Post mortem on IBR3 exam

It rained all night; there was even some thunder and lightning at around 6am. Most people were only too pleased that it was finally raining, but I wasn't: rain has always made me feel depressed.  I suddenly had this terrible thought that the IBR3 exam was on Wednesday and the IBR2 exam on Thursday, which would mean that I had missed one exam and had prepared for the wrong exam ... but it was only the amygdalae playing tricks on me.

I drove to the train station in the car (because of the rain), rode to Tel Aviv - and on the way realised that I had forgotten to pack my calculator. How would I answer the statistics questions without a calculator?? As I would be arriving in Tel Aviv an hour and a half before the exam, I assumed that I would have time to buy one ... if I could find a suitable shop.

I wandered around the area where the exam was to take place, taking note of a shop which might sell calculators (it hadn't opened yet), when I discovered that I was almost directly opposite the anonymous office building in which the exam would take place. So I went in and asked whether I could borrow a calculator - no problem.

The examinees had been told to arrive at least 30 minutes before the exam, which was scheduled to start at 9:30 (so be there at 9). I was there at 8:15. Another person turned up at around 9:10, a third at 9:20 - and the invigilators turned up at 9:25! So much for half an hour early. After some fiddling around - it seemed that the two others didn't have books in which to write their answers - we finally started at 9:45.

My heart sank when I read the paper. Instead of being presented with someone's methodology section of their thesis and being asked to criticise it, there was a short discussion between a candidate and his supervisor. The candidate didn't seem to know anything, or at least had a very naive view of doctoral research. My job (as well as his supervisor's) was to set him straight. Unfortunately, the questions were worded in an unfamiliar way which made writing the essay fairly hard. I wrote for nearly an hour, barely filling two pages. 

I knew that the second half of the exam would be statistics, for which I was prepared, so I was looking forward to this. The first question was, as expected, asking for a chai squared analysis of some figures; this was easy and I got it out of the way quickly. But the second and third questions had me stumped: is the average educational level of the managers from the companies whose mergers failed significantly higher? (I may have got the wording slightly wrong) Higher than what? The third question was the same, only asking about managers from companies whose mergers had succeeded. 

In desperation, I started looking through the formulae which we are given, trying to find something which matched this description. At first, I thought that I had a suitable formula, but the answer that it gave seemed to be completely wrong, and anyway I was missing one term. After thinking about this for about ten minutes, I realised that I could calculate the missing term and then calculate the variation of each group against this. The difference between the two groups is that one group numbered 24 whereas the other group numbered 34; 30 is a magic number in statistics, so one group had to be tested against certain values (the t-statistic) and the other group against different values (the z-statistic).

I do not know whether this is the answer that they were looking for. If it was, then I would have done ok, but if not, then 22 points went down the drain.

The final question, as expected, was to write a short report regarding the statistics results. This was easy.

I looked at the paper again, checked that I had calculated the chai squared correctly, looked at the clock (about 11:50) and realised that staying would not improve any of my answers. So I left the exam, feeling exceedingly dejected. I would not be surprised if I didn't pass the exam.

Normally at this time of the year, one writes about the miracle of Chanuka: how oil which was normally sufficient for one day lasted eight. People often use this when writing about basketball, how Maccabi Tel Aviv win a game against all odds. My Chanuka miracle in the past few years has been that the examiners (MBA and DBA alike) have always asked questions to which I knew the answers. This time, there was reversion to the mean: I didn't know the answers.

The only thing which slightly improves my mood is that in six months time, they probably will ask questions to which I know the answers.

Incidentally, the two other examinees (women in their 30s) were sitting for the second (maybe third) time their finance exam for the MBA. I have never seen them before, which is not surprising in light of the statement that one made when she said that she didn't attend any of the lectures nor the practice sessions. This is someone who wants to get an MBA? The other still has to pass accounting.

The least we can do is wave to each other

After having listened to the Shel Talmy mix of TLWCD for the past ten days, and having the remastered version accompanying my evening power walk for the last two days, I've got this classic album very much on my mind. In that spirit, I would like to offer some random comments

1. In my opinion, the Shel Talmy mix of 'Out of my book' is better than John Anthony's version. First of all, the vocal is in the middle of the stereo as opposed to being on one side (which was a really strange decision). Secondly, in the middle bit, I can hear what sounds like a harpsichord - I've never heard this in the original. But otherwise, the ST mix is worse than the JA mix: vocals, bass and drums are clearer, but the saxes and flutes are mixed much lower. 'Darkness' especially loses most of its power. There are also a few glitches in 'After the flood', but otherwise this sounds fairly like the official version.


2. In 'The book', mention is made of Nic Potter playing electric guitar in 'Whatever would Robert have said" in a last minute addition. To my mind, the final result sounds as if this were planned from the beginning . I've never heard any discussion of the fact that the electric guitar also plays centre stage at the end of 'After the flood' - indeed, David Jackson is nowhere to be heard and it's the guitar which plays the solo. It's conceivable that initially DJ played a solo but was mixed out when NP's part was deemed better, but still....


3. The sequencing of TLWCD bears more than a slight resemblance to the sequencing of another record released a few months before, also with a similarly cumbersome title, 'The court of the crimson king'. Both albums start out with sound effects (wind, a pipe organ) followed by a very strong song; the second track is very gentle, and the third is strong again, but in a different manner to the opening track. The first half of the second side differs, but the final track is another blowout. The same gross structure appears on 'H to He'. Maybe this was a common idea, maybe it was the best idea available, but it does appear to be more than coincidental.

[SO: 3078; 2,11,29]

Critical week

This is going to be the most critical week of my academic career (at least, since a week in March 1978 when I had four final exams for my first degree held in the space of five days): on Thursday, the 'Introduction to Business Research 3' exam will be held, and on Friday, IBR2. Those who follow the story will know that I should have taken IBR2 in June but got the dates mixed up. Maybe this will be the last time I ever have to sit a formal, written exam. I don't remember thinking this in 1978, although I did think it in about 1986 when I took an accounting exam. Little did I know then. I certainly didn't think it a year and a half ago when I sat my final MBA exam as I knew that I would be continuing my career.

If I pass the two exams, then presumably I can start on the interesting part of my doctoral studies. If I fail one or both, then I will have to take it/them again, which means waiting another six months.

I've been working on the material for IBR3 for the past month and am now fairly confident about it. There will be two questions in the exam: the first one will be to read the methodology section of a thesis and point out its strengths and weaknesses, possibly even having to rewrite part of it. The second question will be a statistical analysis of the given data. Almost certainly, part of the analysis will involve the chai squared test, probably in conjunction with some tests regarding regression. I've worked hard on the statistics, as this is easier for me; hopefully I can get a good mark on this part of the exam, thus needing fewer marks from the first half in order to pass. As always, one needs 50% in order to pass, and I'm hoping that I'll get 40 from the second question. I haven't neglected the first part, and after analysing several previous exam papers, I'm fairly aware of the points which I will have to make.

