The Murder Detectives

The title does not refer to some fictional characters but rather to real-life murder detectives who are depicted in the three part documentary which won a BAFTA in 2016. The 'story' is as follows: 19 year old Nicholas Robinson is stabbed in the stairwell of his block of flats in Bristol; he staggers out into the road and dies of his wounds. There is an eye witness to the stabbing which happened out of the range of CCTV but no identification could be made; whilst the presumed assailant can be seen entering and leaving the building, dressed in hoodie and revealing no features, there is no footage of the act.

Fairly quickly, the detectives find a glove on the scene; they extract DNA which gives a match on the database, so they are able to arrest a suspect. Unfortunately for the police, the suspect gives an alibi which they are able to match from more CCTV footage, so they have to let him go.

A knife is recovered from a drain.

Word reaches a community policeman that Luchiano Barnes was responsible; when the police check, 18 year old Barnes had abruptly left Britain the day before on a flight to New York.

The police try to build a case but don't have much concrete evidence which could link Barnes to the murder so they have to wait. Eventually he returns and is arrested at the airport. Throughout his interviews he responds "No comment".

After a few months the case comes to trial; Barnes is convicted and sentenced to serve a minimum of 23 years. His parents are also convicted of abetting a criminal and receive custodial sentences. A good description/review/reflection of the documentary can be read here.

So much for the story. As a long time reader of police procedurals, I have many questions which were not answered in the documentary. First off, how come the entire investigation was filmed? Did they have a film crew hanging around, waiting for someone to be murdered, or was the whole thing reconstructed? Judging by what was shown, it was filmed in real time, which begs the question about the film crew at the beginning.

Nothing is ever shown about the defense, apart from a statement issued a few days before the trial begins in which Barnes admits to being in the building but that the stabbing occurred in self-defence. Very much an own goal. I would love to know what was in the defense council's mind for as far as I could see, the evidence was circumstantial.

The glove: more than one person's DNA was found (including Barnes'). What was it doing in the flat? How come more than one person had worn it? The DNA match was only partial for Barnes.

The knife: after it is filmed being found, this presumably vital piece of evidence is never mentioned again. Did the pathologist check to see whether it would cause wounds compatible with those of the victim's? Were any fingerprints or blood stains found? Maybe the water in the drain washed these off.

Red stains were found on the first suspect's shoes: were these checked for being blood? If so, whose?

What was the motive? The deceased's girlfriend told a story about how he was supposed to acquire a gun but presumably failed, for which he was killed. One might say that this is hearsay; no proof was offered - at least in the documentary - which might have upheld this motive.

The point of the documentary might well not have been the same as a novel's in that the fictional police have to show why their suspect is guilty; it might only have been to show how the police really work. The reality is not too far removed from the fiction: developments occur more slowly and many more people are involved than the two to five officers in a DCI Banks novel. The real police seem to be very dependent on CCTV.

Whilst this three part was initially engrossing, I later found it to be too long and somewhat disappointing.

Incidentally, BBC Entertainment are once again showing the early episodes of the DCI Banks dramatisations. 'Playing with fire' was very annoying, but 'Friend of the devil' played fairly close to the source material - although why give the story away in the very first scene. Otherwise, my original criticisms are still valid: age has not mellowed me.

L-Theanine

A mention of this non-essential amino acid in a recent blog by Jeff Duntemann sparked my interest: his blog linked to this article, which mainly discusses theanine in conjunction with caffeine. Another site - apparently written by a teenager who doesn't know the word "you" (too much Prince) makes all kinds of claims. After some research, it seems that theanine is quite well known in life-style circles but hasn't made the leap to front page news, despite the fact that it appears to have hard proof about its positive effects on the human body.

As far as I can establish, l-theanine (the d-enantiometer appears, like many organic compounds, to be less active), a natural compound isolated from green tea, appears to increase the occurrence of alpha waves in the brain, leading to relaxation, and helps with anxiety, blood pressure control, mood, and cognition (wikipedia). I certainly don't have a problem with cognition and I'm not normally anxious, but it seems that this supplement can make a difference to my life. Other abilities which have been attributed to theanine are a reduction in headaches and in perennial colds; basically it seems that it can generally improve one's well being and reduce all manner of irritants. As someone who suffers from these mild complaints, any improvement will be greatly appreciated.

One of the articles which I read mentions suppliers; one of these is Solgar, which to the best of my knowledge is an Israeli company (there are shelves devoted to Solgar products in the food supplement section of the local pharmacy). I couldn't find theanine on those shelves, and discovered that Solgar don't market the supplement in Israel. No matter; I found a supplier in America who ships the Solgar product to Israel, and about ten days after ordering, a bottle of 60 capsules, each 200mg, arrived here. The cost was a mere $26 plus $4 shipping; a local company is selling imported capsules here at at least twice the price, but they have run out of stock.

As at the moment I'm interested in improving the quality of my sleep, I have been taking one capsule about an hour before going to bed. Here are my notes:

• Friday: first capsule. Very intense dreams during the night. I awoke with a slight headache.
• Saturday: woke at about midnight in an attempt to free myself from a 'dream loop', in which I dream about the same thing over and over again. Sleep through till the alarm at 5:30. Again, a slight headache.
• Sunday: nothing special about the dreams. I awoke feeling refreshed, no mild headache. It seems that the remark which I read  about the body needing to adapt to the new stimulus is true: I am adapting and now the theanine is doing what it is supposed to do.
• Monday: no apparent effect

The scientist in me is pleased that there are three measures which I can use to establish whether theanine has a positive effect on me; two of these - blood pressure and weight - are fairly weak measures as they can be affected by many factors, but one - sleep apnea - is easily measured and should be a very good test of whether the quality of my sleep is improving. Sleep quality is considered to be very important with regard to general health, and all the good things which theanine is supposed to promote - lowered blood pressure, reduced weight, higher immunity to viral infections - all derive from improved sleep quality.

Two films

Over the past few weeks, I've seen a couple of interesting films, both coincidentally starring young British actress Rosamund Pike.

The first, 'What we did on our holiday', was exceedingly enjoyable and I would recommend this to anyone who shares the same tastes as I. Blessed with Scottish highlands scenery, the events of this film take place over a weekend and seem somewhat realistic (as do all British films). Apparently much of the children's dialogue was improvised, or at least based on improvisation.

 I am less sure about the second film, 'Hector and the search for happiness', about which I find it difficult to form a concrete opinion. Whilst the film discusses a very important topic, it does so in a very facile and fairly unbelievable manner. The film is enjoyable on a surface level, but falls apart when one starts to probe under its surface. The photography itself is stunning but the activities depicted in this globe spanning film are very white, middle class, Guardian-reading, biased. The film is based on a French book, so I imagine that many faults derive from the book.

