1700 blogs

By a happy coincidence, the 1700th blog falls on the last day of 2023. Blog #1601 was written on 11/04/23, so that's eight and a half months ago. 2023 has been one of the most productive years in blogging. And as for the topics ...

Position	Tag	Count	Previous position	All time position
1	Health	16	14	5
2	Israel	14	1	7
3	Nutrition	14	-	55
4	Musical group	12	-	67
5	Personal	12	3	4
6	Erythritol	8	-	92
7	Guitars	8	-	38
8	Song writing	7	18	14
9	Non-fiction books	6	9	39
10	Obituary	6	12	10
11	Swimming	5	-	43
12	Food science	4	-	51
13	Programming	4	4	1
14	Delphi	3	-	6
15	Headphones	3	13	66
16	Kibbutz	3	16	18

That's quite surprising. I wouldn't have thought that health would be in first place, but of course that's because of the series of blood tests that I did in the middle of the year along with the topic of nutrition. Otherwise there seems to be an almost complete change in topics that interested me; seven of the top 16 didn't even 'chart' in the previous 100 blogs. That said, I predict that nutrition, erythritol, food science and possibly guitars and swimming will not chart in the next 100 blogs.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
999	31/12/2016	Farewell 2016 - a summary of the year from my idiosyncratic viewpoint	DBA, Health, Personal, Obituary, Song writing, Theanine
1102	31/12/2017	End of an era	TV series
1192	31/12/2018	Love is all you need (film)	Films, Sorrento, Italy
1569	31/12/2022	Gaslit, Watergate ... and more ranting about Israel's new government	TV series, Israel

Dreams turned to dust (new song)

At the beginning of December, thinking that I had hardly touched the piano since my return to electric guitar, I sat down and shortly figured out an eight bar sequence, using only scalar chords (since you ask, I IV I IV iii ii V7sus4 V). In order to turn this into a song, I repeated that eight bar phrase then moved to a chromatic mediant for a contrasting eight bars; as the song is in D, this was a move to F, but as the chords finished on the 5 chord, A, there was a descent from A to F, also a chromatic mediant. As it happens, this move happens to be in one of the songs that the musical group was about to play on stage. I note that this chromatic mediant move is becoming a cliché for me; the same move occurs in The Great Escape. I shall try to find a new way of writing a contrasting section in a verse.

After a few days, I made a complete demo sequence of the song, including solos ... then immediately started work on a new version, as the first version was too demo-like. I took the best parts from the first version and used them as the basis for the second version, a version that has undergone several changes from the original, such as having instrumental breaks in D minor. The original version had a middle section but I didn't like this very much and probably would have had difficulty in finding a suitable tune, so this was replaced by something more viable but also unusual (if the the instrumental link prior to the bridge ended on Em, the bridge started on Bm).

Over the past few weeks I've been working on this second version, adding tweaks here and there (e.g. an extra bar between the end of the second verse and the instrumental that leads to the bridge). A great deal of time was spent on a six bar coda that changed in detail three times before I found something that approximates what I wanted. 

Having recovered somewhat from my throat infection, I have resumed walking the dog in the late afternoon, and on one of the walks, I heard a not too well known song by Yoni Rechter entitled 'Dreams turned to dust'. I thought that this was an excellent title and that I could probably do something with it. The following evening I sat down and almost off the cuff wrote two complete verses (24 lines) for this song, about a woman who had dreams but they had all turned to dust. A following evening saw me complete the lyric as well as editing the odd word or line here and there. It occurs to me that the ease with which I wrote these lyrics stem from the fact that they mean absolutely nothing to me; it's all imagination about what could be.

My voice has been strengthening over the last few days so I thought that I would try and record vocals for the song. But first I thought that I would add some guitar playing; the box that takes guitar input and connects as a USB sound module didn't work so I was forced into playing into my practice amp then miking this. A few takes were successful; I tried to play a lead line for the final verse but couldn't get it together fast enough so in the end I simply sequenced this line. I did record myself playing chords for the final verse but in the end I dropped this.

Recording the vocals was fairly straight-forward although I had problems remembering the tune of the bridge. In the end, I recorded this whilst listening to a version of the music with the tune playing, then took the resulting vocal and laid it over the instrumental music. Mixing as always took a long time to get a good vocal sound then a good balance between the music and the voice. 

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
22	30/12/2005	Joseph Finder - Company Man	Joseph Finder
321	30/12/2010	All quiet on the blogging front	ERP, ITM
528	30/12/2012	Being a tourist in Israel: Ein Karem	Israel, Holiday
665	30/12/2013	Song festival review, part 2	Kibbutz

2023 was a lousy year

The time has come to write a summary for a year that many of us would prefer to forget. There were two mega-disasters on the national level, one event that must be classed as a disaster on a personal level, and very few good things to counter these.

