2018
Thank you for coming to visit my ex-son's grave.
(Installed on 2018/12/30, No.181)
My ex-son's college classmates took trouble to visit his grave in this busiest last days of the year. After visiting the grave we moved in to the warm room and enjoyed talking about his memories and their recent activities in front of the family altar. I heartily appreciate their warm friendshp. I wish a very happy New Year to them all!
Return to the listWind Shield
(Installed on 2018/12/26, No.180)
I installed a shield in order to block freezing winds.
Cold north-west winds, though only a few times in one winter, freeze the tap water installed between the next door wall and our house.
I hope it works and we can be free from no water situation on cold mornings.
For details visit my web site.
I Have built A Tube Driven Digital Amp
(Installed on 2018/12/10, No.179)
After finishing condenser tuning on my tube amps I had wanted to build a digital amp and I have put ideas together into a tube(6DJ8) driven digital amp as shown in the photo.
The amp sounds good as other amps I have built, no better though. I installed a tube pre-amp in order to avoid insipid digital sounds. Perhaps it worked.
For details visit my web site.
I Installed A Door Slit Keeper
(Installed on 2018/11/22, No.178)
Door Holder (Open or Closed)
I installed it for the winter season to help the air always ventilated. The springs are soft and you can easily close the door tight when you want it.
The second photo shows the holder to keep the door open (or closed). I installed it on the other side a few years ago for the summer season. It functions to keep the door half opened to fully opened (or closed).
Both devices don't bother you as you pass nor become obstacles in opening and closing the door. Return to the list
Making Dried Persimmons
(Installed on 2018/11/18, No.177)
We worked on making dried persimmons on Dec.1 last year. It's two weeks earlier this time. Did hot weather influenced? We don't know.
They are not so many but it took about two hours to finish the work. The weather seems not chilly and dired enough now and there will be the risk of mold. We hope having dipped them in the boiling water works to keep them from the risk.
Thank You For Offering Flowers
(Installed on 2018/11/9, No176.)
Someone had offered flowers and candles which we only knew today. They were already taken in the previous photo. We are very sorry for our overlooking.
Thank you for your visiting and offering beautiful floweres. They were clematis, big leaves(Aspidistra?) and two other plants unknown to me. One of them were pretty white group floweres.
They seem to have been offered soon after my wife offered chrysanthemums about a week or so ago. We are so sorry again for not finding and thanked for them.
Trimming The Hedge For 2018 Fall
(Installed on 2018/11/3, No.175)
I weeded and trimmed the hedge around our family tomb. Last time I had to do the same work with a pair of very dull pruning shears on July 27 when the sun was boiling us. It was hard work.
This time the weather was good and the shears cut well. So the work was much easier but it took four and a half hours. Neat trimming of the hedge took time.
Cleaning of a ditch, pruning of trees around the house and weeding and trimming around our family tomb are the three big work I have been doing two times a year. Luckily I was healthy enough to finish it again for 2018.
We Pruned For The Shade In The Next Summer
(Installed on 2018/10/28, No.174)
We have three taller trees(percimmon, kurogane holly (Ilex rotunda) and muku-tree) and a hedge of Photinia glabra(Rubia argyi) in our yard. It's a little early but I pruned them expecting they'd provide us with good shades of trees in the next summer season.
It took us two days to finish the work. On the first day we pruned and on the next we milled the branches and twigs stuffing into plastic bags.
The photo was taken by my wife as I was trimming the muku-tree.
Internal Volume Enlarged And Repainted.
(Installed on 2018/10/16, No.173)
I had been knowticing the lower sound of BUHSP2 was better than that of BUHSP1. The only notable difference between the two systems is a larger internal volume at the bottom base of the former, where the downward propagation changes its direction upword.
Thus I finally set about the renovation of the latter. I added four pieces of plywood board with a larger hole of about 3.6 liters at the bottom base.
The renovation was successful. The sound quality improved. It became almost the same with that of Nautilus D.I.Y., my masterpiece.
I have been troubled now with choosing one between the two systems each time I listen to music.
For details click here
The Red Flower Of The Season
(Installed on 2018/9/26, No.172)
Red spider lilies or cluster amaryllises bloomed at last. The summer of fierce heat is gone, the autumn steadily replacing it with the cooler air.
