Razer Ornata v3 keyboard

Two months ago, when I bought my new computer, I wrote¹: the keyboard on the new computer is not very good; I suppose it's a function of getting used to it, but at the moment, I am inclined to invest in a better keyboard. All morning I kept on hitting the 'PrintScreen' key when I wanted to press F12 - that's very annoying. Finally I got around to doing something about this and purchased a new and heavier keyboard - a Razer Ornata v3.

This seems to be very much a gaming keyboard although that is not my interest. It's packaged very well and the USB plug even comes with a terminator (if that's the correct word). When I plugged it in, the keyboard seemed not to respond but that's probably because the computer was asleep. But I couldn't awake the computer via the keyboard because the keyboard wasn't recognised yet. I touched the power button lightly on the computer which caused it to spring to life and recognise the keyboard.

The first thing that I noted was that the keyboard changed colour every 30 seconds or so - very distracting. So I had to look for the firmware that would allow me to turn this 'functionality' off. I had to log in to the vendor's web page, possibly created a user ID and went through several screens before I could find something to download. In the end, several programs were downloaded - these are mainly intended for gamers and show demos of various games and products. Eventually I found the dialog that would allow me to turn off the colour show. This entire process was very annoying but fortunately I won't have to do it again. I have left the software installed on the computer in case I change my mind, or want to impress one of my grand-daughers, or have an epileptic fit.

Otherwise the keyboard itself seems fine - maybe I would have preferred something even heavier, but it's certainly better than the cheap keyboard that I had previously. I'll know soon enough whether this was a good purchase.

And talking of purchasing: I bought this from one of the shops in the local mall, what we would once call a stationers. It cost me 199 NIS which when amortised over several years amounts to nothing. When searching for a picture of the keyboard, I saw that the official importers charge 299 NIS for this keyboard. As the Americans probably say, do the math. 

Internal links
[1] 2065

---

This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
1302	26/03/2020	Counting beats with van der Graaf (2)	Van der Graaf Generator, Time signatures
1303	26/03/2020	Days of Corona (2)	Health, Covid-19
1487	26/03/2022	"You hold me" - you've heard the song, now watch the video	Home movies, Song videos
1915	26/03/2025	Clinging to the wreckage ... and legal morality	Israel

Getting used to my new computer and starting to convert Delphi programs

As I wrote yesterday¹, I bought a new and fancy computer with 16 GB memory. This should make working with Delphi a pleasure instead of a pain. Also the new screen is much larger than the screen on my laptop so of course all the windows aren't scrunched up together. Connecting everything was easy, although most of this involved getting underneath my desk. The computer has many USB ports, both at the back and in the front. It even has a PS/2 socket for a keyboard! Those disappeared at least ten years ago. The DVD drive does not work at the moment - inserting a disk caused the red light to come on, but the computer doesn't detect the drive.

The computer comes with Windows 11 which currently is not particularly user-friendly. No doubt I will get accustomed to it in the future and change settings so that it works the way that I want it to work and not the other way around.

The first software that I installed on the computer was AnyDesk, but that was only so that I could copy across the VNC program ("TightVNC") that I have begun using at home. This program allows for remote control but only for computers in the same network: this is fine. If I want to transfer files from one computer to another (as one does), these files only go as far as the router on my desk and not to the greater Internet, thus the transfers should be faster.

I had great difficulty in setting up the SQL Manager program on the new computer. Installing it was simple but defining the localhost connection was difficult and took many attempts. Before installing it, I first installed Firebird 2.5 which went quickly, but I forgot the values of certain definitions, which is why getting the manager to work took so long. The localhost connection is with protocol TCP/IP, port 3051. The security DB is in the firebird/bin directory, as is the correct version of fbclient.dll. My major mistake was trying to set up the connection with an old version of fbclient.dll. Remember: the correct version will always be in the firebird/bin directory.

Eventually the Manager was set up and I could register databases. At first, I was worried as the 'register database' asks for the default character set, and I couldn't find UTF-8 amongst the choosable options. There is, fortunately, a button next to that field with the legend 'Get default' - this sets UTF8. Thank God. Once this was done, I could access the new unicode database that I had created yesterday and copied to the new computer. I also registered the old database with character set WIN1255. 