Chronologically, the first mega-disaster was the incredibly stupid attempt to wreck the justice system, or as its proponents would put it, 'judicial reform'. I have been reading what I wrote at the time and am amazed at the anger and venom hiding in the words. It appears that this 'judicial reform' has been 'deep sixed', but there's no telling with these people that hold ideas that most would see as ridiculous; to them, these ideas are virtuous and obvious and quite probably God given. Apparently the Supreme Court is about to give judgement on whether dismissing the 'probable cause' law is legal, and the Court is voting 8 for dismissal and 7 for retaining. Two of the judges are due to retire in the next few weeks (or may have already retired), so one might say that 7 are for retaining and only 6 for dismissal. That's all we need now.

Unfortunately, this disaster quite probably caused our enemies, especially in the south, to wrongly evaluate Israel's internal sturdiness, leading to the Oct 7 attack/massacre. One of the first skits on the satirical 'Wonderful country' TV program showed reserve soldiers boarding a bus and being checked off from a list; first to board were the 'anarchists'.... 

This war is still far from over, and is, in many ways, the worst war that Israel has ever participated in. Obviously it's not a war for survival as were the war of Independence and the Yom Kippur war, and the number of military casualties has not (yet) exceeded that of the previous wars, but in every other parameter, it has been the worse. Civilian casualties are far higher.

I have the misfortune of having been in Israel as an adult for both the wars of 1973 and 2023. I suppose that one must say that fortunately in 1973, I didn't really understand what was happening and so couldn't really participate in the national sense of sorrow. Looking back on those days, I feel a sense of wonder that the country had existed for only 25 years in 1973, meaning that most of the citizens had been born in the British Mandate prior to the declaration of independence, or had emigrated from elsewhere. I don't know the actual figure but I estimate that 85% of today's Israelis were born in the state of Israel.

The disaster on the personal level was the death of my company's president. Due to external events, it's obviously difficult to evaluate how much this has had an effect on us, but I for one feel the loss of an experienced hand on the rudder. In the past few days, I had an argument with someone at work about a certain decision being wrong; this decision was taken by the CEO and I several years ago. Who is this whippersnapper to call it wrong? He wouldn't have done so had the CEO still been alive.

The only good things that happened this year on a personal level are concerned with music: first, my rebirth as a performing guitarist, and second, the discovery of trumpeter Matthew Halsall. I've written about the first item more than enough times, and not enough about the second item. I can't even write about a renaissance of song writing, as I've written only a few songs and it has been murder writing this words for them (although I've just finished writing the words for a new song that was started at the beginning of the month).

I had hoped for an improvement on the academic plane, but that was not to be so. I still waiting, eight or nine months after handing in my doctoral thesis, for the concluding viva exam, and as I've probably written at some time, I've lost almost all interest in this. I had hoped that the studies in nutrition would be fruitful, but these have sorely disappointed me. 

There is one personal event that will be a very good thing, but it is yet to happen and I want to wait until it does happen, lest something go wrong. 

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
225	29/12/2009	The latest bright idea	Programming, Delphi, Non-modal
527	29/12/2012	Sequencing "House with no door"	MIDI, Van der Graaf Generator
664	29/12/2013	The Tzora song festival - a review (part one)	Kibbutz
790	29/12/2014	Meta-blogging	Meta-blogging
998	29/12/2016	What really makes me happy these days	DBA

My army service, part two and a half

Nine years ago I wrote a short series about my army service. Rereading these blogs now, I can only notice how short they are and how much was left out. I want to recollect an event - about 18 hours in length - that took place towards the end of my basic training and before leaving for the professional course. I assume that this event took place after we had been out in the field for a few days, as the recollection begins with a group of maybe 10 trainees unloading a lorry. As was customary, we built a 'rifle stack' with all of our rifles stacked standing up and next to each other (see picture).

After we finished unloading the truck and whatever, we retrieved our rifles. Somehow, one of my tent-mates and I were left without a rifle. Now normally, especially outside of a military camp, losing one's rifle is one of the worst sins possible, maybe resulting in a court martial. But as this occurred within a camp and as we were (presumably) ordered to stack our rifles by a NCO, neither of us seemed particularly concerned. The serial numbers of the rifles were registered along with our personal army numbers, so the rifles could be identified when they turned up.

The night following our return to the base camp would have a company's commander inspection of our tents, a very big deal (or at least, so it seemed), so everyone spent their time making our area clean. All the rifles (bar the missing ones) were locked in the rifle rack, so the lack of rifles was not particularly important. 

At some time in the late evening, my companion and I were given to permission to seek our rifles thoughout almost the entire base. We visited all kinds of places, mainly tents with other recruits, but not only. We returned to our tent at about midnight without having found the rifles.

We then had to stand at attention for a couple of hours as the company commander - whom we had barely ever seen - made his inspection of the tents. I could see that people were standing at attention despite the fact that they were fast asleep - instead of being perpendicular to the ground (90°), some were leaning dangerously forward at about a 75° angle. Nothing was said about the missing rifles when the commander came into our tent. Eventually we were allowed to go to sleep.

