Its now Boxing Day 2015 - the 26th December. We had Xmas lunch at the Antlers on Christmas Eve, the 24th.  Walked over - couldn't get a taxi. Lied to by Don. Pleasant lunch. Gillian also walked - was a bit late - I had been early, so was on my 3rd straight Bombay by that time.  Taxi'd back to Grianan with Mr MacLeod, Gillian got out to collect her presents and taxi'd on to Matheson Place.

Xmas day - jersey and two jackets from the Murrays - and a welcome cheque; a chocolate bar and a huge piece of Home-made Xmas cake from Julie, and what I really need - a diary from Gillian, a calendar from Jeff in New Zealand - he's just had a heart bypass - so appreciate this even more this year.

Prior to this had carried out experiments with Prof. Talbott's source sounds. Very prolific. Mimics the speech spectrum to a large extent - including the period of silence allophones. Unfortunately has a harsh spectral peak - a broad peak - possibly due to room resonance at Talbott's point of origin.

So did a lot of spectral normalization - and divided the frequencies by 2 across the board. Improved listenability.

Did a compare with a jury-rigged version of the AIS  - got a couple f interesting ones - 'Why wait - telephone God.' Sent copies to Julie, Victoria (Talbott) and Todd Moster for verification.

Did not get my books downloaded - was quite demoralized for 2 weeks earlier - shouldn't happen - but it did.

Hope to take most of the time till January 7th, tidying up, getting the place at least looking comfortable - and to use the time on two prototypes - with the aim of raising funds.  With a lack of money problems - the work could speed ahead. The next thing would then be to keep the funds out of the grasping hands which ruined me before.

We had one overnight storm on Tuesday - violent hail - like sand-blasting the house - great flakes of paint have fallen off and the skew needs repair.

Another is forecast for the coming Tuesday/ Wednesday.

OK - about to switch off and go downstairs for coffee, get warm, and bed.