In the Delphi conversion program, I had to update the locations of the two database files as I had cleverly used a different name. That was easy to fix. Running the conversion program was very simple. Yesterday I added functionality that allows me to see when the conversion started and when it finished: on the laptop it took 19 minutes to convert everything. On the new computer, it took only 6 minutes!

Today I started work on converting the program that reads the database to Delphi 10.2. At first glance, this looked very easy, as all Hebrew text displayed on components was automatically converted to Unicode, and only the Hebrew that resides within program texts had to be converted. But the problems started when I tried accessing the data. Basically the UTF-8 bug bit me once again. After no small amount of struggle, I abandoned the database components that had served me well over the past 15 years (the program that I'm working on was converted to Firebird/dbExpress² on 04/10/09) and adopted the FireDAC components. These work very well in a test harness.

So now, I will work on adding the dynamic SQL query³ that I have for this database. Once this is done, then I'll work through the entire program, changing what needs to be fixed.

After working for three hours on the new computer screen, it took me a few minutes to adjust to the smaller screen on the mobile computer, which is where I am writing this. On the other hand, the keyboard on the new computer is not very good; I suppose it's a function of getting used to it, but at the moment, I am inclined to invest in a better keyboard. All morning I kept on hitting the 'PrintScreen' key when I wanted to press F12 - that's very annoying.

Internal links
[1] 2064
[2] 201
[3] 573

---

This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
670	24/01/2014	Song festival - videos	Kibbutz
921	24/01/2016	Bitten by the bug	Programming, Priority tips
1373	24/01/2021	Winter sun (new song) - and musings on Carole King and obscure chords	Song writing, Home recording
1710	24/01/2024	The Ryan Universe	Tom Clancy

Powered USB hub

A month ago, I wrote¹ that my mobile computer had been transferred to a new case, and that in the process it had lost a USB port. The computer has two ports: one is used by the mouse (itself problematic in that I have the mouse on the right hand side of the computer and the ports are on the left side) and one by headphones. If I want to connect anything extra, I normally remove the headphone plug. I do have a USB hub with four sockets but this isn't very useful as the connected devices are dependent solely on the power supplied by the USB socket and frequently this isn't sufficient. I use this hub as a simple extension cord for the mouse.

The solution is a powered USB hub: one cable connects the hub to power and one cable connects the hub to the computer. I ordered such a hub (pictured on the left) from Temu that arrived yesterday. Today I connected everything and the problems started.

Maybe I'm naive but I connected the cables the wrong way around: the cable that comes out of the hub (pictured at the top) is not the power cable but rather the cable that connects to the computer. The other cable has a USB plug on one end and some form of connector on the other end; there is a socket for this connector next to where the internal cable exits the hub. Stupidly, I thought that this was the cable that connects to the computer, even though the connector is one that is more often seen on power supplies, like a multi-head transformer. The hub did not work in its original configuration, but after I switched the cables around, it now works. The useless 'user manual' does not say which cable connects where. 

Another bone of contention is that the power connector doesn't sit completely in the socket. Again, this may be my naivity, but I expect a plug to sit firmly in its socket, especially when it's a plug carrying power. I know it's not 240V AC, but even still, the plug should fit the socket securely. Anyway, the powered hub works and that's what's important. I suppose that I shouldn't complain considering the modest price that I paid for this device.

Internal links
[1] 2041

---

This day in blog 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
1699	30/12/2023	Dreams turned to dust (new song)	Song writing

Internal/External Hard Drive Reader USB 3.0 & Type-C to SATA/IDE Adapter Kit

I bought this device from Temu that allows one to connect old disk drives or newer SSD drives to one's computer via USB. I thought that I would use to to see whether there is any interesting material on an old 3.5" disk drive that I have. I could also use it to restore anything that might have been on one of the SSD drives for my mobile computer that caused the computer to crash¹ in the past.

Connecting an SSD drive was very simple: there is a socket on one side of the drive that matches the pins on the SSD drive. Once this was connected and the USB cable (not visible) that leaves the device was connected to my computer, the disk was visible on my computer. As this disk dates from only a few months ago, I doubt that there is anything that I wanted to restore from it. As far as I was concerned, this was more a proof of concept.