The next morning, at the company parade, I and my companion turned up without our rifles, and so our platoon commander could not go through the ritual of checking the rifles' barrel for dirt. "Where are your rifles", he asked. We replied that they had gone missing the previous day whilst we had been ordered to stack our rifles - in other words, we weren't responsible. Nothing much happened, meaning that the platoon commander probably knew full well where the rifles were.

I don't remember exactly how the situation was resolved. Someone mentioned - or maybe it was my companion and I saw - that the rifles were leaning against the wall in the company office (a place that we had been barred from checking during the night). One of the NCOs obviously wanted to play a joke on us, but instead of getting all worked up about losing our rifles, we were fairly apathetic (this happens when one's tired), and as I wrote earlier, we considered ourselves not to be responsible for the disappearance of the rifles as we had stacked them upon the direct order of an NCO.

This may have taken place on a Friday morning, meaning that there is a good chance that we went home for the weekend after this event, rifles in place.

It occurs to me now that this 'joke' didn't turn out the way it was intended, as it was perpertrated accidentally on two 24 year old university graduates. I imagine that things would have been different had it been two callow 18 year old recruits whose rifles had been 'stolen'.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
223	28/12/2009	A new Word automation technique	Programming, Delphi, Office automation
224	28/12/2009	What is the connection between King Crimson and Organisational Behaviour?	Organisation behaviour, King Crimson, MBA
997	28/12/2016	Biscotti again	Cooking
1191	28/12/2018	Amos Oz (1939-2018)	Israel, Obituary, RIP
1454	28/12/2021	Memory upgrade	Computer

Nutrition exams score

The University gradebook page has been updated with results from the two class tests that together give one's final mark. As I related a week ago,I was told that I had received a B for the [first] exam, but no numerical number. That situation has now changed: I received a B3 mark, whatever that is, and now know that my score was 73%. I've even seen my answers along with where I was correct and where I was wrong.

The second exam also has the mark B3, but no percentage yet. If B3 is approximately 70-75% according to the first exam, then the second exam has the same approximate mark, and as each of the two exams both contribute 50% of the final mark, my final mark must be 70-75%. 

I have discovered the conversion table from percentages to 'mark': B3 is grade point 15 and is 70-73%. As the two exams had the same grade, it follows that my final grade must be the same, B3. I haven't managed to discover what a failing grade is, but it appears that I passed comfortably.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Year	Title	Tags
221	2009	Neat tricks in the 'management' program	Delphi, Firebird, Non-modal
662	2013	A long story with a low payoff	Personal, Motorbikes

Christmas update

My previous post was on Monday, 18 December. The morning after this, I began to feel unwell and soon developed a painful headache, an elevated temperature and a very sore throat that made it very difficult to swallow. I swiftly took to my bed. After a few days of these symptoms, along with heavy sweating, things finally began to ease slowly during Friday. A throat swab that was done on Thursday morning revealed yesterday that I had Strep throat; as opposed to my previous illness with an almost constantly runny nose, there was no cough and no phlegm this time around. Anyway, now I am diagnosed, I have started taking antibiotics, and the gross symptoms have disappeared. There is still a very small discomfort when swallowing, I still feel weak and unfocused and I have yet to regain my appetite. On the other hand, I've lost 2kg in body weight and if I continue eating the same way as I am now (i.e. barely eating), then I should lose some more weight.

As I've been unfocused for the past few days, there isn't much else to report. When I was feeling a bit better, I watched some YouTube videos, and one would have had me on the floor laughing, had I sufficient energy for this. This was a review (if it can be called that) of some of the goods available on the TEMU website; I had previously seen two other videos doing the same thing; these were normal reviews and fairly interesting.

Some of the goods shown in the amusing review were obviously rubbish, but some were worth a further look. I admit to being very favourably inclined towards the radio link for guitars, as opposed to a regular guitar lead; the price - a mere £7, or maybe a bit more - being less than the amount that I paid for a good lead a few weeks ago. But when I went to the Temu site to order, I discovered that the price was about 78-80 NIS, meaning that there is a ridiculous foreign currency exchange value, or more likely, the 'free delivery' has suddenly become much more expensive because of the Huthis and their terrorist activities against ships in the Persian Gulf area heading for the Suez Canal. So for now, I am dropping any ideas of purchasing items from the Internet. Incidentally, I saw that the same item can theoretically be ordered from Amazon for 'only' $16 (that would cost 64 NIS and might arrive in a few weeks). I wonder how much the same item would cost from an Israeli supplier, who presumably had already purchased the item.

