Today I visited Chris and Meriel.

As usual, we talked and did geeky things including diagnosing a problem with DVD writing one of their machines was due to Windows corrupting the data rather than the drive itself by writing multiple DVDs using Linux without the intermittent errors containing bytes repeated again and again as a block instead of real data.

For the last couple of nights I’ve been fighting off a sinus headache each night on the left hand side of my face. Tonight I’ve taken some paracetamol to try to stop it ruining my sleep. Well, fingers crossed.

After playing Minehunt on my Tréo I finally got up just after midday.

The afternoon was spent first determining why the previous recording to disk using my laptop recorded at the wrong speed and then recording Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds using Audacity from my set of LPs. (The speed problem turned out to be due to CPU speed throttling.) I’ll transfer it to 2 CDs when I get some more jewel cases.

I didn’t do much this evening though.

I spent much of the day experimenting with transporting an old LP to CD.

The upshot of this is that somehow during the digitisation process the music gets sped up by about 4%. I’m not sure if it’s a hardware sampling clock problem or a Windows timer problem or even a bug in Audacity.

Still, all the other parts of the process worked fine. That won’t help if I can’t record properly.

It was a day where I planned to do some audio recording but I never got around to it. Instead I talked with Leila on MSN both in the morning briefly in the afternoon.

Most of the evening was telly watching, finished off with watching “The return of the Goodies.” I wonder if in the new year they’ll suddenly start repeating the series.

As for the weather, it started with rain, which continued for most of the day. It cleared up at about 4pm with some brief sunshine. It’s now blowing a gale.

I got up “early”, ie. about half past 9, so as to pop into Helston to pay my Christmas cheques in. Whilst there I also bought a 3.5mm to 5mm jack plug convertor so as to connect my old HiFi which has a turntable to my laptop for the purpose of transfering my old records to CD.

In the afternoon my Dad and I got Skype running and managed to dial up my Uncle in Enfield. It took quite a while to get it working as my uncle had problems with his audio connections.

Later on I experimented with recording from LP. It worked, after a bit of tweeking. I just now need the time to do the recording properly and be able to set up my laptop in a convenient way.

I didn’t do a great deal. Played a bit more Doom 3 and that was about it, really.

Not a wholey eventful day. Basically, most of it was spent reading in the back bedroom warmed by the sunshine through the window.

The weather’s been cold but bright, which isn’t unpleasant.

It’s Boxing Day so my Mum, who’s been watching too much telly and hence has been seeing too many sales adverts, wants to go to the sales.

So as to calm her down we went off to Truro’s retail parks to browse the shops.

My Dad got a mouse and a pair of ear phones with a microphone for use with Skype from PC World’s sale.

As we were returning along the lane near the house we passed a couple walking their dog. Normally this wouldn’t be anything of note. However, the woman in this couple was Tory Amos.

Update: I’ve just realised that I’ve mis-spelt the name of the woman, it’s actually “Tori Amos” and not “Tory Amos.”

A pretty quiet Christmas Day. there wasn’t much on the telly so played Doom 3 again (and am now in Hell so I’m losing interest).

Merry Christmas everyone.

I tried sending a e-mail last night just after midnighter to the “junk” and “soiree” lists hosted by Alec’s machine at work but the messages haven’t turned up. (Is Coyote down for Christmas, Alec?) So, this posting will have to suffice for the time being.