Neat hack - but is it useful? (Management program)

Over the past few years, I have slowly been moving reports in the OP's management program from a simple SQL query with maybe one or two parameters (sometimes with a list of customers or therapists on one side and the required data for the chosen customer/therapist, and sometimes via two dates) to a more dynamic form, in which a form/screen/window has what Delphi calls a pagecontrol with two tabs (as shown in the picture on the left), where one tab has a form with various parameters and the other tab shows the result of the query. I see now that I wrote about this eight (!) years ago so I won't go into too many details here.

I see also that I posted the code that shows how the parameters are added, but not the basic query, which for the above form would be

select therapists.name, interviews.curdate, interviews.score, 
people.forename, people.surname, 
coalesce (people.origzehut, people.zehut) as origzehut,
dockets.id, ranks.name as rname, people.id as pid
from interviews
inner join therapists on therapists.id = interviews.therapist
inner join people on people.id =  interviews.pid
inner join dockets on dockets.id = people.docket
left join ranks on dockets.recommendation = ranks.id
where 1 = 1 

The parameters are added after the 'where 1 = 1' line, such as 'and therapists.id = :p1'. When I remember, I try to add a similar parameter tab to every new report.

Last Friday we were talking about adding more fields to a different report when suddenly I thought to myself that it would be a neat hack to add saved queries to the parameter tab. The idea is very simple: let's say that I've filled in the parameters for a query (e.g. select all the interviews held during 2020 that had a score of 5 - that's three fields) and I want to repeat this query at some point in the future, maybe choosing a different therapist (I don't have a way of choosing two or three therapists; it's either one or all). I want to save this query so that I can restore it again with minimal effort. Obviously (or not), the parameters stay on the screen until one exits the screen, so repeated queries with different therapists don't require new input (apart from choosing the therapist). But should one close the screen or run the query on another day, the values must be chosen again. Saved queries allows one to restore the parameter values.

This is less a technological problem (how to save the values and later restore them) and more a user interface problem: the user must be able to save, restore, update and delete queries, preferably whilst seeing the saved parameter values.

After thinking about this for about an hour or more, I came to the conclusion that the requirements would be a list box (showing the names of the saved queries), a button allowing one to save the values (that's the '+' button on the right hand side underneath the list box), a button allowing one to update the values (that's the middle button) and one button to delete saved queries (the '-' button on the left). Restoring/choosing a query is done simply by double clicking on the query name.

Pressing the '+' button brings up a dialog box in which one gives a name for the query, and then the parameter values (those that are not default, e.g. empty) are saved. My original data design had a 'savedquery' table consisting of an id, program number and query name, along with a son table with a pointer to the father id, the tab order of the field being saved and the value of the field being saved. During testing, I belatedly realised that the management program is multi-user, and so I added a field for the user to the 'savedquery' table. This way, two users can have different saved queries for the same screen with the same name, but with different values, and each user will get the values that she saved, and not those of another user.

I originally developed the necessary code as part of my example screen; once it was finished, I considered how to make the code more generic so that I don't have to write it again. Certain parts have to be modified per screen (saving and restoring the value of a given parameter) but no small amount is generic. I think about 60-65% of the code is generic and 35% specific.

Whilst writing this blog and looking at the code, I have just realised how I can make the entire saving and restoring procedures totally generic. Hurray!

I have my suspicions that no one is going to use this feature, but I enjoyed the technical challenge of writing it!

Sequencing "House with no door" - revised/revisited

Many years ago, I wrote about sequencing the Van der Graaf Generator song, "House with no door". At the time, I didn't like the first version that I sequenced so I created a second version. As I wrote at the time, "Last night I wasn't too convinced about the new version, but having listened to it several times this morning, I think that this will be 'the one'".

Both versions popped up on my headphones the other day, which is when I realised that there are parts of the first version that are good (and parts that are not so good) and that there are parts of the second version that are good, along with parts that are not so good. As a result, I decided to create yet another version of this song!

The first major production decision was to remove all percussion; this was one of the problems that bogged down the original versions. The second decision was to remove the completely instrumental third verse - this is where David Jackson plays the most beautiful multiple saxophone counterpoint - but in my versions, this verse was slowing things down and causing problems. I decided to create my own chord sequence for the instrumental break; if the song were in C (as is the original, but I'm playing it in Bb), the chords would be Dm (four bars), Fm (four bars), D7 (two bars), G7 (two bars), C (three bars). The D7 is the secondary dominant of G7 that is the dominant of C. 

I also simplified the instrumentation slightly but added a marimba at the beginning of the final verse: I could hear something in my imagination that was not in the original nor in either of my earlier versions.

Now all I have to do is become familiar with the new arrangement and eventually sing it. 

15 June 2021

A special day.

In my teens, I had several close friends whose birthdays fell between 15-19 June. Unfortunately, I lost contact with all of them years ago and no longer remember accurately whose birthday fell when. So if it's yours on 15 June, Happy Birthday!

More importantly, this is the day that the Israeli ministry of health rescinded the order about wearing masks. We are now free of mask wearing, except in hospitals and old age homes. The kibbutz clinic issued an instruction (a warning?) that masks should be worn by those with upper respiratory tract infections, but probably the warning extends to everyone. I've been a frequent visitor to health clinics in the past few weeks but now I have no outstanding appointments for a few weeks. 

Coincidentally, I made my first trip to Karmiel in what is probably a year and a half. It seems that nothing has changed in that time, although obviously I missed all the changes. I don't know whether this visit is going to be the harbinger of future visits: I made an exception because I had three consecutive meetings with the CEO and I wanted to see the infamous 'nesting' machine and the 'automatic warehouse'. I think that I'll travel to Tel Aviv in a week or so in order to give a new employee a training session with Priority but other than that, there seems to be no incentive or imperative to travel.

The automatic warehouse opens all kinds of possibilities and will allow several changes to occur with respect to how the wood planks are purchased and removed from inventory. Consider this post of mine from 12 years ago (!); almost nothing has changed in that period, but finally that era is over. The automatic warehouse allows us to know every minute how many planks are in inventory; I will add to this the requirements and so everyone will be able to see how much inventory needs to be ordered.

Primary aldosteronism

I apologise for continuing to blog on this topic, but I find it fascinating. After all, it is my health.... Not only that, the researcher in me finds the protocols very interesting.

The new web site that I found states that primary aldosteronism (PA) should be considered in cases where

• Blood pressure is above 150/100 mm Hg on three different measurements obtained on different days
• Blood pressure is above 140/90 mm Hg, and does not improve despite combining three conventional antihypertensive drugs
• Blood pressure is below 140/90 mm Hg, but  four or more blood pressure medications are combined
• High blood pressure and sleep apnea

There are other indications, but the above is enough; the fourth might be considered to be the most obvious in my case, but I don't remember the topic of sleep apnea being raised in any consultation. The first stage in diagnosis is the aldosterone/renin ratio; my blood contains almost no renin so the ratio is very high - a good sign of PA. The second step is oral sodium loading that is supposed to suppress aldosterone production; not quite, in my case. 