It is noble that the eponymous Hector, a psychiatrist, wants to find causes for happiness in order to help his patients improve. No doubt that this is the impetus behind real life psychiatrist Martin Seligman and his search for happiness (or more accurately, his search for the causes of happiness), but Seligman goes about it in a somewhat more orderly manner. Even I have written about this search.

Somehow I doubt that anyone who is unhappy is going to learn very much from this film.

If this blog's opening paragraph mentioned Rosamund Pike, then I should close by noting that her character in 'Hector' is another thing which leaves me somewhat bemused (I'm not writing about her acting which is fine enough). Supposedly a marketing star for a pharmaceutical company, she has enough time to mother Hector in their very large flat. One of her Skype conversations with Hector is very strange - she's preparing to go out, but there's no mention about where she is going, with whom or with why. I thought that maybe she was moving on and meeting new people instead of staying faithful to the globe-trotting Hector, but no. That scene - at least, to me - is somewhat ambiguous and could easily have been left out.

Second version of intermediate thesis submitted

Today I sent the second version of my intermediate thesis to the research committee. I've been very quiet about it here, primarily because there hasn't been much to write about. After getting over the shock of the first review (the shock was not passing but rather the tone and extent of the comments), I then entered the twilight months of February and March, when I was ill with flu with complications and found it difficult to accomplish anything which required thinking.

Since then, I've been working steadily on the thesis, adding a great deal of background material, whilst extending the discussion of data acquisition and analysis (which is mainly statistics). There was a short detour for a month or so when I tried to include a graphical model and material about moderating variables, but my advisor advised me to drop this.

The advisor - or at least, the advisory process - is another reason why it has taken seven months to create a new version. The turnaround between me considering that a version is worthwhile submitting to the advisor and getting it back with comments can vary between two to four weeks. This time period seems to be fairly constant, regardless of the amount of new material, so it can be fairly frustrating when removing material (the moderating variables) takes a few weeks for a response.

That's all water under the bridge now. As the research committee meets only once every seven weeks and the next meeting is in a month's time, I won't get any feedback until late September. Hopefully this time the intermediate thesis will be accepted, allowing me to get on with the actual research (sending out questionnaires and tabulating the results). 

I think that the time scale of the doctorate - around four years, not including the primary courses - is not sufficiently emphasized when candidates begin. One needs a great deal of patience!

Turning a corner?

I don't think that I've written about this here, but since the beginning of April, I have been putting on weight - so much so that I was 3 kg above what I should be. This may not seem like a large amount but it does make a significant difference to my well-being. The most obvious expression of this extra weight comes from the CPAP machine which has been showing at least 20 'events' every night - far too high! These events impact my sleep which then affects my general sense of feeling well, or rather, not feeling well.

I decided to take things in hand two weeks ago. I had been eating a small snack bar at around 9:30 in the morning, as this is when I start feeling hungry. Even though these bars contain only 60 calories, they can be cut out. But more importantly, I stopped eating blackcurrants as if they were calorie-free sweets; although the currants do have an anti-oxidant effect, they are also full of sugar and I'm fairly sure that they were the prime cause of the weight gain. Result: after a week, my weight dropped by half a kilo. The next step was to stop drinking three glasses of chocolate milk every morning at work (10am, 11am, 12am) and replace them with lemon cordial. Result: another week, another 500 grams lost.

Yesterday I took the dog for a long walk in the morning; I then swam 24 lengths in the pool (beating my previous best by 4 lengths) and in the evening I speed walked 3.5 km. Maybe none of these activities on their own are world beating, but the important thing is that I am exercising and getting rid of the excess weight. Swimming is a good activity but I find it extremely boring. Sometimes I can think about programming problems which help me counter that boredom and allow me to swim further, but that doesn't always happen. The evening was humid; when I returned home after walking, the sweat was running into my eyes and my shirt was wringing wet. I bought some vests especially for this purpose; I shall have to dig them out of the cupboard.

Today I am replacing the lemon cordial (40 calories per 100 ml, which means that the drinks are contributing about 300 calories per day) with some diet apple cordial, which supposedly has only half of the calorific value. I am also going to try to resume my old habits of walking every evening; I'll start with the attainable distance of 3.5 km before increasing that to 5 km. 

I will also check the CPAP machine to see whether the last week's activities have had any effect. In order to do so, I have to extract the memory card from the machine then insert it into the computer via a holder; this isn't a problem but adds overhead which I could do without. I also want to see whether increasing the machine's pressure has made a difference: increased weight means that a higher pressure is required to achieve the same result.

I have to admit that I woke up yesterday after what seemed to be the best night's sleep for a long time. I think that leaving the air conditioner on all night (Friday) in the bedroom also helped as this reduced the humidity. It didn't seem to have so much of an effect last night (Saturday) but maybe Friday night was especially humid. Again, it will be interesting to see whether there is any difference in the CPAP results between Friday and Saturday night; Friday night traditionally always has high levels, almost certainly due to eating a full meal in the evening.

I should note that about a month ago I finally found on the Internet the instruction manual for the CPAP machine which explains how to change the pressure. This is not something which the casual user is supposed to do! One explanation which I have seen is that the pressure is set following standard tests and is akin to a prescription; a user should not change the number or strength of pills that he is prescribed and cannot change the lenses in his glasses. So a user should not change the pressure! But the last time I gained weight (a few years ago), the technician told me not to worry and showed me how to change the pressure. In the following years, I forgot how to do this so it's good to now have the official manual.

Updates

AMC broadcast an eighth episode of 'The Night Manager' last night! Due to the air conditioner in the lounge not working since last Friday, I haven't had the time or inclination to watch any more episodes. I am still sticking to my theory that AMC simply took the raw material and repartioned it.

Before devouring once again the book version of TNM, I started rereading the new DCI Banks novel. There were a few points which raised my sixth sense the first time around, but I didn't remember them when I wrote the connected blog entry. Rereading the first few chapters reminded me: until now, Banks has always drunk his tea black ("as it comes" is normally how author Robinson puts it). This time, he drinks with milk and sugar; hardly a hanging offence, but nevertheless uncharacteristic.

But one other mis-characterisation really stood out: it is implied that Banks once had an affair whilst he was married; this might have been a one-night stand after some office party. Such philandering has strongly been denied in the previous books; whenever Banks looked back on his marriage, it was always with either regret or pride that he did not have any extra-marital sex. So this snippet should have been removed from the book - in any case, it has no bearing whatsoever on the story. As it happens, it is connected to something which Robinson did get right - Banks' sometime colleague Burgess appears once again, and the bad blood between Burgess and Cyril (pub owner) is mentioned; this was due to Burgess 'having a tumble' with Cyril's wife in the third book of the series, many years ago.

Yesterday was my 60th birthday, I hung one more year on the line (thank you, Paul Simon). I had only modest expectations from the day: no headaches (I had a terrible migraine the day before), no arguments with people at work (there was one on Monday) and getting the air conditioner fixed. I am pleased to say that all three expectations were fulfilled. On the other hand, I spent two hours in an acrimonious meeting in the evening which I could have done without (I was only an observer, not a participant). The granddaughter came over for an hour, accompanied by her parents, so that was my birthday present.

