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Life in the time of the Virus

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Raj,
You humble me - thank you.

Kevin,
Julian Wales comes from a very wealthy family. If anyone ever thinks that the wealthy have a good upbringing, it certainly is not him..... he had a dreadful childhood and yet he is a wonderful human being I am proud to say friend. I tease him ruthlessly about his love of Jaguars, saying they go nicely and then stop forever; he responds that my chariot is the pinnacle of cold logic and completely without soul. Perhaps we are both correct?
Nice use of a ledge on the heatsink for your Bedini. I agree with Bigun, a ledge makes it very easy to work on the amp when it's operational, good for adjusting.

Peter,
I had no idea you suffered a heart attack while listening to my old LF..... my God, what can I say? I am very unhappy to hear this - perhaps I can never sell you another amplifier, maybe with a better amp you might next time fall off the twig completely!!

AS,
Ah, yes, a successor...... I have been working on this for a few years. No luck yet....

Hugh
 
Hugh

You've heard my LF55 after I sold it and you said "you almost fell off your perch" after hearing it. It will take more than one of your amps to kill me.

I've had 2 events in the last 2 years. The first was a heart attack shortly after a stress test and the second was dehydration after cooking myself working in the yard which caused BP to fall below 60/40. Age (69 this year) has caught up with me and 2020 is the first year I have noticed limitations in stamina, strength etc. Add in failing eyesight, low fine motor skills and worse coordination but at least the hearing is fine. Just have to pace myself now and understand the barriers.

Back to your amps. I've built over 30 amps and nothing has been close to the engagement and presentation of your designs. At times they were able to take my breath way and caused me to become very emotional. Those in the AKSA family will know what I mean.
 
Peter,
I had a good friend in NYC called Paul Kaplan who died of pancreatic cancer seven months ago. For four years he battled the disease suffering through 17 chemo sessions, each of six weeks and I would ask him how he was every couple of weeks and he would list all the problems, many issues including lapsing into unconsciousness, unable to get up in the morning, loss of sight in one eye, strokes, a litany of maladies that would have killed lesser mortals. And then at the end of it, he would say humorously:

'Ah, but after all this I still have my health'!!

Old age is not for the weak-hearted, and we should switch our humor from slapstick to black because it's a marathon, not a sprint. There is ONLY gallows humor, and the Germans have a wonderful word for it which speaks hugely of their culture: Schadenfreude.

Oddly, and I'm your age Peter, I'm loving living through my sixties. It's painful, lacking in energy, and the constant realisation you are losing your powers, but I find I like being old now. Never much enjoyed youth or middle age, although at all ages I loved sitting on a motorcycle or in a good car at high speed.

Stay well, you and I will live through a lot more pain and misery before we die!!

Hugh
 
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Schadenfreude isn't gallows humour- it is the act of laughing at another's misfortune.

Equivalent in English is Epicaricacy.

I.e. it would be to laugh at your friend's misfortune with health, rather than his self deprecating humoured response to his own misfortune.

But yes it does say alot about culture!
 
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Yes, we find that rather than being the most dominant life force on the planet we now are confronted by the fact that it is the microbe world, not the human world, that dominates.......

There have been many pandemics, Filipe, they come every twenty or thirty years. Humanity will get through it, it's a numbers game, and in two years most people will hardly remember it.

Hugh
 
There are other things which can wipe out humanity from the planet but their probability of hitting us is extremely small. For instance, a gamma burst can easily damage the biosphere by wiping off the ozone layer. There is also the 'spectre' of rogue massive stellar objects which roam unattached to a galaxy. These can be black holes or neutron stars or anything in between these two extremes. A stellar object like these, will disrupt the solar system's equilibrium with yet a more horrid spectre of planetary collisions, planets being ejected out of their orbit into outer space and collisions with the stellar object causing this disruption.
The above is what can happen from beyond the solar system, but this is not enough. The Sun itself can do huge damage to the earth and its people, by emitting strong stray magnetic fields which induce huge voltages in long cables destroying electricity distribution systems and communication systems.
 
This is a rebuild of a Bedini 25.25 that I intend to complete in the next week or two. I bought the flanged sinks from Conrad Engineering and the custom smaller ones (8FT with one half of fins removed) trimmed to fit, some time back. Mr Wales was extremely helpful. The only problem I had was drilling the holes into the flange. The drill press chuck is too large to get close to the sink, so the TO-3s were laid out length wise. The new sink is ~ 80% larger than original. Have a new 400 VA trafo & new PSU boards with 40 000 uF for each channel. The problem is getting the case finished off, but can & will be done later. Time to get these boards working. The lock down is helping. PCBs will be below flange with TO-3s top side.

Kevin

I love that build, it has a look to it that is missing from my high density SMD designs that relaxes me just looking at it.
 
edbarx,

Our demise will be self inflicted I suspect. It could be as simple as redesigning our DNA just because we can, whether for increased life expectancy, greater performance, to make better soldiers or to support space travel. And in time we’ll become a different species and we, the ‘old species’ will be gone.
 
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Joined 2001
Paid Member
:cop: We'll let this thread continue as "Life during wartime", but theorizing about the virus itself, and how to control it is not allowed and off topic. Political comments are also not allowed throughout the forums. The alternative is to close it permanently which we will do if there are further issues...
 
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