Telecommunications.

[Jack Williams]

You bet, Sarongman. Lovely samosas kept me fed.
Meanwhile more technology: The speaker there on the table, connected heretofore to that short-wave radio that nobody listens to anymore, now has a more High Fidelity Richard Allan CG8T twincone jobbo connected to a little ten watt valve monoblock that I had in the workshop for checking tuners, but now lurks under the table.
Certainly rocks up those videos of mine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnwJWOLWBls

[crfriend]

[...] connected heretofore to that short-wave radio that nobody listens to anymore [...]

I freely admit more than a bit of passion for short-wave from years gone by, but nowadays it seems chock-a-block with preachers and precious little else.

Long gone, and lamented as well, are the days when "Big News" events would send me packing for the short-wave set to see what I could glean from assorted international sources. Everybody lies, of course, but if one can get enough sources and average out the lies then one will likely be reasonably close to the truth (if not, necessarily, facts).

Certainly rocks up those videos of mine.

That's always good!

Speakers are always the weakest link in the chain, and the devil is always in the details. I have a 15+ year old set of computer speakers (Altec Lansings) that used to be on my late father-in-law's machine and which I now use daily (after a repair or two) -- and they sound better than the "Bose Acoustic Wave Music System" that was my 5-year reward from where I used to toil (tax, of course, was levied to me not the company). The Bose resides under my desk, powered off, until I can find a use for it, probably as a CD/radio source, the other speakers being better in all regards.

[Jack Williams]

A friend of mine has a lovely pair of big traditional Altec-Lansings on his collection of just about every single-ended triode amp around.
Meanwhile this looks encouraging:

[Jack Williams]

On the short-wave, I admit I haven't tuned in myself for a while either. The set you can see a bit of in that above photo is a ham radio seceiver with SSB (on the wrong side!) but does have the main broadcast SW band, unbandspreaded.
The set below is a much better Short-wave beast. I did upgrade it some time ago with more sensitive front-end tubes and bigger power transformer with 6L6 power tube. The 12" electro-mag speaker sees about eight watts RMS. It will blast you out of the room on the static alone!

[skirted_in_SF]

Meanwhile this looks encouraging:

Two thoughts:
I'd love to see the faces on your local copper thieves who make off with that reel only to find out it is glass.

Don't get you hopes too high. Last weekend I walked past a big wooden crate about the size of the equipment cabinets you post on page two of this thread. Someone had written on it something to the effect of curses on on the people who have left this box on our sidewalk for the last three weeks. Our local telephone semi-monopoly is rolling out fiber to the neighborhood and littering sidewalks with these cabinets.