A tube I recognise! I thought that their unremarkableness was why they are so common: They function exactly like the textbooks say, making them the 'default component' to which all others are compared.

I agree about nixie clocks. I've made only one project using nixie tubes, and it was no clock. It was an electronic die.

My beef with nixies is--they do exactly one thing, and an LED does it better.

Can't modulate anything really, can't make interesting noises come out of it. It does one moderately photogenic thing and then it's completely out of personality.

What I get a real kick out of is taking weird old TV tubes like 6BU8s and trying to get them to make funny noises. I think it's hilarious that anybody thinks tubes are "more linear" or "introduce less distortion"--they provably introduce more. No--I seek them out precisely because I like the ways they can distort things.

Especially if that entails turning, say, TV demodulation tubes or Soviet VFDs into voltage-controlled oscillators. ...Sadly, moving put all that on pause and I still don't have bench space again. Oh well.

I can still draw.

speaking of LEDs: it's fun to use them to set cathode bias voltages, drives purists fucking crazy

Oh my, the big UAIOE energy going on here! :O