Connecting a 3.5" disk was more problematic. I had difficulty at first figuring out which socket would fit the pins on the drive. Eventually I solved this puzzle as can be seen in the picture. An extra power cable has to be connected from the device to the drive. Even after everything was connected properly, my computer could not see this drive. I looked at the instructions (such as they are) and read: for 3.5" drivers [sic] and old SATA HDD, you need to connect 12V 2A power adapter and 4-pin power cable provided. The 4-pin power cable was connected but I have no 12V 2A power adapter and at the moment I don't have such a power supply. But it so happens that Temu can provide this missing power cable so at some time in the future I'll be able to access this disk as well as any other old drive that I might find (or from my currently languishing XP machine).

The practical value at the moment is zero, but this may well come in handy in the future.

Internal links
[1] 1928

---

This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
434	11/12/2011	50 words for snow - Kate Bush	Kate Bush
991	11/12/2016	Repairing the Kindle	Kindle
1098	11/12/2017	More on Delphi 7/Hebrew/Win 10	Programming, Delphi, Unicode
1446	11/12/2021	Mike Nesmith, RIP	Obituary
1563	11/12/2022	Could it be that it's over? A rant about current Israeli politics.	Israel, 1984, Yehonatan Geffen
1870	11/12/2024	A mistake in a MIDI sequence has a positive outcome	MIDI, Song writing

A bad week for computers

On Sunday, I accompanied my wife to Tel Aviv so that we could sort out some of the inheritance problems arising from my brother in law's will. We had to go to an address in Yaffo (southern Tel Aviv), so unthinkingly we took the train to Tel Aviv, got off at the first station and took a taxi to our destination. It was a long ride. When we finished our business, I saw that the Tel Aviv metro ran very close to where we were, so I checked the route and saw that it would take us to the central train station. When the train came, we alighted and looked for a device where we could clock our travel cards, but we couldn't find one. As both of us can travel on public transport for free, we weren't too bothered. After a stop or two, the train went underground and after a few more stops we arrived at our destination: just like being abroad! There were automatic ticket machines there, but they wouldn't let us out. We explained to the guard who came to check what was happening; she explained that at overground stops, the machines are in the 'bus' shelters; we simply hadn't looked there (this would be like in Italy). As we don't have to pay for the trip, there was no penalty, but someone before us who also didn't 'stamp his card' was charged with a fine.

Reading text messages on our phones, we discovered that there was a major electicity blackout in our area after a pole had caught fire. There was an urgent problem with Priority that had to be fixed so I had no choice but to call the network manager and talk him through the correction that needed to be made. Later I discovered that instead of writing an equals sign (=) in a condition, I had written an unequals sign (<>)! A small difference with a major effect! 

The power came back on at around 16:30, which is when I discovered that my XP computer refused to boot. I assumed that the power supply had gone. The next evening, I took that computer along with my mobile to our local repairman: the mobile worked fine, but its fan would frequently get stuck, thus causing the computer to overheat. There was also a problem with the lid. In the mean time, I used the computer that I have from work for my daily activities: this is fine for working, but I don't have that many books or much music on it. 

After a few broken communications, the repairman told me that the XP computer was completely dead; apart from the power supply, there were several capacitors that had blown. "It's OK", I told him, "I have a reserve computer here for exactly this contingency. Can you move the disks from the old computer to this reserve one?" "Send me a photo of the computer's board", he replied. I did so, only to be told that several of the capacitors on this computer also were dubious. This morning I connected the computer to the peripherals, but it too would not boot. It's a real problem to find a board that is old enough to support XP these days. If the repairman doesn't find one, maybe I'll use a more modern computer and try to build a virtual machine that at least will support Delphi 7. I don't know what I'll do about music.

I picked up the mobile an hour or so ago. It has a completely new case which on one hand is good, but on the other hand, I've lost a USB port. There are now only two which are on the left hand side, making life problematic for the mouse. I'm using an extension cable at the moment.

The work computer could not access emails sent to my home computer, whereas my mobile computer can. There were a few blog entries than needed to be uploaded into the blog manager, but the HTML code that the modern version of Outlook creates is not good for the blog manager. After a bit of experiment, I discovered that I can input the HTML code: almost nothing gets entered into the blog manager, but then I can copy the HTML code directly from blogger and everything is fine.

