Porting an application to Windows 10/Delphi 10.2 (part 5)

Three and a quarter years ago, I wrote about the trials and tribulations of porting a Delphi7 database program to Delphi 10/Windows 10 that has built-in unicode. The subject quietly dropped off my map, but in the past two weeks the OP has had much difficulty with the computer that is designated the database server. So much difficulty that I have been tasked with finding out whether it is possible to port the program to Delphi 10 (Seattle) so that the database can be moved to a modern Windows 10 machine.

I read my blog entries a few times in order to remember what worked from the previous time and what didn't work. The first thing that I did was to define a new database whose charset is UTF8. Then I defined a new table 'people' using the DDL file that I extracted from the old database, taking care to redefine any fields that would hold Hebrew as being 'CHARACTER SET UNICODE_FSS'.

I then copied a conversion program that I had written for my previous tests to a new directory and redefined the databases involved. For some reason, Delphi kept on using the wrong version of the source but I eventually sorted this out. I defined a query qGetPeople as being

select ID, gender, docket, aliya, classa, classb, followup, q400, dob, 
examdate, zehut, 
cast (surNAME as varchar (24) character set  UNICODE_FSS),
cast (FORENAME as varchar (16) character set UNICODE_FSS),
telephone, email,  origzehut,
cast (address as varchar (128) character set UNICODE_FSS),
cast (country as varchar (24) character set UNICODE_FSS),
cast (army as varchar (48) character set UNICODE_FSS),
cast (education as varchar (128) character set UNICODE_FSS),
cast (workplace as varchar (64) character set UNICODE_FSS),
cast (jobname as varchar (64) character set UNICODE_FSS)
from people

Then I used this query to extract records from the old database in order to insert them into the new unicode-aware database. Rubbish was being entered! I tried and tried but couldn't figure out why this once worked and now it doesn't.

I broke off for lunch and a light nap whilst I considered my options. I created a new table in the new database consisting of three fields only: an auto-increment id field, a surname and a forename. I defined the latter two fields with the character set WIN1255 - what might be termed 'old-fashioned' Windows/Hebrew. In order to populate this table, I used a simple query 'select surname, forename from people' as opposed to the complicated query above. Checking the data in the SQL Database manager showed that my new table did indeed hold Hebrew text!

I then put together a simple application with a data module, a form that shows all the data from the new table in a grid and a simple form that allows the editing of one record chosen from the grid. This all works perfectly.

So what's the difference between this time and last time? I think - and I'm not about to test this assumption - that the difference is Russian. The complicated management program that I will have to port over the next year does not contain any Russian, so the simple proof of concept program that I wrote should be sufficient in the technical unicode sense.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
169	26/04/2009	Knowledge hoarding	ERP, Psychology, Kaizen
170	26/04/2009	The iron law of bureaucracy	ERP
354	26/04/2011	Crocs	Shoes, Copper
833	26/04/2015	Vinyl log 6 - 26 April	Richard Thompson, 1975, Vinyl log, Walking
1126	26/04/2018	Programming text screens in Priority	Priority tips

Wishing you a happy and kosher Pesach!

 

I couldn't get to sleep on Saturday night; eventually at about 12:45 am I sat by the computer to finish off the musical group video and read a little. After that, I could sleep. I woke up yesterday morning with a sore throat although there was no elevated temperature. Today I feel the same. I'm not in the mood for the most important festival of the year.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
127	22/04/2008	Holiday week	Programming, Delphi, Cold feet
702	22/04/2014	More research	DBA
1024	22/04/2017	Jerry Lee Lewis rides again	Grandfather
1607	22/04/2023	Songbird	Song writing

More performance videos

Yesterday evening we (the musical group) were sent a link to an online directory holding several video files. These are of much better quality than the ones sent previously: they appear to have been filmed from a camera standing on a tripod, so there's no jerking around of the video. Not only that, the sound apparently was taken directly from the soundboard so it's also better quality.

Whilst theoretically this should be good, the sound exposes problems with the mix. For most of the songs, the keyboard is too loud and unfortunately the keyboardist made several mistakes, making listening to the songs painful. At one stage echo was added to the vocals; this was fine during the reggae song when they were added, but no one thought to remove them afterwards so they also detract from the otherwise excellent vocals - I had never heard the vocal harmonies previously. Fortunately there were alterations; in one of the later songs, I can hear my guitar suddenly being raised in the mix to an almost reasonable level.  

I suggested that we make a 'proper' recording: if output can be taken directly from the mixing desk then we can record a song, listen to it then improve the mix. Without having external ears, most of us are going to want their own part louder, leading once again to imbalance. No one has responded yet to this suggestion. Members of the audience say that the balance was fine, but there's no recorded evidence of this.

The videos are contiguous; as opposed to music tracks that I make where the song will start a fraction of a second into the track and will end a fraction of a second before the end of the track, these videos simply run back to back, so a song might start in the middle of one video and finish in the middle of the next. This actually is advantageous: I put all of the clips in the movie maker program without the need for transitions. The result appears to be very good (I haven't watched it all the way through yet). Apart from the singers who move about, the musicians are extremely static. This was because we barely had any room in which to move due to the smallish stage. That said, the bassist and I managed to pull off a few synchronised - and spontaneous - neck moves at the end of some songs.