They shoot and grow every year at the same place around a corner of the graveyard entrance. It is the place where a weed killer is sprayed but they have been surviving.
There is one more place at the bottom where about twenty more vigorous ones are blooming. The graveyard is now surrounded by houses and a busy road. As a child I remember the lilies were all around the graveyard, which then was surrounded by rice fields.
Thank You For The Flowers
(Installed on 2018/8/22, No.171)
Some one of my deceased son's friends, I'm sure, visited our graveyard and offered beautiful flowers.
I found them as I dropped in to the grave on my way to daily evening walk. I hastily went back to my house for a camera.
The flowers were Dendrobium, Lisianthus(Texas Bluebell) and four others unknown to me in each bunch. They were all beautiful and fresh-looking as you see in the photo.
The flowers my deceased son's friends offer are always selected from among most beautiful-looking ones at the flower shop, I suppose. They never pick up those usual bundle of flowers arranged to be offered to the grave. So, each time they stand out in the graveyard as if they are the bouquets to someone dear, which I heartily thank them for.
Fireworks For Adults
(Installed on 2018/8/12, No.170)
We had frolicking time with fireworks last evening. It was proposed by one of the relatives who planned to make a home coming occasion of her two nephews from Tokyo an enjoyable time.
After fireworks we stayed in the dark talking about the good old days when kids are smaller. The occasional breezes made us forget about the daytime heat.
The Summer Festival
(Installed on 2018/8/5, No.169)
Photo:the writer at the whiteboard assisting children.
I participated in the summer festival as the person in charge of bingo. It's been several years since I was involved in the event.
The festival, which is sponsored by the neighborhood association, is a customary evening event held on the first Saturday in August.
The game(bingo), one of the integrated programs for children, is produced to be proceeded by MC's who are elementary school children in higher grades.
Recording Of NHK FM Broadcasts
(Installed on 2018/8/3, No.168)
The photo above shows a converter(Onkyo SE-U55SXII), an FM booster and a tuner(KT-8300) on top of one of my nautilus diy's.
I had again wanted to record the beautiful sound of NHK FM broadcasts and I have done it with a new software I installed to my pc. I had tried before when I bought the Trio tuner last year but failed. The free software I installed then seemed too old for Windows7. It stopped on the way and couldn't finish through a recording.
The built-in timer of the new software didn't work at first either. But it turned out that my old pc lacked ability for the software to work appropriately.
So I set the software to work as lightly as bossible killing all unnecessary display options and minimizing the window size while the timer is working and it worked.
I set the sampling frequency of recording to 48000Hz and resolution to 24-bit with which I found no deterioration in the sound quality.
There are higher quality options but with my setting the file size for 100 minites recording becomes about 1.5 giga bytes. I'm afraid I can't accept the bigger files.
I Mended Pruning Shears
(Installed on 2018/7/31, No.167)
I had postponed the mending for three years but using them with energy and strength more than needed came to the limit. I learned from the hedge trimming around our graveyard last week that I got older and couldn't waste my precious strength any more.
The shears I mended this time were of rivet pivots, not of threaded volts with nuts to be tightened. So the mending was troublesome.
Anyway, I could mend them at last after hours of sweating work outside. Now I'm looking forward to the next pruning chance.
For details visit here.
I Trimmed The Hedges Around Our Graveyard
(Installed on 2018/7/27, No.166)
The festival of the Dead is near and as usual I weeded and trimmed the hedges around our graveyard.
I wanted to finish it during the morning as it was forecasted cloudy before noon but as you see in the photo it soon cleared up and it became very hot. It took hours as I did the work slowly in order to protect myself from heatstroke.
Another Tube Amp Refined
(Installed on 2018/7/20, No.165)
For details visit here.
The renovation/condenser tuning refining was completed as shown in the photo above.
There were two purposes in this project. One was to replace tubes(6DJ8s) by FETs in order to get rid of the unstable behavior of the tubes.
The other was to remove condensers from inside shassis to the outside replacing them by those with increased capacities.
They were both successfully done. The sound quality of the renovated amp turned out to be very same as that of the previous amp!?
It seems there was no margin in the improvement of the sound by more regulated power supply.
Another Tube Amp Refining Project
(Installed on 2018/7/10, No.164)
I have been preparing another condenser tuning refining on a tube amp. The target is again a mini-watter I had built with 6DJ8 + 6N6P amp.
