I believe DAB+ is successful in mainland Europe, but it has been foisted upon us here. The main issue is that it is contrary to the fundamental broadcasting ethos; it pushes costs to the consumer. A DAB radio is a com...

DAB used to stand for Dead And Buried, then various people wanted to shut down VHF. The government wanted to shut VHF down because they remembered the UHF mobile phone bonanza. (Yes, I know 88MHz to 108MHz isn't quite the same, but government types aren't technical.) Broadcasters didn't like the ele...

It's all about money. Follow the money. Operating even a single transmitter is expensive. Once upon a time, it was BBC credo that if there was a choice between a cost being borne by the broadcaster or the listener/viewer, then it should be borne by the broadcaster because that reduced total cost. Th...

Yup, that box is way too small, so it's too tempting to avoid. Ours know they're not allowed on kitchen counters, and that usually stops them. Only usually. I did once have a cat who would drink from a mildly running tap.

(I will carefully avoid mentioning what is inside the record player itself as input connectors to the RIAA stage :twisted: ) Welcome to SDI at 1080p50: I thought I might hear from you. My turntable is a Garrard 301, so it needs a very solid plinth, achieved by the plinth being... ...solid. So there...

The worrying thing is that there are lots of snake oil audio cables. Fancy mains cables, fancy loudspeaker cables, fancy interconnect cables with phono plugs (not XLRs) at each end. But guess what? The world still uses unbalanced cables from turntables to RIAA stage. The cartridge is a balanced tran...

As with all data, it's important not just to look at the final result, but also how it got there. Histograms are a case in point because random additions (as described) are what you want to see, not a gently changing line of changes (usually due to temperature slowly changing). FFTs are also useful,...

Interesting stuff. Some numbers on the noise in different orientations would be nice, although the visual comparison is good. I imagine the instrument has cursors, so it should be possible to measure the width of those peaks at half maximum amplitude (FWHM). I would expect the noise in all orientati...

Remembering that a crystal is really a mechanical resonator, it relies on mass and restoring force, so if you change the orientation, you change where gravity affects it, changing restoring force. Makes sense, although I've never seen it before. Changing cable length will change capacitance as you n...

Your little brown and white treasure would be seriously growled at for what it's thinking of doing there. Scope probes are unbelievably expensive and all my cats have learned that they are absolutely forbidden. (OK, it's not a 'scope probe lead, but it's going into a 'scope, and I figure it's too ha...

Yes, that does seem to be the standard value for bridges.

Eventually realise I have a component drawer full of polystyrene caps, and that it wouldn't take too many to increase that 87nF cap to 100nF. So tomorrow's job will be to fettle with capacitors to make a 500nF reference capacitor read as 500nF. But why has the 100nF reference capacitor fallen to 87...

I believe bomb squad people had a small remotely controlled tracked vehicle called a Wheelbarrow. It's quite old for the die-cast box to use slotted head (probably 4BA) screws.

tggzzz wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2026 10:05 am "Never underestimate the number of people who can repeat words without understanding them."

That phrase would have been invaluable when I was marking students' coursework in the late 90s.

I read the context bit and needlebinding isn't at all what I expected. The article then moved onto lacemaking (you will of course, recall Bertie Wooster shooting his irreproachable Mechelin lace) and straw dolls featured in the Wicker Man.

I see similar AI-generated nonsense for lathes on Fleabay. I often look up "Hobbymat MD65 lathe" to see what modifications people have made (and whether they might be worth incorporating on mine). I see all sorts of rubbish written in the item description. The Hobbymat is a nice enough lat...