Author
|
Topic: Your today in pictures..
|
|
|
Paul Adsett
Film God
Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003
|
posted April 17, 2016 08:52 PM
This 1970's Zenith Console Stereo is located below my screen in my screening room. It is a really nice looking piece, and being early American furniture style, it has not become dated in appearance. It has not been run in quite a while, so today I opened the lid and polished everything up and removed the platter and lubed the motor and disc changer. I placed an LP record on the turntable at it ran beautifully and sounded fantastic. Just as film is so much more intimate than DVD'S, so are LP'S compared to CD's. There really is something special about pulling that record out of its sleeve and placing it on the turntable and lowering the stylus.
This particular stereo is one of the Zenith Allegro series, manufactured in the USA at a time when American electronics companies held their heads high, firm in the knowledge that they designed and made the best products in the world. And their employees felt the same way. At Zenith the corporate logo said " the quality goes in before the name goes on", and this stereo is a perfect testament to that philosophy. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it will be running just fine 50 years from now. You have to weep when you realize how this country has lost its iconic companies like Zenith and RCA.
-------------------- The best of all worlds- 8mm, super 8mm, 9.5mm, and HD Digital Projection, Elmo GS1200 f1.0 2-blade Eumig S938 Stereo f1.0 Ektar Panasonic PT-AE4000U digital pj
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
Bryan Chernick
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 654
From: Bothell, WA, USA
Registered: Mar 2010
|
posted April 18, 2016 11:38 PM
Paul, my wife and I have two RCA Victor stereo consoles from the early 1960's. we're always listening to the radio and records with them. They sound great and we have over 1,000 records to listen to, jazz, rock, blues, soul, soundtracks, Latin... Does yours have an 8 track?
| IP: Logged
|
|
Paul Adsett
Film God
Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003
|
posted April 19, 2016 08:57 AM
Hi Bryan, Yes my console also has the 8-track player, which still works perfectly, although I have only a few tapes to play in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ-DKXWVtiA [ April 19, 2016, 08:06 PM: Message edited by: Paul Adsett ]
-------------------- The best of all worlds- 8mm, super 8mm, 9.5mm, and HD Digital Projection, Elmo GS1200 f1.0 2-blade Eumig S938 Stereo f1.0 Ektar Panasonic PT-AE4000U digital pj
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
|
posted May 13, 2016 10:47 AM
I'm just back from the Beam Tunnel!
We're in a maintenance shutdown for a couple of weeks, so we can work down in the innards of our synchrotron light source.
Under normal operations the spot I was standing in to take the picture is bathed in high intensity X-rays. The camera I was using would certainly survive the experience, but not the guy operating it!
Here's what you are looking at: buried down inside all that stuff there is a stainless steel pipe about an inch across which is operating at very high vacuum. There is a very energetic beam of electrons which is very highly focused.
If you started walking in either direction, after a half mile you would find yourself exactly where you started. It looks exactly the same throughout the tunnel. It's very easy to get lost when you are new here!
Most of the objects on those girders are specialized electromagnets. The large blue ones bend the beam so it goes in a circle, the others focus it and keep it aligned at the center of the beam pipe. Each magnet has a power supply. There are more than 800 magnets. I'm a power supply engineer...life is good!
On a warm day like today, the tunnel is HOT! This is not because somebody left the thermostat turned up. The walls of this area are at least 3 feet of poured concrete for shielding and vibration isolation. The concrete is about 5 years old, still curing, and still releasing heat into that confined space.
Those of you who are worried (-or delighted) I'm giving away national secrets, it's OK. Nothing here is secret at all, as a matter of fact many countries around the world have a machine like this, it's just that at least for a while it is the newest and the most advanced.
Basically what this does is provide high intensity X-rays for imaging. It's useful for medical research, semiconductor research, metallurgy and many other fields requiring very advanced X-ray imaging. A few years ago the machine this one replaced verified the authenticity of a Van Gogh painting and this one should be able to watch a virus attack a cell in real time.
NSLS II Introduction
-------------------- All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
|
posted May 30, 2016 09:28 PM
I spent some time this afternoon relining my front brakes:
I actually hate doing brakes. They are dirty, you have to work on them either sitting on the ground or sitting on a stool bent in half. -Also, if you mess them up, you may (you know…) die.
-but you see I had no choice: I’m up for inspection and I had an eighth inch of brake lining left. The minimum in New York State happens also to be an eighth of an inch, and no mechanic with a mortgage and a week at Disney World hanging out on his credit card for the last three years is going to let something like this slide!
The factor of five times difference in cost if a mechanic does it vs. me is kind of a clincher here!
It was kind of a daunting project: you see, this is my “new” car. It has 53,000 miles on it and my old one had over 200,000, so it’s practically mint in original packaging as I measure these things!
Because it’s “new” I have never actually worked on it before. I don’t have the service book, and as a bonus It hasn’t even been published yet!
-so I have no procedures, no torque specs, no “don’t do this or you will lose a wheel” kinds of helpful hints.
I did what we all do these days: I went out on the ‘net. There is a lot out there: YouTube videos, helpful websites and the occasional pop up ad. from attorneys specializing in motor vehicle accidents. There was this one extremely detailed website that actually said “Sit in the driver’s seat and step on the brake pedal.” (…really?)
Exactly what makes a torque spec off a website that trustworthy? This isn’t really coming straight from Honda and for all I know it’s being typed into a website by some guy who has a refrigerator full of severed heads and if I follow it I’ll wind up wrapped around a tree! I actually compared several specs I found on different websites and only used them because they agreed with each other!
-having an actual, bound book in your hands is just much more reassuring: at least if you wind up flipped on your roof you’ll have somebody to sue!
In the end, all went well. I guess to a large extent disk brakes are disk brakes and they aren’t that different among each other. Naturally those first few times I used them I made sure I wasn’t pointed at anything close enough to hit if all hell broke loose, but it stopped quickly, quietly and straight!
Next Weekend: the rear brakes.
-------------------- All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
| IP: Logged
|
|
|