On the other hand, .I wasn't very confident about IBR2 six months ago and I'm not very confident about it now. I've been concentrating on this material for the last couple of days and will devote almost all my remaining time to it now. The trouble - at least, for me - is that the material is too amorphous and difficult to get a grip on. I shall have to work out a strategy for answering, in the same way that I have for IBR3, although previous exam papers seem to be less consistent in their structure.

I thought that the exams, as per previous years, would be held in the seaside hotel, but presumably I'm the only Heriot Watt student left in Israel and it would be too expensive to hire the hall there. A few weeks ago, I was sent instructions telling me that the exams would be held in the British Council building, but a week ago I was sent another letter telling me that the venue has moved. Both these new locations are 5-10 minutes walking distance from a train station in Tel Aviv, so it won't be a problem getting to them. I will phone the contact number on Wednesday to ensure that I go to the correct address. If I'm going to be the only examinee, maybe we can start before the advertised time: the exams are supposed to start at 9:30am, but I imagine that I'll be there by 8:15am. I could of course travel by a later train, but I prefer to be early rather than arrive at the last minute.

[SO: 3068;2,11,29]

Arik Einstein

Anyone in Israel will know that the doyen of Israeli singers, Arik Einstein, died of an aortic aneurysm a few days ago at the age of 75. I'm not going to write an eulogy for him as many have already done so (and people are still laying wreaths at various places in Tel Aviv with which he had a connection) but rather write about what he meant to me.

Arik was at least a decade older than most of the Israeli musicians to which I listen: he was born in 1939 and served in the Nachal entertainment troupe from 1959. So when I first heard him in the autumn of 1973, he was already 34 years old. He made a series of classic records from about 1970 through 1975, had a few years off then made some more classic records. He was the first who wrote lyrics with every day words as opposed to singing poetry, thus making songs much more accessible to the general public.

Musically, his records occupied the same sonic space as the Beatles' "Rubber soul", although with a delay of several years, and most of his pre-1980 records maintained that simple acoustic guitar/electric guitar/piano/bass/drums sound. He very rarely sang with syncopation, which made his records to be not too engrossing. Thus in 1973, he already sounded anachronistic.

His second major talent was to hook up with a young and talented composer - Shalom Hanoch, Miki Gabrielov, Shem Tov Levi, Yoni Rechter and Yitzchak Klapter - making one or two records then moving on. These records naturally had differing styles and placed a seal of approval on the composer.

In the early 80s, he tried his hand with more upbeat material and larger groups (frequently featuring saxophone) which involved coarsening his fine voice. Whilst this was more interesting musically, it was less of a pleasure to listen to him.

I realise that all of the above is a bit muddled. I have a few records of his but never reckoned him as an artist to which I would like to listen. His mission - as far as I was concerned - was to influence and inspire other musicians. In that, he definitely succeeded.

Maybe his greatest strength was that from the 1980s onwards, he stayed at home and never performed in public again. He certainly was never part of the 'celebrity generation' and steered well away from them, maintaining his modesty until the end.

Nostalgia (song festival)

As I wrote the other day, I wrote a melody for the second set of lyrics that I received, but had difficulty in placing some of the lyrics on the melody. Presumably this is what happens when one writes lyrics without a tune to act as a reference: syllable counts don't matter, neither do metre nor emphasis. The name of the song (I assume) is 'Nostalgia', this being the five syllable word being sung at the end of every verse, hence the title of this blog.

I actually wrote to the author asking for some changes; I have yet to receive a reply and was getting worried - maybe she was hurt that I was asking for changes. Last night when I went to bed, I had some ideas both regarding the arrangement and how I could sing the problematic line. I woke up with the phrasing of that line on my lips and felt more confident regarding the recording.

As it happens, I met the lyricist this morning and asked her whether she had received an email from me. She said no, so I then asked whether xx@gmail was her address - yes, she said, but she only reads emails on Saturdays! Relieved, I asked her to ignore the email that I had sent her as I had cracked the problem.

This afternoon, I devoted more time to recording that tricky final verse. It took several takes before I got it exactly right; I also screwed up a few times regarding what might be called the 'engineering' part - deleting takes, correcting takes then losing them, etc. Finally I got the vocal file that I had been working towards, with all the phrasing and pitches that I had wanted. A quick mix with appropriate eq ... and the song is finished.

I read an article the other day which shows how to add a song to a Blogger page - the song itself is in my public Dropbox folder, but supposedly I can add a music player. I have added the necessary HTML code but at the moment I can't see whether it actually exists! What happens is the player appears for a few seconds but disappears before it can be activated; after reading the comments, I see that I have to create an ogg file instead of mp3 - I'll try that. [Edit: the player isn't visible when I'm creating the page, but it appears when the blog is read - and the player can be activated!]

[SO: 3048; 2, 11, 29]

Stack Overflow

I've been casually mentioning the Stack Overflow site on this blog for several years. As far as I can establish, my first mention here was on 25/10/09, but I asked my first question on 25/08/09.

As the site states, Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for professional and enthusiast programmers. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about programming.

Like all the Stack Exchange sites, there are two systems of ranking: one is reputation (Your reputation score goes up when others vote up your questions, answers and edits. As you earn reputation, you'll unlock new privileges like the ability to vote, comment, and even edit other people's posts) and the other is badges (Badges are special achievements you earn for participating on the site. They come in three levels: bronze, silver, and gold).

Sometimes the badges seem puerile (there's a badge awarded for filling in one's biography or logging in every day for a month), but some are more serious and of course, the gold badges are difficult to achieve.

Most of the time, I manage to ignore my reputation and number of badges, but over the past week checking my reputation had become almost obsessive. The reason is that a reputation of over 3,000 enables one to vote to close questions which aren't good (or vote to reopen), and I was so very close to achieving that 3,000 reputation.

Unfortunately, SO doesn't easily allow one to see how the reputation changes over time (that's not strictly true, but it'll do for now). I've been thinking about including my reputation and badges here for some time - not in order to brag, but rather to see where I was standing at a given date. The key is very simple: first the reputation, followed by the number of gold, silver and bronze badges.

At the moment my reputation is 3,013 but having just given a good answer to a question, it may soon increase. Sometimes it happens that people upvote an answer which was given months or even years ago, so there is not necessarily a connection between answering new questions and increases in reputation.

[SO: 3013, 2, 11, 29]

More song festival

I wrote a tune for the second set of lyrics that I received and probably will record a demo this evening.

I find it very interesting to note that when I looked at the first line, I automatically knew that this was going to be a slow, sad song in a minor key (A minor, as it happens!) with a 6/8 time signature. There are lots of songs like this, although I have been racking my brains to try and think of an example which I can quote! The song which does come to mind is 'Because' by the Beatles, but this isn't really an example as the arpeggio has eight notes (the time signature is 4/4); if one thinks of it as 6 + 2, then it's easier to understand how this might be considered an example.

This song was a bit harder to compose than the other song; the melody - bar that first line - was difficult to hear. After finishing the song, I realised that four bars were actually pinched from a song which I wrote 40 years ago (but recently rerecorded); although no one else would know, I would know. I have to admit that the melody was somewhat weak there, so yesterday an alternative chord sequence for those bars appeared. I worked them into the song then found that I needed to change the melody - for the better, I think.

