Recording 'Wonderful days'

Two months ago, I wrote about starting a new song. I worked diligently on this during spare time and eventually completed an arrangement. The third version of this finished with a section that is based on the Andalusian cadence; this suggested itself to me after the Phrygian portions of the song (especially during the 'middle eight' - actually eight bars of instrumental and eight bars of singing). But I used a twist on the casdence as I will explain below. 

Earlier in the year I had been sequencing the Van der Graaf Generator song "My room (waiting for wonderland)" and although this does not feature the Andalusian cadence in full, it's very similar. What also is interesting about this song is that the verse features an odd rhythm that I wrote about two years ago: one bar of 4/4, one of 2/4, then two bars of 4/4. As it happens, David Bennett uploaded a video a few days ago about songs that are in 14/4 time; although I consider this to be a somewhat artificial time signature, it does describes the rhythm in 'My room', and thus the rhythm in the coda of my new song. I mapped the Andalusian cadence onto this rhythmic structure, with the second chord having only two beats. Maybe the non-musical amongst you won't notice this. What follows below is more for my benefit that for anything else.

The music was written on 4 February but the words arrived only three weeks later. I decided that I have written enough sad songs and that it is time for something more uplifting, hence the title 'Wonderful days'. This phrase appears right at the end of the song; indeed, until that moment, I was wondering what the song would be called. I spent most of Saturday 11 March trying to record vocals to the song and not really succeeding. It doesn't help that the tune is awkward - the first line starts on a C#, the second line starts on D and the third line on D# - and that there are many words to each line. The lyricist in me is annoyed with the musician in me who insists on writing such complicated vocal lines.

That initial 'recording session', whilst not being successful, did at least clarify a few things. The song was originally written in the key of A but even then I knew that this was far too high for my vocal range. For several weeeks, the song was lowered to E, making its highest note C, an octave above middle C, and its lowest note Ab, four semitones below middle C (this is not a recognised male vocal range; it's somewhere between a high tenor and an alto). The recordings showed that I could reach the high note but not the low note, so I had to transpose the song up to the key of F# - a key with six sharps, should I have written the sheet music out (I could also call this Gb, in which case there would be six flats in the key signature). As the second chord in the tune is now F# augumented, the first note on this chord should be called C double sharp (i.e. C# augumented) - but this doesn't really make any difference to me or to the MIDI sequencer. 

Once I could sing the song, I found that I also had great difficulty in producing a good vocal track; the tone of my voice seemed to change from line to line. I couldn't find good settings for reverb and eq, and also couldn't decide whether to have the vocals in mono or in fake double tracking. I decided to leave recording the vocals for later, although as the middle section was good (including the highest note that is now D, an octave and two semitones above middle C), I kept this short passage. I'm fairly sure that I reached that D without any mechanical help.

In the mean time, I discovered that Audacity, the 'free and open-source digital audio editor and recording application software', has the ability to make a continuous change to the tempo and/or pitch of a selection within a music file (this is confusingly called a 'sliding stretch'), so I used this to slow down the ending of the coda. Now that I know how to do this, I may use it to speed up parts of songs without affecting the pitch; Reason (or, at least the old version that I have) does not allow changes in tempo whatsoever.

It is now the first day of the Passover holiday; I had promised myself that I would work on this song during the holiday. So this morning I set up the microphone, briefly warmed up my voice - then sang the entire song with the same quiet tone throughout! One take. Processing the vocal track was also straight-forward, as was the mixing (this was partially due to my previous work). So after two hours of problem free work, I completed this song.

Now all I have to do is write words for the two songs that I had completed prior to this one but are still lacking words. Only then will I be able to record them. I also have a few covers of songs that I want to record (or rerecord) vocals for, so maybe I'll work on these for the time being.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
125	06/04/2008	The night of the long knives	Redundancies, Downsizing
165	06/04/2009	Dave Stewart/Barbara Gaskin - Green and Blue	Richard Thompson, Peter Hammill, Randy Newman, Jackson Browne, Canterbury sound
347	06/04/2011	Green MBA	MBA
565	06/04/2013	Back to blogging	DBA, Jewish holidays, Cooking, Mobile phone
1208	06/04/2019	Maybe I'm doing it wrong	multi-track
1305	06/04/2020	Days of Corona (3)	Personal, Psychology, John Le Carre, Covid-19

Passover night, 2023

After a gap of several years, Anat and I returned to performing 'our' song at the beginning of the Passover ceremony. The entire evening was very enjoyable and allowed one to forget the past few years. 