This time the project is two staged. The first is the remodeling of the amp into a hybrid amp with FET(2SK117) + 6N6P. The second is to do a refined condenser tuning to the amp.
So far, I have finished making condenser components as shown in the photo as well as making the FET units on small pieces of print boards with which to replace 6DJ8s.
It seems to take another week or two before finishing the whole remodeling.
A Tube Amp Refined
(Installed on 2018/6/24, No.163)
I have refined one of the three mini-watter tube amps by replacing condensers(for condenser tuning) with new ones applying a new circuit. The condensers on the right channel became more independent of those on the left channel, plus their capacity is larger than before.
I couldn't detect any improvement on the oscillograph but the sound, happily, improved.
First, the total volume increased by a few degrees on the volume nob rotation angle and, more importantly, the texture of the sound became more velvet-like.
This very small tube amp is now the best among those I have built. It seems I have learned how to improve tube amplifiers.
Tomohiro's 32nd Birthday -2/2-
(Installed on 2018/6/19, No.162)
As was customary we had BBQ under the green shade after visiting the tomb.
As the photo shows, it was a lucky sunny day between rains. We thought it was the gift from Tomohiro.
Children enjoyed finding pillbugs(Armadillidium vulgare) behind stones, under flowerpots, etc while their mothers and fathers enjoyed eating and talking.
Tomohiro's 32nd Birthday -1/2-
(Installed on 2018/6/19, No.161)
June 16 was my deceased son Tomohiro's birthday. Some of his college classmates visited us and offered beautiful flowers to his tomb. One of the classmate came all the way from Tokyo. Tomohiro's elder sister's family also joined the party.
I Have Moved Windows System And Data Into New Hard Disks.
(Installed on 2017/6/4, No.160)
My pc began to betray suspicious behavior. The old memory of a crush disaster prompted me to move both windows system and data into new disks.
I have been using the case of the old PC which I bought to my deceased son in celebration of his entrance to college. It is now an important keepsake from him.
This is the third moving of disks. Last time I installed windows system into an old disk and I had been afraid the next moving would be earlier. The refoming work on my web site which I continued daily for months must have caused the behavior.
He was a kind of a Mac fan. While in London he bought a MacBook and brought it home. Thereafter, he seemed not used his windows PC I bought him. The case is well-made and well-finished. It looks still beautiful too.
I Have Reformed My Website
(Installed on 2018/5/31, No.159)
I have reformed my website and it's now more smartphone friendly.
Please try it.
Red Roses Bloomed.
(Installed on 2018/5/18, No.158)
My favorite roses are in full bloom again. I like the very red roses againt green leaves. They are beautiful this year again exactly as I expected of them.
Thank You For Offering Flowers.
(Installed on 2018/5/4, No.157)
Today, on May 4th, two men of Tomohiro's friends since childhood visited his grave together and offered flowers. They seemed to have arranged the visit on the occasion of one of them's home coming during the long holiday weekend.
After visiting the grave they also paid a visit to our house and prayed before the altar when we had enjoyed talking for awhile. They both have grown fine young men, shining to my eyes.
Tomohiro's Grape Vine Sprouted
(Installed on 2018/4/20, No.156)
The weather during early spring this year had been very unstable but the season never stays. The vine put forth many beautiful grape buds too.
The clusters last year were smaller. Supposedly because the vine bore fruit for the first time. How will they grow this year? I hope they grow bigger and sweeter.
Cherry Blossoms One Day(?) Behind The Peak
(Installed on 2018/3/29, No.155)
The photo was taken in the afternoon on March 29.
The trees are decades of years old which had been planted along the fence of the nearby DIY shop I often go. There was a pond on this side of them where I used to fish as a boy. The shop was a factory then.
The blossoms looked one or two days behind the peak. I missed watching them for I stayed still indoors as I wanted to recover from cold. Wonderful blossoms I could enjoy this year again.
I Restored The Pump -2/2-
(Installed on 2018/3/19, No.154)
The photo shows the electronic circuit placed over its design. It consists of detectors of sensor signals and an off-delay timer switch. I installed it in order to replace the original circuit which had stopped working.
Through the electrical work I learned a few important technics in applying semi conductors such as a comparator, a timer IC and a photo-interrupter.