Today is very humid; I have a small headache and a slight stomach ache, which are my normal reactions to the humidity. I hope that they don't develop into anything more unpleasant.

Jerry Donahue, guitarist with Fotheringay and Fairport, had a stroke a few days ago. From what I understand, he is slowly recovering. Get well soon, Jerry! We met in the summer of 1988 and had a pleasant conversation. I also wrote to him about a year ago, asking who played what on the Fotheringay song "The pond and the stream"; he replied that he would give a full answer when he had some time (he was probably touring at the time). Now it seems that I will never get an answer, selfish me. 

The night manager

I probably bought my copy of John Le Carré's novel shortly after its publication in 1994. I have always enjoyed the book and have repeated the experience of reading it several times over the years. I discovered a few months ago that the book had been turned into a television series, but expected that it would be some time before I would be able to see it.

A few weeks ago, whilst idly zapping through the channels on our television, I discovered a new channel, AMC, which "primarily airs theatrically released movies, along with a limited amount of original programming". One piece of original programming is - you guessed it - "The Night Manager".

The first episode which I saw was the third, which began with the attempted kidnapping of Roper's son, Daniel (for those who don't know the book nor the series, this will mean nothing). OK, I thought. This means that the first episode would have been Switzerland interposed with Cairo, and the second Cornwall and Canada. Due to problems with the blank dvd discs which I have, I only watched (and recorded to dvd) the third and fourth episodes, whilst recording (and leaving on the 'Yes Max' machine) the fifth, sixth and seventh episodes.

Wait a minute: seventh episode? IMDB lists only six. What is happening here? The other day I downloaded a Blu-ray rip of the series: I now have all the episodes on computer (and dvd), but without subtitles. This version only has six episodes. We watched the first episode, which was slightly different from what I expected, but was in chronological order: Cairo preceded Switzerland. But it was the second episode which caused internal turmoil: this began with the kidnapping!

Only when I watched the second episode did I realise what must have happened: each Blu-ray episode is at least 50 minutes long, making the whole thing 300 minutes in duration. The AMC version has seven episodes, each about 43 minutes long: also 300 minutes. Presumably they cut and pasted scenes to make the story more palatable, and maybe even cut out some. I quite agree that beginning the second episode with the kidnapping (which has moved from the Bahamas to Mallorca, no doubt due to budgetary reasons) is very jarring; it would have been better to move the Cornwall part (transposed to Devon, presumably not for budgetary reasons!) to the beginning of episode two, then continue with the kidnapping. 

I hope that there aren't any more major edits.

"When the music's over"

The latest installment in the casebook of literary creation DCI (now DS) Banks (written by Peter Robinson) is a deeply disturbing novel; whilst some of it is enjoyable in the way that police procedurals are, it is as upsetting as an earlier novel in the series, "Aftermath".

As Robinson frequently does, the book is divided into two stories, an 'Alan' and an 'Annie' story; these do not overlap. Also as per a few Robinson books, one of the stories is split between now and 50 years ago. Unfortunately, this is very much a novel for these times - or as one might have said 50 years ago, Robinson has tapped into the zeitgeist. Views espoused by one character, Paul Warner, are exactly those of the people who voted 'leave' in the recent British referendum, aka Brexit. Events which happen in this book appear to have been inspired by real life in Britain from the past few years.

Coincidentally, I saw a few days ago an episode of the British series 'Silent Witness' (which features crime solving pathologists), which was about exactly the same subject matter: Pakistanis grooming young white girls for prostitution. Some of the dialogue from that episode (broadcast 2012) is paraphrased in this book. I'm not trying to suggest that Robinson plagiarised the television programme; these unfortunately are sentiments expressed by the British people of the 2010s. To be honest, I'm glad I'm not there any more.

This is the 'Annie' story which is very powerful; it could easily have filled a book on its own and is very well developed. Accompanying Annie (who has become slightly more mature and is even hoping for promotion, although still somewhat out-spoken) is the recent addition to the team, DC Geraldine (Gerry) Masterson, who is given a much bigger part in this book than previously. DC Masterson gets her superior's rank wrong at one stage, calling him DCI Banks rather than DS Banks. Maybe she had yet to get used to his promotion, but I don't think so.

The 'Alan' story is about how a famous (fictional) entertainer raped a fourteen year old girl 50 years ago in Blackpool. This story line is obviously based on its real life counterparts of Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris et al., and is a bit weak. From a literary point of view, victim Linda Palmer's memoirs about her holiday resonate very strongly with Banks' own memories of a similar holiday with Graham Marshall in 'The summer that never was': one from a male perspective (meeting girls) and one from a female perspective (meeting boys). Of course, Palmer's stay in Blackpool ended somewhat differently from that of Banks, but it is interesting to read. But is this a sign of lazy writing? Robinson has already covered this material, albeit from a different viewpoint.

Another sign of lazy writing might be the inclusion of DI Chadwick and DC Bradley from 'A piece of my heart' (which, as it happens, I read again a few days ago). Judging from the characterisation of Chadwick in the earlier book (apparently ten years ago), he was a very moral person and there is no way that he would have ceased investigating the rape of an underage girl on his own initiative. This story is much less developed than the other; it is somewhat surprising that Banks is the person investigating, as I thought that his rank would have him coordinating the two investigations rather than taking an active part in one (and of course, interviewing attractive women). I thought that this book would develop DS Winsome Jackman's character, after her leading role in the previous book, but she barely exists.

Having written all that, the closing conversation between Banks and Palmer is classic Robinson and goes a long way in healing any wounds which might have been opened by the rest of the book.

When the music's over

Turn out the light

(The Doors)

Addendum: rereading this book seven years later, there is a whopping mistake in the opening chapter. ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Banks. But he remembered. It was just such an indulgence in a dark corner under the mistletoe at an office Christmas party that had led to the only affair of his married life. He didn’t much care to be reminded of it now, though at the time it had seemed exciting and dangerous; it had made him feel alive at a time when he had felt the world and his marriage were falling apart around him. In a previous book (whose name I don't recall at the moment), Banks says (with regret?) that he never had an affair all the time he was married.

Someone's tired

More mobile phone

For the past few days, I have been receiving messages on my phone telling me that I can upgrade the operating system to version 6, aka marshmellow. I thought that I would wait until the weekend to do this, when I would be turning on my personal wireless router. The reason why I was waiting for the weekend was that the kindle edition of the latest installment in the DCI Banks series was being published on Friday, so I would be turning on the router for that.

Unfortunately ... I discovered that whilst the router provides internet services when it is physically connected to my laptop computer via cable, it has ceased broadcasting its existence; in other words, no wifi. This meant that my phone could not download the update and the kindle could not download the book. Naturally, discovering this on Friday afternoon means waiting until Sunday to get it fixed.