I discovered during the week that I could not connect via Anydesk to the OP's server; problematic as I had been sent an email about a problem whose source was oblique. Eventually I swapped messages with someone there who has a certain amount of technical nous: I saw that the clock on the server was showing some date in 2040. After he corrected the date, I was able to connect to that computer. There were several entries in one table that had completely wrong dates - this was the source of the problem. I hand corrected those entries and now everything more or less seems to be ok there. 

I don't think that there'll be a Prolog blog this week. I'll try and bring the code up in Delphi 10 Seattle that I have on this mobile; it should be fine, but there may be a required change in syntax here or there. Programs created by this version are about 10 times larger than under Delphi 7 and I find the programming environment to be very cluttered.

---

This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
313	28/11/2010	Sumptuous Sunday 2	Cooking
1094	28/11/2017	Research proposal accepted!	DBA
1188	28/11/2018	Executing a program and waiting for it to finish	Programming, Delphi

Discoveries

I wrote about the rechargeable wireless business clip-on earbud¹ a few weeks ago; since then, I've been accustomed to using it.  This morning I popped out of the house to pick up a parcel; I had the earbud in my ear before I left, and I decided to keep it there. Of course, someone telephoned me when I was out. I didn't even have to take my phone from my pocket: I simply pressed on the correct button and talked. When I came back with the parcel, I forgot that I had the earbud in; I picked up the headphones connected to the computer and continued listening to music. A bit later, someone else called, or maybe it was a WhatsApp message which is when I realised that I could hear both the earbud and the headphones. In other words, when someone calls, I only have to remove the headphones; I don't have to start fiddling around with the earbud because it's already in my ear. So I'll put it in when I start work in the morning and I'll take it out in the evening.

My regular computer has been giving me problems ² again. On Sunday morning, the first working day of the month (and incidentally my birthday), the computer simply stopped in its tracks maybe five times in the space of an hour. I gave up and continued working with the computer that I have from work. This second computer doesn't have a separate numerical keyboard (which I find very useful) and has a smaller screen, but it has never given me any problems. After working with this computer non-stop for a day and a half, I wanted to print something. This computer does not have my Pantum printer³ defined, so I dug out the installation cd and copied its contents to the computer. I then ran the setup program; this installed not only the printer but also the scanner program that for some reason was not defined on my primary computer. This morning I've been working without any problem on the primary; maybe the problem was overheating*. Anyway, now that I know that the scanner can be installed, I went ahead and installed it on this computer. No more scanning via a third computer then transferring the files via Anydesk.

Unfortunately, scanning takes a long time (several minutes for a page): this is because the data has to be transferred via wifi. The scanner is connected physically to the XP computer with a USB cable, so naturally that works much faster.

I also found out how the computers - and my mobile phone, for that matter - connect with the printer: I originally wrote "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!" But this isn't strictly true. What actually happens is that the printer is connected to the router via a network cable, whereas the computers and phone connect to the router via wifi. The computers are not connecting to the printer's wifi but to the router. This isn't going to change anything - as opposed to the first two discoveries - but it's nice to know. It also helped me understand how I (or my wife) can print directly from our mobile phones instead of having to send me something by WhatsApp so that my computer can see the message and print it.

* Indeed it was. It was like watching open heart surgery when the technician took the mobile apart, found the fan - that was not turning - and extracted it, in order to clean all the gunk away. Putting it all back together was somewhat nerve-wracking for me, but he knew what he was doing.

Internal links
[1] 1966
[2] 1928
[3] 1477

---

This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
45	05/08/2006	Eilat activities	Israel, Holiday
747	05/08/2014	Information quality	DBA
1652	05/08/2023	Dead Sea weekend	Israel, Personal, Holiday
1797	05/08/2024	Agriculture	Kibbutz

Fourth hard disk

Last week, I reported¹ that my computer froze three times one day. I ran some diagnostics and repair tools that seemed to allieviate the symptoms, or at least improve matters, but each day the computer would freeze. Fortunately no work was lost at any stage; one time I was writing a blog when the computer froze, but when I got back to work, the blog text had been saved upto and including the last word that I had typed. The wireless network link had also disappeared, meaning that I couldn't use the computer even if I wanted to. I completed the blog on my second computer, the one that I have from work. In some respects, this is a better computer - at least, it's never given me any hardware problems - but its screen is smaller and it has no separate numerical keyboard.