I was thinking yesterday evening about the weedy/thin sound that my guitar makes; I initially considered buying an equaliser pedal that should improve the sound. These pedals are less expensive than I thought they would be so buying one won't be a problem (although where to put it on the pedalboard is a thornier problem). But before I do so, I want to check some of the possibilities offered by my multi-effects pedal that I have so far ignored: specifically the pre-amp stage.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
167	21/04/2009	Dangerous ideas	ERP, Kaizen
575	21/04/2013	Finally, a thesis title	ERP, DBA
576	21/04/2013	Who knows where the time goes?	Sandy Denny
832	21/04/2015	More home movies	Home movies
1124	21/04/2018	Sandy Denny: 40 years gone	Sandy Denny
1211	21/04/2019	Hardware woes	Mobile phone, Computer

The morning after the morning after

I've just received videos showing six of the fourteen songs that we played on Thursday night. Some of those videos needed to be rotated and for that I found an online converter that fortunately does not leave watermarks or similar. Listening to these videos is disappointing to say the least: the sound balance isn't very good. Whilst the singers are out in front, the drums and my guitar can hardly be heard. Watching them is more interesting even though for most of the time I'm hidden behind one of the singers (although my left, chording, hand is clearly visible). Grumbles all around. That said, one of the singers says that recordings made by mobile telephones are not exactly faithful, audio-wise.

I'm uploading to YouTube the only complete song, one of those for which the late Yehonatan Geffen wrote the words. Fortunately only two guitars accompany the singing so I'm quite audible - the high pitched guitar.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
32	20/04/2006	Printer ate my fours	Programming
472	20/04/2012	Levon Helm, RIP	Obituary, The Band, RIP
574	20/04/2013	Emerging from the morning mist	Dog
700	20/04/2014	700 blogs	Meta-blogging
701	20/04/2014	Musical progress	MIDI, Song writing
945	20/04/2016	Programmers at work (2)	Kindle
1386	20/04/2021	Yet another new song ("There she goes")	Song writing, Home recording
1495	20/04/2022	Still positive	Health, Covid-19
1606	20/04/2023	Again, vertigo	Health

A triumphant end to a tumultuous week

Last Friday my company updated its Priority installation to version 23.1, as required by the new Israeli regulation regarding invoices over 25K NIS. I won't go into all the problems that we faced but fixing them took a great deal of time. On Monday, I along with several other people, finished work at 22:40 pm, only 6 hours after my normal finishing time. Some of the people involved will be compensated for the overtime, whereas others (including me) won't. There are few more changes and additions that I want to make today as a result of the past week's experiences.

More importantly, as I wrote a few days ago, a date has been sent for my doctoral viva exam. In spare moments, I reread my thesis; I have to admit that I was quite impressed. Yesterday I wrote to my supervisor, asking for a meeting a few days before the exam when we can go over what the examiners are likely to ask. During the previous exam I was asked several times why I chose something, so the thesis rewrite included in advance my rationale for whatever choices I made. They may simply want to go over the changes requested in which case there will be no problems. Whatever.

I would like to include a 'Where are they now' epilogue to the thesis. This was brought home to me whilst reading about the fourth case study that was touted as being the validating study. Everyone was very enthusiastic about this enhancement, so it took me a while to realise months ago that it wasn't being used! Yesterday I wrote to two of the people closest to the enhancement, asking if they can explain to me why the enhancement wasn't being used. 

Something else that I want to note is concerned with upgrades: I had made one or two changes to the standard Priority installation that I hadn't documented and had in fact forgotten. These changes were overwritten in the upgrade, so it took some head-scratching before I remembered what I had done. Private additions are upgrade-proof, but changing the standard is regarded as a no-no, exactly because because upgrades might well revert to the unchanged standard.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about taking a medicine for lowering the potassium level in blood. Yesterday I had the blood test to see what progress I (or the medicine) has made: the level has reduced from 6 whatevers to 4.7! Now the level is somewhat on the low side. As we are about to enter the Passover week and then I'm going on holiday for another week, the chances of seeing a doctor (either my GP or my nephrologist) in the near future are negligible. All I need to know is whether I should continue taking this medicine; either I take it once a week (as opposed to three times) or I stop. I sent an instant message to the nephrologist yesterday evening telling him of the result, although I didn't think to ask whether I should continue, so his response was simply "Very good". 

The replacement ceremony for the Seder was held last night; the evening was split into two halves, with the first being 'edited highlights' from the traditional Kibbutz Seder, and the second being a performance by the musical group. The first half went on for quite a while; as a result, many people already had had enough and went home before we got underway.

That said, the audience that stayed very much enjoyed themselves (those that didn't enjoy presumably didn't stay). One of the mild criticisms from our performance last year was that there were no songs for children; we took this criticism seriously, and as we knew that there would be plenty of young children around at the beginning, we decided to start with two - later increased to three - children's songs - although played in our regular style. What impressed me was how the children got up and danced in the clear space in front of the stage. Some of the dancing was quite organised! This certainly didn't affect our playing.In retrospect, I wonder how they knew that live music is accompanied by dancing - presumably they learn this in kindergarten.

We had good on-stage monitoring that certainly helped me appreciate our playing. I could also hear myself clearly for a change. The middle of one song was slightly messed up - not that anyone in the audience would have noticed; it turns out that some of us (including myself, I confess) forgot how to count to 16. 

Coincidentally two of the songs that we played have lyrics written by Yehonatan Geffen, who died exactly one year ago. Retrospectively, I can say that this is our tribute to him, but that isn't really true.

As the evening went on, the audience thinned out, leaving only the 'hard-core fans', so one might say that the average enjoyment level increased. Towards the end, the spotlights suddenly turned into a light show; until then they had only been a source of heat. I don't know whether the ambient lighting was decreased or the spots suddenly starting changing colour; whatever the reason, my sensitive eyes swiftly became blinded. During the brief pause between whichever song we had been playing and the next, I whipped out the sunglasses that I had kept in my pocket exactly for this reason. Some people thought that I was playing the rock star, but my family at least knows my problem with lights.