As expected, there were more than a few references to the current internal situation in Israel; whilst the text of the ceremony is fixed (in the booklet that contains the text, but one could produce a new booklet), the 'blessings' that accompany the traditional four cups of wine are written anew each year. Naturally the topic of being slaves in Egypt and suffering under the Pharoah has several parallels to today's situation, although we feel that it's the story in reverse: after having been free men, we are now entering a period of 'slavery', or at least, having our freedoms curtailed.

I could choose from two pictures to display here: the other picture doesn't cut me off on the left, but I can see that we are getting ready: I am fixing the capo on the guitar and Anat is looking off to the side and not to the microphone. So I feel that the above picture is better.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
240	05/04/2010	Holiday	Cooking
346	05/04/2011	Firebird fixed!	Computer, Firebird
692	05/04/2014	Pneumonia	Health, Nick Drake
821	05/04/2015	Vinyl log 1 - 5 April	Vinyl log
937	05/04/2016	Sorrento shopping (2016/2)	Holiday, Sorrento, Italy
1118	05/04/2018	The sense of an ending (2)	Films, Literature
1207	05/04/2019	Excellent music blog	Beatles, Song writing

The end of the country as we knew it

On 11 December, barely 14 weeks ago, I wrote the following: I (and I am not alone in this) feel now that everything that has happened to Israel and to me personally is about to be taken away by the extremist government that is in the process of being formed as I write these words. The juidicial system, the education system, the police ... everything that screams 'democracy' is now considered to be 'undemocratic' and has to be replaced.

I certainly didn't expect what would happen during those 14 weeks. I didn't expect the demonstrations that would grow and grow exponentially; I didn't expect that the Defence Minister would speak on Saturday night, saying that the 'judicial reforms' are causing irreparable damage to the army and its defences and so he could not support those 'reforms'. Whilst his being fired was a predictable move by the Prime Minister, I didn't expect that thousands of people would immediately take to the streets and demonstrate against this.

I've seen similar happen in other countries, but never in my country. I can't find the words at the moment to describe how I feel .... I am trying to work but I am listening to the television - the Histadrut has called for a general strike until the proposals are removed, the airport authority has announced that there will be no more take-offs, the local authorities have joined the general strike ... it's the end of the country as we knew it.

We're still waiting for Netanyahu to make his speech that will define how things will go from here. 

As an aside, there are a few statements that have been developing within me over these past weeks -

1. Every government is supposed to work for the people and improve their life. This government has worked only to improve the lives of its members.
2. The Likud party came to power based on a platform of handling the housing crisis, handling the rising cost of living, handling violence in the Arab cities, returning law and order to the Negev and handling Iran. It has done none of these things, instead concentrating on something (judicial reform/ruin) that was never mentioned in their pre-election platform.
3. Yariv Levin, the 'justice' minister is afraid that if he does not carry on with his legislation, he will be framed for some offence (such as treason). Paranoia.
4. The same YL said on 12 January "It turns out that there is another political party in Israel. A party that did not compete in the election that took place only two months ago". The name of this party is Yair Netanyahu, the PM's son. He thinks that he rules the country.  Did he stand in the elections? Who voted for him?

I don't see how we can continue from here. The first thing to be done is cancelling the firing of the Defence Minister: the last thing that anyone wants is that the security of the country be compromised. IMHO, the most responsible thing to do should be to call for new elections but I can understand why that is an unpalatable option.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
564	27/03/2013	Lost videocassettes reappear	TV series
1017	27/03/2017	Thesis update	DBA
1488	27/03/2022	Cystoscopy	Health

Reality Is Broken -- Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

I am currently reading the above book, written by Jane McDonigal and published in 2011. I am also part of the minority who do not play [computer] games. Or do I? In the opening chapter, McDonigal writes that all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.

