Received my latest shipment from SU-METAL at 8:07 this morning. Metal Forth Deluxe Edition from Japan, and an extra T-shirt. Shame I don't have an open-topped CD player to see the pattern going round on the DeLorean.

Here they are plugged in and locked. Bought the Living Voice Auditorium speakers about 27 years ago from Kevin Scott, the inventor. Still remember the demo: "Don't worry about the price, listen to the music. Have another chocolate Digestive." Got 7 of his speakers now. Choccie biccies for the win!

New super-dooper Furutech locking gold banana plugs installed on the 2nd back surround speaker. Rumour has it that the price is about to go up. Got the last cables done that needed the upgrade. If everything is optimised, it will be as good as it can be.

Being small and convenient, it is good for such large, faint things as the Pleides or Orion`s nebula , but doesn`t do planets as they are just too small. Do also remember that cameras need sun-filters as well to get pictures of the Sun. Don`t fry your CCDs.

Another way to record the solar eclipse is to get one of these modern smart telescopes. I borrowed this Dwarflab 2,which does tracking, seeking by app, astrophotography and all the image stacking. For eclipses, you need to put its sun-filters on and you can shoot single shots or a movie.

For eclipse viewing, March 2025 we had a few ways to watch. One way, if you don`t have any solar filters, is to project the image onto a sheet of paper in a box...

All dressed up for Sun viewing...

And here it all set up, with its equatorial mount, which makes tracking simple, but blows my mind thinking about it as the 'scope has to move in odd twisty ways on 2 axes to get to where you want to look. About 40kg of glory. Plus, I can drive it from an app on my phone.

Here is the 'scope I bought with pre-decimal money. It was my second scope, since the 1st was a small table-top 'scope on a tiny tripod, OK for looking across the fields but not practical for looking at the sky. This is a 60mm refractor. Bit wobbly. There are better things available today.

Finally I went large, and got the 200mm motorised monster. It's very heavy, bigger eyepieces, very nice. Astrophotography is another game, requires motor tracking and guiding, different 'scope and camera, cooling, anti-dew warming, hours of capture, more hours of computer processing.

Meantime, some new telescope bits have arrived. Rearranged all the eyepieces so I could give away the beginner's 'scope I've had for 55 years with a set of eyepieces. New finder scope to replace the red dot finder that I keep leaving switched on. Costs a fortune in batteries.

Nice busy day out at Hyper Japan. More space than ever, both halls in use. Seems like I ought to get my Japanese motor dressed up.

The MOA-Burger birthday cake has been completed: a chocolate sponge with black cherries and cream in a rainbow sponge bap. There were construction issues, not least that a 2/3 layer needs some extra minutes to bake.

It's all very well having a tidy hi-fi tower, but where would we be without a wire or three?

Following the almighty calamity of making The Princess YUI's birthday cake a week early, here is the new cake, albeit for yesterday, so Catch It If YUI Can. Happy Birthday YUI!!!!!

Been watching some of these documentaries. Interesting that we were all solving the same issues, such as having few tools, in similar ways. Looks like many of us wrote graphics editors, a few clever ones wrote development kits, and we all used squared paper and colour pencils. We all know hex codes.

Apparently I was pushing my luck with the track length. 2 sets of booster cables were used, but the track length was over 120 feet, and that was just too much. Last year's track was a tad shorter, and no bridge.

Scalextric afternoon. Few hiccups with the lane-changers. Some of them were rather unreliable, even after swapping them out, suggesting track connections weren't all that reliable. Two power supplies and four cars should not be difficult.

Found a picture of the Gribbly`s tribute section of Fire & Ice. I thought there would be more pictures in my folders but I don`t seem to have any at the moment. This was on the interweb.

The subject of the Archimedes came up. Graftgold didn't write anything for that, as far as I recall. However, Gribbly's Day Out was created with our blessing. Paradroid 2000 also appeared, which is a port of Paradroid 90. Here's Archimedes Gribbly's Day Out. Plenty of colour there! Looks very nice.

Been listening to the 'new', meaning second-hand but new to me, power amplifier. Percussion sparkles a little more and all the instruments sound a tad clearer. Chris Huelsbeck's Turrican Medley sounds excellent. Got to try a movie soon.

Been dusting off my old telescope that I bought with shillings and pence. We had to fix a broken metal part, the finder scope is permanently out of focus, and the small eyepieces are in need of cleaning. Popped in an adapter and sighted up Jupiter with a newer eyepiece. Not half bad.

Excellent evening's entertainment watching the UK Pink Floyd Experience. 7 of them on stage, so more like PF live. Loved it, especially Set the Controls... Great drumming, and The Great Gig in the Sky. I bought the T-shirt, and the CD.

I believe we had our @pauliehughes.bsky.social loader at this point. Just a bit of animation and a progress bar at this stage. Since we finished the game and delivered the master before we ever saw any artwork, and time travel had not been invented, it was not part if the game.

My new white Centenario has been rewired, tested, and introduced to most of the herd. The green and blue ones were new and live in their own boxes. Took the opportunity to re-box the soldering kit as it didn't really fit. Everything in the house has a box!

We've had a clean up. Re-wiring tomorrow. We could do some DNA examination on the ball of fluff I removed. Enough to build a mouse.

Never before have I seen a second-hand #Scalextric car like this. I'm not going to torture it by seeing if it runs. Big cleanup first.

I also realised that the Connect button is light grey and Connect is written in red. You know what`s coming next. Text needs to be written in a contrasting colour, not a nearly invisible colour to someone who is colour-blind. Putting the button under the phone camera was just the icing on the cake.

Spent a couple of hours looking at Venus, the New Moon, Jupiter, the Orion Nebula and the Pleiades. By 8:30, all the gear was dripping with dew, so we packed up. Still getting used to the gear. Had the mount tracking nicely. Only dropped one expensive eyepiece on the concrete. ☹️

I expect it will. Plus, they can save some petrol money and not wear out the engines. That might help the budgets. Maybe they can have a Scalextric tournament on those Sundays?