[Mike], a cathode-ray aficionado and a major sponsor of Oscilloclock’s X-Y-Z Core design, reached out earlier in the year with devastating news:
His home, workshop, and all its contents had been completely destroyed in the Palisades Fire (California, U.S.) in January.
We at Oscilloclock are no strangers to earthquakes, typhoons, nuclear meltdowns, and even bear invasions. But we have never witnessed our home, lab, and all surroundings destroyed in a wildfire such as [Mike] experienced:
What was lost…
[Mike] had been designing and building his own cathode-ray tube based clocks. His focus was on the controller – the microcontroller-based circuit that generates signals telling the CRT’s electron beam where to go, and when to turn on and off. He also designed and built the clock cases himself.
He’d needed help for the high-voltage power supply, deflection amplifiers, and isolated blanking amplifier. These are a little complex (not to mention dangerous), so he’d decided to use the well-matured Oscilloclock X-Y-Z Core product to do all the heavy lifting – so he could just focus on the controller.
And, we’d provided him with a bunch of lovely vintage CRTs.
Putting all these together, Mike had made 4 complete clocks – and wow, they were beautiful!
Of the four clocks thus constructed, two had gone to [Mike’s] friends.
However, one of the clocks had come to [Mike] for repairs right at the time of the fire.
And just like that – three works of art were lost forever.
The road to recovery
Since the fire, [Mike] has been living in smaller quarters, with no room (and, you can imagine, not much time either) for hobbies.
But we both knew he’d be back into it! And when he reached out in April to discuss getting more XYZ Cores, in anticipation of a fresh year-end re-start, we were overjoyed. To what better cause could a couple Cores contribute?
[Mike] recently reports that he’s managed to rent a workspace, and will be setting up again from December!
We can’t wait to see what transpires.
We wish the very best to [Mike] and all others affected by disasters, whether natural or inflicted, as they rebuild their lives. And may they never give up in their quest to increase the artistic entropy of our world!