Category: Diary

Well, the Sage that I bought has started playing up and due to the fact Lakeland offer a two year return guarantee, I decided to take it back.

The grinder started producing varying results and the portafilter kept sticking to the group head. Not what I expect from a £550 machine.

Wasn’t very happy with the performance of the steamer either as I couldn’t get a decent froth no matter how hard I tried, plus it spat out about an eggcup full of water before any steam was produced. Not exactly what hype made out.

So, having searched the coffee forums I eventually settled on a more professional machine, a La Spaziale Vivaldi II which as it turns out is a far superior machine in just about every way. It does not have a built in grinder but it has a dual boiler system and a rotary pump so no more chug chug chug chug when I pull an espresso.

It does however take about fifteen minutes to heat up in the morning, but that’s small price to pay for such a lovely coffee.

They’re much bigger now, and the Cayenne is producing some fruit, which I keep picking off in an attempt to allow the plant to grow a little larger.

Well, after a day of hard web research, I shortlisted some PC speakers to replace my Altecs, the list is as follows;

• Klipsch ProMedia
• BOSE Companion 3
• B&W MM1

Although I do like Bowers and Wilkins equipment (I have the Zeppelin Air and it sounds incredible) It appears the B&W don’t have a sub, and therefore produce all their bass from the two desktop speakers.

According to some reviews on-line this apparently can cause the desk they are on (in my case) to vibrate excessively. Excluded these.

The Klipsch look good and the reviews are great, but as John Lewis had the BOSE on display and I could actually listen to them, I decided to get them.

Now I have to look forward to running them in for the next few months.

After having my Altec Lansing MX5021 desktop speakers for the past 9 years and put up with the increasingly loud standby hum for ages I decided to take the unit apart and have a look and see what was the cause.

The Altecs are looking a bit sorry for themselves now, they’ve fallen off my desk countless times, survived about 5 house moves but still sound incredible.

However, there’s always been a low hum from the amp/subwoofer box so I took the unit apart on Tuesday night and tried to find out what was causing it.

As soon as the unit was apart the cause of the hum was dramatically easy to locate, it’s the transformer.

I detached the transformer from the casing (its screwed and glued) and re-mounted it on a thick bed of silicone to try and damp the humming.

The windings themselves were really hot despite the unit not being driven for some time before the strip down, the same was true for the heat sink on the amplifier board, it was still very hot about 35 minutes after power down.

One thing I didn’t like the look of was that the sub casing was filled with fibreglass insulation which actually covered the transformer and the heat sink. Strange build choice.

Put the whole unit back together and tested, the hum is still there. Bummer.

January 2014

As you can see, they’re growing strongly.

My garden and this windowsill are south facing, so the plants are doing really well, as they get full sun all day.

Had a small chilli off of the cayenne, but snipped it off to make the plant concentrate on growing stronger.

July 2013

Growth update, they have started to sprout.