Collin Kennedy died in 2018, just two years after this video was taken. What would anonymity have achieved for him in those last two years? Avoiding punishment? His whole point was that these parking fees are already a punishment on the sick.

Is public protest dangerous? Sure. Is it more dangerous than merely existing as a sick or disabled person navigating a hostile healthcare system? I think that is for every individual experiencing it to decide for themselves.

Collin Kennedy, 50, lived with multiple myeloma — a type of blood cancer — for 19 years.

He invited media to watch him fill a parking meter with spray foam to raise awareness about the high costs of parking for cancer patients and other sick people getting treatment. Video of Kennedy vandalizing the meter was widely shared on social media. It led to a Canada-wide petition to end the practice of charging for parking near hospitals.

$17,000.

$17,000

Then, their policies changed. Half my work was no longer allowed. People left the site in droves. I left too, for awhile. I came back to a ghost town. I still have 25k followers, but I don’t think more than 10% are active anymore. I’m followed by ghosts. Same with DeviantArt, although I was never quite as big there, and I’ve been gone so much longer.

This disallowed half of my work was never allowed on Facebook in the first place, or Instagram, but their algorithms are such that my stuff rarely makes it to anyone’s feeds, and if I post a link to where people could actually pay me for my content, it’s hidden unless I pay for it. Patreon swept my work away to a dark corner where no one could see it unless I personally guided them there. Twitch is so strict you can’t even show bare feet. The death of Google Reader means nobody follows RSS feeds anymore, so I can’t direct people to my own site.

So there’s Twitter I guess, where I can post whatever I want, but again, algorithms. But more than that, I don’t have the energy to build up a following once again on a site I don’t own that can delete my career on a whim. The thought of spending time jumping around through hoops for attention just to have it taken away again has stripped any motivation I had to try.

The internet has been gentrified. All the small cute houses and mom & pop shops have been shut down and replaced by big corporations that control everything. I’ve been making webcomics for twenty years, and at the start, the internet was a beautiful wild place. Everyone had a home page. It was like having a house and people came to visit you and you would visit other people in their houses. Now, we don’t visit each other in personal spaces anymore. It’s like we have to visit each other in the aisles of a megamart. Everything is clean and sanitized and the weirdos who made the internet what it was are no longer welcome. No space for freaks anymore.

People still ask me for advice on how to break into comics, and I don’t have any wisdom because I don’t recognize the internet anymore. I don’t feel comfortable working within its boundaries which seems to be getting smaller and smaller and smaller. None of the tools I used when I started exist anymore. They’ve been replaced by things I don’t know how to use. I don’t think I could break into comics today. 2002 had so few barriers compared to now. You might have started on Keenspace, but you could reach a point where you could break away to your own site and people would go to it. Now, you start on Webtoon or Patreon and I guess you just stay there? It feels so much like owning a hardware store for years and then having to go work as a cashier at the Home Depot that put you out of business. I’m looking at my career trajectory and it all points to being a Wal-Mart greeter with uncontrolled arthritis.

Somewhere around 2002 I was doing some work with Bob Dylan and his band in preparation for a tour. They bought a THD BiValve-30 head and a pair of our 2x12 speaker cabinets for Bob to use as his stage rig. I helped the band out in rehearsals with a few technical things and, in the process became friends with their two main techs, Tom Morrongiello and Yuek Wong, both great road techs and wonderful people.

At one point in this process, while they were on tour, Yuek phone me, asking how to properly bias a 1960s Vox AC50 that Charlie Sexton had on tour. I told him that, even though the schematic recommended 47mA per tube, it was happiest at 25ma. (There’s that number again.) Yuek responded that my advice was dramatically different from what he was being told by all the other techs he had spoken to. I recommended that he simply try my numbers and let his ears make the decision. Instead he decided to call every tech he knew. He called Ken Fischer, Blackie Pagano, Tom Mitchell, Harry Kolbe, Aspen Pittman (not an amp tech, but a tube expert), Gerald Weber, Mark Sampson, and a host of other techs in the US and Europe. All of them told him that it was a class-A amp, and needed to be biased to numbers as low as 120mA per tube to as high as 175mA per tube, depending upon who he asked. This is the range where he was biasing it (because the majority must be correct, no?), and still the amp sounded awful. His conclusion was that the amp must be broken in some way.