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Today I resumed my habit of checking obituaries over at the Guardian and was saddened to read the obituary of Bob Johnson, who was the guitarist in Steeleye Span Mark 3. Bob had already joined the group by the time of the Lacock festival, meaning that I had the pleasure of meeting him at the time. As I wrote several years ago, [a]t some stage Jonathan and I approached the group and informed them that we had appointed ourselves as their official groupies (lackeys would be a better term) for the duration of the festival. I don't recall now what this function consisted of besides buying them the occasional drink. We were too cool to take mutual photographs or even ask for autographs, so all that is left is my failing memory. By this time, Bob Johnson and Rick Kemp had replaced Martin Carthy and Ashley Hutchings, and Johnson certainly brought a more fun approach to the group's music.

I have to admit that I haven't listened to the records of this version of SS for many years; I know that I have a 3 cd set that contains their five albums, but I'm not sure exactly where it is. I shall have to look for it, rip the discs then renew my acquaintance with them.

I see that by a cruel coincidence, I wrote about the death of Tim Hart, fellow Steeleye Span member, on this day fourteen years ago.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
220	25/12/2009	Tim Hart, RIP	Obituary, Steeleye Span, 1972, Music festivals, Folktronix
788	25/12/2014	Interfacing with Priority from an external program	Programming, ERP
1101	25/12/2017	Sheet music	Yoni Rechter
1368	25/12/2020	Covid-19 vaccine (2)	Covid-19

Nutrition exams

I last wrote at the beginning of October about the course in Nutrition that I am taking: "I realised with a very heavy heart that the course requires memorising the material but not necessarily understanding it." Of course, that was written before October 7, when the world had somewhat different priorities. After a pause of a week or two, I carried on learning - or at least, reading through - the material. At one stage I looked at the course's timetable and saw that I was far in advance of where I should be. So I stopped.

It was only after receiving an email from one of the course's tutors about two weeks ago that I realised that I had missed an exam that awards 50% of the course's marks. I immediately took the exam - this is an open book exam just like the practice MCQs but with a hard limit of 45 minutes. I didn't bother 'revising' for this exam; I knew what I knew and what I didn't know could be looked up, albeit as quickly as possible. I finished the exam with about five minutes to spare. I later explained to the tutor why I had missed the exam - both the local events and my disappointment with the course had contributed to this. I was told that I had received a B for the exam, but no numerical number.

For all of last week I was suffering from a bad cold: I didn't have an elevated temperature or headaches, but I produced phlegm in commercial quantities and my capability for thinking was greatly reduced. Friday and Saturday saw improvements in my condition, and yesterday (Sunday) I felt that at least mentally I was back to full capacity.

So I logged into the university website and discovered that I had missed the second compulsory exam that awards the other 50% of the course's marks. I waited for a lull at work (generally after lunch) then worked on this exam. It was harder, in that there were fewer questions to which I knew the answers without thinking, and some of the other questions defied my lookup capabilities. In the end, the exam cut off before I had answered all of the questions (maybe one or two were incomplete). Results won't be announced for another couple of weeks.

I imagine that I passed the course - my professional pride won't allow for anything else - but to be honest, I don't really care. At the moment, I don't have any intention of continuing these studies; I don't have any motivation and most of the other courses in the degree or certificate tracks don't really interest me. At least the function of this course - to see whether the course or subject or studying methods are suitable for me - has been successful. I dipped my toe in the water but didn't find it too much to my liking.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
152	18/12/2008	Bits and pieces	Weather
436	18/12/2011	Watching the weight / 3	Diet
660	18/12/2013	DCI Banks mistakes	DCI Banks, Peter Robinson
992	18/12/2016	Robbie Robertson - Testimony	The Band
1448	18/12/2021	A fruitful day, part one: "Building the life" (new song)	Song writing, Janis Ian
1449	18/12/2021	A fruitful day, part two: a conversation with my doctoral supervisor	DBA
1450	18/12/2021	A fruitful day, part three: continuing work on PrioXRef	Programming, Personal
1451	18/12/2021	Further thoughts on running Excel from a background thread	Programming, Delphi, Office automation

Days of Chanuka

At the entrance to the kibbutz has been erected a large Chanukiya, in memory of Ro'i Rozner, the young kibbutz member who died last year. I wanted to get a picture of this during the period when the 'candles' are lit. Last night was the second night of Chanuka, so two 'candles' are lit. I note that here they are lit from right to left whereas at home we lit from left to right.

A few extra notes about the performance on Thursday night: there was a professional photographer wandering around and taking pictures. At the moment I haven't seen any notification about his work (e.g. uploading his pictures to the kibbutz website), although when I got home on Thursday I received a WhatsApp message saying that 'my magnet is in my postbox'. It appears that this photographer was like those at weddings who take hundreds of pictures then straightaway put them on magnets so that people have a reminder of the wedding. Indeed, he may have put up a board in the lobby to the auditorium where the magnets were shown, but the lobby was so full of people (and I was busy taking parts of the drum kit back to our rehearsal room) that I couldn't see anything except people.

My wife said "It's good that you were wearing a black shirt", or in other words that I look good in the photographs. I replied that it was a shame that most of my fellow musicians didn't make any sartorial effort.