The whole processes of restoration are uploaded here.
I Restored The Pump -1/2-
(Installed on 2018/3/19, No.153)
After weeks of struggle I could successfully restore our old family pump which I had once decided to let retire.
I dared to restore it because I wanted to utilize the tank as a reservoir for fresh water in an emergency. A big earthquake had been long forcasted.
The followings are the items of the restoration other than general necessary cleaning.
1 Replacement of motor bearings
2 Replacement of inlet and outlet franges
3 Replacement of a backward flow check valve
4 Replacement of a mechanical seal
5 Replacement of seals and o-rings
6 Replacement of a photo interrupter of the water pressure sensor switch
7 Replacement of an electronic circuit for the automatic operation of the motor
8 Installing of a new faucet
Thank You For Offering Flowers
(Installed on 2018/3/3, No.152)
A person who stayed for several days at the guesthouse in London where Tomohiro had been staying visited his grave today and offered beatiful floweres
The person knew accidentally through facebook that he had died last year just when we had the first aniversary of his deathday.
After visiting the grave the person also offered an offering before the tablet in our house where we had a chance of knowing in what way he was staying in the guesthouse.
Thank you for visiting and offerings.
Thank You For Offering Flowers
(Installed on 2018/2/27, No.151)
Two persons who had been onriendly terms with my deceased son visited his grave this afternoon and offered beatiful floweres.
One came from Nagoya and the other from Tokyo. They had been wishing to pay a visit to his grave and managed to find time to visit together today.
After visiting the grave they also offered flowers and an offering before the tablet where we had a chance of exchanging the memories of the deceased for a while.
Thank you for visiting and offerings.
Our Family Pump Stopped Performing At Last
(Installed on 2018/2/20, No.150)
Our family pump, which survived some troubles in the past, stopped performing at last. It has been installed more than 25 years ago in order to give more pressure to piped water.
The first trouble was caused by a nest of a small insect in a photo sensor. The second by a deteoration of a chemical condenser. The third, by the flow sensor which was covered with thick rusty scale.
As for these troubles I could successfully remove the causes. However, the pump didn't start one day and then my repair became endless. It started with replacing the motor bearings which was followed by mechanical seals, photo-triacs and so on.
After I tried repairing a foot valve I finally realized the pump was fatally old. It's time it can be released from its duty. It has performed its mission for more than twenty-five years!
Thank You For Offering Flowers
(Installed on 2018/2/19, No.149)
February 19 falls on my eldest son Tomohiro's deathday and someone offered pretty flowers on the tomb.
They were offered without being witnessed as had been repeated a few times before. I found them newly offered as I dropped in to the grave on my way to a daily evening walk.
I heartily thank someone unknown for offereing such pretty flowers.
We Had The Second Anniversary Of Tomohiro's Death
(Installed on 2018/2/12, No.148)
With the second anniversary of our eldest son(Tomohiro)'s death being at hand on Monday next, we held a Buddhist service on January 12th.
In the afternoon, his close classmates came to visit his grave and offered flowers.
After visiting the grave they stayed with my family a while before the tablet of the deceased. It was the happy time when we recollected the happy days we shared with him and could get over the grief of his loss. I was greatly thankful for their visit. I heartily appreciate that they still regularly come and stay with us.
I Installed Scarebird Tape On The Mukutree
(Installed on 2018/2/9, No.147)
Our mukutree, which provides us with wonderful shade during the summer, provides birds with nice resting place during the winter. We welcome birds but we had been suffering from their droppings, especially on a car.
So I finally installed glittering tape on the tree as shown in the photo.
Tying the tips of boughs with tape was a dangerous work because you had to place a ladder against a slender bough. Fortunately the ladder didn't come off the bough nor any one of the boughs broke during the work.
The tree doesn't look nice but we'll have no more dropping touble.
A Classmate Of My Deceased Son's Came to Visit His Grave
(Installed on 2018/1/6, No.146)
The flowers offered were gorgeous as you see in the photo and we are so obliged to the visitor to whom we joined our hands in prayer.
I've been learning flower names through offered flowers. I newly learned Lisianthus, Tutsan and Delphinium this time. Delphinium is rich in variety and it took some time to identify the flower.
Thank you for coming this far to visit our son's grave.