At some stage I remembered that the SSD disk had been replaced on the computer several months ago after a similar attack of freezing; could it be that the replacement disk had also been damaged? I backed up various directories to an external hard disk, turned off the computer then took it to my repairman.

Yes, once again, the SSD disk has had to be replaced. I now have a collection of old disks, although I have no idea what I will do with them, or to them. After all, there is some sensitive data on the disks so maybe I should try and destroy them at some stage.

Internal links
[1] 1925

---

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
1748	26/04/2024	Porting an application to Windows 10/Delphi 10.2 (part 5)	Programming, Delphi, Unicode

Digital voice recorder

I mentioned yesterday that I was going to try and use the digital voice recorder which I purchased about six years ago in order to record from our new mixer in the rehearsal room. I charged the device throughout Friday night, and on Saturday morning, I took it down to the room. 

I had already discovered that there is a problem with the recorder: when the USB cable is connected to power, the recorder shows that it is 100% charged, but when I disconnect the cable, the recorder says that its battery is empty and immediately turns itself off. This is annoying but not insurmountable as next to the mixer is a strip of power sockets, so I can always have the recorder connected to power when it is supposed to be recording.

After turning the mixer on and connecting the cable to the input socket on the recorder, my first attempts at recording were unsuccessful and recorded nothing. When I looked at the mixer, I understood why: for some reason, after our final rehearsal, someone muted all the channels. So I unmuted the channels to which were connected some microphones, started recording then walked to a microphone where I counted to eight. I stopped the recording and played it back: I could hear silence then me counting. So it appears that the recorder does record.

When I got home, I continued playing with the recorder. For some reason, the files on it were dated 01/01/15, so I tried to find any setup options that would allow me to set the recorder's date. I did indeed find the required setting and set the date, but as soon as I disconnected the recorder from the power, as noted earlier the recorder turned itself off. When I reconnected the power, the clock had reset to 01/01/15.

But more importantly, I discovered that I could set the input source: there were three options, being microphone, line in and one other that I don't recall. The microphone was set as the input source, and it seems that this change is maintained even if the recorder is turned off. In other words, my test in the rehearsal room didn't test anything as I recorded my counting through the internal microphone and not via the line in socket. Despite this, I strongly suspect that the line in socket will work next time.

As a new voice recorder can be had for about 70 NIS (about $14), I decided to order a new one so that the power problem wouldn't be a problem. A new device would probably solve the problems that I was having with this old one.

Yesterday was also problematic in that my mobile computer froze three times. At first I thought it was because of the voice recorder being connected, but the computer froze after I restarted it. The first step in checking the computer was to run the command sfc /scannow; this checks the validity of the standard Windows files. A few problems were discovered. I then ran the command DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth; this restores any missing Windows files. This completed successfully and a second run of sfc showed no errors, so hopefully the computer should not freeze today. 

---

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
1745	20/04/2024	The morning after the morning after	Musical group

Chrome returns!

Ten months ago, I wrote¹ 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.

I downloaded the Chrome setup program from the Internet and vainly tried to install the browser; each time that I tried, the program simply gave up during the initial installation phase. So after several barren attempts at installing - and also seeking advice on a professional forum where I received no help - I gave up on Chrome and went back to using the Firefox browser that used to be my default browser, several years ago.

The only action that I couldn't do in Firefox that I could in Chrome was access any Priority Web installation (PWI). This wasn't that much of a problem, and a few months ago I realised that I could use yet another browser, Edge, for accessing a PWI. 

So what's changed? My company now has its own PWI, and we even have a user that uses it exclusively. There have been a few times that I have wanted to access this PWI but have never succeeded, even though others have. As it seems that today someone from Priority technical support wants to access our Priority via the PWI, it became important that I have access to it. So I got in touch with our technical support and one of the first things that the technician did was to rename the directory c:\program files (x86)\ google to c:\program files (x86)\ google.old. He then proceeded to install Chrome!