Again, Yuek called me, and asked how my opinion on biasing the AC50 could be so different from everyone else’s. My answer was not subtle: First, it’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. Second, for a few years, one of my main amps was an early 1966 AC50, and I loved it! (I only sold it because someone offered me a ridiculous amount of cash for it.) Third, the AC50 is not, and never was, a class-A amplifier; it is a class-AB amplifier. I said, “I know how bad and arrogant this sounds, but I am right and they wrong.” 

I reminded him that a pair of EL34 power tubes in class-A will only put out about 30 watts max, and only if they are using a huge power supply and enormous output transformer designed for class-A operation. (A 50-watt class-A output transformer will be about the size of a 150-watt class-AB output transformer.)

The AC50 is called an AC50 because it is designed to put out 50 watts RMS. I said: “If you bias it as they are recommending, it will have no highs, the bass will be tubby and weak, and it will put out about 10 watts maximum, and a bad-sounding 10 watts at that.” He agreed that it sounded exactly the way I was describing. I was finally getting through to him.

Again, I advised him to bias it to 25mA per tube and give it a listen. He admitted that the amp would not even go that low with its current bias supply, and he didn’t know how to rebuild the supply to give that range. As they were in LA, and as round-trip airfares from Seattle to LA were $99 at the time, I offered to fly down and sort it out for them. I added that if I was wrong, then the amp needed to be repaired, because something else was wrong with it, and I would repair it for free and pay for my own flight. But, if I was right, I would like them to pay for my flight and my work. Yuek agreed.

Two days later, I arrived at the venue and, without even listening to the amp (because running it at that bias is very bad for the transformers, the filter caps and the tubes), I performed a basic voltage test on the amp, warmed up my soldering iron, rebuilt the bias supply and biased it for 25mA per tube. When I was done, I plugged in to it and played a bit. The amp sounded glorious. It was loud and clear, tight, detailed, and with the touch-sensitive midrange punch that I always loved about the AC50 when hit hard. Yuek was at the same time thrilled and in disbelief. How could so many famous techs be so completely wrong?

A few minutes later Charlie Sexton came onto the stage and Yuek had him try the amp. Charlie lit up like a Christmas tree with joy at how fantastic it sounded how rewarding and responsive it felt to play. He thanked Yuek profusely and asked what he had done to bring it to life. Yuek, being a gentleman, said “Thank Andy, not me. All I did was let him bias it his way.” I got a huge smile and hearty thanks from Charlie (another gentleman), and all was well. I turned down their offer to pay my airfare and work.

The crew was apologetic that there was no ticket to offer me, as the show was completely sold out, but they did give me a stage pass for the night. Again, they apologized that there would not be much room at the stage sides either. As it was Los Angeles, the number of friends of the band attending would be huge, but I was assured that I would at least have room to stand, and perhaps to sit.

As fate would have it, I watched the show from stage left, seated on a huge flight case, squeezed between Kate Hudson on my right and Johnny Depp on my left. At first, I thought I might chat with them. I knew Kate’s then husband Chris Robinson from my time with the Black Crowes, when I helped them get their gear in order while rehearsing for the “Three Snakes and One Charm” tour. My conversation starter with Johnny would have been his friendship with my brother Gray (a visual effects supervisor), who had worked with him on a few of his films. In the end, I decided that conversing with them would only have boosted my ego, and would have likely been awkward and annoying to them, so I demurred and sat in silence. It was a good evening.

If there is a moral here, it is that the truth is the truth, regardless of who says otherwise, regardless of how loudly they shout it and how many of them are preaching it. If you are right, stick to your story and don’t be bullied by anyone or any group of people. I’m not trying to say that I am always right, but I make sure that I am before I stick my neck out.