Once primary aldosteronism has been biochemically established by ARR and confirmatory testing, the next step in diagnosis consists in determining the subtype of the disease. Although it only concerns about a third of patients, the form of primary aldosteronism for which treatment is the most effective is unilateral disease where an adenoma is the source of excess aldosterone.In the third step of the diagnosis process, imaging of the abdomen is obtained by [a] CT scan to assess whether there is an adenoma or the rare adrenal carcinoma on one of the adrenal glands.

One last step is needed in the diagnosis process — adrenal venous sampling. It is the “gold standard” test to distinguish unilateral from bilateral disease, and to determine the best course of treatment.

Reading further, I see that this test measures cortisol, not aldosterone; values from the adrenal veins are compared to a peripheral sample taken from the inferior vena cava that establishes a base value and to which the adrenal values can be compared.

For now, the next step is to obtain an appointment for the test. The PA site stresses that the diagnostic center handles a high enough case volume; the radiologist (or endocrinologist) to which I am being referred performed three such procedures last week. That should suffice.

I'll close this post with a paragraph I found elsewhere on the site, living with PA. Because they are prone to sleep disorders, patients with PA must ensure they get enough rest. Adopting a few simple techniques also helps reducing the anxiety and depression caused by excess aldosterone:

• Accepting events that are beyond our control;
• Asserting our feelings to prevent anger and aggressiveness;
• Setting limits and saying no to requests that create excessive stress;
• Managing our time effectively;
• Making time for hobbies and interests;
• Learning and practicing relaxation techniques;
• Seeking out social support; 
• Seeking counseling in times of crisis and to learn from professionals trained in stress management.

The above provides good reasons why I am still working from home.

Adrenal venous sampling

I had today what I thought was going to be the decisive meeting with my nephrologist: the CT scan from a week and a half ago showed a small (1 cm) adenoma on the left adrenal gland. I feared that the next step would be surgery, but no, there is another test that can be performed before this final step.

Incidentally, I praised the doctor for his approach to the problem: although there have been many steps, there has been a gradual progression from a minor, no inconvenience, test (blood), through a slightly more complicated test (urine collection with salt loading) followed by a more complicated, but still non-invasive test, the CT. Now the gloves are coming off: the next step is invasive as is (of course) the final step. Here is a very good web site that explains the various steps in the diagnosis, so to be fair, the doctor was following their advice.

So what is the next stage? Adrenal venous sampling. There's a somewhat learned web page that discusses this, but an easier explanation can be found here. In simple terms, even though there is an adenoma on the left adrenal gland, it may not be producing aldosterone (which is upsetting the balance). The way to test this is to compare blood taken from the left adrenal gland to that taken from the right adrenal gland; if both samples have the same aldosterone level, then the adenoma is non-producing and can be left as it is. But should the sample from the left gland have a higher aldosterone level, then ....

Here's a nice picture of what's going to happen. For the patient, it's similar to catherisation, where a catheter is inserted into the femoral vein and then travels up to the heart. In this case (AVS), the catheter doesn't have to travel far, and in the words of the nephrologist, it's a much easier procedure as there's no need to battle with the blood pressure found in the aorta.

A new Yoni Rechter songbook

About ten days ago, there was an interview on TV with Yoni Rechter in which he discussed a new songbook ("Twenty songs from five decades"), his fourth. A few days later, I was in the local mall (after having my chest x-ray) and went into the book shop, asking about this book. I didn't know its name and I didn't know whether the book had been published yet (the interview said that it would be published in a few weeks, but now it occurs to me that the interview could have been recorded a week or more before it was broadcast). A salesperson looked it up on the computer, found the name of the book, found that they had it in stock and eventually found the physical book on the shelves. It makes a welcome change to buy something as it is published and not a year later (more on this later).

As per its title, there are (only) twenty songs in the book and these come from all across his career. There are a few from his first solo album (1980/1), some from his last 'official' album (2017) and a few from his most recent album (again, more on this later). I haven't really had the strength or ability to concentrate on reading the sheet music, but as his songs have been accompanying me on my walks for the past few days, this was an ideal opportunity to look at the notes for the title song of the last album "Svivenu" ("around us"). 

Funnily enough, I was thinking - prior to hearing this song - that there are very few Rechter songs in 6/8 or 12/8; of course, "Svivenu" is in 12/8. The song is presented in the key of A minor (although there is a modulation to Eb in the middle), but a note in the introduction to the book says that the recording is in a different key. The first chord in the verse is naturally Am; the second chord in the first verse is Bm7 (b5), which is the diatonic chord formed on the second note of the minor scale (B D F A). A few bars later, a different chord is used: B7b5; in other words, the diatonic D has been sharpened to D#, leading more naturally (pun not intended) to the E7 chord that follows. Further on (after returning from the modulation), that second chord is now B7 - not only has the D been sharpened, but also the flat fifth (F) has been 'unflattened' - it's now F#. My point is that the same sequence near enough occurs three times, but each time that second chord is changed slightly. That's variation - or sophistication. There's plenty to learn from these examples. If I get really bored, I might try entering all the notes into the MIDI sequencer.

Now resolving the 'forward' references: a few weeks ago, I idly accessed Yoni's web page (or rather, Facebook page) and discovered that he had a 'new' album of children's songs released; this came out in January 2020, before Covid-19, but presumably the pandemic prevented any PR effort on behalf of this album. Again, in one of my visits to the local mall, primarily for medical reasons (if I remember correctly, this was when I went to get the salt pills), I went into the book shop, but this time found the disc immediately.

The first few listenings to the disc were somewhat confusing, but shortly everything sorted itself out, and I very much like this collection. The writing is cinematic: voices and instruments come and go. I wonder how children would find these songs because they are not straight-forward. An animated clip of one of the songs ("Pnina") can be found here; this song is like a mini-opera and again I wonder how children would find this. This song is one of those included in the new book, so I can give a short analysis. After two bars of musical introduction in 4/4, the first bar of singing is in 5/4 followed by one in 4/4, then one in 2/4, three bars in 4/4, one in 5/4 followed by several in 3/4 before the song returns to 4/4. In other words, metrically strange. But it may be easier for an untrained mind to learn this song simply by listening than for a trained musician to follow the notes. All of the songs on the album can be heard on YouTube, starting from here. 

The title of the album, "Yoni Giraffe", is a joke: on Rechter's previous album for children, "The sixteenth lamb", there was a track called "The giraffe has a long neck" (he can see things coming a week before we can) which is introduced by Yonatan Geffen commanding "Yoni, Giraffe", i.e. Yoni, play the Giraffe tune. Needless to say, Yoni Rechter is ... tall.

There are a few 'songs' that are spoken with a musical background; my favourite is one called 'Zebra' which is a Hebrew translation of a song by Shel Silverstein. I was going to translate the words back into English, but I found the original (the Hebrew differs here and there):

“I asked the Zebra,
are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?
And the zebra asked me,
Are you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with quiet times?
Or are you quiet with noisy times?
Are you happy with some sad days?
Or are you sad with some happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?
And on and on and on and on and on and on he went.
I’ll never ask a zebra about stripes...again.”

More data on my last viral infection

A week ago I had a CT examination, primarily of my adrenal glands because of the hyperaldosteronism. The scan showed a small (1 cm) adenoma that might well be the cause of my problems. I have an appointment with the nephrologist on Thursday and he will decide what the treatment is to be.