It's a shame that I didn't know about this hack nine months ago. Installing Chrome went without problem, but it took the technician about half an hour to figure out how to access our PWI (VPN and firewall problems). Now I'm set up. There were some bookmarks to add to Chrome (I couldn't seem to export them from Firefox then import them into Chrome) and several to delete.

Internal links
[1] 1733

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
539	19/01/2013	Successfully sending an email in Hebrew with embedded picture and attachment	Programming, Delphi, Email, HTML
919	19/01/2016	Another misuse of Excel / preconceptions	Excel
1464	19/01/2022	Late afternoon walking	Computer, Weather

Back to normal (computer)

I received my repaired computer yesterday morning and I've been working continuously since then with it. Apart from anything else, the larger screen (17 inch?) is a pleasure to work with after the cramped screen of my work mobile. The hard disk (SSD) has been replaced and not only does the new disk directly repair the problem that I had last week, it also fixes several minor problems (like Firefox frequently freezing, more semi-alliteration) that I had ignored but were probably due to problems in reading the disk. 

After all, I'm a software person, not a hardware guy.

One of my first acts was to backup material that has accumulated since March, primarily videos and pictures from our two trips abroad. I discovered that there is no small amount of duplication on the external hard disk, so I devoted several hours to removing the duplicates. The 'videos' directory occupies 148 GB on the computer's hard disk, 'pictures' 19.5 GB and 'songs'/'music' 91.9 GB (although this latter directory on the external disk is probably twice the size), so cleaning up freed a great deal of space on the external disk.

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
263	18/07/2010	The in-basket 3 (whole lotta programming)	Programming, Delphi, In-basket, Combo box
735	18/07/2014	Research proposal submission	DBA
963	18/07/2016	Someone's tired	Grandfather
1242	18/07/2019	Sending data to a procedure	Priority tips

More computer woes

On Friday morning, after finishing whatever tasks I had on hand, I performed a Windows Upgrade on my Win 10 mobile computer. The upgrade completed but the computer would not restart. I turned it off and on again, resulting in the "Preparing automatic repair" message being displayed. The computer prepared and prepared but after twelve hours, it was clear that the automatic repair was not going to happen.

As this was the weekend, I decided to contact my computer technician only after a few days had passed. Last night he told me that there was a problem with the hard disk that he was trying to fix; first he would copy everything to another disk then presumably reformat the disk, so this is going to take some time.

This computer has had an unfortunate history with hard disks: five years ago, the computer slipped off my desk, ruining the hard disk. At the moment, it is simply inconvenient that I don't have that computer. I am working all day (and writing this) with the mobile computer from work so at least nothing there has been affected. This computer has only two usb ports, one of which is permanently used by the mouse (I don't like touchpads on computers) so that gives me a little less freedom. I tried using the usb distributor that I bought many years ago (four sockets) but this doesn't work very well as apparently my devices draw more current than the usb port can supply.

I've copied the blog manager and database programs from Mega to this computer: the last backed-up entry was about Donald Sutherland, from 23/06/24, so there's only a few entries missing. I suppose I could enter those then backup the database.

As usual, the motto is 'wait and see'. 

No 'day in history' today because apparently I have never before written a blog on 16 July. There's always a first time.

Icing on the cake: I lost my housekeys whilst walking the dog, and even though I've gone over our walk three times, I haven't found them.

Mitigating disasters

A week ago, I wrote about two disasters that occurred. I am pleased to say that they have been overcome.

With regard to the PayPal scam, both PayPal and my credit card company recognised the attempted transaction as fraudulent and so did not honour it. I still haven't heard from the company in Australia from whom the goods were ordered, but I presume that they too have ignored 'the order'. I also received my new credit card, the replacement for the one that was left in Rodos. 

I'm still receiving 10-20 spam emails a day; instead of immediately deleting them, I have taken to unsubscribing from the various sites that are sending the mails. This was fine with letters in French, Spanish, Polish and Norwegian (!), but I haven't had much luck with those written in Russian, Mandarin and Arabic. I've been copying parts of these emails into Google Translate in order to find out what the 'unsubscribe' button is but this hasn't always been successful.

