Congratulations World, the end of AIDS is nigh!  Swiss experts have released a first ever consensus statement saying that a person who is on effective HIV medicines and has an undetectable viral load cannot pass on the virus during sexual intercourse!  The implication for hard hit countries is that if they can just get everyone on medicine, the disease can be wiped out in just one generation.   HIV can be the next polio!

What you say?  Why isn't this being trumpeted from the highest mountain top?  Because when the word gets out that by breaking the stranglehold the drug companies have ...<< MORE >>

I warned you. ...<< MORE >>

I'm starting a new catagory called Hong Kong Night.

Tao and I have been having one day a week for his Hong Kong friends to come over.  Tao will usually cook up some chinese food.  He's made some really good dishes.

We usually get started around five or six in the evening.  Our friends show up with their pockets fat with cash for the taking! Ha ha ha.  Just kidding.  I don't play Mah Jong but I often sit in to watch.  We pull the couch aside and put the Mah Jong table in front of the TV.  We put the Hong Kong chanell on and dish out the food.   The boys can really put away a lot of food!  Thank god for Costco.  The dogs go crazy for scraps, circling beneith our feet like furry pirhanhas.  Terris and Annie bring thier dog, Coffee.  He stayed with us for a year while they lived in student housing.  Coffee is an old, fat, pug.  He can't hear very well or see for that matter.  He knows where the food comes from though!  He will post guard outside of the fridge waiting for me to come.  He knows I will always pull out something for him too

After dinner the dishes are cleared and the Mah Jong tiles come out.  They take turns playing, four at a time.  Usually there are small bets.  At this time I will usually retire to the garage to work on my projects.  Last night I finished up the Tao Amp while they played.  I can hear the tiles swirling around on the table, and the laughing and the cantonese language.  I enjoy having this bolus of foriegn culture in my kitchen.  It's so important for Tao to have his countrymen around him this one night a week.  His friends also enjoy this time immensly.  I can't imagine being in a foriegn land and never having an opportunity to speak english or eat a cheeseburger!

The night usually runs very late, often till well after 3AM.  I will usually come out and roast up a batch of coffee for us.  I home roast coffee and have made a post or two about it here.

Last week someone brought over a Wii fit.  Tao was performing some kind of ...hoolahoop action I think.  I swear it looked exactly like tardive's diskensesia.  They were laughing up a storm.

        

Hi!
This is a slideshow of the TAO AMP.
The AMP10 from www.41hz.com is the actual guts.  I spent about two or three weeks on this project all told.   I worked on my days off and after work sometimes.

The light bulb is my cut rate soft-start system that slows down the rush of electrons that stoke the capacitators.  I'm sure that the amp could work fine without it.  It's actually part of the test process to put the bulb in line to keep the amp from pulling too much current if there is a short.   That way things don't start burning!

I drew out the "plans" on a post-it note.  The volume control and some of the switches are scrounged.  Also scrounged is all the lumber.

It's up on legs with the heavy (!) transformer slung undernieth to dampen vibrations.  I doubt a human could hear the diference if it was vibrating or not but you never know (unless you test!).  Also by being up on legs, you can easily dust underneith it! The legs are hardwood walnut and just about choked my table saw. The transformer lives in a custom vacuum molded holder.

There are two inputs, one is gold plated rca jacks and the other is a 3.5 inch jack.  I thought that since it I would be mostly using it with my N95 it should be an easy hook up for that.  The switch on the forehead is the selctor switch.  The volume control, scrounged from a subwoofer is in the mouth.   On the left lower part of the face is the mute switch and on the right lower part is the on/off button that is snubberized.  Snubberizing protects from transient power spikes.

The "face" plate is my partner, Tao's face.  I took a mold using alginate and plaster, then made a plaster positive and finally used my homebrew vacuum former to pull a mold.  I put a washer over the lips to make a nice spot for the volume control.  Thanks Tao!

The 5 way speaker bindng posts are on each side.  I have moved so much stereo equipment around in my life that I am just tired of all the inputs and outputs on the back!  This time everything is available from the front or sides. 

Instead of painting it I used contact paper.  I wanted it to look different.  Boy did I succeed!

This is really just a mock up of the final.  I will probably halve the volume of the case.

How does it sound?  Well, let me just say that is the most sublime, clear, uncolored sounding amp I've ever heard.  I never knew what fidelity was before getting a decent pair of speakers.  Now I can't live without it.

On my list of things to do is to buy a decent volume control as well as cleaning up the routing of everyghing inside.