I was so focused on this that at first I didn't notice something else in the scan results: a large amount of pleural fluid in the right lung. This also appeared in the chest x-ray from Tuesday although in a lesser amount. In other words, there definitely was something wrong with my health in the past week, and the pain in the back was probably due to the accumulation of the pleural fluid.

My regular health is now near enough back to normal: I didn't feel well enough to go swimming on Friday morning, but I did swim yesterday. The first length was delightful: the water temperature was a bit below comfortable so this adds an extra frisson. But after about ten lengths, my timing was getting progressively worse and I stopped after sixteen lengths. At home I napped for about an hour as well as eating a few sandwiches. Hopefully next week will be better.

A few nights ago I recorded a tv show about how to improve one's immune system. What tips did this programme give: don't drink alcohol (check); sleep well (check); eat properly (check), exercise (check) - in other words, I'm already doing what the programme advises. One fact that I didn't know is that a high (3+) neutrophil to leukocyte ratio is bad for one's immune system; there's a medical term that I have momentarily forgotten that became important for Covid-19 patients [toxic shock syndrome or Cytokine storm] - the immune system reacted so strongly to the infection that it overwhelmed the body (something like anaphylactic shock). Five out of the six people examined in the show had an NLR well over three at the beginning of the programme; most managed to reduce it a little during the six weeks that they were monitored. 

I looked at all the blood test results that I have from the past 8 years and discovered that there are values both for neutrophils and leukocytes, so it was a simple manner to extract the values and calculate the ratios. My normal ratio is 2.0, which is very good. Strangely, the one time when it was significantly higher (3.1) was exactly one year ago, just as we were coming out of the first Covid-19 lock-down. Apparently the psychological effect of that lock-down was to create neutrophils as if my body thought that it was under attack. Further evidence that the mind has no small effect on the body.

My 'friends', the viruses

I know that it's not correct to anthropomorphise viruses, but sometimes I wonder. 

For several years after I emigrated to Israel, I was subject to nasty throat infections that led to microhematuria: I remember sitting in the office of a professor telling me that the doctors would be left no option but to remove my tonsils if I had one more infection (the tonsils provide a breeding ground for the staph bacteria that cause the problems that lead to blood in the urine; whilst this operation is considered 'regular' for children [although not anymore], it's quite a serious operation for an adult). Obviously the bacteria were listening for I've never had such an infection again. I related this incident here.

My friend the cold virus comes to visit once a year; I used to have some form of infection once a month, but after I started being vaccinated for the cold, the rate dropped impressively. Even if I had to pay for the vaccine, it would be worth it, as the cost of my lost productivity far exceeded the cost of the vaccine. I used to take comfort in the knowledge that at least someone (or something) would be happy to see me once a year.

I managed to avoid an infection from Sept 2019 - Feb 2020; after that, the viruses were as scared as I was from the new guy on the block and didn't come to visit. Obviously social distancing was very important in this; once things started coming back to normal, mask wearing also kept the viruses at bay.

But May 2021 has been one long infection; the first lasted nearly a fortnight but consisted only of a sore throat and some weakness. I had barely overcome that one when another virus attacked me; apart from the sore throat, this one caused pain in my back and also, unfortunately, caused my temperature to rise, making me weak and causing my mind frequently to lose focus. 

Yesterday I finally got the chance to see a doctor (the mild fever started only on Thursday); the physical examination didn't reveal much, but the doctor left nothing to chance and ordered a chest x-ray. This was clean* and I was given the medical ok last night. True, I did wake up in the middle of the night with a headache and bad feeling, but by morning I was feeling near enough normal.

To anthropomorphise again, the virus saw how serious I was about getting rid of it, so it decided to leave. A slight headache started about half an hour ago, but doesn't feel as if it's going to progress. My mind is sharp and my body shows no weakness.

Leaving levity for a moment and returning to a more scientific point of view, the fact that Israel is returning to pre-Covid behavioural practices aligned with the fact that I've been out of the house relatively frequently the past month (various medical tests connected with my high blood pressure, as well as dealing with several bureaucracies in order to open a bank account for my father) have increased my exposure to the world. I have heard that hospitals in Israel are reporting raised levels of incoming patients with non-Covid breathing problems; it seems that the viruses are making up for the fifteen months when they had no chance of infecting people.

I hope that June is going to be a more productive month than May (although it could hardly be less productive).

* the x-ray wasn't totally clean, and I wrote the above before I saw the results. The x-ray showed some pleural effusion.

It's all in the voicing

About a month and a half ago, I blogged about a simple song that I had written, "There she goes". Recently, I've had the song playing in my head, but as opposed to the simple 4/4 rhythm of the original, I've been hearing it with a 6/8 rhythm. On Saturday I got the chance to sit down and create a new version of this song with the ternary rhythm. I haven't been too successful in sequencing songs with this rhythm from scratch, but this time it worked. After completing the sequencing (and discovering that two bars in the original are equivalent to four bars in the new version), I sang the song and mixed it. 

The morning after, I listened to the song once and found it terrible (too slow), although I should listen to it again. There was, however, one thing that could be saved from this version: at one stage in the song there's a Bb chord, but somehow this got sequenced as the triad C-G-D (over Bb in the bass) - an interesting sound. I took this chord and put it back into the original version, improving it somewhat.

Today I was thinking about this chord: it's a quartal chord, with intervals of fourths (D-G, G-C) as opposed to thirds as used in most chords. Whenever I see a quartal chord, I see it as a some form of a suspended chord, in this case probably Gsus4. But what happens when one adds the Bb in the bass? My next thought was that this was a Gm(add 11) chord, a strange construction. But then I thought that it could also be viewed as a Bb6/9 (no 5) chord, not that I've ever considered such a sequence: Bb D G C. I played this on the piano and it has a really nice and spaced out quality - that's because of the fourths D-G-C. When I played the tune of 'There she goes' along with this chord, the tune adds an F at the top, yet another fourth - Bb D G C F. But this can also be seen as a 'complete' Bb6/9 chord and is even more 'spaced out' or 'airy': it's a chord that allows its notes to breathe.

I've read about 6/9 chords but never appreciated them, mainly because I was playing them in closed voicing, i.e. Bb D F G C. This sounds cluttered and not very useful. But the moment that I move the F up an octave, I get the open voicing that I accidentally obtained in 'There she goes'. The sixth and ninth are decorative notes and don't really affect the quality of this chord chord that most naturally resolves to an F chord: the Bb resolves down to A, the D resolves to C, the G resolves to F and the C and F stay as they are. We now have a F major first inversion.

I'm going to play more with this open voicing and see where it leads; as opposed to the sort of harmony that I usually employ, where the chords make the running and the melody is something placed on top, it sounds like this chord can support an extended melody without having to change or resolve to another chord.

Does salt have an effect on sleep apnea?

I wrote yesterday that in the days that I was taking salt pills, I had a large number of apneic events (8-14 per hour as opposed to 0-2 normally). I wondered whether anyone had researched this topic and came across a few articles such Could a High-Salt Diet Be Contributing to Your Sleep Apnea? This is from nearly eight years ago, so not really news.

There are also academic papers authored by medical doctors, such as Increased Dietary Sodium Is Related to Severity of Obstructive Sleep Apnea in Patients With Resistant Hypertension and Hyperaldosteronism. But all the articles that I have seen (only a few) discuss obstructive sleep apnea, whereas I have central sleep apnea, a much rarer condition.