I saw at one stage the son of the keyboard player taking pictures of his father but I didn't know that he also took pictures of everyone else (including the above picture of me). Incidentally the backdrop was a huge picture of the harvest festival, which is why it appears that there are people behind me. At the end, when we were packing up, we were all called to the front of the stage when a few people took pictures of us. This goes to show that I don't know how to smile with my teeth, or maybe I'm simply embarrassed by the few crooked teeth in my mouth so I learned how not to smile with teeth. Mind you, the keyboardist (on the far left of the picture) also didn't smile with teeth.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
31	19/04/2006	Strumming the guitar - stage one	Programming, MIDI
246	19/04/2010	Books and films	Films, Nick Hornby, Time traveler's wife, Hugh Grant
699	19/04/2014	Researching during the Passover holiday week	DBA, Psychology
944	19/04/2016	Programmers in MOBI	Programming, Computer, Kindle
1023	19/04/2017	Donating blood (2)	Health, Donating blood
1123	19/04/2018	70 years of independence	Israel, Kibbutz
1605	19/04/2023	Yehonatan Geffen (1947-2023)	Israel, Yehonatan Geffen

Derek Underwood, RIP

Another sporting hero from my youth, Derek Underwood, has died at the age of 78. His biggest claim to fame was probably the final test match against Australia in 1968: With England 1-0 down in the series, Australia were 85 for five on the last day when a thunderstorm drenched the ground. However, a desperate mop-up operation by the crowd allowed play to restart with 75 minutes remaining, and in the concluding half-hour Underwood took the last four wickets for just six runs in 27 deliveries, securing his final scalp with only six minutes left and ending up with 7 for 50.

He was defined as a slow left arm spinner, but it seemed to me that he bowled 'straight' middle pace. I could never understand why he was so successful.There was a boy at school in my year who was in the same class as me for a few years, but we never had much to do with each other; he was a bowler who seemed to base himself on Underwood and was in the first XI. I have no memory of ever facing his bowling.

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News of a different kind: I have finally been informed that a date has been set for my final doctoral examination - 20 May. That will give me plenty of time to remind myself what the research was about. I'll probably have a meeting with my supervisor a week prior to the date.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
29	16/04/2006	Weird weather	Weather
244	16/04/2010	Travelling by train/Outliers/Memories of school	Trains, Outliers
829	16/04/2015	Vinyl log 5 - 16 April	Vinyl log, Blodwyn Pig, Nice enough to eat
1493	16/04/2022	The malleability of folk songs	Fairport Convention

Jasmine Myra - Knowingness

Barely a month ago, I wrote Probably my favourite [tune in the live recording] is the one that starts after about 47 minutes in the unedited video and is the last piece before the break. This starts out as another tone poem with harp arpeggios in 3/4 time; after a few minutes there is a break for the clarinet and then the piece continues in 4/4. A theme is played then there's time for a wild bass clarinet solo before the ensemble comes back in for a stomping finale.

Well, this piece has now been released from Jasmine's upcoming second album and can be found here. Whilst the first half - the tone poem with harp arpeggios - is even better than the live performance, at the moment I'm finding the second half disappointing. The bass clarinet break isn't as good, the sax solo is mannered as opposed to wild, and the ending isn't as stomping as the live version.

Is this the usual case of loving the first version of a song than one hears, where all the other versions pale in comparison, even though the first heard version is not the first recorded version? Maybe in time I'll learn to love the studio version; the first half is more atmospheric, whereas the second half doesn't take off.

Incidentally, the credits on the YouTube video from which the live version comes are wrong. Although Arran Kent plays flute and bass clarinet on the studio recordings and is credited on the video, Jasmine says that the player is George [something, possibly Segman]. 

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
349	13/04/2011	Advanced SQL for me - NULLIF	Programming, SQL
696	13/04/2014	Fifteen minute meals	Cooking
827	13/04/2015	Vinyl log 3 - 13 April	DCI Banks, Richard Thompson, Vinyl log
1021	13/04/2017	April thesis update	DBA
1603	13/04/2023	Rain, rain, rain	Weather

Update on our spring performance

A month ago, I wrote that for the first time in history (excluding the Covid years), the kibbutz will not be holding a communal seder; instead, there will be some form of ceremony a few days beforehand and that the musical group will be playing. We've been under a strict regime of two rehearsals a week and we will have two more before we play.

As I wrote in December, After a while of rehearsing, there comes a time when one can play the songs freely, without worrying what the next chord is or whether if one is in tune. Then playing the songs becomes a pleasure and one wants more. I think that we reached this stage last Saturday night, so our rehearsal on Wednesday evening was more fun that usual. Once again we've reached that stage, which is just as well. We played the entire set the other night with barely a breakdown.

The problem with the group is that it's a kibbutz group and so we're all equal. There's no musical director; instead, basic arrangements are agreed upon and one can't really criticise anyone's playing. That said, the weakest link is the pianist, who unfortunately plays most of the time like a pianist and not as a modern keyboard player. He comes from a long tradition of musicians who read music and it's hard for him to improvise or even loosen up.

Eventually we taught him how to play the reggae rhythm that is needed on two songs: a quaver on beat two, another on the 'and' of beat two and a further quaver on beat four. As someone pointed out, he was playing exactly the same thing as I was. Indeed. So I went home, thought a bit then started playing those songs in a different style with syncopated arpeggios. Sometimes I mess up the timing slightly, but it doesn't matter as it adds variety.

