This one is a quicky...

...I have just done. Because I was awake all night, not through sleeplessness, but because I was trying to research something. Will explain in a minute. So I was absolutely tired come morning. Too tired to bird listen.

My wi fi data had nearly run out (just have a scrap left, will renew at midnight, phone has a barely connection) so I needed wi fi cafe with data and printing facilities. So that was this morning. Came home. Crashed out asleep. Woke up. What do I do for today's sound?

Ah! The second hand in a clock. It actually sounds and looks a different picture with each clock. So this is actually the vastly different feel of sound for each clock. It is amazing. The kitchen clock sounded and looked like giant commas. The carriage clock in the front room was a soft sound with lots and lots of tiny squares. This intrigued me and I wandered between these two clocks in sheer amazement at the vast difference.

So this is my pic for today for my challenge to myself of a pic/drawing/painting every day in 2017.

[This is my artist's perception of sounds as they are now after being drastically changed after the remapping of my cochlear processor. I am readjusting to the different sounds, which are actually vastly different, as it is now suggested I was never mapped properly in the first place which is why I have struggled the last few years.]

What happened last night? My personal CD player gave up the ghost yesterday. So I looked online expecting to be able to order another. There was almost zilch. Just some cheap end of the range ones. My personal CD player had been a top end of the range when I first got my cochlear implant. I needed the best possible quality to try and make sense of sound. The cheaper ones were total rubbish for my level of hearing.

With this drastic new mapping for my processor last week, I have now been able to pick more sounds within voices when I have played cd's on it. So, I have been made up. It was very portable and is in a small shoulder bag as I move around the bungalow, garden, potting shed and garage. It meant the sound was right next to my processor and I was picking up as much as possible. And I was listening as much as possible, to train my brain to get used to the new mapping.

But it packed in. It had been very well used. So I thought it would be a simple matter to replace it with another of exceptional quality. Alas no. Apparently they don't make the good ones any more. Just cheap rubbish quality ones, where the sound of a voice, to me, on it goes back to just a blur and no definition.

I couldn't believe it. So I ranted and raved (to friends online). Was told that it was out dated technology and MP3's were the thing now etc. MP3's??? This is no good. I have tried them, but in the making of them, the sound is slightly degraded, and it takes the edge of the sound off for me, and sounds blurred. In addition I don't have a decent laptop now, not one with any decent sound quality.

I have a big collection of CD's which I have built up since I had the cochlear implant 7 or so years ago. And they are brilliant. I want to listen to them directly through a personal CD player which is extremely portable.

I have another problem. My ghetto blaster, and I mean it is a ghetto blaster, has started to go west...among other things, the remote works intermittently...and I do play things a lot on repeat to learn to get used to the sound...I need the remote for that one track repeat function...but the ghetto blaster won't accept that repeat function now and crackles and all kinds. Cleaned it with a cd cleaner etc, but again the poor thing is worn out.

A friend said get one of those boom boxes. I said they are tinny little things. At max they might have 1.7 watts each speaker. My ghetto blaster has 3.5 watts each speaker. I did look at the boom boxes but many don't even have a headphone socket. I need that headphone socket to plug in the device I have for wireless streaming (or whatever it is called).

Apparently, I can't remember what it is called, you cannot turn up a lot of devices now so they don't wreck your hearing. I have an argument with my Nexus each time I try to turn it up...no, you will damage your hearing comes up on the screen...this warning flashes a few times and it actually prevents me turning the sound up into the red zone, before it finally gives up and lets me move the volume into the red zone. But it resets itself each time I turn the Nexus on, and I have to go quite a way into setting to be able to over ride it.

For a deaf person, or profoundly deaf person, even with a cochlear implant, many of us need devices with a higher level of sound output than current devices will let us do so, simply because they are protecting hearing of a hearing person.

So, let us go to Bluetooth. Try that my friends said. That is modern technology, you are in the past. No I am not. I use technology that is compatible for me and my processor.

The transferring of sound by Bluetooth is not powerful enough for me. I can't hear with it. I went to a demonstration etc and tried it out. Oh, my friends said.

What else? Erm...I have been ranting and raving all night in my head and all this morning. Using it as a focus to research what could be available for me. And finally deciding this morning that I would focus research on different types of listening devices, transfer of sound etc to my processor, and working my way upwards from there, and then seeing what devices would be compatible with it. I also need to write a list e.g. Headphone socket needed for wireless transfer of sound. A lot of devices now don't have a headphone socket with the conventional jack plug.

I was knackered when I got home, but I had printed loads of stuff this morning which I will study when I have posted this. I need to do this rant!

Then when I woke up I checked on eBay. What for? For my personal CD player of course. Brilliant idea I thought. I thought maybe I could get a second hand one exactly the same. It will do for the moment and keep me going, so I thought. Good idea don't you think?

Excuse me, but when did my current personal CD player become labelled as "Vintage". It is a Sony Walkman. Okay I realise it was old, but it is fetching vintage inflated prices. Never mind I thought, I am going to do it. I need something, and I need something now. So I texted a friend...asked her how to bid on eBay. I have never used eBay before. When she realised what I was going to bid for and how much I had decided to pay, a series of texts came through like bullets...

...you're wasting your money...what if it doesn't work...(me says back but the seller has a near 100% rating)...her reply is unprintable...then she says...but the parts in the personal CD player are old if they're exactly same as your current one...the rubber will have gone...the parts will have degraded...and so on...

I think I hid the whiskey at the bottom of the cat food supply...