Regardless of the type of apnea, it seems that the scientific community is aware of the effect that salt has on sleep apnea. For many reasons, one should try and reduce one's salt intake as much as possible.

Apparently I was coughing all night long, although I know only that I woke up just after 4 am with a coughing fit. I went and made myself a cup of tea, hoping that this would calm my lungs. I wonder what the CPAP machine will show for last night.

The hypothesis is strengthening (hypertension)

At the end of April, I performed the 24-hour urinary excretion of aldosterone test, eating a high-salt diet for three days followed by urine collections over a 24-hour period. The 'salt loading' was achieved by obtaining salt tablets  (yes, such a thing exists) from a pharmacy which led to a little comedy as the pharmacist wasn't sure what the dose should be. She wasn't familiar with this test (probably no one is) so she decided to call the doctor (it's good that they have contact details for cases like these) and established that I have to take 2 grams three times a day. As each tablet contained 500 mg salt, this meant 4 tablets each time, 12 a day, 36 overall. I also went to the kibbutz clinic to pick up a container for the urine.

On Monday morning I started with these pills. They are, as one might expect, salty, but swallowing them wasn't a problem. I ensured that I drank a large amount of fluid during the day. On Tuesday, I was able to swallow the first three pills each time, but the fourth caused a small amount of nausea. This got slightly worse on Wednesday, but I swallowed all the pills like a good boy.

The urine collection started on Wednesday morning, not including the first urination. By 9:30 am, I had already collected about 1.3 litres which had me worrying as the container held only 2 litres. I picked up a larger (4 or 4.5 litre) container from the clinic that had come since my visit on Sunday. I continued to work, take pills, drink and urinate. By Thursday morning I had collected 3.7 litres - apparently the usual amount is about 2 litres, so obviously something was happening! I was told to shake the container (in order to mix the liquid) then pour off an amount into the usual container for urine samples. I also had yet another blood test on Thursday morning.

The idea of the salt loading is that it is supposed to shut down the production of aldosterone and so any found in the urine means that the body is over-producing. The blood test showed that my sodium and potassium levels were as usual, meaning that something is continuing to maintain the balance of these elements (that are connected to water retention and blood pressure).

After a week, I received the results of the urine test - 33.9 nmol - but again, I couldn't figure out from the internet what this means: it's a normal level but I suspect that 'normal' does not take into account the salt loading. Again on Sunday morning, my doctor telephoned me and confirmed that this level is considered high after the salt loading, but not extremely high. The next step is a CT of the area - I'll shortly make the booking. The hypothesis of primary hyperaldosteronism is strengthening, although I have to admit that some of the treatments mentioned in the linked article don't sound appealing.

Although I didn't feel any ill effects from the salt loading (apart from the mild nausea when taking the pills), I have just downloaded the data from my CPAP machine for the past two weeks, and the days of the salt loading (and the day after) show a relatively high number of central apneic events. Interesting. It's a shame that I couldn't tell the doctor this (he can contact me but not vice versa) - I'll have to remember this for our next conversation.

I've had a viral throat infection for the past few days and haven't felt particularly well during the days; most nights are problematic when the painful swallowing wakes me. Despite this, the CPAP data doesn't show any change and the number of apneic events has actually been very low over the past few days. Isn't that strange: something that medically is extremely minor makes me feel unwell, but I feel nothing from something that is medically significant.

DBA: Methodology chapter

My last post on this subject, exactly one month ago, had me excitedly telling about the book, "You and your action research project". My plan then was to read the book then incorporate whatever needed to be added to the methodology chapter of my thesis. In the end, I didn't read that book exclusively; I looked for other sources of material as well. As I was reading, I was also writing the section of the thesis entitled "Action Research - the theory"; I had to describe what AR itself is, how it differs from traditional research (primarily by siting the researcher at the centre of things instead of being abstracted out) and as a result of this, presenting arguments about validity and rigour. Here it was important to bring in viewpoints that appear in other works, so in the end there must be at least six or seven works cited in this section.

When I had finished this, I went on to describe the actual methodology used in AR; for this, a paper by Näslund et al. (2010) was invaluable[1]. Whilst not containing the AR cycle that I obtained from another paper, it contained a framework for conducting the research where the topic being researched is supply chain management. Most AR has been carried out on topics concerned with education, so this specific research is closer to mine. After displaying the framework, I had to explain all the terms contained within, sometimes referencing Näslund et al. and sometimes others. I worked on this for several hours but didn't finish in that time slot. The rest was completed during the week. After I completed this section, I wrote a brief summary of the entire chapter. Then I realised that I had completed what I had planned to write during the month, so I sent the current version off to my supervisor. 

After implementing any changes that he might suggest, my next task is to plan and carry out a pilot study for the thesis. This is where theory meets reality: I have to take all that I have written during the past month and actually do it. I've been thinking about which case I can use: this seems to be somewhat problematic as there isn't anything obvious that I can research. Whichever enhancement I choose has to be new (i.e. not examined in my previous research); one example that I could use is the development of time/task management, but this was implemented several months ago, meaning that I can't 'accompany' it from the beginning which is what I would like to do. There isn't anything on the books at the moment; a fair amount of my time is creating and adapting reports and procedures that I have written for the 'nesting' machine.

Actually there is something that is currently receiving a low priority but looks ready for a revival: it's a similar enhancement to one that already exists. It's meant to allow salespeople to reserve quantities of materials for a type of product called a 'screen' (I'm certain that this is not what I would call a screen in English). What's special here is that both a height and a width have to be specified. I shall now start trying to collect all the emails that I have on this subject: this is 'primary' material.

References

1. Näslund, D., Kale, R. and Paulraj, A. (2010): "Action research in supply chain management—a framework for relevant and rigorous research", Journal of Business Logistics, 31(2), 331-355.

Has the culprit been found (hypertension)?

I wrote a week ago about the enzyme/hormone renin and the blood test that I had done, whose result I did not understand. A few days ago, I was notified about another result, presumably from the same blood sample, this time for aldosterone; again, the units defeated me and so I was unable to figure out what my aldosterone to renin ratio is.

This morning, my specialist called me on my cell phone (that's personal service for you) and explained that my renin level is exceedingly low (that's why it appeared as "less than 1.96") and that the aldosterone level is high. This suggests where the cause of my hypertension lays. The next step is to perform a 24-hour urinary excretion of aldosterone test: the patient eats a high-salt diet for a few days followed by urine collections over a 24-hour period. Instead of changing my diet, I will be prescribed special salt tablets in order to cause 'sodium load' and then I collect my urine.

The specialist will be able to make an informed diagnosis on the basis of this test. 

I wonder whether this means that I can cancel the special ultrasound test that I have to do at the end of May.

How to deal with shoes that are a bit too large (and are ordered without trying them on)

I wrote three years ago about buying shoes via the Internet, where I noted that "as my shoe size varies between 42 and 43, I decided to play safe and ordered them in size 43". The type of summer shoe that I like lasts only for one year so in 2019 I bought a new pair of shoes size 43 in a shop (obviously I had forgotten that I had an extra pair waiting at home). That same day I discovered that those shoes were a bit too big, so my wife returned to the shop the following day and bought a pair size 42. I wore these from April 2019 until the "end of the season", probably October, by which time there was a hole in the fabric of one shoe and the other wasn't in too good a shape. I wore these shoes whilst in Greece and very much liked them.