As for my XP computer, I waited a few days before taking the computer to the repairman. It turns out that there is a problem with the motherboard, which is very old. He suggested transferring the disks to one of the computers of a comparable vintage that are being discarded by the OP as they have been succeeded by more modern computers. 

These days, I only use that computer for email (from one address), programming and making music, but I don't want to transfer to more modern versions of these programs. I am considering deleting material from the fixed hard disk and transferring files from the extra hard disk (F).

Almost immediately I worked on a new mix for 'Another sleepless night' and transferred the final version to the laptop. I'm listening to it now: the vocal is a bit wobbly (don't forget that I didn't use pitch correction) and sounds very dry (no reverb). I couldn't find a reverb setting that I like. Maybe another remix in the future will fix this.

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
491	21/06/2012	Dubrovnik log 7	Holiday, Dubrovnik
727	21/06/2014	Circumetnea railway (Sicily log 2)	Holiday, Sicily, Italy
957	21/06/2016	Autoharp	Musical instruments
1400	21/06/2021	Neat hack - but is it useful? (Management program)	Programming, Delphi, SQL
1632	21/06/2023	Metabolical	Non-fiction books, Erythritol, Nutrition

Today's disasters

As usual, I accessed the emails sent to my personal email address. Once upon a time, there would be 20 emails a day that I would receive from various musical mailing lists, but now most of these are inactive, so 10 emails a day is now a huge amount. I was told that the program was downloading 128 out of 1225 emails! Obviously something was wrong.

Somehow one of my computers has been hacked. Most of those emails were obviously rubbish; some were asking me to authorise my attempt to create an account for one service or another. I was in the process of deleting all of them when I noticed that there was an email from Paypal, informing me that I had authorised a payment to some company for $666.36. Apparently I had ordered a computer to be delivered to an address in Australia.

Obviously this is false. I connected to Paypal and through them sent a message to the vendor denying the order. Then I was back in Paypal and ordered them not to honour the payment. I saw in my Paypal mailbox three messages trying to authorise this payment, each message on a different credit card that I have registered at PP - including the card that has been cancelled. Naturally I removed the non-existing credit card and changed my password to something that I'll never remember. 

I also saw a message on my mobile phone informing me of the debit. Customer service will be open from tomorrow morning so I'll speak to them then. I hope that this doesn't mean that the card on which the payment was made will be cancelled. I have yet to receive the replacement for the lost card.

---

After breakfast, I started work on recording vocals for the new song, "Another sleepless night". This went more or less ok. I had recorded a rough vocal the day before, but this was when the air conditioner in my room was working so there was a lot of background noise; I also sang wrong words here and there. The idea of the rough vocal was to help the real vocal with the phrasing.

Then I went swimming. Yesterday's swim was quite painful around the shoulders so I was hoping that today would be better. Indeed it was; I swam 10 lengths without stopping, had a short breather, swam another 6, another breather and finally another 4 lengths - 20 in total. My goal for the next swim is two sets of ten lengths each.

After coming home and showering, I continued to work on the new song. I could hear that very little pitch correction was required - only on a few lines in the final verse. After doing this and turning the vocal into stereo, I considered how I could bolster the repeat of the second half of the bridge. I had just completed this when ... the program told me that it couldn't find the file. Then it couldn't find any of the files that comprise the song.

It turns out that the computer has "forgotten" that it has a disk F on which all of the song files are stored. As I wrote a few weeks ago after having come back from Italy, I discovered that my XP computer would not boot. I got the computer fixed but about a week later the same problem occurred. Now is not quite the same: the computer boots but one of the hard drives is being ignored.

Turning the computer off and then on again (aka 'a hard boot') reveals that indeed the same problem has occurred - the computer can't boot. I imagine that the BIOS has somehow lost its definitions. I don't want to disturb the computer man today - it's Saturday, the Sabbath - but I'll contact him tomorrow to see whether this is something that I can fix. He lives on the other side of the kibbutz and it's a pain dragging the computer over there.