At the moment, we're playing 12 or 13 songs. We started off with four songs from the swimming pool performance, added a few more here and there ... and suddenly we were adding a new song every week (we've stopped now). For most of the songs, the general attitude seems to be as one of The Band told of their days as the Hawks: STOMP! But there are the two reggae songs that break up the flow and there's another song that starts out fairly delicately before descending into the usual stomp. One of the new songs starts out with a tinkling piano intro and slowly builds and builds. I thought that this would be a good closing number but the others thought otherwise.

The song that we are closing with is accompanied solely by the two guitars: no bass, no drums and no piano. Although the record is in G, for some reason the singers wanted to lower the key by a semitone, so now we're playing in F#. The two guitarists took different options to make playing this song easier. I'm using my octave pedal as a transposition pedal, playing the song as if it were in D and having the pedal transpose it up by four semitones. The other guitarist brought along a second guitar to our last rehearsal, where the guitar is tuned down by a semitone. As a result, almost automatically the two guitars are playing different chord shapes. I listened to a recording of the song from one evening: I should stick to playing chords on 1 and 3, instead of imagining that I'm playing fingerstyle on an acoustic guitar - this way there'll be a firmer rhythm.

Funnily enough, there's another song (the new reggae song) that is written in G but we're playing it (as per the video) in G#. Here we don't need any tricks to play in this odd key; it's interesting that we can go up a semitone without too much bother but not go down a semitone. As I wrote above, I'm playing arpeggios on the top three strings so this is easier than full barre chords.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
826	12/04/2015	How not to display data in graphs	Statistics
1121	12/04/2018	Apology to Israel Railways	Trains
1602	12/04/2023	More bells and whistles for the 'Blog' program	Programming, Delphi

Defining collections on the Kobo

I've been transferring epub files to the kobo and removing the corresponding mobi files that I originally transferred. As per the kindle, I would like the books to be in collections, making it much easier to find a book, or to read all the books of a given author. This is much harder to do on the kobo than on the kindle, primarily because the kobo apparently allows a book to be in more than one collection.

When I first started with kindle collections, I wrote I wondered whether there was a PC program which could do this when connected - indeed there is. After downloading the program, I started assigning books to collections; eventually I hope that every book will be in a collection which will make locating books much easier. Once most of the books were assigned to a collection, it was much easier to add a book manually to a collection as I added books to the kindle.

Unfortunately there is no similar program for the kobo; the ebook conversion program Calibre handles a little bit of collection management, but I couldn't get it to do more than create collections per author. As some books have the surname, forename format and others have the forename, surname format, a few duplicate collections were created. But more importantly it seems as if Calibre doesn't assign books to collections.

Eventually I hit on a method that was somewhat painful, but should get easier as more books get assigned. I choose a collection (e.g. Neal Stephenson); let's assume that initially no books have been assigned to this collection. I press on the three dots that are on the right hand side of the line that has Filter and Sort on it. A menu appears with three options: cover view, manage collections and manage downloads. I press on manage collections. This brings up another screen that is almost the same, but instead of manage collections, Add Books now appears; I press on this. Now a list of all the books on the kobo appears, with the legend page 1 of 363. The kobo displays only six books per page; more books would mean less scrolling. I press on the Filter button and choose unread - less books are displayed. It's a shame that there's no option to display books that have not been added yet to a collection. I then scroll through the books and press the + button to the right of each appropriate book; the 'adding' count at the bottom increases. When I've finished choosing the books, I press on the save button in the bottom right hand corner.

I've just discovered that choosing the cover view option, eight books get displayed on a page instead of only six. Here comes the most important trick: I press the ... button underneath each book and choose the mark as finished option; at the same time the filter for this collection is set to unread. This causes the books to 'disappear' (not really), but more importantly, when I go to choose books for another collection, I filter by unread books; thus all those that I've already marked don't appear, thus reducing the population from which I choose.

Annoying.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
125	06/04/2008	The night of the long knives	Redundancies, Downsizing
165	06/04/2009	Dave Stewart/Barbara Gaskin - Green and Blue	Richard Thompson, Peter Hammill, Randy Newman, Jackson Browne, Canterbury sound
347	06/04/2011	Green MBA	MBA
565	06/04/2013	Back to blogging	DBA, Jewish holidays, Cooking, Mobile phone
1208	06/04/2019	Maybe I'm doing it wrong	Multi-track
1305	06/04/2020	Days of Corona (3)	Personal, Psychology, John Le Carre, Covid-19
1598	06/04/2023	Recording 'Wonderful days'	Song writing, Home recording

Drinking sand (not really)

I did blood tests a few weeks ago; while most of the results were reasonable, there were a few values that were on the high side. As these were concerned with kidney function, I booked an appointment with my nephrologist; to my surprise, this was for a few days after I booked. It always amazes me that here is a specialist whom one can see almost immediately whereas for other specialists, especially skin doctors, one has to wait for weeks if not months.

He looked at my results; I thought that he was going to say something about the high level of urea in the blood. Urea is a waste product that the kidneys remove from blood and higher than normal BUN (blood urea nitrogen) levels may be a sign that the kidneys aren't working well.  This passed without comment.

What did need treatment was the high potassium level; high levels of potassium can cause problems with the heart. My potassium level is high because I have to take a certain medicine (prescribed initially by the neprologist a few years ago) to combat a hormone imbalance that affects blood pressure but also upsets the sodium/potassium balance. He said that he would prescribe for me a medicine that would reduce the potassium level and that I should do blood tests in a fortnight to see that the medicine is working (and not causing any other problems). I was slightly taken aback by this: if there is a medicine to reduce blood potassium then why haven't I been prescribed it earlier? I was soon to find out.

