Simply random stuff

[barfle]

I've been into cars and specially the custom variety my whole life and been following most
of the TV shows built around them. Dave Kindig is the most talented designer I've been aware
of in all those years, the output from his shop consistently builds customs that just take my breath
away. He's combined his design talent and success into building a business with
a shop full of employees of the best in the business and the SOTA equipment to support them.
There's no doubt in my mind that if I had the kind of $ it takes to build a world class custom, the
first place I'd call would be his.
https://www.kindigit.com/
https://www.kindigit.com/show/

I have a tendency to fiddle with my cars. The closest I ever came to “full custom” was a VW sedan that was definitely noot street legal when I raced it on dirt tracks in the early 70s. I wasn’t very good, but I do get to say I raced against Rick Mears.

My automotive project of the moment is another VW, this time a 79 Super Beetle convertible. It’s actually my wife’s car (original owner), but I brought it back from comatose over the last couple of years. We keep it garaged and off the road in winter, but it’s a fun little car to scoot about in. Lots of potential projects there!

 

[mandrix]

I never built any custom cars. But I started engine building with motorcycles when I was about 14, and tuning up the parent's cars.
At 15 I was working off the books at a Suzuki shop, doing non warranty work, including rebuilds, and changing tires, a few wheel re-spokes here and there.
Guys would put marine white gas in the tank, not knowing it was low octane, and burn holes in pistons (I did it once as well).

I rebuilt my first small block at 16, did a passable job (it ran). Later I rebuilt more small blocks including a '64 Vette 327 I put in my '68 Chevelle. I always took my blocks and heads to a guy that ran a small parts store/shop to dip the blocks, go over the heads. check tolerances and install the cam bearings then I did the rest of the assembly myself.

My last hot rod was a 2000 Z28, LS1 engine with a few goodies and all the suspension mods including sfc's stb, etc. Sold it when I retired and bought the wife a Grand Cherokee for her DD.

 

[Bruce00]

I made it to 10 today! Heading to a meeting . . .
View attachment 102803

Day after Thanksgiving will be 10 yrs for me. I just quit drinking cold turkey ( ha ha) after waking up with a wicked hangover. Only missed it twice in the years that have past by

 

[JohnN]

American Reacts - Toronto Leafs fans Completes The US National Anthem / Detroit Returns the Favor​

​

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

With the sheer amount of multichannel releases coming out as of late, sometimes I wonder if this will even sell, LOL.

 

[GOS]

With the sheer amount of multichannel releases coming out as of late, sometimes I wonder if this will even sell, LOL.

If what will sell?

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

If what will sell?

Whatever I'm working on right now!

 

[GOS]

 

[DuncanS]

View attachment 103016

Had my money, I tell you what I'd do
I would go downtown, buy a Mercury or two

'Cause I'm crazy 'bout a Mercury
Cruise up and down this road
Up and down this road

I'm goin' to buy me a Mercury now
Cruise up and down this road
Up and down this road

... as told by one Mr. S. Miller & entourage!

 

[cbmmm3]

Had my money, I tell you what I'd do
I would go downtown, buy a Mercury or two

'Cause I'm crazy 'bout a Mercury
Cruise up and down this road
Up and down this road

I'm goin' to buy me a Mercury now
Cruise up and down this road
Up and down this road

... as told by one Mr. S. Miller & entourage!

beat me to it Dunc.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

beat me to it Dunc.

Are we not clever? We are QQ!

 

[Sonik Wiz]

When the Millennium DTS decoder first came out one of the most distinctive external item was... a blue LED! Now today we have the Blue Eyed Monster, aka, Surround Master, with blue LED's so bright you can read a book by them. Interesting to look back at at techno-history & see how easy it was to make the red or green LED but the blue was a real challenge:

 

[DuncanS]

Are we not clever? We are QQ!

Yep, Quietly Quackers!

 

[zdjh22]

When the Millennium DTS decoder first came out one of the most distinctive external item was... a blue LED! Now today we have the Blue Eyed Monster, aka, Surround Master, with blue LED's so bright you can read a book by them. Interesting to look back at at techno-history & see how easy it was to make the red or green LED but the blue was a real challenge:

The piece of optoelectronic gear that amazes me is that they pushed past the blue to the ultraviolet. You have been able to buy cheap UV-curable adhesive plus a UV-LED for a while now (similar UV-curable stuff to what your dentist uses). Great stuff BTW.

 

[LB-V]

Day after Thanksgiving will be 10 yrs for me. I just quit drinking cold turkey

I used to, by my own fabricated tradition, drink a bottle of Wild Turkey 101 for my Thanksgiving. What a deal that was!

Thankful I take her one day at a time now.....

 

[barfle]

When the Millennium DTS decoder first came out one of the most distinctive external item was... a blue LED! Now today we have the Blue Eyed Monster, aka, Surround Master, with blue LED's so bright you can read a book by them. Interesting to look back at at techno-history & see how easy it was to make the red or green LED but the blue was a real challenge:

I remember when I got a sample of a blue LED. It was probably ‘84 or ‘85, and it is still the pilot light in an amp I built for my back channels and will eventually become my headphone amp, with a few tweaks. Everyone I showed it to was impressed with a blue LED. Of course, now they’re everywhere, and the quantum dot TVs use them to energize the red and green dots. Go figure.

 

[zdjh22]

I remember when I got a sample of a blue LED. It was probably ‘84 or ‘85, and it is still the pilot light in an amp I built for my back channels and will eventually become my headphone amp, with a few tweaks. Everyone I showed it to was impressed with a blue LED. Of course, now they’re everywhere, and the quantum dot TVs use them to energize the red and green dots. Go figure.

OK, another old man story, sorry. My first job out of grad school in 1987 was at the Amoco Research Center in Naperville, Illinois, working in a group that designed and manufactured AlGaAs diode lasers. I was the only physicist, the rest were EE PhDs that had gotten their degrees at UIUC under the inventor of the LED, Nick Holonyak (John Bardeen’s first EE grad student) or from other professors that had gotten their degrees under Holonyak.

Gallium nitride was used for blue LEDs, but they were terribly inefficient (and hence dim) because GaN couldn’t be doped very well for the p-side. Our dream was to make diode lasers in the blue, but no chance at that efficiency (even though you could photo-pump GaN to make it lase in the blue). Along comes Nakamura in Japan, who finally figures out how to get stable p-side doping in about 1992 or 1993, and that’s when you started to see really bright blue LEDs (and white ones also). A decade later he figures out how to make blue GaN laser diodes, and we get BluRay players. He also gets a Nobel prize for those efforts

Fast forward to today, and Nakamura is now a professor at UCSB and has formed the Blue Laser fusion company. LLNL just 18 months ago demonstrated power gain in inertial confinement fusion using flashlamp-pumped Nd:YAG lasers in the infrared (with lots of caveats - far far from break-even energy-wise). Nakamura proposes using blue lasers for inertial confinement fusion. We’ll see!

 

[Simon A]

You guys have been begging for it for years, now it's finally here!

Teaches of Peaches documentary out soon.

 

[J. PUPSTER]

 

[J. PUPSTER]

They rock hard for a bunch of old farts; and the wall of Marshall's just explodes outta my speakers and fills the room -as it should!!!