Despite that, I've had so much trouble with a line in the final verse that I decided to return the lyrics to their author, asking for a revision to that line.

The festival organiser thought that my first song was wonderful. I think that she's exaggerating somewhat, but I have to admit that the melody was in my head all day long yesterday.

[SO: 3003, 2, 11, 29]

What's in a name?

Yesterday, the Israeli National Statistics Unit (I'm sure they have a more official name) published data regarding the names given to newly born children in the year 2012. Most of the attention was given to the names given to girls - 850 were called 'Adele', probably in homage to the British singer.*

In the boys department, the most popular name in 2012 was No'am! When I chose my name, some 36 years ago, it was a rare thus meaningful name. Now it's become common. Maybe I should change my name again. One of the children living next door is also called No'am; sometimes I hear a voice calling the name and I answer, not realising that the child is being called and not me.

I note - with a certain elitist disdain - that the name has been spelt in the more 'common' form, where the letter vav carries the 'o' sound - נועם. I spell my name with the archaic "holam haser" vowel, נעם. Such is the phonetic character of modern Hebrew; this is akin to the British spelling 'night' as opposed to the American 'nite', or 'through' versus 'thru'.

Incidentally, the most popular girls name in 2012 was No'a (which literally means movement, as opposed to No'am, delightful). Interesting that the most popular names sound almost the same. I note too that No'a is spelt with a vav as opposed to with holam haser, נועה as opposed to נעה.

* 10 years later, my daughter tells me that the many religious women named Adele are in fact named after the wife of a famous Rabbi.

TV series update

I checked the upcoming programmes on satellite channel BBC Entertainment a few days ago and was pleased to note that the channel is commencing showing several series from their first episodes. This makes it ideal to follow (and possibly record) the series.

• Absolutely fabulous - I loved this series in the 1990s and even bought the first two series on video (which of course I haven't seen in years). It was interesting to watch this again with a more critical eye: Edina is totally over the top and Patsy has tremendous hate for Saffron, but for me, the funniest character was actually Bubble, who got some lovely lines. For example, they were talking about a fashion show starring the model Yasmin Le Bon; her husband Simon Le Bon (lead singer of Duran Duran) called to say that his wife couldn't come, so Bubble says "How progressive of him to take his wife's surname". I am going to record all the episodes of this classic series.

• The office - I saw a few episodes of this many years ago and really hated the character of David Brent. I thought that I would try again, now being a graduate of Organisational Behaviour. My opinion hasn't changed. The only character with whom I felt any form of identification was the lady who came from head office to inform Brent that his was one of two branches which might be closed. Interesting to note that Martin Freeman (The Hobbit, Sherlock, etc) was one of the characters. I won't be continuing with this!

• Hebburn - This is a fairly new programme (from 2012) which I watched with no preconceptions. The series seems to be about a family which lives in the town of Hebburn near Newcastle; the son of the family brings home a girl who initially he presents as his latest girlfriend - although actually they are already married. The only interesting characters are the above girl (presented as Jewish and studying for a doctorate in psychology) and the family mother. Here I will reveal my class bias and state that I found most of the characters 'exceedingly common'. I look (or at least, think that I look) quite like the father of the family, although I hope that I don't share his health problems: he has a heart attack at some time during the series. Whilst I imagine that I'll continue watching this series, I doubt very much that I'll keep it for posterity.

• DCI Banks - I wrote about this several years ago, giving it a scathing review. I think that I had downloaded the 'Aftermath' film from the Internet as opposed to watching it being televised. I presume that BBC Entertainment are going to show as many episodes as they can, which means that my previous judgement may be tempered by episodes which take less liberties with the source material. Of course I'm going to record this.

I've also been watching a few other series which I haven't mentioned here. The primary series is from Australia, entitled 'Rake'; this is about a barrister, but as opposed to other series which I have seen about barristers, this is more about his out-of-court life as opposed to his legal career. I find this series very entertaining, although sometimes it's hard to figure out what they're talking about (strong Australian accents). It's a comedy in the same way that Gavin and Stacey is a comedy, and 'Absolutely Fabulous', 'The office' and 'Hebburn' aren't: it doesn't have funny one liners, but rather situations which tend to be strange, the humour arising from the situations themselves. To my regret, I didn't record this: I would like to see the first episodes again.

The other series which I have been watching half heartedly is 'The good wife'. In my opinion, American TV rarely produces anything which I can watch, the exception being 'The West Wing', of course. Unfortunately, I only hooked up with this from the fifth series, so I don't know any of the back story. It's certainly classy but not totally immersing. At the moment, I've been watching it in lieu of anything better to watch.

I suppose that the main criterion is how I would feel if I missed an episode of one of the above programmes. I would be distraught if I missed an episode of DCI Banks, disappointed if I missed AbFab or Rake, and not bothered about the others. Fortunately, the satellite tv provider generally shows each programme two or three times during the week, so there really should be no reason not to see each programme if I am so inclined.

I don't recall whether I have previously written about regret over not recording programmes. I have dealt with this in the past by recording everything (or nearly everything). Obviously I am not consistent. Somehow I doubt that I am going to feel any regret about not transferring 'The Office' or 'Hebburn' to dvd; I have most of this week to make up my mind as BBC Entertainment will show each programme a few more times this week.

Song festival

My kibbutz will be celebrating its 65th birthday in December. There's quite a heavy programme planned for the first week, but I shall be elsewhere as my two doctoral exams will be held at the end of that first week. 

At the end of the month will be held a song festival; a month or so ago, a call was put out for people to write songs around the theme of the 65th birthday. It was stated that those who only wrote lyrics would have tunes provided for them. I volunteered my services to write tunes.

Yesterday, one of the festival organisers called me and asked whether I was still prepared to write music. I noted that I had the exams at the beginning of the month, but that I would find the time for the music. We agreed that working on songs makes a good distraction from preparing for doctoral exams.

After we spoke, the hint of a tune came to mind. I mentally filed it away for further use, as there was no guarantee that the tune would be at all suitable (in terms of metre) for the lyrics that I would be sent. As it happens, the first set of lyrics which I saw fit almost exactly onto the tune (a nice piece of serendipity), so I was easily able to extend my snippet into something more substantial. I noted that there were some lines which were problematic in that they had too many syllables, but I managed to get around this.

The chord sequence for the verse is a combination of something standard aligned with my harmonic sense: in the key of E minor, there are two repeats of Em | Bm | C | G | Am | B | C | D | followed by two bars of E minor, which link the verse to the chorus. The instrumentation is basically syncopated Rhodes, bass and drums.

The chorus, though, was something else again. At first, I couldn't see much of a rhythm in the words, but after playing with it for a while, I began to see opportunities. The tune which I created for the opening of the chorus used virtually the same chord sequence as the verse, which was a mild annoyance to me, so the next part veered from the standard into more familiar territory for me. Two repeats of Em | Bm | C | G, followed by Am - so far, standard. But the A minor is followed by G minor: Am | Gm | F | Gm | Am | Bb | Am | Bb. At this point, I was worried that I had dug myself into a hole from which I would not extract myself, so I put in a four bar instrumental which brings us back home - C | D | Em | Em. The end part of the chorus serves as the introduction, and there the E minor chords are major.