The following is my rather verbose response:

Let’s start out by stating that I am a proper amplifier designer, not a hobbyist who cuts and pastes from other designs, and gleefully repeats whatever he reads on the internet, as if it were fact. I’ve been at this for 50 years and have consulted for everyone under the sun in terms of sound, reliability, manufacturability, and just about every aspect of analog audio circuit design you can think of. I do amp repairs and restorations for dozens of multi-platinum rock bands, and I’ve often gotten that work because they see that the only amps they have that almost never need repair are their THDs. I’ve also helped Philips, Fluke and Hewlett-Packard design and build better test equipment based on my experience. I don’t even take proper textbooks as gospel, preferring to actually measure and analyze real-world situations, often proving PhD engineers and university department heads wrong in their assumptions.

Whoever started the myth that standard push-pull class AB1 guitar amplifiers (eg. Fender, Marshall, HiWatt, etc…) should be biased to 70% of maximum allowable tube dissipation should have sugar put in their gas tank. This is totally wrong in every way. There is no magic percentage of maximum dissipation to which one should bias, but most class AB1 audio amplifiers are happiest in the 35% to 40% range. (For the record, 70% is what is generally recommended for portable class B2 radio transmitters, and is close to what a class A1 amp wants.) It all depends upon the impedance of the output transformer primary, the load line of the output transformer, the impedance of the screen supply, and a few other, more esoteric factors that aren’t really worth getting into here.

People tend to repeat something that they read somewhere, as if it were truth, and it gets repeated and repeated until 95% of the hits on the internet are recommending something that was wrong to begin with. At times I find it frustrating.

That 70% factor also goes out the window when dealing with current production tubes, which are not designed to proper specs, but rather are made by reverse-engineering well-made old tubes and making countless assumptions as to why things were done the way they were. For instance, few of the Russian power tubes in production will work in a class-A amplifier. They tested their “designs” in Marshall 50-watt heads. If they worked for a few hundred hours, they gave the go-ahead to production to make 100,000 of them. Everyone who really understood how to design power tubes has been dead for 40 years, and their expertise died with them. Most people don’t spend their hard-earned money on NOS tubes because they sound better (some do, some don’t), they usually buy NOS tubes because they will sound good for 10 years of daily use as opposed to 1 year of daily use with current production stuff.

The purpose of biasing a class AB1 push-pull amplifier is to eliminate crossover distortion in the signal, plain and simple. This can be done with a distortion analyzer, but it does not differentiate crossover distortion from other types of distortion, so an oscilloscope is the best way of determining when crossover distortion has gone. When a tube is biased too cold, the signal from one tube (or tubes on one side) stops flowing before the signal from the other tube (or tubes on the other side) starts flowing, and this “gap” is called crossover distortion, as it occurs around the zero-crossing of the signal voltage. You bias a push-pull audio output section by first making it too cold on purpose, applying signal that is well below clipping, usually around 25% to 50% of clipping, and slowly increase the bias current (making the bias voltage less negative) until the gap at zero crossing is gone. When you have reached this point, you have attained the maximum dynamic range possible from the amplifier without the (very ugly-sounding) crossover distortion.

I got curious about where this point fell, as it could be a little bit ambiguous exactly where the crossover distortion “disappeared”, so I started writing down the no-signal (quiescent) dc current in the tubes where I was sure that it was gone. I documented this in roughly 10,000 amplifiers between 1969 and 1999. What I found was that, in high-powered class-AB1 amplifiers with properly designed output stages that ran their tubes near their voltage limits and had relatively linear load lines in the output transformers, the crossover distortion was sometimes gone by the time the bias was set to 21ma quiescent current per tube, often gone by 23ma, and always gone by 25ma quiescent current per tube.

One surprising thing is that it didn’t seem to matter at all what the tube type was. This number held true for 6L6, EL34, 6550, KT66, KT77, KT88, KT90, 7027A, 6CA7, 7591, 7868, USA, German, Dutch, British, French, it just didn’t seem to matter what the tube was, or who made it, as long as it was in this family of tubes that could deliver roughly 50 watts from a pair.