Strangely enough, I don't remember what shoes I wore last year*, assuming that I wore shoes - I had problems with bloated legs and feet as well as working from home - but at the beginning of this year I knew that I would have to order shoes via the Internet (shoe shops opened only a few weeks ago). I should have read my blog where I would have discovered that I had an extra pair of shoes from 2018 that probably would fit my feet. Had I known this, I probably wouldn't have ordered, but fool that I am, I ordered two pairs of shoes size 42. Oops: when they came, I discovered that they were slightly too small and had no option but to give them away (I tried wearing one pair for a day but it was clear that they would not be suitable; they would be impossible to wear should my feet swell, as they did at the beginning of this week when we had a heat wave/sharav with temperatures approaching 40°C).

I then checked my shoe cupboard and discovered a few pairs of shoes that might be suitable candidates for wearing this year, only they are size 43; shoes too big are even worse than shoes too small. It was then that inspiration struck: why not search the Internet with the question "How to deal with shoes that are a bit too large"? This led me to an article that talked about "heel grips" that effectively reduce the size of the shoe. 

Googling "heel grips" led me to this page; I promptly ordered one set of six heel grips. As this is via Amazon and there was a delivery charge, the grips arrived yesterday, two weeks after ordering. Much better than a slow boat from China. I took from the shoe cupboard the size 43 shoes from 2019, transferred to them the thick, rubber, inner soles from the size 42 shoes from 2019, and tried them on for size. Too big. My wife added one heel grip to the left shoe and one to the right; the right hand shoe fit well but the left was still a bit loose so she added another grip to this one. Now both shoes fit well, although they feel a bit strange as there is a wire running through the middle of the heel grip that I can feel. I'll probably get used to this in time.

Moral of this story: if I am going to order shoes via the Internet, then order them size 43 and add heel grips until the shoes fit. Secondary moral: read this blog first! Then check the shoe cupboard to see what's in stock.

* I remember now what I wore: a pair of cheap 42s probably also from China, with  thin soles that used to get stuck to my feet and ride up when I would take them off.  Quite possibly the spare thick soles wouldn't fit. There were times when I couldn't wear them last year because of my feet swelling. A few weeks ago when the weather got warmer, I asked my wife to glue the soles so at least they wouldn't ride up. These shoes are ok as a reserve pair but I wouldn't like to wear them all the time. Of course, working from home means that I put on shoes for only an hour or two a day and so these shoes are good enough.

Yet another new song ("There she goes")

I thought that I was taking a break from song-writing, but when I sat down to play a bit on the piano on Saturday, a new tune, albeit simple, took form. I also used to think that I was unable to write songs that use only three chords (tonic, subdominant and dominant, eg C, F and G, aka I IV V)  or four chords (the extra being iv, A minor in the key of C), as well as the extremely weak movement of I -> vi (a major chord to its relative minor), but I was wrong on both accounts. This new song (in the key of F, but no Bb, so still only white notes) starts I vi I vi before moving to V and thence to IV. The V chord doesn't sound like a dominant and there's no major cadence, thus the song sounds somewhat modal.

After playing this a few times on the piano then recording it onto my mobile phone, I sequenced the tune on the computer. From the beginning I envisaged a minimal arrangement; it started off with a harpsichord playing arpeggios with a piano joining in on the second verse, but after a day or two, I decided to remove the piano, move the harpsichord to the second verse and have an atmospheric pad play the whole way through (all of two minutes). A piccolo plays the instrumental lines; I think that I must have pitched this an octave lower than what a piccolo usually plays as the sound is 'thicker' than I would have expected. There was a very simple bass part but I replaced that yesterday evening with a walking bass line. No drums; I have often wanted to record simple songs in the style of The Blue Nile, but their drum machine often annoys me. This arrangement doesn't require any percussion (aural punctuation).

And words! Listening to the arrangement at one stage, some words floated into my head - "There she goes, with a ribbon in her hair". The ribbon was later transformed into a feather, and then I started looking for a rhyme for 'hair'. It turns out that there are many rhymes for 'hair'; in the end, all twelve lines of the lyric use the same rhyming sound - hair, care, where, dare, tear (as in clothing, not eyes), share, pair, rare, air, fair, mare and spare. This was a serendipitous bonus.

Now all I need is a little time to record the vocals.

Rennin vs Renin

As part of the tests that I am doing in order to find the cause of my high blood pressure (which finally is reaching normal values, thanks to the heavy drug regime), I had to have (yet another) blood test. The nurse told me that it was for "Renine" (of course, she spoke to me so I didn't see how it was written down) - this was pronounced as if it were a French name that rhymes with Janine.

This sounded strange to me as the only rennin that I know of is used in the making of yoghurt and is derived from a cow's stomach. Of course, I wasn't going to argue with the nurse, who said that the blood has to be taken in the urban medical centre (where I had the covid vaccine) and anyway it requires a 12 hour fast. What could be so special about this test, I wondered?

When I got home, I looked up renin and discovered that it is a hormone that the human body secretes that plays a part in regulating blood pressure - it's good to know that my kidney doctor is leaving no stone unturned (pun unintentional, but it's a good one). When I had the test done, I asked the nurse what was so unusual about this test; apparently the only reason that I had to go to the medical centre was that there was a driver waiting to take my blood (and presumably anyone else who had the same test) to a laboratory in Jerusalem where they must specialise in this rare test.

After a day or two, I was notified of the result: "Less than 1.96". This result has me baffled, primarily because there are no units given. Also, "less than" implies that 1.96 whatevers is some cut off value, but this doesn't sit well with what's written in the Wikipedia entry (not that I trust this). Renin is usually measured as the plasma renin activity (PRA) that is measured specially in case of certain diseases that present with hypertension or hypotension. PRA is also raised in certain tumors. A PRA measurement may be compared to a plasma aldosterone concentration (PAC) as a PAC/PRA ratio. That doesn't help very much.

Moving to plasma renin activity, one reads that Reference ranges for blood tests of plasma renin activity can be given both in mass and in international units (μIU/mL or equivalently mIU/L, improperly shown as μU/mL or U/L, confusing mcU/mL used where Greek μ not available), with the former being roughly convertible to the latter by multiplying with 11.2.

Then a table is presented, which is even more confusing

Unit	Lower limit	Upper limit
ng/(mL*hour)	0.29, 1.9	3.7
μIU/mL	3.3, 21	41

How can one source have a lower limit of 0.29 whereas another source has a lower limit of 1.9 that is 6.5 times higher?? And how does "less than 1.96" fit into this? Is this lower than the lower limit, assuming that the Israeli health ministry has decided to use 1.96 as the lower limit? Does "less than 1.96" mean that the laboratory can't measure less than this, so it's not possible to know how much lower the result is than the lower limit? So many questions, so few answers.

I haven't made a followup appointment yet as I have to have a special ultrasound scan at the end of May, when I am also seeing an urologist, so theoretically I will be in the dark until June. I suspect, however, that I will get a note from my clinic stating the result and my family doctor's understanding of the result.

An ultrasound scan that I underwent a month or so ago shows that there are slightly abnormal results with regard to the bladder (hence the urologist) but these might be normal, considering my age, and may or may not have anything to do with my blood pressure.