Here's a short video of me testing the amp before it went into the box.  It gives you a good idea of how small this thing really is and considering how good it sounds , it's really amazing.

Turn up your speakers!

This was video was shot on my Nokia N95 phone.  It has a pretty good camera but it's still just a phone.

        

Since my last post on this subject I have finished putting together the amplfier.  All the resitors an capacitators went in one at a time and very very small!

I probably spent too much time on some of them because I ended up pulling up a soldering pad on one of the cap.  I think that will stop the signal and since I only get signal from one channel at the moment, I believe that is my problem.

I have posted several messages on the www.41hz.com message board regarding the project and there have been several people that have been very ...<< MORE >>

I'm working triage today. The emergency department has become the defacto primary care facility. The few patients that do have a primary doctor can't get an appointment to see them. Two people today were actually at their doctor's office and left to come to the ER after waiting for hours in the waiting room. Talk about a love hate relationship. This is their caregiver. They went to the office and waited and waited and finally just got up to take their chances at the ER.

Here in the ER we have been attempting to step up to the challenge but the deal is that the healtlhcare system in the US is sadly broken. You can't measure the human tragedy that is the outcome of this mess.

Let me tell you about a patient. John D. is a fourty two year old African American. He dropped out of highschool to care for his first child and has been working ever since. In order to keep from paying healthcare benifits, his TWO employers keep his hours under part time. He has a long history of coming into the ER for various small complaints. Each time his blood pressure is elevated. The ER docs won't treat his blood pressure because it's a "Primary Care Issue". Their policy is that if the patient can't get in for follow up they don't want to write for a medicine that he can't be followed up for.

His kidneys have failed from the hypertension. He no longer works. He is on disability. His dialyisis costs over a thousand dollars a visit and that's three times per week. NOW all is medicine is paid for. NOW he has a primary care doctor. For less than fifty cents a day his blood pressure could have been treated. If a father has to choose between his healtcare and his children's he will always pick the children's.

This same sad story is repeated a million different ways. Each time we loose a tax payer and gain a dependant. Each time we loose a healthy adult in favor of paying the healthcare system for his treatment after he becomes unable to be a productive citizen. Don't even try to comprehend the suffering of these people and their families because you can't do it.

You see, we are already paying for healthcare for everyone. But we are wasting money paying for profit corporations to perform what amounts to paliative care for people who fall through these HUGE cracks.

Guess what happens if you get sick? I'll tell you what happens, you loose your job and with it goes your health insurance. Now in order for you to get care, you sell everything in a mad scramble to preserve some function or dignity.

You lose your job, your insurance and what do you use to pay for your medicines in a country where the profit margins of the drug companies is protected by law? And why do we pay more for drugs here? Why are drugs less expensive in Canada? In the US we pay more for healthcare than any other nation yet we are no where near the top in life expectancy. We have a higher infant mortality rate than any other first teir country. Women can't find a doctor to take care of them during pregnancy. A pregnancy they probably didn't intend but no one ever told them how to use a condom because of abstinance based education in the school system.

Dead babies and people on disability is the wages of our healthcare system. The VA, the nationwide system of government sponsored, one payer healthcare system has the highest quality of healtcare demonstratably superior outcomes for less money. Why is that I wonder? Because the profit goes to caring for sick humans instead of making the rich richer.

        

I've reached a waypoint in the AMP10 project.

The next step is to test the power supply system on the circuit board. Since the amplifier uses a computer chip to amplify the sound, it only needs five volts on the board. So some of the MANY extremely small parts I've placed are for the purpose of changing the twenty-two volts alternating current to five volts of direct current.

I purchased a variable tranformer that allows you to run current of your choice through the system and hooked it up to one of the input rails of the system. However I got a great deal of fluxuating numbers. I spent a lot of time last night emailing back and forth with the forum dedicated to the assembly of this amplifier. At the time of this posting I'm still not sure if I passed the test or not. It's supposed to have stable voltate but it doesn't. However my transformer only allows you to hook up one rail at a time and I THINK it needs the two rails to give a positive and a negative value from the ground.

In any case, the thing LOOKS great. I really enjoyed building it and I can't wait to get it actually playing music. The soldering has been the best part. It has been a combination of a new skill as well as learning something. Like reading a good book while learning a skill presented in it. Better than reading a book, and better than learning a skill!