It occurs to me that my music making is a game. It has

• a goal:  create a song
  
• rules: the 'rules' of music, primarily melody, harmony and rhythm
• a feedback system: I listen to the song and can hear (hopefully) where it needs improving. Also, one could include posting the song on YouTube then counting the number of plays that it receives, along with any comments
• voluntary participation: no one is making me do this!

I've only read the opening chapter so far, but somehow I don't expect that McDonigal will include making music amongst the games covered in the book. But still ... I quote a paragraph slightly further on in the chapter: When we’re playing a good game—when we’re tackling unnecessary obstacles—we are actively moving ourselves toward the positive end of the emotional spectrum. We are intensely engaged, and this puts us in precisely the right frame of mind and physical condition to generate all kinds of positive emotions and experiences. All of the neurological and physiological systems that underlie happiness—our attention systems, our reward center, our motivation systems, our emotion and memory centers—are fully activated by gameplay.  That's how I feel when I'm making music.

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
465	25/03/2012	Pharyngitis, Darkness	Health, Van der Graaf Generator

UN Happiness report

It's hard to believe, but according to a headline that I read today, 'Israel has risen five places to fourth in the 2023 World Happiness Report, which is sponsored by the UN, through a poll conducted by Gallup, measuring happiness in countries between 2020 and 2022. In the 2022 report Israel has risen from 12th to ninth, and it now finds itself in fourth place'.

I can't figure out when this poll was conducted; is <this year>'s position dependent on the values of three years prior to <this year>? One thing is clear: maybe we were happy, but not in 2023! I suspect that the 2024 report will show a sharp decline in Israel's happiness.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
121	21/03/2008	Literary allusions	ERP, Literature, Satie, 1984
690	21/03/2014	Research questionnaire / 3	DBA
933	21/03/2016	Zero values in Priority tables (2)	Priority tips
1482	21/03/2022	Severe stomach cramps	Health

I contain multitudes

My current reading is "I contain multitudes" by Ed Yong, that is about bacteria within our body. Unlike most non-fiction books that I read, this one makes me feel old.

I studied microbiology in the years 1974-8, where the focus was on pathogens that might appear in food. We learned how to distinguish when faecal contamination occurred, according to the bacteria found in food. I don't recall them off-hand, but one indicated contamination within the past day, one within the past week, and one (almost certainly clostridium perfringens) within the past month.

But this book is about the good things that our internal bacteria can do for us, a view that was unheard of 50 years ago. It's statements like 'By the 1990s, scientists knew that there were more than 100 HMOs in milk, but had only characterised a few' that make me feel old. The way it's written, the 1990s were long ago, but for my studies, they were 20 years in the future.

I wouldn't say that everything that I learnt has been overturned, but it also seems so antiquated now.

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
119	16/03/2008	Back to blogging	Office automation, Meta-blogging
120	16/03/2008	Chava Alberstein	Chava Alberstein
464	16/03/2012	Rubber duck debugging	Programming
1480	16/03/2022	My first year as a Londoner, part 1 - being a student	Personal, 1975, 1974

Goodbye, Dilbert (at least for the time being)

For those who don't know, Dilbert is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Scott Adams, first published on April 16, 1989. It is known for its satirical office humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office with engineer Dilbert as the title character. [Wikipedia]. I've been following it for years, sometimes very much enjoying it and sometimes finding it boring. A week or so ago, Scott Adams made remarks that were construed as racist and so many newspapers have dropped his comic. The strips were still appearing on Dilbert's web site - at least, until yesterday. Now he has disappeared. 

So as a reminder, I am pasting here a strip from a few days ago, that is very appropriate to my situation.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
463	15/03/2012	Sequencing "Lost" / 2	Van der Graaf Generator, Peter Hammill, Home recording
688	15/03/2014	Boy, was I wrong - programming naivety	Programming, Delphi, ClientDataSet
1381	15/03/2021	A year of Covid-19	Covid-19

Yes, today is the "anniversary" of Covid-19 in Israel and the date that the Occupational Therapist uses to compare values 'before' and 'after' the outbreak.