You and your action research project

In the feedback from my unsuccessful viva examination, the examiners wrote "It is recommended that the Action Research method be adopted whereby the proposed framework is implemented in a sample of enhancement projects within one or more case companies so that meaningful empirical data can be collected and analysed." Well, that sounds doable. But what is Action Research (AR)?

I spent a few days trying to find out about this topic. There are a few papers that talk about implementing AR within a doctoral thesis, and I even discovered that someone in my DBA programme published a thesis using this approach a few years ago. But almost all of these paper (and especially the thesis) don't explain very well what AR is and they certainly don't explain how to use AR as the research method for a thesis.

I continued looking and eventually stumbled upon "You and Your Action Research" by Jean McNiff and Jack Whitehead. Amazon are selling this for silly money ($200.76!!!) so I'm glad I found the book in pdf format. Not only that, this is exactly the book that I need: it explains what research itself is, what action research is and how to conduct the research. Reading the opening chapters causes me to realise that I could have done with this book two or three years ago, and that huge swathes of my thesis will have to be rewritten.

I completed - as far as I was concerned - the literature review a week ago. One criticism that was raised during the viva was that I found and presented one model of engineering change - then stopped. I should have presented more models then contrasted between them. So the review as it currently stands has five separate models of engineering change along with commentary and comparison. Only now, after reading the opening chapters of YAYAR, I wonder whether I need any such models. 

Continuing on from the literature review, I pasted in most of the theoretical methodology chapter that discusses various research paradigms. Again, it looks like this material will have to be heavily revised. Anyway, I hit a brick wall after the research paradigms because this is where my ideas are supposed to enter the thesis. So I contacted my supervisor in order to have a discussion that will take place tomorrow. Of course now the discussion will be far different to the one that I had originally planned. I think that I will spend the next month reading the book and contemplating what has to be added to the thesis, along with how I continue the research.

Going back to the opening paragraph, what is AR? 

Action research is conducted by practitioners who regard themselves as researchers. It therefore goes by other names such as practice-based research, practitioner research, practitioner-led research and practitioner-based research. The practice base of action research means that all people in all contexts who are investigating the situation they are in can become researchers, regardless of their age, status, social setting, or social or professional positioning. The situations may be in virtually any context – in the workplace, in the home or in an aeroplane – and in any personal or professional arena. Because action research is always done by practitioners within practitioners within a particular social situation, it is insider research, not outsider research, which means that the researcher is inside the situation, and will inevitably influence what is happening by their presence... This is one reason why action research is so popular: it puts practitioners in control of their own practices – but this also carries the responsibilities of offering explanations for those practices.

The ‘action’ of action research is always about improving practice, however practice is understood. Processes of social improvement begin with personal improvement, and personal improvement is grounded in personal learning. Think about the idea of action, as outlined above. You can watch television; this is usually understood as ‘activity’, without involving ideas about improvement. When the action is about contributing to other people’s learning, however, it must involve ideas about improvement. Investigating how the action has contributed to improvement becomes a process of knowledge creation; offering explanations for how and why this has happened becomes a process of theory generation. Action research is different from traditional social scientific research, which aims to understand and describe a social situation in terms of something ‘out there’. 

It is a process that helps you as a practitioner to develop a deep understanding of what you are doing as an insider researcher, so it has both a personal and social aim. The personal aim is to improve your learning in order to use that learning to help you improve your behaviours. Its social aim is to contribute to other people’s learning to help them improve their behaviours. Both are equally important and interdependent. When you make your research public by writing and disseminating your report and ideas, you offer an account of how your learning may or may not have influenced the situation.

New song, E Dorian? B minor?

Over the past few months, I've been listening to the YouTube channel of 'David Bennett Piano' that explains points in music theory in an amusing and interesting way. True, I haven't learnt very much that I didn't know previously, but David plays through the examples and also points out how changing the examples makes them lose their special touch. An example, to which I was listening the other day, is 'Songs that use the Dorian mode'.

Quick explanation of the Dorian mode: if one plays all the white keys beginning on C, one plays the notes C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C: the C major scale, otherwise known as the Ionian mode. If one plays the same notes but beginning on D, the notes are D-E-F-G-A-B-C-D: still the same notes, but the intervals are different. The C major scale has a major third (C-E, four semitones) whereas the scale beginning on D has a minor third (D-F, three semitones). But this is not the D minor scale: in D minor, the subdominant chord (formed from the fourth note in the scale, the sixth and the eighth) is G minor (G-Bb-D). This scale has a subdominant chord G major (G-B-D); this 'sharpened sixth' causes the scale built on the white notes starting on D to be called the Dorian mode.

David plays tunes in the Dorian mode and points out that the typical chord change in Dorian is i-IV, for example Dm to G. Of course, the Dorian mode doesn't have to start on D; it can start on any note, but what is important is the intervals between the notes. If one starts on E, then the notes are E-F#-G-A-B-C# (sharpened sixth)-D-E, etc.

David asked for songs that use the Dorian mode, and I pointed out that 'The Banks of the Nile' by Fotheringay is in E Dorian (whenever a C is sung, it is C#). I was thinking about this the other day when walking the dog and thought that maybe I can break my temporary drought by using the chords of 'Banks' in order to write a new song, using primarily the chords Em, D, A and Bm. I sat at the piano and quickly came a tune based on these chords. The actual sequence is Em-D-A-Bm (twice) A-Bm-Em-D A-Bm-Em-G-F#-Bm: the notes of all these chords are contained within the E Dorian scale (except for the A# in the F# chord; Dorian would have an A chord instead) and so this song - unusually for me - is perfectly scalar, albeit in a mode.

The instrumental/bridge part in the middle is of a different species, what could be called a cycle of fourths: Bb-F-C-G, repeated several times. The move from Bm to Bb might look odd on paper but it sounds correct (I actually heard it in my head before I started playing it). I thought that going back to E Dorian from G would be easy, but because I extended the instrumental with several bars of Bb, I had to transition back via C.

After I finished sequencing (including playing a brief solo on my new mini-keyboard) and having the traditional post-prandial snooze, I took the dog for a walk. Naturally my thoughts turned to this new song (no lyrics yet and I have no idea what they will be about when they get written); it suddenly occurred to be that it might be more accurate to say that this song is written in plain B minor. The notes are exactly the same but start at a different place: B-C#-D-E-F#-G-A-B. So is the song in E Dorian or B minor?

The answer to this (somewhat pointless) question depends on which note sounds like the base note (or tonic, to use the musical name). Is it E or B? Whilst the song might start on an E minor chord, it ends on B minor, and in fact the only place where a perfect cadence (a dominant chord followed by its tonic) appears is at the end: F# > Bm. So however much I might have though that this song is in E Dorian, I have to conclude that it's in B minor. Does this make any difference? Not really.

[Edit from a month later] In order to confuse things even more, I decided to replace the F# chord towards the end of the verse with an A, definitely making the song Dorian. This required a slight change in the tune that actually made it easier to sing. Just to be contrary, I didn't replace the perfect cadence in the final verse.

DSupt Banks: Not dark yet

The usual time for a new Peter Robinson/DCI Banks book to be published is in the summer, but the summer of 2020 went by with no new book - not really surprising, considering the year 2020. But wait! A new book did appear yesterday, creeping onto the stage with little publicity - "Not dark yet", the 27th installment of the series.

