I have already had more than enough of Christmas television eg Kirstie and Phil and their parties. My first Xmas card arrived. I watched the vid of Blue Skies� If We�re Telling the Truth. I have been working through the discard folder, throwing some things out and giving some other things a new finish. Gilbert said he thought I was in a rock phase. I would say I was in an octotonic phase and that this seems to lend itself to rhythmic treatments with a steady beat. But I also think I could be about to use drones a fair amount now that I have found a stock of them. I watched B Jones � the Edge of Reason which I had seen once before and indeed once is enough. Then the end of the Beach which still looked good.

I tried to get the Minimoog working again � without immediate success � but ended up patching it into SMS so that it could be controlled from the MIDI sequencer � also the ARP. I also managed to get a 10 band stereo graphic equaliser patched in to replace the one that I inadvertently deleted. This has multiplied the range of sounds available � it�s possible to refine the individual patches from within SMS but I am not clear whether the modifications can be saved. I also tried driving the softsynths with the Dhorn using the MIDI interface, The Minimoog is actually easier to record in this way that the main GS synth in SMS which complicates matter by recording volumes as well as pitches. There was some bad news from the works. I watched Miranda and Ian Hislop on BBC2.