We Grew Evil Tomatoes

Less evil this year for some reason

Evil Tomatoes

Still evil (or maybe just slightly menacing)

Potatoes

Hundreds of them
Cleaned and sorted

Vactrol Folks..!

I'd been making vactrols, but it turns out managed to kill most of the LEDs with my heat gun. After hours of messing around with heatshrink, LEDs, LDRs, superglue and plastic foam wadding I gave up and just ordered some Xvive vactrols from Thonk...

Dalek Table II

I decided to rebuild the passive ring modulator properly with matched transistors and the correct kind of transformer. Not surprisingly these changes made all the difference with a more defined 'ring mod' sound and much much better carrier suppression. In this version I used Triad TY141P transformers (10K:10K) and BAT48 diodes

Dalek Table

I found some old transformers that have been floating around in my parts drawer for over twenty years, so I decided to whip up a passive ring modulator. The diodes are 1N60P

Peas To Meet You...

...WOO WOO !!!

Peas are in season. These are Blauwschokker, soon we should also have Maro and some indeterminate variety that I saved from a packet of Leo's Dried Peas

It Lives...

The Worng Electronics LRMSMSLR or mid/side encoder/decoder. It's a fantastic little module for creating spacial depth or other stereo effects by modulating the mid & side channels with VCAs, filters, distortion, etc etc...

Boards can be purchased from Thonk or direct from Worng here

Squirrel Nuts !

The squirrels get quite grumpy when we run out of peanuts. Here's a young squirrel who today figured out how to reel in the coconut fat ball hanging from a high branch, unhook it and scoff the lot. He then dropped the empty shell nearly braining a pigeon on the way down and for good measure tied the string into a fiendish squirrel knot that took a set of ladders and quite some time to unpick. Half an hour later the replacement fatball was also on the lawn. So long as they leave my tomatoes alone...

Radishes...

...with beer

Oktoberfest starts early !

Finest Green

Behold...   ...Well actually it's dried pond slime, but it looks like Nori and it smells like Nori.  I daren't eat it just yet, so I blitzed it with the workshop blender (every workshop needs a blender) and added it to my potting mix, now enhanced with Finest Green...

Fun With Diodes

Last night I made a little passive diode clipper. Not expecting it to do a great deal, I was quite surprised at the results from just two Schottky diodes and a 1K resistor

Passive Aggressive

I decided against making a couple of 2x3U sidecars and instead opted for some simple 3U passive boxes that are easy to move around. In the popular boating vernacular this box is probably known as a punt

Tomatoes !!!

Hundreds of them. Still. And no evil ones

Cabinet Eleven (Part Two)

I had to put this on the back burner while I pondered the configuration of the next couple of cabinets. Again this is 2x11u and is the fourth I've made to this spec. The good news is we had the Eucalyptus trimmed, so while at the time of this shot there is a pigeon around four metres up in the tree, it can't (and didn't) manage to do any anything untoward

Norm !

We might finally have a hedgehog in residence, but his is one of 152 pictures my trailcam took last night of nothing happening in a vacant hedgehog house.

When It Gets Colder - It's Time To Solder

I'm building this for an old friend. He'll have to guess what it is...

Also on the bench is a pair of Barton Decaying Analog Noise modules and a couple of Sloth Chaos boards from Nonlinear Circuits

We Still Grow Evil Tomatoes

Just a gentle reminder, like...

It Lives (Part Three)

Some modules just get dragged kicking & screaming into service. I'm afraid the Music Thing Spring Reverb was one of them. I bought the boards back in 2013 when they were just released and after nearly two years, a dead NE5532, a potentially dead reverb tank and a missed board connection I got around to finishing it. It's quite good too

A Handy Little Herb Drier

It's getting to that time of year. Here's a handy little herb drier idea that I came up with last night. I've used Eucalyptus because I've a lot of that to hand. As you can guess I've not quite finished those accounts yet...