The book is named after a Bob Dylan song, to which DS Banks listens at one stage, thus maintaining the tradition of naming books after songs, no matter how tenuous the connection.

The book became available yesterday in its Kindle edition: I had ordered it perhaps a week in advance and was mildly excited when I downloaded it.

At first, I was underwhelmed by the story; it begins with three different strands: recently added character Zelda revisits her childhood, Alan Banks sees his daughter get married, and Annie Cabbott continues investigating the background behind a murder executed (sorry for the pun!) in the previous book. None of these threads are particularly interesting, and in fact, the marriage thread runs dry immediately. It gets replaced with another short thread about Banks' son and his musical group's farewell tour.

But then an event that crops up in Annie's investigation starts to become interesting and the Zelda thread hots up ... and suddenly the book becomes much more interesting and engrossing, so much so that I continued reading all the way until the end, which is surprising, to say the least. I have often written that the pacing in these books is such that the beginning is slow and the ending fast, but this time the beginning was very slow and the ending very fast.

No glaring mistakes appeared in my first pass through the book, although there was one little thing that nagged me. Annie is looking for someone (a girl) but can only find very few traces. She manages to find the manager of a pizza restaurant where the girl had worked; not much information comes out of this interview, but the manager did say that the girl's salary was paid to her bank account. This is never referred to again, but surely Annie should have asked about this account then follow it up with the appropriate branch who could have told her that the balance was transferred to ....

A year of Covid-19

Today marks the unofficial anniversary of Covid-19 in Israel. What has changed since then? So much and so little. Israel is now returning to normal after some vast percentage of the population has been vaccinated against Covid-19. I've been working at home for nearly three months but soon I imagine that I will have to return soon to the factory (Covid-19 was a good excuse). We have elections again in another week. We might even be able to celebrate the Passover as a kibbutz again, although that seems unlikely; certainly Independence Day.

I wrote a year ago: On Monday I participated in a video conference: we now have software which enables peer to peer conferencing, as opposed to the 'client server' software which we had been using with special projectors. As a result, six or seven people connected up: most of the time there were only four active windows with two being hidden, although I think that everyone was visible at first. Another surreal event in increasingly surreal times. We were discussing (as we do every week) changes which are to be made to the factory in Karmiel; the biggest change is the installation of two huge 'nesting' machines which perform a variety of tasks connected with wood. These machines are being supplied by a company in Italy ... with whom all contact has been lost. It is clear that there will be a three month moratorium on these machines, if not longer.

Today we had another video conference: the novelty has long worn off and this is how I keep in touch with people. The 'nesting' machine arrived about a month ago and the technicians are due to arrive tomorrow for their long awaited visit. 

I am vaguely thinking about writing a song about the last year. I am fairly ashamed/embarrassed as my year has been good, whereas many, many people have lost their jobs, not to mention the 6,000 Israelis who have died of Covid. Of course, hundreds of thousands of people have died over the world. So far I've only got one couplet, something like "I've been practising/social distancing/all my life", but that's as far as it goes. I haven't suffered and sometimes that makes me feel guilty. I have increased my monthly donations to charity three-fold, partially assuaging my conscience, but that's the closest I have come. 

The continuing saga of saving unicode text - this time in the 'manager' program

Due to Covid-19, for the past year almost all of the customers/examinees for the Occupational Psychologist have been completing their exams via the Internet; someone developed a method using Google Forms (or docs, I'm not sure) to display one or two exams and to receive the output. These output files are very simple text files, normally in the form of an INI file, and there has been no difficulty in reading these files.

There is one form - not an exam - that is causing problems now: the personal details of  the examinees. I've received two files in which all the data has been written in Russian, and of course all our tools refuse to read this (or rather, replace each Russian character with a question mark). My previous forays into unicode (for example, this blog) had a program reading data into a database consisting of one or two tables, and so it was very easy (once I understood what to do!) to create a new database for these data. But we want to read the examinees' personal data into the 'manager' program (which is conceptually an ERP system) that has, at present, 101 tables in its database and around 260 different forms. There is no easy way of converting this system!

On the basis of the above-mentioned blog, I created a new test database consisting one table. There are two very important definitions: the database itself has a default charset UTF-8, and most of the fields within the single table have the UNICODE_FSS charset. I was able to input manually the Russian data into this table, save it and then display it (albeit in the database manager - I haven't got as far as trying this out in Delphi yet). 

This is as far as I have got so far, and I wanted to document all this before I go any further.

A solution that I am considering is to maintain this UTF-8 database along with the regular database. The 'people' table will contain an id field - not an autoincrement, but the same number as in the regular database - along with the fields that need to be in unicode. Fortunately, these fields do not appear in any reports so they can be maintained separately. The form that displays the data will have to get half of its fields from the regular database and the other half from the UTF-8 database; I think that this is feasible. 

I will create a stand-alone form that will display this double data so that I can solve all (?) the problems in a simple test harness before I try to integrate this form into the rest of the ERP program. 

Sometimes it takes a long time for the light to go on in my head

A shade over ten years ago, I reported that I had bought an Alesis Q49 usb/midi keyboard controller. I had fully intended to use this keyboard when sequencing songs, but it was too large for my computer desk and it joined its comrades in the music room shortly after its purchase. As far as I can recall, I used it precisely once.

Over the years, I've gotten used to 'writing the dots' as if I were a composer from the pre-computer age. This is painstaking work but more importantly, it forces me to imagine in my mind, then sing, parts so that I can write them down. I'm not very good at transcribing rhythms, so frequently I will simply plonk down the notes as crotchets, then play around with the note lengths until what I have written matches what I have imagined.

Sometimes it takes a long time for the light to go on in my head: this time, it wasn't until someone asked on the Musical Practice & Performance Stack Exchange site a question about small midi controllers. It wasn't a very good question, but it moved me sufficiently to search for such a controller on eBay. I quickly found this and ordered it without much delay. I ordered it on the evening of 23 February and was given a delivery date of after March 15; it arrived yesterday, a week earlier.

The unit itself is fairly small which is good, as far as I'm concerned. The action is somewhat 'chunky' which is not so good but not that important. Surprisingly, the keyboard is 'weighted' or 'velocity sensitive', meaning that the harder one presses, the louder the note played. I'm not sure that this is an advantage and the chunky action makes me doubt this more. Apart from the octave buttons (on the left), I couldn't get much joy out of the rotary control and other control buttons. The documentation is minimal; one is supposed to download a program from the manufacturer's site and indeed I did so, but I couldn't get much out of this either.

Reason recognises the keyboard without problem and I was able to play along with songs in this program. My regular MIDI sequencer was more problematic: whilst the notes that I played were recorded, I could barely hear them. The rotary control appears to change the instrument patch but I couldn't find a way to increase the volume produced. So it seems - on the basis of maybe fifteen minutes exploration - that I can use the keyboard with the sequencer when I am laying down chord sequences, but if I want to play anything expressively, I will have to do it in Reason. Fortunately this program has the ability to save anything recorded in it as a MIDI file, so I can still play to my heart's content and then edit whatever needs editing. I have never got to grips with editing within Reason: better the tools one knows.