I wish I hadn't seen yesterday evening's News on tv

There was further coverage of demonstrations against the judicial ruin, this time in London, Paris and Rome - cities where the prime minister has visited or will visit in the near future. There was also coverage of counter-demonstrations: apparently someone setup a Whatsapp list but has managed so far to sign up 1,100 people. A physical counter-demonstration drew 10 people. I will refrain from drawing the obvious conclusion from this.

But what really upset me was a short clip of Simcha Rotman (1), chairman of the Knesset Constitution Committee, saying that all these demonstrations were because 'the left wing cannot accept that Netanyahu is the prime minister'. Whilst no left winger is pleased that Netanyahu is the prime minister, THIS IS NOT THE REASON FOR THE DEMONSTRATIONS!!!!!! Is Rotman so thick that he cannot understand that the people are against judicial ruin and the beginning of dictatorship? Has he even read any of the slogans daubed on the demonstrators' placards? 'No to judicial reform' is very much to the point. 

We are told that he had a three hour meeting with the President yesterday; hopefully this 'misunderstanding' has been overcome. But I doubt it. The rhetoric of the right wing needs to be taken down several pegs.

The father of Justice Minister Yariv Levin died on Saturday night, so the minister will be out of action for a week.

My anxiety level is increasing far too fast. This anxiety has dominated my thinking since yesterday evening, not allowing me to think about programming problems that are more immediate.

(1) I don't know to whom Rotman was speaking, but he did so in good English with no accent. Until these elections, no one had ever heard of Rotman, so what gives him the right to be so intransigent??

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
462	13/03/2012	Post mortem on the Negotiation exam	MBA, Negotiation
557	13/03/2013	Ring out the old, bring in the new! (My motorbikes)	Motorbikes
931	13/03/2016	Priority tip of the day	Programming, Priority tips
1298	13/03/2020	Apocalypse now (continued)	Personal, Kibbutz, Weather, Covid-19

More ideas for the 'blog manager' program

Recently, I've been forgetting to add 'This day in history' to a few blogs. The way that the procedure is written in the 'blog manager' program allows me only to find blogs for 'today', whatever 'today' might be. So for the past few days I've been thinking about adding the ability to find blogs for any given day of the year, not necessarily today. Fortunately, it was very easy to do this: I simply moved 99% of the code into an auxiliary procedure then called that procedure either with the date of 'today' or an arbitrary date.

procedure TMainForm.ShowHistory (adate: tdatetime);
var
 y, m, d, instance: word;

begin
 decodedate (adate, y, m, d);
 instance:= dm.NewInstance;
 with qInsert do
  begin
   sql.text:= 'insert into temp (id, instance) select entries.id, ' +
              inttostr (instance) + ' from entries ' +
              'where extract (month from curdate) = :p1 ' +
              'and extract (day from curdate) = :p2 ';
   parambyname ('p1').asinteger:= m;
   parambyname ('p2').asinteger:= d;
   execsql
  end;
 TShowEntries.create (instance, 'This day in history, ' + inttostr (d) 
                      + '/' + inttostr (m), true);
end;

procedure TMainForm.mnHistoryClick(Sender: TObject);
begin
 ShowHistory (date);  // i.e. today's date
end;

procedure TMainForm.mnSomeDayClick(Sender: TObject);
var
 adate: tdatetime;

begin
 with TChooseTagDates.create (nil) do
  try
   adate:= GetOneDate
  finally
   free
  end;

 if adate > 0 then ShowHistory (adate);
end;

Not only was I forgetting to add the blog history, I discovered that I had neglected to log a few existing blogs. This happened to me a few times when I was entering the first 600 blogs manually. I was forced to renumber entries in two tables that fortunately the SQL manager allowed me to do. But it's a pain and the possibility of making mistakes - especially in the tags per entry table - is high. So today I thought that I would add the functionality to renumber automatically, should the need arise again (and it probably would). The main insight was to renumber 'in reverse'; if the maximum blog id number is 1589, then first 1589 should be renumbered to 1590, then 1588 to 1589, etc.  One has to input a starting number, or rather, a stopping number. This would be, of course, the first blog after the missing blog, so that a gap would be left for the missing blog. Renumbering the tags per entry table is performed in the same manner.