My wife went to the pharmacy to collect the medicine, Sodium polystyrene sulphonate,but for some reason the pharmacist first asked my wife if she knew what the medicine is for. She phoned me and I told her that it is supposed to reduce the level of potassium in the blood. The pharmacist then tried to get hold of the nephrologist, but he wasn't answering his phone; then the pharmacist phoned our GP and eventually was given the OK to dispense the medicine. I don't understand why this was necessary but maybe it's just as well that they check the more unusual medicines.

My wife returned with a big tub of reddish powder. The instructions are to place a spoonful of powder in water and drink (the tub comes with its own spoon). Unfortunately, the powder does not dissolve in the water; instead, one drinks a suspension. It's like drinking water with sand in it - some of the powder gets drunk with the water and some stays in the glass. Of the powder that gets drunk, some gets swallowed and some stays in the mouth. So I pour more water into the glass, stir and drink; this allows about 90% of the remaining powder to be drunk. The final grains of the powder get drunk in the third glass of water (actually, I'm drinking it with blackcurrant syrup as I don't like drinking plain water very much). At least the powder does not contribute any flavour, as opposed to the revolting mixture that at one one had to drink before a colonoscopy - fortunately, the preparation for that examination is much easier now. I am to drink the medicine two or three times a week; three hours after I have taken any other medication and three hours before taking any more medication.

Are there any side effects? After the first time that I took the medication, my legs felt very stiff as if they had swelled up with water, but this could be because of the hot weather and the work that I was doing that day, that caused me to sit for several hours with great concentration and so not moving my legs. I'll see whether the swelling appears today.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
468	04/04/2012	Spring is in the air	Holiday, Dubrovnik
936	04/04/2016	Return to Sorrento (2016/1)	Holiday, Sorrento, Italy

Gerry Conway, RIP

The Fairport family has lost another member, after the announcement of the death of Gerry Conway, who was the drummer for Fotheringay, Cat Stevens and Fairport Convention (from 1988 onwards). He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease almost exactly two years ago and retired from Fairport after 2022's Cropredy festival. At the time, it was thought that he felt that he was old enough to retire at 75 years old; now it appears that there was another reason.

"None of us knew that he was in the early stages of that pernicious horror Motor Neurone Disease," wrote band founder Simon Nicol on Facebook. "I didn't know until today, when news of his death filtered out from the protection and privacy he and Jacqui McShee [Conway's wife, and Pentangle singer] sought and deserved. Wonderfully patient and wise, infuriatingly tardy (!) but always ready and eager to play, and blessed with his own inner calm and solidity, I'm going to miss him more than I can say."

Of course, I have several records on which Gerry played: the two Fotheringay albums, "The bunch", "Rosie", some Sandy Denny solo records and a few from the late period of Fairport - fewer than I might have thought.

I was very taken by Gerry's drumming way back in 1970 on Fotheringay's "The pond and the stream", with sensitive drumming that changes according to the song's sections.

And in keeping with things Fairport, today is Richard Thompson's 75^th birthday.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
70	03/04/2007	An end to headaches?	Health, Migraine, Blood pressure, BCC
345	03/04/2011	Farewell NT4	Computer
1490	03/04/2022	Onion sauce	Cooking

Daniel Kahneman, RIP

The Israeli psychologist who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002 has died, aged 90. His most recent book was "Thinking, fast and slow"; I suspect that I never finished reading this book, not that it's not interesting, but because it's a long and concentrated read. 

 

Ironically, today I read the following (from "Originals" by Adam Grant, chapter 8)

Imagine that you’re an executive at a car manufacturer, and due to economic challenges, you need to close three plants and lay off six thousand employees. You can choose between two different plans: Plan A will save one of the three plants and two thousand jobs. Plan B has a one-third chance of saving all three plants and all six thousand jobs, but a two-thirds chance of saving no plants and no jobs. 

 

Most people prefer Plan A. In the original study, 80 percent chose to play it safe rather than take a chance. But suppose we gave you a different set of options: Plan A will lose two of the three plants and four thousand jobs. Plan B has a two-thirds chance of losing all three plants and all six thousand jobs, but a one-third chance of losing no plants and no jobs. 

 

Logically, these are the same options as the first set of choices. But psychologically, they don’t feel the same. In the latter option, 82 percent of people prefer Plan B. Their preferences reverse. 

 

In the first case, the options are framed as gains. We prefer Plan A because we tend to be risk averse in the domain of benefits. When we have a certain gain, we like to hold on to it and protect it. We play it safe to guarantee saving two thousand jobs instead of taking a risk that might leave us saving no jobs. After all, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. 

 

But in the second case, we’re presented with a guaranteed loss. Now, we’re willing to do whatever it takes to avoid that loss, even if it means risking an even bigger one. We’re going to lose thousands of jobs anyway, so we throw caution to the wind and make the big gamble, hoping that we’ll lose nothing. 

 

This line of research was conducted by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman; it helped give rise to the field of behavioral economics and win Kahneman a Nobel Prize. It revealed that we can dramatically shift risk preferences just by changing a few words to emphasize losses rather than gains. This knowledge has major implications for understanding how to motivate people to take risks.  

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
1018	28/03/2017	Priority tip: creating business rules with functions	Priority tips
1304	28/03/2020	Thesis update	DBA
1489	28/03/2022	Another year, another growth	Health, BCC

UN Happiness report 2023

Slightly over a year ago, I wrote about the 2022 UN Happiness report, where Israel was in 4th position. Once I overcame my surprise, I wrote One thing is clear: maybe we were happy, but not in 2023! I suspect that the 2024 report will show a sharp decline in Israel's happiness. Then I was referring to the proposed ruin of the judicial system. The events of Oct 7 were six months in the future.