All I need now is a song; I've actually been very productive in this respect, writing and recording five songs since the beginning of December. One - silly - song was written in about fifteen minutes, sequenced in a few sessions and vocals recorded within a week. So now I'm waiting for new ideas.

My room (waiting for wonderland) - a little musical analysis

I posted the following on the new VdGG discussion board a few days ago -

The discussion about this song that started with the Hugh Banton radio interview led me to share a few musical insights to this seemingly simple song.

First of all, for the first three and a half minutes, all one hears is a variety of major chords (I wouldn't be surprised if Peter managed to include all twelve major chords in the song). It isn't until he hits the words "how could you let it happen" that the disappointment of the words is matched by the music, turning into a minor scale. The final verse is a mixture of optimism ('dreams, hopes and promises') over major chords and disappointment ('but still you don't understand how it feels') over minor chords. The coda is simply two minor chords repeated.

Secondly, the rhythm at the beginning is somewhat odd: a bar of four beats, one of two beats and then another two bars, each of four beats each. This pattern repeats for most of the verse sections. For the discerning, this same rhythm is used in 'The Sleepwalkers'; it's fairly clear in the final verse of that song, but it also occurs in the opening verses. This rhythm is disguised somewhat as the band invoke a fast, ternary, rhythm that masks the bar lines, but it's the same as the final verse, which is now in a straight 4/4 time signature.

---

This innocent post that was trying solely to inform received the (IMHO rude) reply  Yawn.....sorry, you were saying?

Why bother to post that? As Thumper in the movie 'Bambi' says, "If you've got nothing good to say, then say nothing" (I'm paraphrasing). It's not worth even replying to that post because then it's liable to start a flame war. Obviously that poster is not a musician.

What is clear is that this reaction will deter me from posting anything else of substance there. It's simply not worth the aggravation. 

Winter comfort food

It's been very cold for the past few days, and raining almost non-stop. It seems that every time that I step outside to take the dog for a walk, rain suddenly starts to fall, increasing in intensity from a few drops to a full and heavy downpour. I realise that this is nothing unusual for certain places in the world (especially like where I grew up), but this is very much the exception than the rule for where I live now.

Bearing this in mind, I thought it a good idea to cook some comfort food - what I call 'beef ratatouille' [Digression: whilst 'ratatouille' is not an English word, it does contain all five vowels, albeit not in the correct order, having one doubled. 'Facetious' also has all five vowels, each once, and in the correct order]. This is an easy dish that even kitchen challenged people can cook well - it's hard to mess up.

The day before, I had soaked 'white' beans and pearl barley in water.  Today I first prepared all the vegetables: cubed courgettes, sweet potatoes, potatoes and tomatoes; grated carrot and diced onions. Then I fried the onions until they started to turn brown, at which stage I added the tomatoes and carrot for a few more minutes frying (these release water so they counteract the frying somewhat). Then I added half a kilo of minced meat and continued frying and turning until all the meat was brown/grey. The next stage was adding flavour: tomato extract, oregano, cumin and paprika. Finally I added two cups of boiling water, along with all the vegetables and the beans. I mixed the entire mixture thoroughly, covered the pan then let it cook for a few hours - the longer the better.

After about two hours, it was lunchtime, so I took out two portions: the beans were cooked, but I prefer them softer, so I continued cooking for about another hour. Eventually I turned off the gas but let the mixture sit in the pot for another hour before transferring to a glass dish and storing in the fridge. This is the sort of dish that improves with age, so tomorrow's lunch should taste better than today's (not that today's was bad).

I won't include a picture because it doesn't exactly look attractive - especially as I mash everything up together. Unfortunately, it looks like something the dog brings up. But it's warming and nutritious!

Continuation from a few days later: I'm making a second batch because the first got eaten very quickly! I made one conceptual change to the above recipe: I'm cooking the beans and barley in a separate saucepan for two hours so that they can absorb liquid and get throroughly cooked; then I'm going to add them to the main mixture.

Here are most of the ingredients

Cormoran Strike (3)

Something that I missed writing about earlier: I think that this book gives away the fact that it was written by a woman. There's a section about choosing perfume that I very much doubt that a man could have written. I certainly couldn't have written it as I am almost anosmic* - there are many things, including perfume, that I can't smell, although of the things that I can smell, most of them I don't like, primarily coffee and cigarette smoke. There is also a bit about the significance of a man buying chocolates or flowers as a birthday present - apparently it means that the man did not devote much time or thought to the present and so it doesn't mean much to the recipient.

I shall bear that in mind the next time I have to buy a birthday present for a woman.

* I'm fairly certain that this started in my final year at university when I spent several weeks working with a nasty chemical called acetonitrile which was the solvent of choice for my liquid chromatography experiments.

 

Cormoran Strike (2)

I'm slowly rereading the first book in the series, "The cuckoo's calling", and I also watched the first part of the dramatisation. My remark that "nothing has been added" is not strictly true, but it's interesting to see which parts of the book have been discarded completely (much of the back story) and which parts have been combined. For example, in the book there are two policemen who investigated, but they have been combined into one. Another example is a 'business lunch' that takes place between four people; two of them have been removed from the equivalent scene, but as one of these is the downstairs neighbour, Tansy Bestigui, her questioning has to be moved elsewhere.

I've now read all five books in the series, and I have to say that the fifth, "Troubled blood", is quite a tour de force. It's also much longer than the other books, but this is difficult to quantify as a digital book doesn't have page numbers. Theoretically the file's size should provide a good correlation, but TB has several 'pictures' (supposedly handwritten extracts from a journal) that increase the file's size disproportionately. There are four main threads to this book: the reason for the book itself (a cold case from 40 years ago regarding someone's disappearance), the period leading up to and after the death of Strike's aunt, other cases that the enlarged office is handling and the mix of feelings between Strike and Robin. This latter thread constitutes another trope, 'shipping'. 

With respect to the cold case, I am surprised that people have such strong memories of events that occurred 40 years ago. Whilst I remember where I was 40 years ago today (in the army), I don't remember the events of any specific date. Maybe having their statements to the police read back jogged their memory, and presumably the original statements were made close to the event. One thing that I don't like about Rowling's writing style is that several characters 'speak' in dialect that is rendered faithfully in the text; this makes it difficult to understand what these characters are saying. The normal convention is to write a sentence or two in dialect then continue in normal English; the necessary mental gymnastics required to decode this text makes it even harder to fit the data into one's understanding of the plot. I hesitate to call the data 'facts' because there are several liars involved in the story.

Strike's previous successes have led to his office expanding, with a few investigators and an office manager. This enables several cases to run at the same time and leads to various complications. Whilst these extra cases don't add to the main thread (in fact, they detract because of scheduling issues), they add verisimilitude.

To my pleasure, I discovered that our television supplier has started showing the second third season of the tv series: the fourth book "Lethal white" over four parts. The first episode was recorded automatically on Thursday evening: I thought that I would have to wait until Monday morning for a time slot of its broadcast that doesn't clash with other recordings. Doubling the time devoted to this book (the first season had one book with three episodes; the second series covered two books, each with two episodes) should enable a better translation of the story to the screen. I found this book slightly confusing: it starts with one story, moves to another that in itself turns into something else, and all the time the initial story is continuing to develop underneath the second story (shades of Rebus). The addition of the first external investigator adds complication without resolution.