I've uploaded three song videos to YouTube:

• You don't have to worry - this is the song that I wrote about yesterday
• There is love inside of me
• Together

There should be a fourth song, the most ambitious that we have played, but for some reason I have this in two parts with a few seconds missing in the middle. No problem, I thought: I'll use one of the video editor programs to stitch the two together, and while I'm at it, I'll crop the video a little. I then spent at least one frustrating hour trying to do this. I think that the problems started with the fact that the files were in mp4 format. Movie Maker wants its own format, so first I tried looking for free offline video editing software on the Internet. I found a few and tried working with them: for some reason, the picture got turned upside down (i.e. rotated by 180°). I sorted this out and added a dissolve between the two videos; although there was sound in the video editor, the final output file was silent. This happened in a few different programs. Then I tried converting mp4 to MWV but again the resulting file was silent. I discovered that Movie Maker can accept mp4 files, but there seems to be a problem with mp4 files coming from an iPhone. 

I'll conclude with something different: whilst walking the dog at 6:15 am yesterday morning, I was struck by the cloud formation and how it was lit by the rising sun. So I whipped out my phone and took a picture that for once was successful.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
113	09/12/2007	Uncle	Uncle
218	09/12/2009	After the accounting exam	MBA
525	09/12/2012	Guitar stand	Guitars
659	09/12/2013	Gymnopedie Number 3?	Woody Allen, Satie
907	09/12/2015	Margin call and redundancy	Films, Business novel
989	09/12/2016	Greg Lake, RIP	Obituary, King Crimson
1097	09/12/2017	Delphi 7/Hebrew programs running on Windows 10	Programming, Delphi, Unicode
1562	09/12/2022	Yitzchak Klepter, 1950-2022	Israel, Obituary

Chanuka 2023

Yesterday evening was a confluence of events: Chanuka, the 75^th anniversary of the founding of Kibbutz Tzora and my younger grand-daughter's 5^th birthday. Two of these events were celebrated last night in a show held in the kibbutz auditorium, attended by many members and even more children.

Of course, the joy of the evening was tempered by the general mood of the kibbutz and the country: we cannot forget the captives/hostages/prisoners of war being held in Gaza. Alongside atrocious stories of rape and child beating, we also heard in the past few days admissions from the general public of Gaza at how annoyed they are at Hamas. It's not enough that they (Hamas) brought yet another a war to the residents, their leaders hide underground whilst the general populace suffers. Most of the humanitarian aid sent to Gaza is looted by Hamas, leaving only little for the real sufferers. 

On the other hand, there was a great deal of joy and general emotional release in the auditorium last night: those on stage tried to bring some normalcy to our lives.

On to the musical group: we had prepared four songs; as I wrote a few weeks ago, a set of songs that would bring a message of hope and peace. The songs were interposed between the lighting of the candles; this arrangement was slightly offputting as I'm fairly sure that we would all have preferred playing the songs in one go.

We opened with a song that dates from the Yom Kippur war - I realised afterwards that I was the only one of the group who remembers the song 'in real time'; in fact, I was the only one of us even alive in 1973 (i.e. the others had yet to be born). There is a tradition of sending food parcels to soldiers; this song upset the tradition by asking for underwear instead of cake! It was appropriate in 1973 and is still appropriate in 2023. Here's the link to the original version of the song; I hadn't listened to this as I knew the song well enough even though I had never played it. Listening to it now, I am struck by the double lead guitars in the introduction - maybe influenced by Kaveret, whose staggering debut album had been released only a few months prior to the war.

The reason that I'm looking a bit clueless at the beginning is that I thought we were starting with a different song; I only caught on in the first seconds. One can hear the audience joining in.

As opposed to our previous two appearances, this time the audience was in darkness which removed some of the distractions that plagued me in the past. During our second song, I saw that a sizeable part of the audience had lit the torches of their mobile phones - very touching.

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. Last night was relaxed and enjoyable, and at the end I wish we could have played the whole set again. On the other hand, I am informed that some of the younger children in the audience had exceeded their attention span and were noisy, impairing the enjoyment of others. 

Final words: putting the 'nines' on the Stagg helped a great deal.

A close up, courtesy of my daughter

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
316	08/12/2010	Project management exam	Jewish holidays, MBA, Project management
432	08/12/2011	Post mortem on the Finance exam	MBA, Finance
658	08/12/2013	International dressing	Personal
1095	08/12/2017	Trip to the Dead Sea	Israel, Personal
1096	08/12/2017	Dead Sea, part 2	Personal
1190	08/12/2018	First official picture	Grandfather
1278	08/12/2019	The new DVD: what I have learned in a week	DVD

Restringing the Stagg - again

The musical group will be playing on the first night of Chanuka, 7 Dec, and somehow the songs that we were originally intending to play have been replaced by other, more uplifting, songs. This means that I'm only fingerpicking one song whereas I'm providing rhythm strokes for another three. As a result, I have decided to use the Stagg Tele; apart from anything else, it will also be lighter to hold. Continuing from my thoughts from a few days ago, I went to buy a set of "nines" that should be more gentle with my fingers.