This blog is actually being written a day in advance (11/03/23) but now I can show the blog history for 12 March, thanks to the new functionality.

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
460	12/03/2012	Another example of Excel usage	ERP, DBA, Excel
461	12/03/2012	Proposed doctorate	DBA, Excel
556	12/03/2013	Pictures from a balcony (3)	Personal
816	12/03/2015	This boy is on fire	Programming, ERP
1016	12/03/2017	How to exclude rows from summation	Priority tips
1297	12/03/2020	Apocalypse now	Personal, Kibbutz, Weather, Covid-19
1380	12/03/2021	The continuing saga of saving unicode text - this time in the 'manager' program	Delphi, Unicode
1479	12/03/2022	Another dismal Saturday	Home recording

Further down the slippery slope to dictatorship

I haven't written on the topic of the judicial reform/introduction to dictatorship since I walked to the Knesset a few weeks ago. Whilst I personally have not been involved in the demonstrations, nothing has changed since then in terms of anything changing in the attitudes of the Justice (sic) Minister and the chairman of the law committee. The president has made two speeches on the topic; the first was like a shot across the bows - a warning sign but doing no damage - whereas his speech on Thursday night (i.e. 09/03/23 - a translation of the speech can be found here) was of a different species altogether: much more militant.

I want to quote from the speech of reknowned historian Yuval No'ach Harari, author of the book 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind' amongst others, who spoke at the main rally in Tel Aviv last Saturday night (04/03/23). The Guardian posted a translation of his speech that is. to put it mildly, excellent and outraged. I want to quote one part of the speech:

"Coups are not always carried out with tanks in the streets. Many coups in history were carried out behind closed doors with pens and papers, and by the time people understood the meaning of what was written in those papers – it was too late to resist.

History is full of dictatorships established by people who first came to power through legal means. It’s the oldest trick in the book: first you use the law to gain power, then you use your power to distort the law. When examined together, the laws this government is currently legislating have one simple meaning (and you don’t need a PhD in law to get it): if these laws are passed, the government will have the power to completely destroy our freedom".

Although Harari didn't say it outright, the closest parallel is Germany in 1933 when a madman was elected to the Bundestag, then became chancellor, repealed many democratic laws and finally started the path to the Holocaust. Have we learnt nothing from history?

Should the anti-democratic laws be passed, all that needs to be done is to repeal the laws concerning elections - and then Netanyahu, or his extremist son, or any of his henchmen, can become our dictator for the next 50 years. No wonder many people are suffering from extreme anxiety (apparently, the number of people seeking psychiatric care has jumped in the past month).

Ther was an interview with Harari on television last night; he repeated the second paragraph quoted above, but refrained from making the conclusion that I did (after all, he is a professor; maybe he wants his students - i.e. us - to make the conclusion on their own). But he did say that there is no way that we can return to the [legal?] situation as it was on 31/10/22, the day before the painful election day.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
69	11/03/2007	Weekend migraines (part 2)	Programming, Migraine
1589	11/03/2023	Further down the slippery slope to dictatorship	Israel

That's all, say amen, close the door

The title of this blog is actually a Richard Thompson song that is supposedly (and quite probably) about Sandy Denny. I recorded a cover version of this several years ago, but that's not the point of this blog.

I have just uploaded my resubmitted doctoral thesis to the UK Turnitin site, from where it will be accessed by the university staff. I only have to pay another examination fee of £150 and then my thesis will be passed to the external examiners. That's all, say amen. This is not the end of the doctoral process - there still will be the viva exam - but I've written all that I have to write. Actually, that's not completely true: the examiners will probably ask for revisions, hopefully minor.

I have just looked at what I wrote nearly three years ago when I was in the same position, about the problems that I had including a pdf scan of the signed submission form along with the thesis itself. Just as well as I didn't even think of reading this, as today I took a completely different approach and completely the task within minutes. I scanned the submission form then included this into the thesis as a Word file; I submitted the Word file - no conversion to pdf. I hope that there will be no problems with this.