So today I was even more surprised to read that Israel is ranked 5th in the 2024 World Happiness Report, which is sponsored by the UN, through a poll conducted by Gallup, measuring happiness in countries between 2021 and 2023.... the report's authors said that the survey was conducted, "After the hostage taking (on October 7th) but before much of the subsequent warfare". 

If we're so happy here then life really must be tough elsewhere.

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Computer update: Firefox is now working well. I've added some of the missing links, but more importantly I've added passwords to various sites. I managed to reinstall AnyDesk and to establish links to three computers with unattended access so I can retrieve files now. I also reinstalled MegaSync that synchronises files between my computer and remote backup. So now I can return to uploading large database files from the OP's server then back them up at Mega. Still no luck with installing Chrome although I've managed to uninstall it.

Kobo update: I continued reading the mobi version of 'Troubled blood', ignoring the various letters that were inserted randomly into the stream. But one of these letters caused the Kobo to display the book in bold text which was very annoying. Also the Kobo reports all the time that 1% of the book has been read which is obviously wrong. So I converted the mobi file to epub format and uploaded that: a huge change! Apart from no superfluous letters, chapters now work properly, I can see in which chapter I am and how many pages remain to be read in that chapter (an odd metric, in my opinion) and what percentage of the book has been read. So now I will have to convert mobi books back to epub and upload them, whilst deleting the mobi version.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
563	24/03/2013	Pictures from a balcony (5)	Personal
818	24/03/2015	Zooming the millenium	ERP
935	24/03/2016	Draining the ear	Health
1116	24/03/2018	The Belstaff Bouncers	Personal, Habonim, 1975
1484	24/03/2022	My first year as a Londoner, part 4 - "The movement"	Personal, Habonim, 1975, 1974
1485	24/03/2022	My first year as a Londoner, part 5 - The girlfriend	Personal, 1972, 1974
1486	24/03/2022	My first year as a Londoner, part 5 and a half - The girlfriend, continued	Personal, 1975, 1974

Looking for his tribe - revisions

I thought that I would look for my video of 'Looking for his tribe' on YouTube. In the search box, I entered the song's name: I found my video, along with a few others of similar name. 

The video of 'Searching for my tribe' by Selwyn Birchwood left me somewhat bemused as this features a young lady with a prominent bust who apparently sings in a male's bass voice. She also can't play the guitar, which is when I realised that this lady is simply miming. The song itself is a fairly standard blues; there's only so much of this that I can take, not withstanding the lady's bust.

The author writes as an explanation: "I had always been a loner from a very young age. At 19 years old, I discovered an entire world of blues music that felt like 'home'. I knew then where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. Just when I thought I had found my place in the sun, it appears as though all of the people and sounds that brought me in have been replaced with other trends." Sounds familiar. 

Another video that was found is 'A Tribe of People Are Looking for Your Music!' by the same person who has a series of videos explaining how to play ambient guitar. This is a talk-only video explaining how to grow one's audience.

But back to my video: although the most of the song is good, I cringed at the performance of the opening line. To be honest, I have never been happy with the way this line was sung but I had let it drift. This time I decided to do something about it. I connected my microphone to the computer, warmed up a little than sang the first line onto a new track. Normally I would have silenced the first line in the original vocal then mixed that track and the new one together, creating a composite vocal - as I did originally - but as I needed to replace the first line only, I thought it easier to cut out the first 5.3 seconds of the original file and paste in 5.3 seconds of the new vocal. I had to change the volume somewhat in order to match the original vocal's volume, but once that was done, the editing was invisible. I then had to mix the song once again, then create an mp3 file then remove the original soundtrack from the video and paste in the new one..... I deleted the original video from YouTube and uploaded the new one, so the link has changed. Quite possibly I could have uploaded the new video that would have replaced the original but this option was not documented.

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Naturally I spent a lot of time yesterday working on computers.The first thing that I did was to download an offline installer for Firefox onto my work computer, then via a diskonkey transferred this to the broken computer. I was able to install Firefox but not access all the bookmarks. Undeterred, I exported the bookmarks on my work computer (these comprise about 75% of my current bookmarks), transferred these to the broken computer and imported them.

Chrome, AnyDesk and the backup synchroniser are still not working, and the disk frequently goes to 100% usage, but at least there is an improvement. I've been happily typing away for the past ten minutes with no problems, but of course, Blogger doesn't access the disk. Starting programs is a slow process, but once they are loaded, they work almost normally. Even so, I'll take the computer to my repair man on Sunday and see what he can do.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
122	23/03/2008	Clarification	Programming, Literature
817	23/03/2015	Breaking radio silence	ERP, DBA
934	23/03/2016	Composing a bolero	Health, MIDI
1115	23/03/2018	Egged tales (more stories from 40 years ago)	Personal, Habonim, 1978
1205	23/03/2019	Wake up call	Health
1301	23/03/2020	Days of Corona	DBA, Israel, Grandfather, John Le Carre, Covid-19
1483	23/03/2022	My first year as a Londoner, part 3 - "The cellar"	Personal, 1974

Introducing the Kobo

I was recently gifted a Kobo Clara 2E electronic book reader - a Kindle clone, if you like. As my Kindle has battery problems (it doesn't keep its charge long and sometimes doesn't charge at all), I was quite pleased with this gift, but I haven't had the need to do anything with it yet. I woke up early this morning (having gone to bed early the night before) and was considering what to do with my problematic computer, My first decision was to copy all the books that I have stored on it to the Kobo whose memory capacity is a generous 16 GB, far outweighing the Kindle's paltry 1 GB - and even that's plenty for books that rarely exceed 1 MB in size. The second decision was to back up music, photos and videos to an external drive, but that's another story. 