Today I established a chat session with the phone company; after dismantling the router in order to get the sim's identity number, I was told how to reset the router without changing any settings (one presses simultaneously on the 'wps' and power switches and holds them depressed for at least ten seconds). This did the trick, so now my devices can access the internet.

The kindle downloaded the book in a flash (this is always amazing to me) and the phone could download the software update. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to download the update; downloading then took another twenty minutes or so, after which I installed the update (another five nerve wracking minutes).

Now that the phone has restarted, the os seems remarkably similar to what was before. The icons have slightly changed borders, but otherwise nothing immediately strikes me as being a result of the update. I thought that I was going to have to learn a new interface, in the same way that Android 5 was different from Android 4, but fortunately that seems not to be the case. Sigh of relief.

I'll be writing about DCI - now Detective Superintendent Banks - in a few days, after I finish the book. I haven't even touched it yet. I did prepare myself, however, by rereading the previous book, 'Abattoir Blues', during which one musical item stood out: Agnes Obel and "Aventine". I downloaded it, not expecting too much. The first track on the album - "Chord Left" - reminded me strongly of Satie, although that's because it's set in an exotic scale (probably Phrygian) and the sole instrument is piano. Vocals remind me of Alison Goldfrapp. Although it's been playing in the background all morning at work, I haven't listened sufficiently closely in order to form an opinion.

New smartphone

My entry level smartphone has been frustrating me somewhat in the past few months. There are two major problems with it, which may be connected: there is no provision for adding a memory card and sometimes applications will not update as there is not enough ? (memory or disk space) for them. Otherwise, the phone is satisfactory. Getting an upgrade was very simple: I went to my manager and explained my problem. She immediately wrote an email to the person who deals with phones and he ordered me a new one.

Originally I was offered two models: either the Samsung Galaxy S5 or LG 4. My son in law recommended the LG, so I asked for this; when the phone came yesterday, it was the Galaxy. Not very important to me. My first action with the new phone was to charge it completely which did not take very long. I wanted to extract the SIM from my old phone and insert it into the new one but was stymied at the very first hurdle as I couldn't open the old phone! As I also wanted to buy a memory card and a protective cover, I decided not to do anything on my own.

Today I went to a mobile phone/computer shop nearby. A 32GB card cost 65 NIS, about $18, and the cover a bit less. The salesman opened my old phone with no problem and extracted the SIM; this was 'full size' and thus too large for the Galaxy (just as well that I didn't try this on my own). He used a tool to cut the SIM to the correct size - actually he cut it too small and had to use an 'adapter' in order to get the SIM to fit. Apparently there are three sizes of SIM: large, small and very small. On top of the SIM he inserted the memory card; we checked that everything worked and then I was on my own.

I quickly discovered two facts: the physical controls on the phone are subtly different from those on my previous phone, and that the operating system has been upgraded from 4 to 5. These two facts caused me no small bother at first, but I think that I'm getting the hang of things. After getting everything connected, several apps started downloading - this already is something new, as previously I had to wait for a wifi connection for this to happen. Several of the apps are superfluous to my needs so I uninstalled them.

I connected the phone to the mobile computer and restored photos and ringtones which I had previously saved. Using a Google account means that I had no problems restoring contact information. I then started personalising the phone: setting up the shortcuts to what I wanted, etc. In doing so, I discovered some new tricks: I can 'star' contacts then see them in a special view (making it easy for me to dial them) and discovered how speed dial works (after assigning numbers to the contacts, a long press on the given number dials the speed number). This meant that I could remove the phone short cuts which I had added to the desktop, thus allowing a better view of the background - naturally, a picture of my granddaughter. I also set up some albums in the gallery and discovered how I could move pictures from album to album.

Now that the data, shortcuts and similar are set up, there remains the task of getting used to the new buttons. I'll look again at the manual which I downloaded yesterday in order to learn what does what.

Michael Herr, RIP

Sometime in 1975 or 1976, I bought a copy of Tom Wolfe's book 'The New Journalism', which in time has become something of a classic. This book consists of either complete magazine articles or chapters from books which had been or were about to be published. In time, I would buy some of these books.

In March 1978, I bought a copy of Michael Herr's book about Vietnam, 'Dispatches', which had just been published; one chapter of the book had appeared in Wolfe's collection, which was why I was so interested in it. Also, growing up in Britain during the late 60s/early 70s, I had been aware of the Vietnam war but knew very little about it. Herr opened my eyes.

It was also the time of the Litani operation, about which I was hearing on the radio and which echoed with what I was reading. At the time, I was staying at my parents' house in Cardiff, relaxing after final exams, and trying to write reports of seminars which I had attended during the year.

I don't know whether 'enjoy' is a suitable word to use when writing about a book which describes war, but I have to say that the book very much touched me. I heard an echo of it in the second half of Kubrick's "Full metal jacket" and was not totally surprised to discover that Herr was one of the scriptwriters.

I never encountered anything by Herr after that, but 'Dispatches' will always be part of me. Thus I was totally surprised to read his (excellent) obituary by Tim Page, one of Herr's closest friends in Vietnam. This article is as well written as 'Dispatches' was.

I have no idea whether Tim Page and Jimmy Page are related (probably not), but there is a photo in that Guardian obituary in which T. Page looks very similar to J. Page.

Sophisticated syntax in Priority

Let's say that I want to write a trigger which will check in the Contacts form whether a contact already exists with the email address which has just been typed in. 'PHONEBOOK' is the name of the contacts table, ':$.EMAIL' is the name of the email field and ':$.PHONE' is the id field.

Once, I would have written the trigger like this

:COUNT = 0;
SELECT COUNT (*) INTO :COUNT
FROM PHONEBOOK
WHERE EMAIL = :$.EMAIL
AND PHONE <> :$.PHONE;
WRNMSG 500 WHERE :COUNT > 0;

This code counts how many existing records in the PHONEBOOK table have the given e-mail. A warning message (number 500) is displayed if the result is greater than 0. One day, I realised that this is unsophisticated: I don't care about the actual number of duplicates but I do care that a duplicate exists. Enter more sophisticated code

WRNMSG 500 WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM PHONEBOOK
WHERE EMAIL = :$.EMAIL
AND PHONE <> :$.PHONE);

Today I discovered an even more sophisticated way of doing the same thing

WRNMSG 500 FROM PHONEBOOK
WHERE EMAIL = :$.EMAIL
AND PHONE <> :$.PHONE;

Theoretically, this version should be faster than the previous version which should be faster than the naive version, although practically speaking I doubt whether anyone will notice the difference. This syntax does not appear in the Priority Developer's Bible; what does appear is

WRNMSG msg_number [ WHERE condition ];

Looking at pre-defined triggers, I found a few variations:

GOTO 1 FROM PART WHERE ...
SELECT 50 INTO :$.GO FROM ERRMSGS WHERE ...