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
68	09/03/2007	Weekend migraines	Maccabi Tel Aviv, Migraine
555	09/03/2013	I'll never get those wasted hours back	Programming, Email, Problem solving, Nick Hornby
930	09/03/2016	Sir George Martin, RIP	Obituary, Beatles
1204	09/03/2019	The Tel Aviv saxophone quartet	Ambient music
1379	09/03/2021	Sometimes it takes a long time for the light to go on in my head	MIDI
1588	09/03/2023	That's all, say amen, close the door	DBA

Bone conduction headphones/mp3 player

Five months ago, at the end of the swimming season, I wrote about bone conduction headphones. As I wrote, I ordered a device, but I had great difficulties with it when it arrived. It was very small, the control interface was terrible, and I was never able to change its source from bluetooth to memory card. In other words, I wasted about 120 NIS.

About a month ago, I returned to the task of finding a suitable device. I don't understand how a device intended for swimming can work with bluetooth: surely the distances involved and the water would prevent transmission. This time I was smart enough to look for devices that only work from their internal memory card. There were two serious contenders: one cost about 700 NIS and the other about 600 NIS. I decided to order the 'cheaper' one: it's only five or six times more expensive than the piece of junk that I previously bought. The above picture is of the Finis Duo player that comes with 4GB memory. 

Apart from anything else, this device has easily accessible controls, although I doubt that I'll need more than on and off. I thought that there was no way to control the volume, but whilst looking at the FAQs for this device, I see that there is... sort of. The instructions say Volume Up: Press and Hold to increase volume, blinking GREEN light but it doesn't say on which button to press. Presumably the big button on top of the X sign - although I wonder how this is disinguised from turning the device on and off. This button appears to control the power, the volume, play and pause. No doubt I'll get the hang of it.

I pondered how I am supposed to 'wear' the device: which bones conduct the sound? The blurb says that An integrated clip design secures the Duo™ to goggle straps to rest on the cheekbones for a comfortable and streamlined fit. Looking closely at the phones, I can see where how the goggle strap holds the phones.

4GB memory doesn't allow me to store all that I might have wanted to listen to. I've loaded it almost completely; in the future, I'll see which songs don't suit swimming (no King Crimson nor van der Graaf Generator!).

Due to the price of this device, I had to pay customs duty (anything over $70 or $75 is liable for duty). I received an SMS supposedly from the Israeli Post Office on Saturday, but this looked like a scam. Then I saw in my (physical) mailbox a note from the Kibbutz 'post office' that I had received a parcel and that I had to pay 87 NIS duty; the SMS said 10.25 NIS duty. I tried to pay the duty via the official Israeli Post Office, but I didn't seem to have the correct parcel number. The parcel was physically in our office, but the lady there wouldn't let me have it until I paid the duty (I asked her out of curiosity how she would know, and she said that she would take my word for it). As I had to go to the local town's post office anyway for something else, I took a picture of the parcel's label, hoping that the postal clerk would be able to figure out the correct identity number. 

I showed the clerk a printout of the website to which I was directed from the SMS - he identified it as spam, as I suspected. Thinking about it now, I find it strange that the scamming sum requested included agorot (cents); I imagine that the customs duty is rounded to a whole shekel number (who uses agorot now?). I also understand the psychology of the scam - it's only a small amount, so it won't cause much damage. But if 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 people pay 10 NIS - that's a lot of money! 

I find the timing of the scam interesting - how did the scammer know that I was about to receive a parcel?

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
337	27/02/2011	Michael Palin	TV series, Prague, Poland, Michael Palin
456	27/02/2012	More spooks	TV series, MI5
928	27/02/2016	Chicken breasts in tomato sauce	Cooking
1013	27/02/2017	What are the benefits of ERP enhancement?	ERP, DBA
1203	27/02/2019	Pneumonia again	Health
1476	27/02/2022	More musicians	Obituary, King Crimson
1587	27/02/2023	Bone conduction headphones/mp3 player	mp3, Headphones

Anniversary

The photos app on my mobile phone often shows me photographs taken one, two or three years ago on this day (similar to my 'this day in history' links in the blogs). Today I was shown some pictures from a plant nursery from six years ago; I don't know why I kept these pictures in the phone's memory as I'm not at all interested in plant nurseries, but I do remember that day very well.