So: I now supposedly have 2200 books on this device, although I think that this number is somewhat inflated; I copied various ancillary files to the Kobo and I think that these files have been included in the count. All the books are in mobi format, the default format of the Kindle, but the Kobo can handle epub files as well, so it looks like I won't have to convert books anymore, should I settle on the Kobo. On the other hand, I read many books on the computer via a program called Mobipocket Reader, so I'll still need mobi files for this.

I decided that the first book that I would read on the Kobo would be 'Troubled blood' by Robert Galbraith (a Cormoran Strike novel), primarily because I had started reading this on the problematic computer yesterday. This book also has graphics within, so it will be interesting to see how the Kobo handles them. Operating the Kobo is a bit troublesome for the long-time Kindle user: there are no buttons! Everything is operated by touching, swiping and pinching, as with a smartphone. I figured out how to build a collection (aka directory) and how to add books to the collection - this requires touching three dots ... next to the book's name; this process wasn't always successful and sometimes resulted in opening the book. Eventually I succeeded in adding all seven Strike novels to the collection.

The Kobo does not seem to recognise chapters in the mobi format. There seems to be no way to jump to a specific chapter, and navigation within the book isn't easy. At one stage I decided to upload a book in epub format solely to see whether these are handled better; the font was far too small so I had to learn how to change the font size. When I went back to the mobi book, the font was too big so I had to change it again. Apparently one can change the font size simply by pinching, instead of having to go to the settings page. I have been careful with my language here, using 'seem' and 'apparently' - maybe there are ways of achieving what I want and I simply haven't learned them yet.

I read in a review somewhere that the Kobo is slow. I didn't notice any problems when actually reading and 'turning' pages (achieved by touching the screen about half way down on the right hand side to get to the next page), but bringing up the settings page and the book catalogue was a bit slow. This isn't much of a problem; indeed, when adding books to a collection on the Kindle, the operation is a bit slow, but this is a rarely used option and so isn't important. Every now and then, the top right hand corner of the page is shown folded - like one used to do with a real paper book when wanting to save a reminder or to bookmark the page. I am not aware of doing anything to cause this graphic to appear and I don't know what it means (RTFM).

At the moment I'm reading black text on a white background; I've already discovered how to invert this and have white text on a black background, but that looks strange (white on blue would be good). There's also some function to change the background colour according to the hour of the day: reducing one's exposure to blue light at night is a good way to help fall asleep, whereas exposure to blue light at night can prevent falling asleep, or at least, making it difficult.

Obviously there's a lot to learn and get used to; one hour of reading is not sufficient to form a learned opinion.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
163	22/03/2009	Left/right hemisperes of the brain	Psychology, The brain
691	22/03/2014	Reseach questionnaire / 4	DBA

Spring equinox

Two days ago (Tuesday) we had thunderstorms and rain all day long - in total, 29 mm rain fell in less than 24 hours: a good amount. A tremendous clap of thunder woke me just before 4 am, and although I fell back asleep, it wasn't a deep sleep and I could hear the rain outside. By evening, though, the rain had stopped and the skies were clear. Wednesday had clear skies and warm weather during the day, but chilly before dawn and after sunset. Today - Thursday - it's bright and warm. I didn't wear a coat when taking the dog for her walk early morning, and I've just returned from picking up a parcel, wearing only a shirt and trousers. A complete change-around in the weather in time for the spring equinox.

At home, the last two days have been very problematic for my main computer; it has been running extremely slowly and when I look at the task manager, I can see that there is 100% disk usage. This, of course, makes running anything of the computer almost impossible. Fortunately I have my work mobile computer, so I have been working on this (and writing this blog). At first, I thought that the problem was with the synchronisation program to Mega; shutting this down seemed to help and yesterday evening, the computer was running almost normally. But again overnight the disk usage had gone back to 100%.

Could it be, I wondered, that a program that I installed a few days ago was causing this problem? I uninstalled what might be the offending program and again, it seemed that the problem had been alleviated. I ran a diagnostic program that found many problems, but it wouldn't fix any of them. I then restarted the computer only to receive a screen that no one ever wants to see: there was a problem rebooting Windows and the computer would not work at all. 

Frantic googling showed me how to restart the computer in recovery mode. This allowed me to run the program that should have restored the computer to how it was a few days ago. Unfortunately, this program exited, saying that there were problems and that it could not restore properly. With no option left, I rebooted the computer, intending to take it back into recovery mode and run the chkdsk program; I couldn't do this but fortunately the computer did this on its own. After about an hour (there were problems), the computer went into automatic repair mode and once again is rebooting the computer. 

As I write this, "diagnosing your PC" is displayed on the screen ... leading to the 'Automatic Repair' screen and the ominous message "Your PC did not start correctly". I going to try system restore again.  

< Two and a half hours pass >

System Restore says that it has restored the system to how it was 10 days ago. After rebooting and holding my breath, the computer restarted but it's still at 100% disk usage. After about an hour and a half the computer calmed down and it became possible to do some work with it. But Anydesk and Chrome seem to be damaged, so I'm having to finish this blog on my work computer, hence no 'today in history' for the time being ... maybe I'll add it later, assuming that I can get Chrome to work.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
121	21/03/2008	Literary allusions	ERP, Literature, Satie, 1984
690	21/03/2014	Research questionnaire / 3	DBA
933	21/03/2016	Zero values in Priority tables (2)	Priority tips
1482	21/03/2022	Severe stomach cramps	Health
1594	21/03/2023	UN Happiness report	Israel

The end of the end?