I found a good use for this syntax, along with another improvement introduced in version 17: NFILE. This is documented as 'Select NFILE if the linked file comprises a group of records and you want the link table to remain empty when the user enters * or leaves the field empty.' NFILE should be used when getting a linked file when the base table contains many records - such as parts, customers and suppliers. Previously, one would declare the parameter to be of type FILE; the program would take a relatively long time to fill the table if all the records were chosen (by *). NFILE allows one to save this copying; the original table will be used if the field either contains * or is left empty.

But how does one check? In the past few months, I've been writing code like this

LINK ORDERS TO :$.ORD;
ERRMSG 1 WHERE :RETVAL <= 0;
:COUNT = 0;
SELECT COUNT (*) INTO :COUNT
FROM ORDERS
WHERE ORD > 0;
GOTO 1 WHERE :COUNT > 0;
UNLINK ORDERS;
LABEL 1;

But now I can write

LINK ORDERS TO :$.ORD;
ERRMSG 1 WHERE :RETVAL <= 0;
GOTO 1 FROM ORDERS
WHERE ORD > 0;
UNLINK ORDERS;
LABEL 1;

Concise and to the point. So, one more undocumented nugget.

Vinyl log 28 - 4 July

Day	Month	Year	Artist	Title
4	July	1986	Peter Hammill	Skin

I used to receive newsletters from the man himself; he developed a sense of expectation by writing that one long track on this album echoed the classic Van der Graaf Generator sound; Guy Evans and David Jackson played on this song. But even more interesting was the fact that Hugh Banton played on another track; since Banton left at the end of 1976, he had never appeared on any of Hammill's albums, unlike the other two band-mates.

At this time in my life, I had become an accountant for hire, or more accurately, a 'movement worker': one or two days a week I would travel to Jerusalem where I would do the accounts for an urban kibbutz along with some attempts at explaining simple book-keeping to them. This work was paid for by the central kibbutz movement, and every so often I would travel to Tel Aviv in order to get my expenses refunded. I imagine that there were other reasons for traveling to Tel Aviv but I don't remember them now. Presumably I would have bought this record on one of these trips, at the shop which I had discovered which stocked British imports. I'm sure I wrote about finding this shop and being stunned by discovering new Fairport records (this was the mid-80s), but I can't find that blog now.

I must have recorded the album onto cassette because I remember traveling to Jerusalem on a bus and feeling a frisson when Hammill sang "now it's coming to the crunch as you stumble on the Jaffa Gate" ("A perfect date"). This was the song on which Hugh Banton played; unfortunately, I didn't like it very much. On the other hand, the long track "Now lover", along with some other tracks ("After the show", "Shell" and "Four pails") very much resonated with me. Filling out the record are a few guitar based songs which I don't like very much and never listen to ("Skin", "All said and done"). 

There in one atypical and apparently completely MIDI based song, "Painting by numbers", which I quite like. One can find on youtube a video of Hammill miming this song, apparently for some Spanish TV show; it's somewhat incongruous.

[SO: 4207; 4, 20, 41
MPT: 732; 1,3,6]

Autoharp

As of today, I am the owner of an Oscar Schmidt 36 String 12 Chord Vintage Autoharp, certainly the only one on my kibbutz and possibly the only one in Israel. I bought it from Ebay a few weeks ago and to be honest, buying it was a mistake. I had participated in several auctions for more modern autoharps, but I didn't win any.

This one was priced very low which is why I entered a bid. Shipping was available to Israel, which was not the case for about half of the 'harps offered for sale. A moment after entering the bid, I read the seller's comments: Seriously out of tune and needs TLC. Attic find (my own attic- used to play this when I was a kid). No structural issues that I can identify- just cleaning and tuning (and the two missing keys, which I unfortunately do not have). Had I been less frustrated about not winning any auctions and less excited by the fact that the item could ship to Israel, I would have read this prior to entering the bid and probably would not have bid. Silly me. At least I had enough sense to buy a tuning wrench (like a piano tuner's).

Both items arrived today, and it was with some trepidation that I opened the package. The 'harp survived the delivery although there were some extraneous bits of broken plastic in the package; I couldn't identify their source and it doesn't really matter as I couldn't do anything with them. As the package states, the 'harp is totally out of tune; some strings are three or four semitones sharp! So far, I've tuned about half of the strings. Obviously I haven't developed a feel for the tuning wrench yet; this needs a very delicate touch. A slight turn makes for a change of several semitones. But I'm getting there.

One of the 'two missing keys' (these are the white things on the lower half of the picture) was taped with sellotape to the 'harp; I've glued this into place. Hopefully I can find something for the other missing key, which is the closest to the bottom. More importantly, I have to figure out what chord that key plays. 

The autoharp is like a folk guitar in that it plays mainly chords, but unlike a guitar (or a piano), when one presses on a chord bar, the strings on which the bar presses are muted; one hears the unmuted strings. It probably won't be very difficult to get to a simple standard of playing but I doubt that I'm going to get very far. The quality of the instrument doesn't help.

The layout of the chords is:
top row: Gm, A7, Dm, E7, Am, D7
bottom row: Bb (missing), C7,  F, G7, C, G

Having discovered this,  I realised that I had glued the key onto the wrong bar (the key says G but I had placed it on the Bb bar). Fortunately, the glue had not set, so I was able to pull the key off and glue it in the correct place. These chords allow one to play in the keys of C, D, F, G and E; four or five chords in each key. It's a shame about the G7 and C7 chords: these are effectively the same as G and C so the bars could be put to better use for other chords. This site (and others) imply that one can recut the felt on a chord bar in order to create new chords, but that's way above my ability. There aren't going to be many of my songs which I'll be able to play, but most traditional songs and those in the tradition should be ok.

Today's reading matter (2)

I read Randall Bolten's latest blog entry, "Did you spell '273' correctly?" with interest. The issues mentioned in his blog are not the sort of thing which affect me, even though the other day I found a long-standing spelling mistake in my thesis (I also found one on this blog, where I had used a homonym for the word I wanted). I'm writing the thesis with Word, which has a spell checker, so most mistakes should be caught. Unfortunately, Word uses American spelling whereas I use British spelling; supposedly I have 'told' Word to use British spellings but it consistently ignores me. So all the time I get squiggly red lines under words such as 'organisation' and similar.

I continued trying to find suitable material which will help me phrase the data analysis portion of the submission. This section - less than a page long - is proving to be a field of thorns for me and seems to be causing my supervisor - who is a statistician - a great deal of frustration. I have been dreaming about this section for the last few days, which shows how deeply it is affecting me; I still cannot find suitable language.

Something which may help is a paper from Trinity Washington University which gives a sample of a quantitative research proposal.  There doesn't seem to be much material about statistics there but there are a few pages on creating a model of the theoretical framework, which looks like this:

Note independent variable one (IV 1): ECONMOIC DEVELOPMENT. Oops - someone didn't check their spelling!