Instead of looking at plants, I was deep inside my head, trying to figure out a new direction for my doctoral studies, as my first attempt had foundered on not being able to find sufficient participants for my proposed statistically-based research. After no small amount of thinking, I wrote this paragraph: a possible title would be "Benefits of user extensions to post-implementation ERP systems", where the word 'extensions' is comparable to what has been called 'customising' in my thesis. There are different levels of extensions....

The blog went on to denote different types of extensions, but that was intended more to help my thinking than as a title for the research. The following day, I wrote this: today I want to leave the taxonomy of enhancements and think about what results I am supposed to achieve from the research. The title states that "benefits" - whatever they are - are to be examined. As one reviewer overlooking my work wrote at one stage (I don't remember exactly where), let us not forget that this is a doctorate in Business Administration; there should be some effect on the bottom line.

In other words, the technical side is not particularly relevant; what is relevant is the management of such enhancements ... and that is the crux of my research topic. Six years later, I think that I have completed what is effectively my third attempt. A week and a half ago, I wrote about transferring an interview for the fourth case study that I had conducted from my phone to the computer. A few days ago, I conducted another interview for the same case study and transferred it painlessly.

But the point is not the data transferral, but rather that I had conducted another interview (the fourth vocal interview, along with my own 'self-interview' that was of course written), this time with the line manager. There are two reasons why this interview is important: firstly, it increases the number of interviews that I can report upon, and secondly, it is with someone who was not part of the original design team and so comes to the enhancement with a completely different point of view. Unfortunately, as I suspected in advance, the interviewee had difficulty in distinguishing between the technical points of the enhancement (which does not interest me, or at least, the research) and the way that the enhancement was managed (that does interest the research very much). As such, the interview didn't bring much value, although the interviewee did make the interesting point that the enhancement deals with only one part out of many, and so this is a partial enhancement. The other case studies examined complete solutions.

I had written several times in the thesis that this fourth case study is a validating study, in that the enhancement was managed as much as possible on the basis of the model that had been developed as a result of the earlier case studies and that this case study could validate the model. I had also written that the main critical success factor (CSF) is active user participation (or a lack of user resistance); the fourth case study showed abundant existing user participation and so there was no need to overcome any resistance. As such, this doesn't really validate the model, although it does strengthen the case for the CSF.

I don't recall if I have written here about a kind of measure that I invented, the net overhead score (NOS). The idea is that a successful enhancement reduces overhead, and so I evaluated how much overhead there was before the enhancement was enacted, and how much there is afterwards. As I noted in the methodology chapter, this score is entirely subjective, based on my evaluation. Each time the NOS was mentioned, I called it 'calculating the NOS'; my supervisor made a general remark about the NOS, but when I looked closely at the subject, I realised why there was some concern about this. No 'calculation' is involved at all - it's all 'estimating'. So I ran a global search/replace on the thesis and changed most of the calculats to estmats. 

Once I had written up the interview and made some more observations, I sent the latest version of the thesis off to my supervisor for his input. As far as I am concerned, the thesis is now complete, so there is a month left for polishing. In fact, the day after sending it, I started going through the thesis once more with a very critical eye; so far I've found one grammatical mistake (a word should have ended with 'ed' but I left that out) and I've added a few sentences here and there - and I've only finished the second chapter!

So: six years from first articulating the idea to completion.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
66	25/02/2007	Another one bites the dust	Obituary, King Crimson
1010	25/02/2017	New direction for doctorate?	DBA
1011	25/02/2017	Visiting a plant nursery	Personal
1473	25/02/2022	Mint chocolate ice cream comes to Bet Shemesh!	Peppermint, Weather

Transferring another interview

Two weeks ago I wrote about the problems that I had in transferring an interview recorded on my mobile phone to my computer. There I wrote that I used the 'My files' app in order to find the file.  I conducted another interview today, but I couldn't find the file via 'My files'.