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
84	15/06/2007	More songs with odd time signatures	Fairport Convention, Albion Band, Time signatures
179	15/06/2009	Better late than never	Joni Mitchell
484	15/06/2012	Hvala vam što ste mi pomoci (Dubrovnik log 1)	Holiday, Dubrovnik
597	15/06/2013	Sophie Hannah	Literature, Olivia Williams, Peter Robinson, Ian Rankin
719	15/06/2014	Due Golfi train ride (Sorrento log 4)	Holiday, Sorrento, Italy
865	15/06/2015	Ashley Hutchings, MBE	Fairport Convention
1233	15/06/2019	Swimming debut	Swimming

Milano: the final day

As opposed to all the other days of this holiday, I woke early on Tuesday morning. We had done most of the packing the day before, but there were always more things to pack.

After a final filling breakfast, we took our taxi driver's advice and went to the Duomo looking for the ODStore; if one stands with one's back to the Duomo, then this shop is at the top left hand corner of the piazza. Leaving the Duomo station at the Via Torino exit will bring one to the shop. This is a shop filled to the brim with many kinds of chocolate and biscuits, although I wasn't overly impressed with it. Prices are somewhat variable: I bought in Carrefour several bars of Nero Limone chocolate at about 1.30€, whereas ODStore was selling them for about 3.50€. I saw the same bars in the duty free shops of Malpensa airport for 5€ each, so it's just as well that I stocked up in Carrefour. Opposite the ODStore is a toy shop where my wife bought a variety of toys for our grandchildren. The prices varied from seemingly cheap to reasonable to expensive (anything with a logo). I was more worried about how we would fit all these purchases into our suitcase than about the cost.

There was a light rain falling that made walking about the area inappropriate (I had left my umbrella back at the hotel). Looking down a side street, we saw a good cafe - the Princi bakery. It was a bit confusing at first to know in which queue to stand; I was told (in Italian) that I was standing in the wrong place and that the queue for paying was to the left. We had a delectable large slice of lemon meringue pie along with the traditional tea with milk.

Then it was back to the hotel. We still had several hours to fill before the taxi driver would pick us up. The previous evening next to the metro stop before ours I had seen a shop that purported to sell THE chocolate that I truly love (Baretti e Milano), so I took the opportunity to fill the dead time to walk to this shop. To my surprise, the metro stop was much closer than I had imagined (not much further from the hotel than the stop that we used) but I couldn't find that shop. Shame.

While waiting for the taxi, our travel agent sent us a message saying that the flight had been delayed by an hour, leaving at 23:55. There wasn't much that we could do, so after the driver picked us up and deposited us at Malpensa, we had to wait for more than two hours before we could even check in, due to security reasons. Then we had more time to sit around and do nothing, especially as the airplane hadn't even arrived by 23:55. Boarding was accomplished at about 00:30 Wednesday morning; we landed in Israel some time after 5 am and arrived home at 07:30. I showered and went to bed for a few hours sleep, although that's not enough.

My phone had run out of electricity some time yesterday (Tuesday) so the first thing that I did after arriving was to charge it. By the time I woke up, it had reached 100% which is good; I think that the phone was wasting battery power by looking for networks or something similar. Now the battery is at 94% capacity.

The clip on the top of my mp3 player had broken at some stage. Whilst this of course does not affect the ability to play music, it's mildly annoying and I'll have to order a new one (if it's still being made). When I got home, I discovered that my XP computer would not boot. I knew that it was offline as there was a power cut on the kibbutz a few days ago, but there seems to be something wrong with the hard disk. I've disconnected the computer from everything and will open it up some time, primarily in order to clean out all the dust and dog hair that has accumulated inside. If it won't work after that then it's to the repairman. Thus three electrical devices have either ceased working or need repairing.

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
72	08/05/2007	(Welcome to the) Hotel California	Van der Graaf Generator, Randy Newman, Jackson Browne, CSN, Barney Hoskyns
130	08/05/2008	Amsterdam diary	Programming, Holiday, Amsterdam
357	08/05/2011	More facts your mother never told you about Word automation	Programming, Office automation
581	08/05/2013	Analysing my sleep	CPAP, Gadgets
704	08/05/2014	Doctoring, researching, sampling	DBA, Kindle
1500	08/05/2022	1500 blogs	Meta-blogging

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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

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.

---

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

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.

---

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