There is a music store in Bet Shemesh, although it's in an area that I don't normally visit. As I was in the town yesterday buying meat, I thought that I would travel another kilometre to visit this store. It's very small but there are several items that I would like to purchase (it's like walking into a bookshop for me). There were about fifteen guitars on display: ten electrics and five acoustics (these were cheap ones). One of the electrics was an Epiphone, possibly of the famous 335 type, but I didn't have my reading glasses with me so I couldn't see the model number. There were guitar leads (no need to have ordered them from another shop and wait several weeks for them to arrive) as well as guitar strings and all manner of other instruments. I asked for a set of "nines", as shown on the left. They cost me a few shekels less than the price that an online seller in Israel was selling, and of course, no delivery charge.

In the evening, I set about restringing the Stagg. I've seen on YouTube videos where guitar techs don't free strings from the tuning pegs then pull them through the body; instead they reduce the tension then cut the strings in the middle. This makes it much easier to extract the strings from the body. Once I had all the strings off, I checked the fingerboard for dirt. I couldn't see any but gave the board a wipe down all the same. When I was last at the dental clinic, I asked for a disused probe: I can use this to scrape dirt off the fingerboard in the future. I then added the new set of strings. Previously I would add one string at a time, pushing it through the body then into the tuning pegs, but the video that I checked yesterday had the tech pushing all six strings through the body first. I don't think this is any easier, but there isn't much difference.

For some reason, the lowest string was pulling the nut to the left of the guitar, and after a moment or two, the nut flew off the guitar. I've never seen this happen before. So my wife glued the nut to where it sits in the guitar neck (she's much better than me at delicate handwork like this) and then I hung the guitar back on the wall to give the glue a chance to set. 

Today I carried on threading the strings through the nut via the string trees and into the machine heads. After threading them (and making sure that the windings are below the excess sticking out), I cut off most of the excess on each string. I then tuned the guitar approximately and now I'm leaving it for a few hours to settle down. I'll retune again in the evening. Apparently nines go out of tune more often than tens. We'll see.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
111	01/12/2007	Sleep	Apnea, Anaemia
654	01/12/2013	Critical week	DBA
779	01/12/2014	My army service - part one	Israel, Personal
1361	01/12/2020	E-hour minus 4	DBA
1362	01/12/2020	Viva result	DBA
1444	01/12/2021	My body is like a barometer	Weather
1558	01/12/2022	Christine McVie, RIP	Obituary, Fleetwood Mac

Guitar thoughts

I have a few mild complaints about my Stagg guitar; I was thinking about them yesterday and may have come across some solutions. First off, the volume of the neck pickup is less than the bridge pickup. Solution: raise the pickup! I hadn't noticed but there are two screws next to the neck pickup, one on each side. These are intended specifically for raising or lowering the pickup. I took a suitable screwdriver and gently turned the screws - the pickup rose (I checked that the pickup does not interfere with the strings, even when played on the highest frets). I will, of course, have to check with an amplifier that this simple procedure has made a positive difference. 

I put a new set of strings on the guitar a few weeks ago; these are "tens" in the professional parlance. I have noticed that these strings are hard on my left hand, leaving deep marks on my finger tips. I think that using a set of "nines" on the Stagg would make the strings more considerate towards my fingers. It's a bit early to be changing the strings again but it's something that I'll bear in mind for next time. Incidentally, the fret buzzing that I noticed after changing the strings has disappeared, presumably because the strings have had a chance to settle down. "Tens" are fine on the Washburn.

It looks like the musical group - I'd like to call it Heptagon - will be playing at the opening night of the Chanuka festival on 7 December. There are some songs that I would prefer to play on the Washburn and some I would prefer to play on the Stagg; I wrote about this here, suggesting that I need a little mixer that would allow me to have both connected at the same time. A short Internet search found what I was looking for; after I ordered it, I realised that it's basically the same as the headphone amplifier that I wrote about several years ago, except that the headphones mixer is stereo and I want a mono mixer. But I probably could use this mixer for the guitars if I decide to take both (this may seem like overkill). Something else to check.