So, in order to make life easier for my techs, and to take some of the “guesswork” out of the biasing process, I determined that with all Marshall and HiWatt 50-watt and 100-watt amps, Fender 40, 50, 80 and 100-watt amps, and similar circuits, that they were to measure cathode current with no signal, and set the bias so that the tubes drew 25ma per tube with no signal. Then they had to do a listening test, to make sure that all was indeed well. On a few occasions the amps sounded bad at that rating, and when that happened, I took over to try to figure out why. Sometimes the two tubes were not matched, sometimes the output transformer was damaged on one side, sometimes the output transformer had been replaced with one that was not correct for the amplifier, sometimes the screen supply had too little or too much impedance. But, when things were as they should be, 25ma always gave a clean signal with no crossover distortion.

So, if your amplifier has maximum dynamic range at 25ma quiescent current per tube, what happens if you run it hotter, like 30ma or 40ma? Good question. First off, the noise floor comes up and, the tubes run physically hotter, which reduces tube life, the power and output transformers run hotter (due to the extra current running through them, even with no signal), increasing resistance in the windings, reducing overall output levels, and shortening the life of the transformers. As you can likely guess, the filter caps don’t last as long, either. I do know a few people who claim to prefer the sound of an amp biased to 40ma per tube, but these people almost always run full out, maximum distortion, 100% of the time, and never ride that expressive slope where clean gives way to “fat”, “fat” gives way to “crunch”, and “crunch” gives way to overdrive.

Another side of this is that the power supply and output stage can only deliver so much power before they just can’t deliver any more, and this is the maximum distorted full output. If you bias the output stage hotter than it needs to be, you are reducing the ratio of clean output to maximum overdrive output, and robbing the amplifier of dynamic range. Think of it like the idle in your car engine. If your engine redlines at 8000 RPM and will idle smoothly at 400 RPM, you have a ratio of 20 to 1 in terms of “dynamic range” when it comes to acceleration and general driving characteristics. You always want your idle as low as you can get it and still have it running smoothly. You can set the idle at 2000 RPM, but you will only have a dynamic range of 4 to 1, and will be shifting gears a LOT more often to get to speed. Also, you’ll be burning a lot more fuel and fixing your car a lot more often.

Biasing your amplifier to 70% of maximum plate dissipation is like setting your car’s idle to 5600 RPM with a redline of 8000 RPM. You’ll be rebuilding your engine (or replacing power tubes, filter caps and transformers) a lot more often.

I have a lot of customers who have amps worked on (under warranty) by other companies (as I only do warranty work on THD amplifiers), and then bring them to me for biasing, as everyone else seems to bias them too hot, and then their tubes don’t last very long, their amps sound overly compressed and “mushy”, and they hum too much.

For our final class activity for CT25, we were asked to do a photo shoot of us wearing traditional Filipino garments (from Spanish colonial period, to the Japanese and American occupation, to the modern age). My group mates Gelo, Pau, Kaira and I were tasked to wear Filipiniana in the New Society. Initially, there was this “rule” that “boys” were supposed to wear strictly men’s clothing (i.e. Barong Tagalog, camisa de chino). Okaaayyyyyy…… :/ Luckily, since we got “New Society”, it meant that we could interpret Filipiniana in whatever way we wanted since these are the modern times. Yay! :)

Our group chose to wear the Barong Tagalog, paired with black bottoms and fierce footwear. We opted to have a black and nude collection. We complemented our looks with gold, brass and silver accessories, to keep things looking modern and stylish yet elegant. In my case, I wore my Barong with black opaque leggings, wedge booties and brass accessories. :)

Actually, I’m planning to write a magazine article about Filipiniana in the modern age. Though, it would be better if I do a bit of research first, right? Haha. So, for now. here is the original writeup. :)

NEW SOCIETY/MODERN AGE

The traditional Filipino costume (Barong, Filipiniana) saw a revival in 2000’s. Though considered as a formal dress code on most occasions, the Barong and the Filipiniana had turned into a more fashionable and relevant clothing to the new generation. Influenced by any other culture not just from the West, but also from different parts of the world, the designs now are more varied, customized, and creative. Designers have more freedom, tweaking small details in the traditional garments. The youth have come to appreciate it by injecting their own flair of style. As the global community becomes more open, new creative ideas and freedom on expression becomes more and more evident on the “NEW” Barong and Filipiniana, contesting the conventional, re-defining individualism. Women are not just boxed in typical Filipiniana gowns- this is 21st century - EVERYTHING IS BEYOND THE STATUS QUO.