Whilst I was working out the tune and the chords, I also developed the arrangement. Actually, there isn't much development, as this song is being written for a song festival: the most important part is the words, followed by the tune, followed by the chords and ended by the arrangement. So I settled on a fairly simple arrangement with only small amounts of instrumental fairy dust.

Feeling that the chorus wasn't packing much power - to be honest, the line structure didn't help here - I decided to cut the second chorus short and then repeat it from the beginning, this time in a different key. The first attempt as this was ok, but after thinking about it, I decided to make the cut earlier, then transpose to F#m.

I'll record vocals this afternoon and then we'll see what happens to this song. The fascinating point about this process is that I received the lyrics at about 1:30pm and had a finished song (without vocals) at around 6pm. I would have completed the song that evening had it not been a Friday night, when my daughter comes for a cooked (and formal) meal. 

Do I wish I could normally work this fast? It certainly makes life much easier having a completed set of lyrics. Normally I would work and work on the arrangement, thinning it out at the beginning and adding instrumental dexterity later on, but as I wrote at the beginning, this time the music is not the focal point.

I have also been sent the lyrics to another song. At first glance, these are going to require a completely different approach, but I won't start with them until I finish this first song.

We last had a song competition about fifteen years ago: I took one of my songs and had the lyrics translated into Hebrew. My wife and I sang the song with live backing, and I thought that we did very well. In fact, everyone who had heard the song during rehearsal was impressed. But as the kibbutz as a whole voted on the songs, extraneous factors came into play, and I don't think that the voting reflected the musical quality. We came third, but this left a sour taste in my mouth.

Minimalistic arrangements

As I have probably mentioned at some time in the past, every evening I take a 'power walk' of two kilometers. As this walk is simply ten times around what might be termed a car park, one might consider it to be boring. Indeed, my dog has long learnt that when I'm walking laps, she can sit down and wait for me to finish.

When I walk, I think about programming problems, although lately I've been going over the methods for solving the statistics questions in the doctoral exams. I also listen to music: in fact, this is a chance to listen to clearly recorded/played back material without any distraction. Last night, most of my laps coincided with the Swell Season's "Strict Joy", which took me back four years to the evenings when I would listen to the disc whilst traveling to lectures on organisational behaviour.

About a week ago, my laps coincided with the Blue Nile's "Hats" disc. Every time that I hear these songs, I think that I should be able to create something which sounds similar - but then I remember that my songs tend to have more complex chord sequences, meaning that it would be difficult to imagine the necessary minimalistic arrangements.

This time around, however, I was reminded of a song which I wrote 40 years ago, which has a very simple verse: a two bar phrase (E and F#) which repeats four times. I dug the song up and started arranging it. As usual, getting started took a while, but after a few evenings' cogitation, I had a basic arrangement with picked acoustic guitar and bass. After playing with this for several hours (and in the course of doing so, I added a new chord sequence for the middle eight), I ended up with a complete arrangement. 

I listened to this for a few days but felt unhappy as it wasn't the minimalistic arrangement which I had in mind. The second verse, especially, gave completely the wrong feeling. On a whim, I took out all the instruments except for the bass, a chordal pad and a monotonous drum beat: this was much closer to what I was looking for! I had to change the bass line in a few places, but otherwise no changes were required. I decided to leave in a few instrumental lines, without which the song would have sounded incomplete (these were links between verses and a short solo).

After completing the arrangement, I looked at the words. As these were written 40 years ago, when I wasn't as experienced at songwriting as I am now, I could see that they were clearly the result of a small amount of inspiration and a larger amount of filler. Some of the lines didn't make too much sense and the language was simple. Yesterday, I rewrote the words, keeping the original idea and maybe 40% of the original lyric; I enriched the language and generally improved the lyrics. It helps to look at all the lyrics at one go: one can see where an idea was set up in the opening verse and either repeated verbatim or even negated in the final verse. I was able to change the words around, making a better flow.

I'll probably record the vocal over the weekend; I want to keep this as simple as possible with as few affects as possible. It probably will not even be double tracked. 

The end result may not be The Blue Nile, but it's certainly different from my usual output.

Sorting in Excel via Delphi automation

I was asked to prepare a table for the OP's flagship database, which shows for each question how many people have answered 'yes' and how many 'no'. Getting the data itself was fairly easy but displaying it was something else again.

Basically, I had an array with 480 rows and seven columns, where I had to sort the array by the fourth column; the spreadsheet has a header row. I thought that it would be easy to output the data to Excel then let Excel do the sorting. As it turns out,  I have never had cause to sort in Excel via automation before now, so first I recorded an Excel macro which would sort. This is the result

    
Range("A1:G481").Sort Key1:= Range("D2"), Order1:= xlAscending, Header:= _
  xlGuess, OrderCustom:= 1, MatchCase:= True, Orientation:= xlTopToBottom, _
  DataOption1:= xlSortNormal

While Excel might be able to understand that, it wasn't at all clear how I was going to translate that into a form that Delphi could understand. So I started googling, finding several solutions, none of which worked. Eventually I found the solution which I am documenting here.

 
const
 xlAscending = 1;
 xlNo = 0;
 xlTopToBottom = 1;
 xlSyllabary = 1;

 sheet.Range['A1', 'G481'].Sort (sheet.Range['D2'], xlAscending,
                                 EmptyParam, EmptyParam,  // key2
                                 EmptyParam, EmptyParam,  // key3
                                 xlAscending, xlNo, EmptyParam, True,
                                 xlTopToBottom, xlSyllabary);

Let me explain the 'G481' term: there are seven columns, and Excel labels them alphabetically. So 'A1' refers to the cell at the intersection of the first column and the first row, its neighbour is 'B1', etc. So 'G1' refers to the cell at the intersection of the seventh column and the first row. As there are 480 rows in the array along with a header row, the final cell is G481.

The first parameter to the 'sort' procedure is the column by which the spreadsheet will be sorted; the second parameter presumably states that the sort will be in ascending order. In this case there is no second nor third key, but if there were, they would be the third and fifth parameters. The eighth parameter (xlNo) would appear to relate to the existence of the header. Don't ask me about the rest (what does syllabary mean? Now I know).

Unfortunately, for the time being,  I am going to have to relate to this code as a magical spell as I don't really understand what each parameter does. All I know is that it does what is required.

Note to myself: following is the definition of the 'sort' procedure from MSDN:

 
Object Sort(
 Object Key1,
 XlSortOrder Order1,
 Object Key2,
 Object Type,
 XlSortOrder Order2,
 Object Key3,
 XlSortOrder Order3,
 XlYesNoGuess Header,
 Object OrderCustom,
 Object MatchCase,
 XlSortOrientation Orientation,
 XlSortMethod SortMethod,
 XlSortDataOption DataOption1,
 XlSortDataOption DataOption2,
 XlSortDataOption DataOption3
)

Dates

Did I mention that my daughter is getting married?

