Steve Wozniak

Old phonograph players -- did they feed an amplified signal, or was it a passive signal into the input? That's the only thing I can think of -- that the tape input is more akin to what a MP3 player outputs, where a phono is something "different."

Exactly. Our "old" amplifiers have phono inputs for connecting vinyl record players (turntables) to the amplifier. A phono input is designed to take up to few a millivolts in signal from phono pickup cartridges (remember buying those?) and then amplify it. For phono inputs the amplifier also does some equalization (changing the amount of bass, midrange and trebble in the signal) based on a standardized RIAA curve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization) because the output from your mp3 player is already amplified and equalized, you don't need RIAA screwing it up for you.

In fact I have a Peavey RQ-200 mixer plugged into my amps "aux" input, so I can do a whole bunch of inputs, mic, guitar, mp3 etc and even mix them together. I have a vintage Marantz 1090 amp, a purchase from a summer job I had in 1980, collecting trolleys for a supermarket - the amp is still going fine, I've had no problems with it at all in 26 years!

I sometimes pull out my old Trio turntable with Ortofon cartridge to turn an old 12 inch single that just cannot be found as an mp3, into an mp3.

I find that a variable bit rate (VBR) recorded mp3 at 192kbps is now perfectly indistinguishable to me from vinyl (vinyl is supposedly "analog", perhaps "digital" if you believe in quantum mechanics). My hearing used to be pretty good, my eyesight was never that good. Now my hearing is shot from chemo so everything sounds like a mush and I can't hear the hi hats. My eyesight is now better than my hearing so if recording home played music I equalize by sight rather than by ear, which is not good. See "All You Need Is Ears" by George Martin. I have real trouble in hearing certain people speak, my 2nd line manager was talking to me yesterday and I really had no idea what she was saying, I couldn't hear her fast and low spoken voice. So I just nodded and smiled, I hope I haven't agreed to any project that I am going to regret!

My daughter and I had great fun practicing nodding and smiling when you can't hear something -- in Pizza Hut a few months ago -- she thought it was hilarious and it is now another one of "our games". We have hundreds of such games that we play and no-one knows about them except us, it's very funny.

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I went to her school parents evening on Tuesday, she's been working hard and is settling into the new school, but still says she misses her old friends. I got to look through her work and I was surprised to see two pages in her history book where the pupils had been asked to draw a timeline and put memorable events from her life on it. She started with her birth in 1997 and the second point was in 1998 called "Parents split up" with a sad face next to it. I remember going through six weeks of counselling with my ex-wife trying to save the marriage and she would not say one word to either me or the counsellor, she had made her mind up and was only doing the counselling for the legal tick in the box "counselling failed". She would not say one word, just sat there in silence with the counsellor and myself asking her questions. Still I felt guilty looking at the sad face Katherine had drawn, wishing I could have somehow saved her from all the sadness, but something tells me Alice feels no guilt at all when she looks at it. She once said "I don't do guilt".

The only interesting thing is that every other point on the timeline is something that Katherine and I had done together. Funny stuff like "2000 - Could now use a mouse and do most things on a computer", sad things "2002 - Daddy got cancer", holidays "2003 Went to Portugal with daddy", "2004 Went to Ireland with Daddy", pets "2005 Got a goldfish", "2006 Got a hamster", a few others in there that I don't recall. I wonder if Alice feels "I better pay more attention to Katherine"? I doubt it, perhaps she feels that she has nothing in common with her?

I don't wish Alice would change, I don't believe that can happen. I knew that I had some serious issues with the way she was before I decided to have a child with her, the lesson is: if there are serious problems don't carry on hoping they will mend themselves, don't bury your head in the sand, get out early to avoid hurting lots of other people. I hope that I have learned my lesson and I only hope that I can teach it to my daughter in such a way that is right for and acceptable to her. Or at least show her all sides of the debate.

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They show fashion outfits including $1500 shoes and $70 socks. And that was in the 1983 edition!! They also show outrageously expensive turntables and amplifiers, with super-sensitive shock dampening devices and vacuum tubes. $30,000 or so.I have to wonder.Why? Again, why?

There is a super-rich class of chavs, David and Victoria Beckham are the King and Queen of this set. Perhaps they buy this crap for the labels. It's a result of smart people playing off of dumb rich people, I mean, what else are they going to spend their money on if not "bling".

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I plan to read "iWoz" at some point, he's one of my heroes.