The people on the board have been very nice and informative. I spent some time on a forum dedicated to the Yamaha R1 race motorcycle when I owned one. I found the members there to be childish and prone to flame wars about "chicken strips" (the unabraded sidewalls of the tires showing you don't drive agressively) and whether or not wearing safety gear makes you a sissy or not. So it's very refreshing to interact with adults with both a common interest and an intellegence level high enough that actual learning is involved.

I watched a short video on soldering last night (yes, after soldering everything to the board), and I was suprised to learn that you have to keep your soldering times very short because heating the componant could damage it. Oops. Some of the items could be on the "well done" side. Learning how to solder a good joint takes time... Too much time perhaps. I'll know more in a few days when I get the transformer in. I'm ordering one from online since it's not the kind of thing that Walmart stocks.

I'll keep you informed of my progress.

        

As my friends know, I'm easily bored.  I have to stay busy or I go crazy and start chewing up the carpet.

My latest project is a homebrew audiophile quality amplifier that I found on Craiglslist (thanks Craig!).  I started off looking for speakers and somehow this Amp10 came up in the search.  The Amp10 is a T-amp sold in kit form by a Norwegian named Jan from www.41hz.com.  I purchased the kit from a fellow over in Santa Cruz who bought two but only assembled one of them.

I vaguely remember a Radio Shack electronics kit from my youth.  More than enough qualification to start a project of this nature.  After all the thing is only about 8 inches by 3 inches.  What could go wrong?

I didn't have a soldering iron so I got to buy another tool!  I love tools.  I could rule the world if I only had the tools.  I started of with a 30 watt iron that came in a kit from Radio Shack.  The tip was actually way too big for the fine work required by this kit but I didn't know that.

I started off by assembling a set of LED moon lights that came in kit form for my salt water aquarium.  Though the aquarium was sold last year, the soldering made for good practice.

The moon lights allow the tank to be lit with a cool blue effect at night, simulating... moon light.  Of course you can buy them ready made but for some reason I bought a kit with...60 bulbs, maybe, for $20 I think.  It was a long time ago.  Anyway, I never got around to assembling them because I didn't  have a soldering iron.

The kit consists of some pre cut wire, a power supply, heatshrink tubing, some solder, and LED bulbs.

Step 1. Strip the pre cut wire where the bulb will go.

Step 2. Bend the wire in half.



Step 3.  Plug in the power supply (3 volts) and check polarity of the bulb.  The bulb will only go one way!



Step 4.  Twist the wires together and solder them together.



Step 5.  Put plastic tape on to keep leads separated.  This step is important to keep the smoke in the wires.  Once the smoke comes out, the system doesn't work...  This is true with all electronics.




The last step is to put heatshrink on the joint!



What?  You don't use your hair dryer for heatshrink tubing?

So after 60 of these, I think I've learned how to solder.



But, after looking over the  AMP10 kit, the places where I have to solder are...miniscule.

The 30 watt iron is way to big so I go back to Radio Shack to look into a soldering station with a small tip and variable heat settings.  The one they have there is $80!  Whew.  I can buy a whole table saw (on sale) for that!  I decide to try my luck at Fry's Electronics and the drive pays off with a nice little $30 number with all the features I need.  I also picked up a static discharge mat, a wrist strap, a solder sucker, and some flux.  All for way less than just the iron at Radio Shack which is basically a rip-off.  However, they are a small retailer and I can see the difference of scale playing a part in what things have to cost.  However, I have a Fry's in my area, so...to Fry's I go.

The first part of the instructions on the AMP10 is to line up everything on a labled piece of paper.



I carefully put the resistors in their places and try to make my solder joints look like the ones they show on the website.  I have about a 50/50 chance of making any one joint look good.  However, the odds are getting better.

Here is a slide show showing some of my soldering and the components as they appear on the board.  I tried to get them tight to the board as it says to do on the instructions.  I may have been a bit overzelous at times.

I only made two mistakes and had to remove the components.  It turned out I only made one mistake and had to reinsert one back where I took it out from...  Pay attention!

Here you go:

        

Richard is an ER nurse who is also a comedian...no really, he's a real comedian.

I've had the pleasure of working with Richard for at least a year and at two different emergency rooms. I appreciate his pragmatic approach to human relations. Bacially he works on prioritizing his patient's care first. Everything else comes second. He doensn't mind working to get a patient or family member on his side if it makes caregiving easier but he won't delay care to do it.
He takes care of business and that makes the load easier for everyone.

        

Adding a pic from work. Here is Debbie. She's a nurse. She's on the phone. Deal with it.