As it happens, I ordered a few extra guitar leads including one short 0.5 metre lead a few weeks ago; even though this was from an Israeli shop, they still have yet to arrive ("there's a shortage of drivers", I was told when I phoned last week to check), although they are supposed to come in a few days' time. Just as well, as the extra leads will help me check how the mixer works, and also because last night I was having trouble with my usual guitar lead. I swapped this with another lead that I have in my guitar bag and the problems went away.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
1443	26/11/2021	Opening Excel from a thread and displaying a file	Programming, Delphi, Office automation

An obscure seventh chord in the wild

A month ago, I wrote a blog showing various seventh chords, including a few that are more notional than useful. As it happens, the musical group is working on a song (by my fave Yoni Rechter) than includes one of the rarer seventh chords - C7b5. This chords appears at the end of a line and is then followed by a row of chords descending by a semitone. At first I thought that this was a misprint in the chord chart to be found on a public site (i.e. not that of Rechter) as other songs on this site often have errors in the chords posted, but after thinking it through a great deal, I realised that this indeed is the chord. The melody note played over this chord is F#, and indeed this chord contains an F# (or more accurately, Gb, as it's the G that is being flattened). I tried a few other chords that contain F# but none of them sounded correct.

I saw an interesting YouTube video about a week ago that states as the basis of a school of harmonic thought that all music is based on tritones. For example, the perfect cadence (e.g. G7 -> C) has a tritone in the G7 (B, F) resolving in the C (C, E): that's what makes it sound so perfect. As I tend not to have perfect cadences in my songs, I noted the idea about tritones but didn't think about it very much.

C7b5 is a great example of a double tritone chord: any dominant seventh chord (e.g. C7) is going to contain one tritone (in this case, E, Bb), but this chord has a second tritone (C, Gb). That second tritone would not resolve normally by a semitone if followed by an F chord. The double tritone also makes it difficult to figure out a chord shape for the guitar - one doesn't want the E and the Gb on adjacent strings, and similarly not the Bb and C. In the chord diagram at the top, the shape on the right is probably the one that I will use as I can lower it by semitones as required by the song. The notes, from bottom to top, are C Gb Bb E - this has all four notes, and no two notes are separated by a tone.

After trying out the various shapes, the chord on the left seems the most appropriate. The notes are C, Gb, Bb, E. I actually developed this shape myself before noticing that it was one of the shapes in the picture.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
430	20/11/2011	Two spy novels	MI5, Liz Carlyle, Charles Cumming
650	20/11/2013	More song festival	MIDI, Song writing
651	20/11/2013	Stack Overflow	Programming, Kibbutz
1554	20/11/2022	Belated discovery about indices and ClientDataSets	Programming, Delphi, SQL, ClientDataSet

Network upgrades and printer problems

Over the past few months, the kibbutz has been updating the internal network wriring: instead of utilising the old copper cables that were laid down for telephones, the "optic fibre to the house" project has been upgrading everyone's connection so that they will have an optic fibre cable from the main network server to the house. This should improve connection speeds by a factor of 10. Due to the war, there were a few weeks in which nothing happened, but in the past two weeks, four houses a day (which means 16 households in most cases) have been updated. My turn came at the beginning of last week.

One day a team installed the physical cable that comes out of the wall one metre from where I am sitting. A few days later, another team turned up with a new optical router that takes as input the optic fibre and provides four ethernet ports as well as wireless access. Two computers are connected to the router by network cable, so they didn't notice the change. I ran wireless network detection on my mobile phone to find the new network name ("noam_wireless_5GHZ") and connected the phone without problem. One computer that connects by wireless also found this network and connected. But on another computer, the only network detected still went by the name "noam_wireless", even though the previous wireless router had been disconnected both from the network and from the electricity. After rebooting the computer, I tried connecting to this old/new network; the connection was successful, and I noticed that transferring a large file via AnyDesk worked much faster, so obviously the computer is connected to the new network.

But my printer had disappeared (not physically, of course). I couldn't figure out how to reconnect to the printer, or more accurately, get the printer to connect to the new network. My original blog on the topic was not useful: "I failed to connect the printer to my wifi: I gave it the network name and password but no connection was made. When I installed the printer driver on the computer, it gave the option of accessing the printer via its own wifi.And lo and behold: I can now print from my mobile to the printer via the magic of wifi!".

The printer is connected via USB cable to one of the computers that connects to the network via cable, so I thought that I should be able to use this connection in order to change settings on the printer. I don't remember exactly now, but I think that I was unsuccessful in this. On the other hand, I was able to access the printer via its own wireless network; I connected my main (wireless) computer to this network then pointed a browser window at the printer's address. I couldn't log on as administrator at first, so I had to reset the password on the printer itself (this is explained in the printer's manual). Once I had opened the browser window as administrator, I redefined the local network, but still couldn't get the printer to connect to this network. I did discover, however, that a file that I had sent to the printer got printed when my computer was connected to the printer's network. 

At the same time, I noticed that the toner capacity was at 0%, so of course I had to change the toner cartridge. I wrote in that blog from 18 months ago that I ordered a replacement cartridge from Amazon; when I opened up the box, I discovered that the cartridge was model PA-211. Despite being touted as suitable for my printer, I received an error message after I installed the cartridge. So I was forced to order a new cartridge from an Israeli supplier, this time insisting on model PA-210, which is the number of the original cartridge that I extracted from the printer.