I will try and create a similar model for my research, which makes me wonder whether what I have termed 'company variables' are not independent variables but rather moderating variables. It could easily be argued that a user might have certain values for some of the independent variables, but these are moderated by the company variables. On the other hand, examples of moderating variables in the Trinity example are 'time in residence' and 'political affiliation'; translated to my research, 'time in residence' could be 'age' or 'years of experience with ERP'. I think that I will ask my supervisor about this - maybe I will get a useful answer.

According to 'Ask Yahoo' (definitely an accredited source of information), the best answer says that:
In general experiment design, you might typically think of a moderating variable as an independent variable, as it is often something the experimenter will manipulate. Its more useful to think of it in terms of causal relationships between the variables, and think of independent variables as those which you think will have a *direct* effect. A moderator variable specifies *when* a predicting variable will have an effect. Say I want to look at the effect of caffeine on memory for example, and I predict that increased caffeine consumption will improve memory performance. In my design, I have a caffeine vs no caffeine condition and male vs female as my independent variables, and memory test performance as my dependent variable. My results show that there is an interaction between sex and caffeine, with males doing better after consuming it, but it making no difference for females. We would call sex a moderating variable in this instance; whilst it doesn't predict memory performance itself, it determines when my predictor (caffeine) will have an effect (only when it is males). Moderation effects are generally demonstrated by significant interaction effects in your analysis.

On that basis, 'gender' and 'age' are definitely moderating variables in my research.

[SO: 4187; 4,20,40
MPP: 647; 1, 3, 6]

Just another proud grandparent

I suppose I should be like any other proud grandparent and post pictures of my grand-daughter and I together. I normally only get the chance to see her on Friday nights - because I'm too busy during the week - and then I have to wait my turn for access.

An advanced - and possibly useless - technique in Priority

Someone asked how to execute a procedure within a form trigger. It's easy to execute a predefined external program such as 'sonraw' (explodes bills of materials) -

EXECUTE SONRAW :TMPART, SQL.DATE8, :ARC, 0;

but I assume that this was not what the person was asking. Rather, he wanted to execute a procedure which he had written in Priority from within a trigger. I can't think of any real reason to want to do this: passing data in the procedure is problematic and getting data out is even more problematic. Hopefully the person who asked the question will reveal what his motives are.

The answer came to me last night out of the blue. I had awoken in the middle of the night with my mind buzzing with ideas following a meeting in which I had participated earlier during the day. One of the ideas would require implementing a trigger in a standard form, and suddenly the solution to another problem - invoking an internal procedure from within a trigger - popped into my mind.

Looking back on the process now, I can see that there was some mental preparation: a few days earlier I had written a procedure which causes a report to be sent automatically to people via email. This procedure uses a certain technique to invoke an internal report, so it wasn't much of a mental jump to realise that I could use the same technique to invoke a procedure by subtly changing its parameters.

Here is the called procedure: its name is XXXX_TEST and it receives one parameter, STK, of type FILE. All the procedure does is create an external text file containing the values which had been passed.

LINK STACK TO :$.PAR;
WRNMSG 1 WHERE :RETVAL <= 0;
SELECT ITOA (ELEMENT) FROM STACK TABS 'R:/1.TXT';
UNLINK STACK;

The trigger which calls this procedure is as follows

SELECT SQL.TMPFILE INTO :STK FROM DUMMY;
LINK STACK TO :STK;
INSERT INTO STACK (ELEMENT)
VALUES (:$.ID);
EXECUTE WINACTIV '-P', 'XXXX_TEST', 'STACK', :STK;
UNLINK AND REMOVE STACK;

After running the screen which activates the trigger, I discovered that I had created a text file, R:/1.txt, with the contents 0, 1336; just as I expected.

Saturday salmon

I discovered a few weeks ago that the supermarket where my wife shops stocks frozen salmon steaks. I decided to buy some and see how well I could cook them. After marinading them all night in a mixture of lemon juice and olive oil, I grilled them for about twelve minutes (six per side) on a hot griddle pan. Below is the result

I had already smeared mayonnaise on the fish before remembering that I should take a photograph, but the burn marks from the griddle pan are still visible.

I think this is how fish should be served: a crust on the outside (with Maillard reaction products) and soft inside. I have to admit that the flesh didn't have any lemon flavour, implying that the marinade was either ineffective or unnecessary. Once I used to cook the steaks in the slow cooker, but that method doesn't give any advantage, save allowing me to prepare the food a few hours in advance of eating. Grilling them in the pan means doing so immediately prior to eating; it would be wrong to grill then keep the food warm in the oven for an hour.

The quality of the served fish justified the price of the salmon: all the diners were very appreciative.

Dave Swarbrick, RIP

A brief tribute can be found here. No doubt more will be posted in the coming days (here's another, more detailed, tribute).

Swarb is the bearded guy in the front left; it's possible to see that he was comparatively older than the others. This picture was taken in 1970, when he would have been 29 whereas Simon (green shirt, middle) was only 19, although seemingly older than he actually was.

I was introduced to Swarb's music in early 1970, once again via the seminal 'Nice enough to eat' album, although it would be a few months later with the purchase of 'Liege and Lief' that I really heard him play.

In retrospect, Swarb was fairly restrained on that record; he began to let loose on 'Full House', after which Richard (far right, blue shirt) left and Swarb remained as the main musical force in Fairport. He carried the flag for several more years until the deterioration in his hearing and the audience shift at the end of the 70s caused the band to dissolve for several years.

Despite appearing at several Cropredy festivals in the early 80s, he declined to play on the revival "Gladys' Leap" album, since when he has been a friend but not a member of Fairport.

When listening to those Fairport albums now, I quite enjoy them but wish that he had been less dominant as I don't necessarily care for the musical values which he propagated.

The only personal memory which I seem to have of Swarb is from Cropredy 1996. I found myself dozing during the mammoth Fairport set, and had to awake myself by saying "It's Swarb! You may never ever get the chance to hear him play again!" (of course, I did in 1997 and 1998, but never again. Mind you, I haven't seen any of them since 2004).

Now Swarb joins the Fairport alumni all-star band in the sky, along with Sandy, Trevor, Bruce and Martin. Strangely enough, the first three along with Swarb appeared together on "Rising for the moon" (1975). As far as I know, their fellow musicians on that album - Peggy, Jerry and DM - are still doing well.

[Update from several months later: that final paragraph was written some months before Jerry Donahue had a stroke]

Today's reading matter

The title may seem slightly abtuse but it's actually very interesting: Factors affecting the adoption of Online Auctions by Internet Users in Hong Kong. It would be reasonable to ask why I am reading this as I rarely participate in online auctions and I am not situated in Hong Kong.

Apart from the intrinsic value of the document itself (this may spur me to buy a used autoharp via Ebay, a purchase which I have long been considering), there is an ulterior motive: this document is a DBA thesis from Heriot-Watt, published February 2014. In other words, I am very interested in looking at the framework of this document in the hope that I can extract some value for my own thesis.