She's been working on getting the hall that she wants at a price per head that she is willing to pay (or to put it another way: guests here are expected to cover the cost of their place; if the hall charges 250 NIS, then a couple will be expected to give a 500 NIS present, but of course, no guest knows exactly how much the hall will charge). Once we have a hall at the right price, then we have a date.

She was torn between the hall that she wants (in Modi'in) which is in great demand, which means that it is expensive, and a hall that she doesn't want in Jerusalem which would be cheap. Finally she settled on the hall in Modi'in, with the compromise that the wedding be held in March (prices are cheaper before Pesach, April 2014). We heard this on Friday morning.

---

A few days ago, I read in an Israeli newspaper that the King Crimson offshoot group, The Crimson ProjeKCt (consisting of three one-time KC members Adrian Belew, Tony Levin and Pat Mastelloto and three others) will be coming to Israel for one concert in March. As this seemed far off in the future, I hadn't bothered yet to check what the actual date will be.

We joked on Friday morning that I would have a tough choice should the Crimson ProjecKCt appear on the same day as the wedding. What should I do? (Of course, there is no real choice whatsoever). There are 31 days in March, I said to myself, so there is a 3% chance that the two events will fall on the same day.

Today I decided to find out when that concert will be. In so doing, I stumbled upon an Israeli site about progressive music, which probably will receive return visits. Anyway, the concert will be held on March 5, 2014.

The date for the wedding? You guessed: Wednesday, March 5, 2014.

So much for the Crimson ProjeKCt....

Some DBA thoughts

Despite the malaise from which I seem to have been suffering in the past few weeks due to lack of quality sleep, I am trying to study as much as possible. On the one hand, this means studying all the various statistical tests, whereas on the other hand, I am revisiting the material which I learnt earlier in the year for the exam which I missed (mainly about literature reviews). I am trying as much as possible to study this material dispassionately: trying to learn it as it is presented and not as how it affects my own research.

Even so ... this morning I was asked about one of our business units and why they don't work properly. I didn't give a very clear answer, but thinking about it now, I can explain more clearly (at least to myself!). As far as I am concerned, people who work with Excel (or to be polite, end user computing) in an ERP environment are like programmers who learnt Access and then try to use what they have learnt in an environment which uses SQL: they are using a 'record' way of thinking as opposed to a 'set' way of thinking ('set' as in 'set theory'). This is a common failing of programmers new to SQL.

Specifically: this business unit asked me for data about parts which have been ordered (the users are never precise enough; what they mean is parts which customers have ordered, as opposed to the parts which we need to purchase in order to produce the parts which we will sell to the customers). I gave them totals per part - a 'set' way of thinking - whereas they persist in asking me for part amounts per order - a 'record' way of thinking. I contend that they would be able to do their job better if they left the conception of a record/order behind and started thinking in terms of aggregates (sets).

This is especially important when considering purchasing: there are two types of purchasing approaches, bulk and specific. The purchaser does not need to know for which orders a bulk item is required, just that 10,000 units have to arrive before a specific date so that all the customer orders can be fulfilled. A purchaser does not have to know the purpose of a part which is bought specifically in order to fulfill a given customer order, but it helps. Obviously, parts which are expensive and used only rarely will be purchased specifically whereas parts which are used frequently will be purchased in bulk.

Translating between the terms, bulk purchasing is a 'set' way of thinking whereas specific purchasing is the 'record' way of thinking.

Paul Klee

When I was a teenager, I "fell in love" with the pictures created by artist Paul Klee. My favourite painting of his was one called 'Senecio' (appears on the left); I don't remember now what attracted me to it nor how I discovered who painted it. I suspect that there was a subconscious influence at play: one day (probably in 1973) I discovered that there was a print of this painting hanging on the wall next to the main staircase in my school! This means that I had probably seen this painting at least once a day for several years.

I went through an 'arty' phase when I started at university, and frequently visited an Athena shop, from which I bought a few Klee and Picasso prints. I took these with me when I emigrated to Israel, and I mounted the 'Senecio' print on plywood, so that I could hang it properly. I had this 'painting' on my wall for several years but eventually had to discard it as the colours had faded. I'm not sure where the Picasso is now but this used to hang on a wall at home; when people came to our house, I used to joke by saying that most of the pictures on the walls were drawn by my wife, but this one (the Picasso) was mine.

I see that there is a Klee exhibition running at the Tate Modern at the moment. This reminds me that there was a similar exhibition in Jan/Feb 1975, which I wrote about for my university newspaper. This was the first of several articles which I wrote, although the others were about music or films. Eventually I 'graduated' to writing a personal column, but due to circumstances beyond my control (I spent my second year working outside of the university; the newspaper's editor changed)  I only wrote two personal columns. Unfortunately, all the reviews and columns which I wrote got lost, so I can't quote from them. Probably just as well, as they would seem extremely naive and callow now.

I have at least one book about Klee at home which dates from my period of infatuation, but I think that I haven't looked at it for thirty years. But if I were in London now, I would be making my way to the Tate....

More health issues

It seems that my joy in cutting down the number of apneic events by increasing the pressure that my CPAP machine provides was short lived: true, I had three days with few events at a pressure of 7.5 cmH₂O, but then I had four days with high numbers (back into the realm of 20 incidents per hour). As per my instructions, I increased the pressure to 8 cmH₂O. After a week, I checked the results and saw that increasing the pressure had made no difference.

Yesterday, I increased the pressure to 9 cmH₂O; presumably as a result of trying to adapt to the higher pressure, I slept very badly and this morning I feel lousy. Hopefully I'll get used to the new pressure and get some sleep, although its quality will be an unknown factor.

In my doctoral studies, I was working on what's called the Mann-Whitney U test, which basically checks whether one series of values is significantly different from another series of values. This test is meant for non-standard distributed values which are independent of each other - exactly like the values I get from the CPAP machine. I checked 24 values from Friday nights against 24 values from Saturday nights, and assuming that I did the maths correctly, I can conclude with a confidence level of 95% that I have more apnea on a Friday night than on a Saturday.

The only good thing that I can find to say about my health is that my weight is fast decreasing. Two weeks ago I was surprised to discover that my weight had ballooned from 82 kg to 85 kg; last week it had decreased to 84.3 kg and this morning I weighed only 83.3 kg. At this rate, in another two weeks I will have lost all the extra weight and will be well placed to make some serious losses.

Which leads me back to sleep apnea: shortly my weight will be the same as it was in April when the machine was set up, which means that I should be using the same pressure as then (7 cmH₂O). If there is a significant increase in the number of apneic events (without regard to pressure) then there is some other variable which needs to be taken into account. Maybe there is a problem with the machine or the mask ... or maybe me.

As an aside, I note that despite the fact that a sizeable proportion of the adult population suffers from sleep apnea, I have never seen this (or CPAP machines) mentioned in either films or books. So it was a happy moment when I found the following passage in the opening pages of 'Up in the air'  "Once between Denver and Oklahoma City, I nodded off next to a pulmonary specialist who told me when I woke that I had apnea - a tendency to stop breathing while unconscious. The doctor recommended a machine that pushes air through the nostrils while one sleeps to raise the oxygen level in one's blood."