Slowly but surely, over the past 15 years many of the traditional things that the kibbutz held dear have slowly wittled away. With regard to celebrating festivals, the New Year ceremony and communal meal has long disappeared, and now to my great dismay, the Passover ceremony and communal meal will not be held this year, due to the low numbers of members who have indicated their participation.

About two weeks ago, we were informed that only about 50 people were intending to attend the communal seder, a number that is considered to be too small to make the evening viable, even with a subsidy from the kibbutz to cover part of the cost of the meal. I wrote the following on the kibbutz electronic notice-board in response to a thread that was started by someone complaining about why there should be a subsidy at all.

Unlike some of the participants in this discussion, I don't come from a large family that is used to holding its seder privately. For me, the kibbutz seder (or, at least how it used to be twenty or thirty or forty years ago) expresses the traditional and best way to celebrate the seder, and I must say that the tendency of members to celebrate in their homes in the past few years only harms the enjoyment that I derive from the evening. There's no fun in participating in a seder when more than 50% of the participants are guests, who don't know the customs and traditions of a kibbutz seder. In my humble opinion, the price of the seder is not the central issue here, but the desire - or lack of desire - to celebrate as a kibbutz. The central issue is not the food (that creates the cost) but the experience.

To which someone replied (I think in a sarcastic tone, but it's impossible to know): I apologise if I have harmed your enjoyment because I have decided to celebrate in the bosom of my family.

My final words on the topic were: Generally, there are no private actions of member x that affect member y (I'm not talking about unsocial acts like there were in the past week [a member complained that someone had slashed his car's tyres, maybe because he hadn't parked correctly]). But when the seder is in danger of being cancelled because of the small number of participants, there is a negative influence. It's the same thing when there was the duty driver [someone who used to drive to and from Bet Shemesh in the evenings picking up people, eg here] and private cars: the moment that a certain number of members had cars, the need to use a general service declined below a certain level. As a result, the duty driver system was abolished, and I would not be surprised if there were members who felt the need (or where even forced) to purchase for themselves a private car, as the kibbutz had ceased supplying this service. This discussion started from money but it's a societal issue: apparently we have passed the tipping point at which it's not worth the kibbutz's while to supply a service, and as a result, members are harmed.

No one bothered to reply. 

Today we are informed that indeed due to the paucity of participants, the seder will be cancelled. Where am I going to celebrate the Passover this year? There have been a few times when I did not go to the kibbutz seder - and I was miserable. I'll see what my wife has to say on the subject.

The fact that I heard at our last band rehearsal that maybe we will be playing at a reduced Spring festival does not cheer me up.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
559	17/03/2013	Sumptuous Sunday 6	Cooking
1382	17/03/2021	DSupt Banks: Not dark yet	DCI Banks, Peter Robinson

Jasmine Myra (2)

For the past two weeks, I've been listening to Jasmine Myra almost exclusively (at least, when I'm at my desk), and I'm now ready to offer comments about her music. I will be referring to this performance below as it's a fine document of a live performance; the only problems are that the first seven minutes contain nothing and there's also a fifteen minute break in the middle. I downloaded the performance then edited out the long waits. For some reason, the microphone into which JM speaks is at a very low volume so it is almost impossible to hear what she is saying; I increased the volume of these parts while I was editing the file.

The line up is JM - alto sax; Arran Kent – flute/bass clarinet; Matt Cliffe – flute/alto sax; Liam DeTar – guitar; Jasper Green – piano; Sam Quintana – double bass; Alice Roberts – harp; George Hall – drums. The last four appear to play with JM frequently over the years whereas the others are not so constant. Liam DeTar - an unfortunate name for a guitarist - is superfluous in this performance; his parts are minimal and can barely be heard. This is somewhat strange as on other videos of JM there is a different guitarist who often plays in tandem with JM.

Unfortunately, I have no idea of what most of the pieces are called. Probably my favourite is the one that starts after about 47 minutes in the unedited video and is the last piece before the break. This starts out as another tone poem with harp arpeggios in 3/4 time; after a few minutes there is a break for the clarinet and then the piece continues in 4/4. A theme is played then there's time for a wild bass clarinet solo before the ensemble comes back in for a stomping finale - although in fact, the piece peters out after the finale, a mistake in my opinion. The bass clarinet adds depth to the sound whilst not being another saxophone. This piece is supposed to be on the upcoming album to be released in May.

My other favourite and unnamed piece is the encore, another piece from the upcoming album. This is introduced as being a slightly silly song, although it is not clear to me why JM calls it this.

I would not like to be the harpist in this group as several songs depend on harp arpeggios played without break for a few minutes each time. I don't know whether this is normal for harp pieces but I imagine that it can get confusing.

I don't understand the economics of this group and how they manage to tour (at one point, JM says that this is the first night of her first tour); can you imagine taking a harp from venue to venue? It won't fit in the van and is also more delicate than a guitar. Matt Cliffe has a booking page that states than he can be booked from £180 a gig (and he's cheap compaired to some of the other names that appear on that page). Let's say that his fee is £200 a night, and if everyone charges the same amount, that's £1400 a night, not including travel and living expenses. Can an almost unknown musician charge £2000 for one gig?

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
463	15/03/2012	Sequencing "Lost" / 2	Van der Graaf Generator, Peter Hammill, Home recording
688	15/03/2014	Boy, was I wrong - programming naivety	Programming, Delphi, ClientDataSet
1381	15/03/2021	A year of Covid-19	Covid-19
1592	15/03/2023	Goodbye, Dilbert (at least for the time being)	Personal, Covid-19