About a month ago, I tried to read a doctoral thesis which was much more connected to my subject matter - something to do with spreadsheets - but it was written very badly, implying that my programme requires much higher standards from its doctoral candidates than does the university which published the spreadsheet thesis. This is why I specifically wanted to find a thesis from my university.

This thesis appears to have a tenuous connection to mine: apart from coming from the same doctoral programme - and thus having the same research committee as I do - it is also hypothesis and research based. This is the section from which I hope to glean some value. It will take some time before I get to the interesting sections, but in the introduction, the author writes "The data from the questionnaire will be analysed using the Kruskal-Wallis test". 

Without going into details, this is a non-parametric statistical test, meaning that the data is not normally distributed (not 'bell shaped curved', for the non-statisticians amongst us). It's interesting that this test is mentioned with no surrounding statements; it's also interesting that the data apparently does not have a normal distribution. I wonder whether the researcher tested for such a distribution; I also initially assumed that my data would not be normally distributed but my supervisor queried this. As I have only performed a limited pilot test, I don't have enough data to establish whether there is a normal distribution.

As the current problem with my intermediate submission is the data analysis section (once again), insights which I can glean from this thesis will be very welcome,

Unconnected snippets

• My wife sent a copy of one of the baby pictures to a friend in America; the response was that the baby is 'adorable'. Not knowing what this word meant (in English), my wife asked me and I explained, using the Hebrew word 'hadar' הדר. It then occurred to me that maybe the English word is derived from the Hebrew - children often replace an 'h' at the beginning of a word with an 'a' - so the root could easily have been corrupted, from 'hdr' to 'adr'. If 'adorable' were a Hebrew word, then its root would indeed be 'adr'. But the online etymology dictionary tells a different tale: late 14c., aouren, "to worship, pay divine honors to, bow down before," from Old French aorer "to adore, worship, praise" (10c.), from Latin adorare "speak to formally, beseech, ask in prayer," in Late Latin "to worship," from ad- "to" (see ad-) + orare "speak formally, pray" (see orator). Meaning "to honor very highly" is attested from 1590s; weakened sense of "to be very fond of" emerged by 1880s. Related: Adored; adoring. The Latin root seems correct. I will try my theory out on a Hebrew linguist.

• 
  While in Italy, I may have hinted obliquely at trying to find a pair of slip-on shoes that I like. I did buy a pair (for 40 euro) but soon came to realise that they had very thin soles; walking with them was not as pleasant as I would like. One day during the Passover holiday, we were in the local mall, shopping for bits and pieces; I went into the Crocs shop and found a model which I very much like - Walu Accent. These cost about 75 euro but they have thick soles (which also massage the feet) and are definitely a good purchase.

• There's nothing like 100% hindsight. I now discover that there is a Crocs shop in Sorrento: Vitulli, at Corso Italia 173. Checking this on a map, this is quite some way out of Sorrento which is why I never saw this shop. I might have passed it one morning when I took a long walk in the direction of the neighbouring village, S. Agnello.

• Another reason for that shopping trip was that the day beforehand, I had lost a USB stick. There was nothing important on it, but I used it for transferring files between computers and for showing pictures on our television. So I bought a new one - 16 GB for the equivalent of about $6.5. I have since obtained an HDMI cable which I will leave plugged in permanently to the television; I will then display pictures from my new mobile computer. I have yet to try this out but have no reason to assume that it will not be successful.

Grandpa No'am

My (as yet unnamed) grand-daughter was born yesterday (2 May 2016) at 14:18, weighing 3.1 kg. Both baby and mother are fine.

Writing lyrics (2)

I followed my own advice from the last blog and wrote lyrics for the 'song with a completed arrangement' the other night. I knew that some of the lines weren't right, but I thought it best to complete the song with what might be dummy lines then replace them later. This evening I had a second session on writing the lyrics and replaced about 40%! Here they are (no hints as to what was and what is new)....

Out of the comfort zone

Stranded and all alone
I’m facing a vague unknown
A task without scope
A path without hope
I’m out of my comfort zone

Once I could fly in my dreams
Now sleep often turns to screams
I’m tired but can’t rest
I’ve lost all my zest
Far out of my comfort zone

People demand that I serve their every whim
Several times a day
Invent the impossible, foresee the unforeseen
Whilst keeping my demons at bay

I’m tasked with the strange, the bizarre
I’m hitched to a shooting star
That insists on solutions that I must provide
Requires concentration when problems collide
Removes me from my comfort zone 

[SO: 4152; 4, 20, 38
ELL: 843; 0, 1, 7
MPT: 627; 1, 3, 6]

Writing lyrics

It being Passover week, I've been at home most days. In order not to waste these days by sitting around and doing nothing, I set myself some modest goals:

1. Try to do as much consulting work (both for the OP and other companies) as possible
2. Work on my thesis
3. Record vocals for at least one of the two songs whose music I have completed

The first two were accomplished without much difficulty, although I notice that I seem to be capable of working only in the mornings. Two days ago, we had a heatwave - 38 degrees - which made it almost impossible to do anything, even with air conditioning. But now it's at least ten degrees cooler, making life easier.

Yesterday's task was to record vocals for a song called 'Apogee'. After getting sorted with my new microphone, I recorded several takes of the song. Singing the chorus was problematic, as for 'fun', I had set them to a 5/4 rhythm, whereas the verses are in 4/4. Added to that, the range either very high for me (A above middle C to D, an octave above middle C) or very low (A below middle C is about the lowest I can reach comfortably). Once I figured out the rhythm, I sang a few takes in falsetto and a few as bass.

In the afternoon, I started work on cleaning the vocals and placing them on top of the tune. The new microphone makes very clean recordings; I didn't need to add any EQ in order to improve the sound, but on some takes I added a little for artistic purposes. After adding reverb, I pieced together a complete vocal track and mixed the song down to stereo.

I then took a break for the time-honoured tradition of taking the dog for a walk and thinking about what I had accomplished. Whilst the completed song sounds good,  there was something wrong.  I wrote this song 44 years ago (almost to the day); the lyrics weren't very good then, so by today's standards they are absolutely terrible. So while I was walking the dog, I tried to think of alternative lyrics.

What made this hard was the rhyming scheme which I had adopted: the syllable at the end of the first line rhymes with a syllable in the middle of the second line, and the syllable at the end of the second line rhymes with the syllable at the end of the fourth line. There is also a rhyme between the end of the third line and the middle of the fourth line. To make things clearer, here are the first two lines:

Come on, my friend, let's go down to the river

We'll take a sliver of fish

There aren't too many rhymes with 'river' so if I wanted to keep the first line (which I did), my options were limited. At first, I toyed with the word 'shiver', but couldn't find anything acceptable. Then I tried 'quiver' which seemed to have more options. Eventually I found a couplet, then another ... and before long, I had a complete lyric (which I am not going to quote here). These are somewhat Beatlesque lyrics: they sort of make sense, but they don't mean anything specifically.