Tasks

One of the Occupational Psychologist's team has left and has been replaced by a new person. Fortunately the integration of this new person with my management program is going very smoothly (as opposed to the one who is leaving who tended not to utilise it very well) and I am slowly getting feedback via the OP on new ideas to implement.

Friday's meeting centered around tasks: apparently the new person wanted to insert into the program a reminder to call someone in a few days time. Although in a sense, this capability exists within the program, the existing function was not really meant for this and certainly doesn't display a reminder.

At first, I suggested that they use Outlook to provide the reminder: why re-invent the wheel? But it turns out that they don't use Outlook very much in the office - they use Gmail combined with the management program. So I had to provide capability. The actual idea of tasks didn't seem to be a problem - this can easily be implemented with a database table of tuples consisting of a few fields, including the date and time of when the reminder has to appear - but what seemed problematic was how to pop the reminder up at the correct date and time.

Originally I considered using an external program which would display the reminder; its execution would be triggered by the management program adding an entry to the Windows scheduler. As I'm not familiar with the interface to the scheduler, this idea had to be put to one side. For a while I considered using a separate thread within the program, but later on I realised that this too was overkill. In the end, I implemented a simple scheme with a timer: every five minutes the timer wakes up and checks whether there are any tasks for the current user whose date and time have passed; if so, display the task non-modally. It is true that this means that the program is polling the database, whereas on the surface the Windows scheduler and thread approaches simply 'wake up' at the correct time. After thinking about this, I realised that these approaches too use polling; as far as the user is concerned, there's no polling but the system itself also uses a timer exactly in the same way that I'm doing. In other words, it's implicit polling as opposed to explicit polling.

Surprisingly, the hardest part of implementing tasks was recording for which date and at what time the task was set. I had naively thought that the TDateTimePicker component of Delphi would do this, but it turns out that I needed two such components: one for date and one for time. I also had great difficulty in getting the time from the component into the database as well as reading back a date/time combination into two components. Eventually I used the following code....

Saving the date and time values in one database field (edDate is the component showing the date, edTime is the component showing the time)

decodedate (edDate.Date, y, m, d);
s:= inttostr (y) + '-' + inttostr (m) + '-' + inttostr (d) + ' ';
decodetime (edTime.Time, y, m, d, ms);
s:= s + inttostr (y) + ':' + inttostr (m);
qInsert.parambyname ('p3').asstring:= s;

Reading the value back from the database and displaying it in two components

dt:= qGetTask.fieldbyname ('curdate').asdatetime;
decodedate (dt, y, m, d);
edDate.Date:= encodedate (y, m, d);
decodetime (dt, y, m, d, ms);
edTime.time:= encodetime (y, m, d, ms);

Once I had developed a method of reliably saving and restoring the date/time combination, I could write the timer code which pops the task up. This was actually very easy. So in the end, the part which most worried me in advance turned out to be easy, and the part which I assumed to be easy turned out to be hard! 

The contents of a task are minimal at the moment; they are sufficient for the purpose, but I have no doubt that additions will be required. Such additions don't bother me as they only affect data insertion and retrieval; they won't affect the date/time parts.

Another germ of an idea which popped up (sorry about the pun!) during our discussion was the possibility of my program actually downloading letters from Gmail! Let's say that we have sent a letter to contact A (the letter was sent from the program so we have the complete text) and contact A replies. The reply would arrive in the Gmail inbox and my program will be blissfully unaware of this. My current idea would be for the program to scan the inbox and download letters which have been sent from addresses which are known to the program. Once downloaded, the contents will be stored in the database and linked to the contact, so we will be able to see the complete conversation. I have written code which accesses Gmail's sent items folder so this part isn't too problematic; I will have to consider how to download letters only once. Should such a program run only once a day and check the previous day's mail? Maybe Gmail assigns each mail in the inbox an id number and I can use this to my advantage.

Whilst I was implementing the 'add task' code, I noticed that there was a routine for loading comboboxes with the contents of a database table that I had written and included in at least ten different forms. It didn't take much to turn this routine into a library procedure and simply call it from all those different forms. This is a minor example of refactoring; every now and then I find such examples in my code and improve them. The management program is a fine example because it is definitely the largest program (by far) that I have ever written, although it's not complicated: it's composed of many simple (and very similar) forms.

Sleep apnea

I haven't been sleeping well lately; according to the readings of my CPAP machine, there have been nights when there have been over 20 apneae per hour, a number which is far too high. I would like to blame this on all the traveling of the past two weeks, but ironically I get the impression that there are fewer incidents on the days that I travel. After locating my sleep clinic (it has moved from nearby Bet Shemesh to Jerusalem), I made an appointment to have my machine checked last Sunday (meaning another day on which I traveled).

The first question which the technician asked me after downloading results from the machine was whether I had put on weight. As it happens, I had been for a regular checkup in the clinic two days previously, so I was able to state (rather unhappily) that I had put on three kilos of weight in the past few months. This satisfied the technician who explained that such an increase would probably mean that the pressure that the machine was putting out (7 cmH₂O) was not high enough anymore. 

He showed me how to increase the pressure (normally the user does not know how to do this)  to 7.5 cmH₂O. He said to see what happens over the next week: if the number of incidents decreases but not significantly, then I should increase the pressure to 8 cmH₂O and then see what happens. As it happens, the number of incidents dropped dramatically (6.7 per hour on Tuesday, 8.4 on Wednesday and only 4.2 on Thursday), so I'm going to leave the pressure at 7.5 cmH₂O for another week and then check the results.

I was in the clinic again yesterday in order to get a flu inoculation. I took the opportunity to weigh myself and was pleased to note that my weight had dropped by nearly one kilo over the week. The most dramatic change in my diet during the past week was cutting the number of milkshakes (milk + powder) from five a day to one or two a day. During the working week, this isn't much of a problem (I just drink a herbal infusion instead) but at home on the weekend, the temptation is greater. I've been drinking more apple flavoured water. I've also cut my two spoonfuls of granola in the morning to only one spoonful, and have cut down on the biscuits.

I hope that next week will show a similar weight loss.

More books

During the last two weeks, I've traveled almost every day (meaning at least two hours traveling in the morning and the same in the evening), meaning that on one hand, I've had very little personal time (I'm too tired in the evening to do much) but on the other hand, I've had the opportunity to read even more books.

Two books were about computers - the autobiography of Steve Wozniak (contrast his life with Jobs'!) and the story of a 21st century hacker who engaged no small amount in credit card crime.

One modern literature book which I found very intriguing and captivating was 'What Alice Forgot' by Liane Moriarty. The book opens with the titular Alice dreaming - as a result of a head injury that she sustained whilst working out in the gym. Alice thinks that she's 29, happily married and expecting her first child whereas in fact she is 39, has three children and has recently separated from her husband. The injury causes her to forget the last ten years of her life, placing her in a completely different 'head space'.

Ignoring the story itself (how she slowly recovers her memory, how she integrates her earlier self with her later self, etc), it is very interesting to try the same exercise out on oneself. If I were to lose the memories of the last ten years, I think that I would still be in a similar 'head space', but if the accident were to happen to me when I was 39, then certainly things would be very different. Aged 29, I was living on one kibbutz with a wife but no children, committed to making a success of that kibbutz, whereas ten years later I was living somewhere else with two children, somewhat embittered at my first kibbutz. Of course, the ten years between 19 and 29 would have even greater changes.