Cris Roxas

Gelo Salanga

Kaira Dimatulac

Pau Sebastian

I love the last photo, very fashion editorial-like, heehee. ♥

Personally, I was really impressed with the outcome of the photos; they were well-executed and well-made ~kudos to our talented photographer/photo editor Gelo Salanga~. This endeavor made me appreciate the beauty, delicacy, and uniqueness of our national garments. Indeed, with the influx of Western clothing and other influences from other countries, we Filipinos tend to forget that we also have something special. Our very own Filipiniana.

Some people might think that wearing Filipiniana is old-fashioned. But I don’t believe so. There are still several people who support and wear Filipiniana, not just people from the government. Even designers, socialites and purveyors of fashion, find ways to reinvent and to promote Filipiniana. Why? Because it is something that is ingrained in our culture, a part of our heritage, a treasure of Filipinism. I realized that thinking out of the box and infusing our own individuality could translate into looks that are timeless, yet fashion-forward. So, lets support our own! :)

~Cris, October 9, 2011

David Cowan 9.51am

In this year’s Macmillan Lecture, the Conservative MP Nick Boles proposed a series of ideas to improve Britain’s economic competitiveness. By far the most fascinating idea was a land value tax.

In the past it has usually been those on the socialistic Left and the libertarian Right who have advocated a land value tax (LVT). But Mr Boles is a prominent Conservative moderniser, founder of the Policy Exchange think tank, and known to be close to the party leadership.

The introduction of a LVT ought to be viewed as the most legitimate way to raise new revenue.

For too long, landowners and speculators have been able to reap sizeable economic outputs from rising land values, though contributing little economic input. One example being how the construction of the Jubilee line sent surrounding land values shooting up to £10 billion, to the benefit of landowners, while taxpayers still had to foot the bill.

The idea strikes to the heart of David Cameron’s vision of responsible capitalism:

“We need to reconnect the principles of risk, hard work, and success with reward”.

Another benefit of LVT is it would create a more stable and productive land market. There would be no benefit in owning land without utilising it since landowners would have to raise enough income to pay the LVT bill. The reduction in speculative activity would help drive down prices and rent, so ensuring that growth in the land market is based on sustainable and real returns instead of artificial and speculative booms.

LVT would also be a new ‘eco-tax’ that discourages construction on expensive ‘greenfield’ areas in favour of cheaper ‘brownfield sites’, so limiting urban sprawl. This brings the consequent benefits of reduced commuting distances and less costly road works, which contribute to CO2 emissions and atmospheric pollution.

However, Mr Boles’ LVT proposal should go a step further. Properties of all shapes and sizes are already overtaxed by the likes of council tax, business rates, stamp duty land tax, planning charges, and landfill tax. If these taxes were to remain then LVT would be burdening people with further unwelcome costs.

Instead, LVT should replace those property taxes - either entirely or at the very least mostly.

It would still raise sufficient revenue if pitched at the correct rate and included main homes, with exemptions for farmland, national parks, charities and pensioners’ main homes. The fact that LVT would also apply to land which at the moment is not taxed at all goes to show how it would raise more revenue than the current property taxes that place a heavy burden on ordinary homeowners.

This would be simple to implement since land cannot be hidden in an offshore tax haven and calculating the tax bill would be made easier by the fact that land values are already measured by the market, therefore compliance costs could be reduced. The same bureaucratic processes for collecting business rates could readily be translated to the collection of LVT.

The LVT would not harm enterprise. It would boost productivity, discourage urban sprawl, could replace the plethora of punitive property taxes, and would be relatively simple to administer and collect.

The extra revenue raised would be enough to fund a radical package of tax cuts to “put fuel into the tank of the British economy”, as George Osborne promised last year, and would reconnect the link between effort and reward by making sure everyone pays their fair share. This is very much a policy that ought to be part of any modern, progressive Conservative agenda.

If I could generalize my experience there, I would say that Pakistani fashion (or rather, Indo-Pak fashion?) is so influential on a lot of couture I have seen on the runways. And trade is such a big factor in fashion. I took a lot of notes and will try to find pictures of pieces I saw.

Aurat March 2018.