In the evening, I recorded one take with the new lyrics (I kept all the original recordings of the chorus, as this hadn't changed) then created a new version of the song. Because I am using an external microphone, instead of one which is at a fixed distance from my mouth, there is less extraneous noise (such as breathing or even stomach rumbling), but the volume is not constant. I shall have to work on microphone technique and probably use more compression in order to even out the volume.

The point of the story, however, is that I can still write lyrics - and write them reasonably quickly - when I want to. Such was the case with 'Qualia', 'The road to Antibes' and one other song not referenced by name. Why can I rewrite lyrics without too much difficulty, yet struggle to write new lyrics? I have two songs - one with a completed arrangement and one which is only a sketch at the moment - waiting for lyrics; I even have the titles. 

I think that it probably is due to familiarity with the tunes: I wrote the new words yesterday whilst sitting on the balcony with my new mobile computer, singing the tune and writing the words into the computer. These new songs are not yet familiar; their tunes do not play in my head. Maybe I should revert to my old habits: pick up the guitar and play the songs until the words form themselves, then improve them. I shall try and work on this tomorrow. 

Tonight I'll try and record the vocals for the other completed song - this one has good lyrics, but I've improved the music.

New mobile computer (2)

A few days ago, I received an email saying that in August, Dropbox would drop its support for computers running XP. My main computer runs XP and I use it for almost everything, especially program development and music. I use Dropbox to backup my development work and to receive timely updates of data from the Occupational Psychologist (OP) and her computers, so this is an essential tool. On the other hand, my work computer won't connect to Dropbox - probably due to network traffic regulations (too many people at work try to store large amounts of mp3 files or access unwanted sites).

So I made the decision to buy a new computer. This was tempered by the fact that I use my work mobile computer for certain personal tasks - mainly storing and manipulating video files - which I am not supposed to do. Thus it seems that buying a new computer - with a large disk, large memory and a modern operating system - is the logical thing to do. An added advantage would be taking the computer with me to the OP so that simple program fixes can be programmed on the spot.

I also decided that my home computer would eventually be dedicated to producing music. This is primarily because I am loathe to upset a system which works well and which I know well. I strongly suspect that some of my programs won't work on Windows 8 and I prefer to keep the setup as I know it. My wife has plans for extending our apartment, turning one room into a music room which will not be connected to the Internet; the current computer can move there.

On Thursday night, I checked a few Israeli internet sites to see what was being offered. I had decided that I would prefer Windows 8.1 as opposed to Windows 10, and that memory and disk size were more important than processor speed. After a certain amount of research, I settled on the Asus P550, which seems to offer all that I need at a reasonable price (2,400 NIS, comparable to the price quoted in the linked review). I noticed that this model was being sold at a local branch of a chain store.

On Friday morning, I went to this shop and enquired about this computer. The salesman checked his stock listing and said that they had one in stock, but he couldn't find the model. Eventually I realised that the said computer was on display under our noses; after removing it from the display stand, we checked the configuration and it was as I required: 1T disk, 6GB memory. The processor is an i3, which is ok. As the computer had been on display, the salesman tried to give me a discount but the sales system wouldn't let him; after several attempts which ended in failure, I suggested that they give me a mouse instead of a discount. Fair enough.

Once home with the computer, I was faced with several tasks:

1. Getting rid of the 8.1 display ('metro') which is suitable for mobile phones and replacing it with a standard desktop display
2. Defining the default language to be English and getting the computer to display left to right (it was set up for Hebrew, right to left)
3. Removing the demo products which were pre-installed
4. Installing my own programs
5. Transferring video data from my work mobile computer
6. Getting Delphi set up to compile my programs - the whole point of this computer is to be a development station

Points 1,3,4 and 5 were achieved without too much effort. After completing the transfer of video data - via a disk-on-key device - by mistake I deleted the entire parent directory from my work computer, files which belong only to me. Fortunately, most of those files were program installations, so not too much damage was done. I found a program which can restore files - Resuma - and after letting this program do its job, I managed to restore a certain amount. I doubt that I lost anything important.

Point 2 was exceedingly difficult: I only managed to resolve this by installing British English along with American English. This seems to have done the job but I'm not overly satisfied with the result. This is what happens when one buys a computer on a Friday morning when the Passover festival (a week away from work) starts in the evening. I will try and improve the situation in the future.

Point 6 - Delphi - started off on the wrong foot until I told the computer to view the Delphi installer as WinXP/SP3 compatible; then I managed to install the program correctly. Transferring my programs and data went ok but there were problems with a few oddball components. I tried recompiling one program - my Cinema database program - during which I discovered a few places where my code could be improved. This went fine, but I discovered that all source code which uses Hebrew has been mangled (rather, the Hebrew has been mangled; the code itself is ok). I have been thinking about ways of addressing this issue: obviously everything will have to be recoded, but it might be better to store the Hebrew interface strings in each program's database instead of directly inserting into the code. This will be slower but slightly more flexible. 

The main thing which is lacking at the moment is an Internet connection. I used my mobile router to a certain extent but was unable to update the Windows Defender database (anti-virus); I will wait until I can connect the computer to the kibbutz wired network (this requires the administrators to define the machine and they may not be working this week). So I can work on my programs and the Sorrento 2016 film but not on anything which requires a connection.

I noticed that Asus offer the option of free storage - 16GB - which seemed very attractive and almost invalidated the point of the entire exercise, which was to stop using Dropbox. But when I managed to connect and set up an account, I discovered that this storage is free for a year; after that, I will have to pay. This morning, I looked for other options and discovered that there is a site - Mega - which offers a staggering 50GB, free of charge! I swiftly set up an account, downloaded their synchronisation client and started uploading data. I'll run this in tandem with Dropbox for a few weeks until everything gets sorted out and then presumably I'll drop Dropbox (sorry for the bad pun). The Mega client works fine on XP; will it work on my work computer?

Programmers at work (2)

Following on from yesterday's post about the e-book "Programmers at work", here is one of the most prophetic passages which I have come across so far. It's in the interview with John Page, not someone of whom I was aware before reading the book.

INTERVIEWER: What kind of information do you think we'll have access to in the future?

PAGE: Let me give you an example of what could be available. Let's say you want to go some place in Europe for your vacation. You want good drinking water, a nice hotel on the beach with a lap pool, and hang gliding nearby. How on earth would you find out all those things? You might find the good hotel near a beach in travel brochures, but they probably don't mention the things that interest you most, like hang gliding and a lap pool. Unless you happen to see a photo, you have virtually no information on which to base your vacation decision. So you end up going back to the same vacation spot each year because you can't find a new place that's any better. There are many other examples and tons of information we don't have about almost every aspect of our lives.

Does that sound familiar? Could it be TripAdvisor or one of its clones?