This arrived the other day (i.e. within a few days of ordering), and today I had the time to install it; the printer accepted the new cartridge gracefully. Then came the time to try and reconnect my computer to the printer: I opened up the control panel on my computer and went to the 'devices and printers' section, choosing 'Add a new printer'. Three printer types appeared (presumably this means that their drivers had been installed previously); I chose the Pantum printer, waited a few minutes ... then saw that I (or more accurately, the computer) had a connection to the printer. I sent a test page and saw it print. This presumably is what I meant when I wrote last year "it gave the option of accessing the printer via its own wifi", although now I didn't see such an option. Maybe the printer driver was still defined as accessing the printer via its own wifi, so the driver looked for the printer's network signature, found it and connected my computer. In other words, this seems to have absolutely nothing to do with changing to an optical router. I should point out that I connected the printer to the optical router with an ethernet cable, although I have no idea whether this made any difference.

Hopefully now the only maintenance that I need perform on the printer is changing its cartridge once a year.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
649	19/11/2013	What's in a name?	Israel, Personal
904	19/11/2015	Even dogs in the wild	Ian Rankin
1186	19/11/2018	E dorian	Song writing, Music theory
1274	19/11/2019	The luxury of digital recording	MIDI, Kibbutz, Song writing
1441	19/11/2021	Tables in Word documents opened in a thread	Programming, Delphi, Office automation
1553	19/11/2022	DBA update	DBA

The musical group reconvenes

Due to the Jewish holidays, the musical group took a break from 17 September onwards, intending to recommence rehearsals at the beginning of October. Of course, the events of 7 October were such that no one felt in the slightest bit interested in playing rock music; nothing was said but there were no rehearsals. 

About ten days ago, the bassist sent a message to our WhatsApp group, suggesting that we start working on new material, possibly for a performance during the kibbutz's 75th birthday, possibly for Chanuka and possibly for a performance intended to raise public moral. I posted back saying that I had had similar thoughts, but that we should ignore our previous repertoire and work on a more 'unplugged' set of songs that would bring a message of hope and peace. We then entered a phase of suggesting more and more songs; last week we worked on three songs quite deeply, and one we barely touched. Presumably tonight we will work on that one song that we agreed upon as well as two others.

As these songs are quieter, or rather less "rocky", I decided to fingerpick most of them. I admit to finding it difficult to fingerpick well on the Stagg; the fingerboard is narrower than what I am used to and the strings seem to be at a higher tension. This morning I tried out the three songs from last week and found it much easier to play them well on the Washburn. So I'll take this guitar tonight.

This makes me wonder whether I'll end up taking two guitars to any public performance - in which case I need a way of switching between them quietly. I bought a small mixer several years ago but I was very disappointed in it as it seemed to suck all the tones out of the sound. Maybe I can find another one that will be more suitable, although of course there's no real way of knowing in advance how it will affect the sound.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
145	18/11/2008	Lonely at the top	MIDI, Randy Newman
305	18/11/2010	How to save money when ordering books from abroad	Book depository
306	18/11/2010	Alesis Q49	MIDI, King Crimson, Antibes
521	18/11/2012	Warming up for DBA exam	DBA
777	18/11/2014	Enron's spreadsheets	DBA, Excel
1552	18/11/2022	Fairport news	Fairport Convention
1687	18/11/2023	The musical group reconvenes	Musical group

Counting beats with Van der Graaf Generator (4) - Whatever would Robert have said?

This song starts in classic early VdGG style - ethereal organ, breathy saxophone, acoustic guitar accents. There's only one other song that starts like this - "Boat of millions of years" - that was relegated to the b-side of the single "Refugees". Both of these songs were on the "1968-1972" sampler that I had and played to death during 1973.

Most of this song is clearly in 4/4 time; in fact, the pentatonic scales played by the electric guitar make it the closest to a normal rock song, especially in the period 4:00 - 5:00. But this section is followed by a short organ break whose time signature I have never managed to figure out. This section appears at the end of every verse, but is so fast and over so quickly, making it hard to analyse.

The YouTuber played this song on his channel and table-drummed the rhythm. I fell off my chair laughing as it seemed to be the 'America' rhythm - a bar of 6/8 alternating with a bar of 3/4. Why not? After all, in a few years time, the group Yes would set the opening of one of their more famous tunes ('Yours is no disgrace') to the rhythm of 'Bonanza'!

I thought that I would check this against listening to the song a few times; I was disappointed to discover that whilst there is an influence of 'America', that's not what's being played. As far as I can determine, it's one bar of 6/4 (?) with the first half being played fast and the second half slow.

Whilst there are sites that give (more or less) chord charts for several VdGG songs, none of them give the rhythms, so I can't check what I feel.

For those who don't know, the eponymous Robert is Robert J. Van der Graaff, who gave the band its name (along with a misspelling).

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
647	16/11/2013	Song festival	MIDI, Kibbutz, Song writing
1358	16/11/2020	Vinyl log #32	Vinyl log, Heron