I am currently reading 'Without remorse' by Tom Clancy, probably in recognition of his death last week. This book was written in 1993 but somehow missed my attention. It is very much a prequel to the 'Jack Ryan universe', set in 1968, as its protagonist is someone who will become the John Clark of later books. The penny didn't drop at first, but after the second mention, I realised that one of the policemen mentioned, Lt Emmet Ryan, is the father of Jack Ryan. Maybe the younger Ryan himself appears in the book, although I doubt it.

Whilst displaying none of the global intrigue of the Ryan books (so far most the action takes place in Baltimore although there is a thread about American prisoners of war in Vietnam), Clancy's attention to detail shines all the way through the book. Clark is a very thorough person in what he does.

At least one does not need an MBA to understand this book - it's fairly normal tough guy material, albeit on a very high level.

More afterwords (My gap year, part 8)

Today I transferred the cassette recording which I made of all the songs that I wrote in my gap year along with those of the final party to the computer, and in doing so, I discovered that I had inadvertently left out one of our number.

So, in addition to those mentioned here, I must remember Mike B. He hadn't been a member of Habonim before that year but that wasn't a stumbling block. His party piece was an impression of Gary Glitter (as a singer, not as a sad old paedophile in Thailand); he would sing, accompanied by Andrew and myself. I can even see a resemblance when looking at GG's pictures in his prime.

After we returned, Mike hang around on the fringes, living in Ilford. Eventually he married the younger sister of one of my emigration group and went to live on Kibbutz Bet Ha'emek, accompanied by his wife, brother and mother. As far as I know, they're still there (although the mother died some years ago). So that means that he was a successful graduate of our year of preparation.

Mike got an oblique mention here (the first paragraph).

The recordings of Erica and myself are hilarious. We recorded a few songs off-stage in which it's difficult to tell who's playing what, along with three songs on-stage. We rip through the live songs at about 150% of the correct speed and Erica's voice sounds like she'd been inhaling helium. It's a shame that we never recorded more under better conditions.

Idly googling Erica with her surname and place of birth, I have just discovered that she too emigrated to Israel and as of 2009 was living in Ra'anana.

Reading books

Over the past ten days I seem to have read a large number of books, so I thought that I'd share them with you.

 

Quiet - Susan Cain: an excellent book explaining introversion. I have to admit, though, that I am finding the later chapters less interesting. This might be an attempt to spin the book out or it might just be me.

 
Up in the air - Walter Kirn: after having watched the film, I had to read the book. I've only read the opening chapters so far but stopped as I found them slightly boring. If a film is based on a book, then normally I prefer the book, but in this case I prefer the film. Maybe it's a psychological bias of preferring whichever came first.

The perks of being a wallflower - Stephen Chbovsky: unusually, the author of the book was allowed to write the screenplay and even direct the film. I didn't think much of the book, probably because it was supposedly written by a very callow fifteen year old. Even so, the narrator is supposed to be good in English so one might have expected richer language. The film is much better.

I am Ozzy - Ozzy Osbourne: sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, or rather booze, drugs and rock'n'roll. A complete waste of time. The only part which is vaguely interesting is before Osbourne and Black Sabbath became famous. Otherwise it's one long party which exceeding tiresome to read.

The hundred year old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared - Jonas Jonasson: as opposed to Ozzy Osbourne, I have a great deal of time for this book. It was recommended to me by two people who I met at a bar mitzva, the only connection between them being that we were all sat at the same table. One of them said that it was like a Swedish Forrest Gump, a comment which makes sense only after having read the book. At times, it reminds me of the Cryptonomicon, in terms of the strange adventures which can happen to someone (although here there are no computers to be found). A very original romp through the 20th century and highly recommended.

Tune in - Mark Lewisohn: a massive tome (the hardcover edition runs to 960 pages and this is the first book in a trilogy!) telling in minute detail the story of The Beatles. This first book runs from 1940 (with John Lennon's birth) up to December 1962, with the recording of 'Please please me', when four louts became T*H*E* *B*E*A*T*L*E*S. I don't really care to read about John's paternal grandparents, but this shows the amount of research which Lewisohn carried out. He is able to bring to light new aspects of what I thought was a well-known story and in certain cases, to change completely one's understanding of what happened. The most important instance of this is the signing of the record contract with George Martin in 1962. I appreciate that not everyone will be interested enough to read the entire book with concentration, but I imagine that it will be easy to dip in and read extracts. I was fortunate to read this whilst having nothing else to do.

More holiday

I haven't been sitting idly at home for the past few days. Every day I've been studying for an hour or two; I'm bogged down in the two statistics chapters and will have to devote a great deal of time to them. Although each little part is not difficult, there are a bewildering number of different approaches and each only has one example, not explained too well. I think back to the finance course of the MBA - I had no difficulty with the material whereas most of the class was struggling. This material should be slightly easier than the finance course, which means ....

Here's an example: Kell Gardens have recorded the number of visitors over the last six weekends. The numbers are summarised in the following table

Day	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5	Week 6
Saturday	242	263	274	213	298	335
Sunday	225	296	251	293	321	326

Test whether the average number visiting on a Sunday is significantly higher than on a Saturday.

Solution

As the data refer to a Saturday and Sunday each week, this has to be treated as a paired test. The factors, such as the weather, that encourage or discourage visitors are likely to be very similar on the Saturday and Sunday in the same week.

[Here is the maths part which I will spare you]

Conclusion

As t* lies in the centre of the distribution, it is highly likely to come from the distribution under the null hypothesis (average number visiting on a Sunday is not significantly higher than on a Saturday).

The formal decision is Reject the alternative hypothesis. The conclusion is that the average number visiting on a Sunday is not significantly higher than on a Saturday.

I suppose that I could analyse the data from my CPAP machine in the same manner to see whether the average number of apnea on Friday nights is significantly higher than on a Thursday, or whether the average number of apnea on days when I travel is significantly lower than on days when I don't travel.

I shall continue to beat my head on this material.

---

I have resumed work transferring cassettes of songs recorded 40 years ago. I am discovering songs which I had completely forgotten about, mainly three chord ephemera which I had probably written on the spot. One tape opened with such a piece  called "John's song"; this had me scratching my head for several reasons. First of all, I don't recall the song nor do I recall anyone called John. There's a badly recorded acoustic guitar playing chords with me singing, alongside a more cleanly recorded lead part which sounds suspiciously like me playing (I can differentiate between my playing and Robert's); could this mean that Robert was strumming while I was singing and playing lead inbetween?

The recording of the next song also had me baffled at first: where has all the hum from Robert's cassette recorder gone? Why is the song recorded in stereo (guitar on one side, vocal on the other)? Slowly it dawned on me that I must have recorded these songs on my own in London, probably in September 1974, on my newly purchased stereo tape deck with two separate microphones. The opening track was probably an attempt at multitracking, with rhythm and vocal recorded, then played back on a mono cassette recorder whilst I played along. I was to get better at this. The songs, though, were written between March and June 1973 and presumably were recorded then; what happened to those recordings?

I was monitoring the transfer from cassette to computer with headphones connected to the transfer machine, so I could hear the stereo. Unfortunately, the recording program on the computer was defined to record in mono; when I listened to the recording, I got an earful of guitar - and no vocal. I then redefined the program so I could transfer in stereo.

After chopping up the 40 minute recording into separate songs, I started cleaning up each one. At first I saved the stereo file as mono, thus combining the guitar and vocal, then resaving as stereo, so that I could have turn the recording into 'fake stereo', where a small delay is added to one track and both tracks have different equalisation settings. The result was ok, but a bit brash.

It occurred to me later on in the evening that due to the clean separation (I would record with one mike inside the guitar's sound hole, which would not pickup any vocal, and one mike for vocal, with a little guitar picked up), I could split the stereo file into two separate mono files. In my multitrack recording program, I included the same guitar track twice: once panned left, once panned right. One track has a little delay and one has some chorus, making a nice stereo sound. The vocal was panned down the middle; as this was a separate track, I could apply the same tools that I use today to improve the vocal sound: compression, equalisation and reverb. I draw the line at "tuning" the vocal!

The result is a much better sounding track than the fake stereo version, so I've been converting all the originally recorded in stereo tracks into this three track format. It takes about fifteen minutes per song, as I'm also cleaning up the beginnings and endings. These recordings are much cleaner than the Bristol ones, but they still need some editing.

---

I completed my Sandy Denny covers album with a recording of 'The Sea'; this is the third song which I've taken from the eponymous Fotheringay album. As I wrote earlier on this subject, Sandy's songs are always verse based (this one has four verses, one of them instrumental), but the chord sequence is unconventional and adventurous. Married to an uneven phrase structure (the first phrase is five bars long whereas the second is four; the third is four and the fourth phrase is five bars long), the song provides an interesting challenge.

As always, the first steps were the hardest: I played around for a few days with instrumentation and styles until I landed on something good. The lead guitar of the original is replaced here with a recorder, enhancing my imprint on the song. I was tempted for a while to have the recorder play the original lead guitar solo (but not the obbligato part) - this was one of the first solos that I ever worked out - but decided to go for something more original.

I estimate that I spent around 20 hours working on this song, including mixing. This is probably about the same amount of time that most recording artists devote to their songs (if not more), but it's a far cry from the amount of time that I used to devote to a recording 40 years ago. If all the songs were written, I could record 'an album' in an afternoon! Of course, there was no possibility of editing, only rerecording a song, so obviously I didn't "look at songs under a microscope", as the expression put it.

Emigration

If 4 Sept 1973 was a very important day in my life, then 25 Sept 1978 was the most important day in my life: it was the day when I emigrated from Britain to Israel. After years of talking about it and months of planning, the actual day arrived, and of course it was a bit of an anticlimax.

My parents drove me from Cardiff to Heathrow; I have a picture of the three of us standing outside our house, along with a suitcase, two guitars and a mandolin. Most of my belongings had been sent in advance to Israel in a 20 ft container, along with those of my group; this was scheduled to arrive some time in December. 

Joining me on the plane were two of my companions. Altogether, there were maybe ten of us emigrating that year from British Habonim, but everyone had their own plans and  separate departure dates. 25 Sept was a compromise date and was based on my return from America on  one hand and a desire to arrive in Israel before the New Year (that year it fell at the end of September) on the other. I was disappointed to discover that the airline - El Al, of course - didn't serve us champagne as new immigrants.

After we touched down in Lod Airport (as it was then), we were escorted to a side room where we filled in some forms and received official documentation of our status, along with our identity card numbers. Then someone took us to Kibbutz Mishmar David, which was to be our home. I had already spent some time here - one month in the summer of 1976 and two weeks in the spring of 1977 - so it wasn't a complete unknown.

Looking back on it now, the first year was structured in a similar manner to the year of 1973: first we had a period of three-four months, which I call 'the phony war'. We acclimatised to living in Israel as Israelis and to a new kibbutz. I wasn't able to find a suitable place to work so ended up running the kibbutz laundry machines on my own for this time. I didn't like the work and was isolated, but I also knew that it was only for a few months.

In the early months of 1979, we went to the development town  Arad for three months, for an extensive course in Hebrew and Israeli culture. As opposed to previous seminars, we were allocated to self catering flats; we ate breakfast 'at home' and lunch in the seminar centre; dinner would either be 'at home' or at other people's flats. Our fellow students were two groups of American immigrants, similar to us; they came from two different kibbutzim in the Negev desert. 

For a while, I was quite taken by some of these people, and even spent one weekend with them in the hot desert, but I realised that I would never be able to survive there because of the heat and so discarded any idle thoughts that I might have entertained of jumping ship from Mishmar David.

I was in the top Hebrew class and as befitting our status, we had two teachers. One was the head of the seminar centre and taught us Hebrew grammar, whereas the second was a journalist (possibly out of work) who taught us how to listen to the news on radio and how to read the newspaper. They both taught us invaluable material. Unfortunately some of the Americans in my class (there were maybe ten of us in the class of which only two were British, so it was inevitable that it would be Americans ...) took a strong dislike to this teacher and caused no small amount of tension, both within the class and towards the teaching staff. I don't remember how the situation was resolved, but I do recall that the other British student (a girl who whilst being from British Habonim was in a year younger than mine and had only joined our emigration group at the last minute) and I were invited to the home of the seminar head for tea one Shabbat afternoon where we talked about life and the social schism.

In the final month of the seminar, I was elected to be the general representative of the entire group; this was quite a surprise as I didn't - and still don't - consider myself to be leadership material. I liased with all three groups along with the seminar staff and arranged a day trip to somewhere (I don't recall now where we went). 

I was one of the few people who went home for the final weekend - I think that the seminar finished on a Sunday or a Monday (I went home on Friday and intended to return on Sunday). On Friday evening, I went to some evening activity on the kibbutz; when returning to my room, my sandal enclosed foot brushed against what I thought was a twig, drawing a little blood. After a few minutes, this scratch started to hurt and someone suggested that I see the kibbutz nurse. It turns out that a black scorpion - poisonous but not fatal - had bitten me; fortunately we were able to deal with this in time before my entire leg became paralysed. I spent the rest of the weekend - and a few days following - stuck on my bed, unable to move. Of course, I missed the graduation ceremony at the seminar in which I was supposed to take a leading part.

After the seminar finished (and my leg returned to normal), I began working in the kibbutz kitchen. It was intended that at some stage I would be running the kitchen (planning menus, purchasing the food, etc) and I insisted that first I learn what it was like to be 'one of the workers'. I was interested to see what the kitchen was technically capable of doing and learning how the cooking devices (large hot plate, steam heated pots and electrical oven) could function.

Sometime in August 1979, I went with a few others to the closest office of the Ministry of the Interior in order to change my status from temporary resident to citizen. This meant, of course, that I would eligible for induction into the Israeli army within the next six months or so. I'll leave that story (or at least, the parts that I can tell...) for another time.