After a moment's panic, I accessed the 'Voice recorder' app and 'pressed' on the 'List' button. The interview appeared at the top of the list. Pressing on the three dots option on the top right of the screen allowed me to share the file - again, I sent it to myself via gmail. This would seem to be an easier way of transferring the files; a bit late now, as I only want to conduct one more interview.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
64	16/02/2007	Working hard (but seeing the light at the end of the tunnel)	Programming, ERP, Cooking, Soundclick
454	16/02/2012	Solving the unflushed inventory problem	ERP
1008	16/02/2017	Reviewing someone else's academic work	ERP
1201	16/02/2019	I can't sleep without CPAP	CPAP

Why we sleep (2) - sleep deprivation

I travelled to Haifa yesterday by train, and on the way reread parts of 'Why we sleep'; something that I noticed previously but didn't really pay attention to, stood out. Chapter 7 of the book is entitled 'Too Extreme for the Guinness Book of World Records: sleep deprivation and the brain', and in it, an experiment is described that measures concentration. 

All of the subjects started off by getting a full eight-hour sleep opportunity the night before the test, allowing them to be assessed when fully rested. Then, the participants were divided into four different experimental groups. Rather like a drug study, each group was given a different “dose” of sleep deprivation. One group was kept up for seventy-two hours straight, going without sleep for three consecutive nights. The second group was allowed four hours of sleep each night. The third group was given six hours of sleep each night. The lucky fourth group was allowed to keep sleeping eight hours each night.

Those individuals who slept eight hours every night maintained a stable, near-perfect performance across the two weeks. Those in the three-night total sleep deprivation group suffered catastrophic impairment, which was no real surprise. After the first night of no sleep at all, their lapses in concentration (missed responses) increased by over 400 percent. The surprise was that these impairments continued to escalate at the same ballistic rate after a second and third night of total sleep deprivation, as if they would continue to escalate in severity if more nights of sleep were lost, showing no signs of flattening out. But it was the two partial sleep deprivation groups that brought the most concerning message of all. After four hours of sleep for six nights, participants’ performance was just as bad as those who had not slept for twenty-four hours straight—that is, a 400 percent increase in the number of microsleeps. By day 11 on this diet of four hours of sleep a night, participants’ performance had degraded even further, matching that of someone who had pulled two back-to-back all-nighters, going without sleep for forty-eight hours.

Ten days of six hours of sleep a night was all it took to become as impaired in performance as going without sleep for twenty-four hours straight. And like the total sleep deprivation group, the accruing performance impairment in the four-hour and six-hour sleep groups showed no signs of leveling out.

I think back to my days of basic army training: we were allowed 6 hours sleep each night, although this is not what happened. It actually means that evening activities ceased at 11 pm and recommenced the next morning at 5 am. There are obviously a few minutes required to get undressed in the evening, but we would fall asleep immediately. It does not include any time for showering, so normally we went without. More importantly, it does not include being woken up in the middle of the night for an hour's guard duty; the most lucky were those who had the first shift (i.e. they stayed awake for an hour then had five hours of uninterrupted sleep), then those who had the last shift. Everyone else fell asleep, got woken up for an hour's walking around, then went back to sleep again an hour later. I don't remember the frequency of guard duty: if there are 40 soldiers in the platoon, six hours to guard and two people per hour, then we would have guard duty once every three to four nights. Of course, more soldiers meant a lower frequency. This went on for several months. No wonder we used to fall asleep at any opportunity. There was a certain amount of time (say 15 minutes) in the early morning between running, breakfast and the daily expection, when one could clean oneself, polish boots and similar, as well of course cleaning up the tents, etc.

In reserve army duty, when it was guarding (as opposed to my first easy years working in a laboratory), it was most frequently four hours on and eight hours off. This later became amended to: between 6 am and 6 pm, four hours on and eight hours off (there were three platoons). Between 6 pm and 6 am, three hours on and six hours off. So, if one guarded from 6 am - 10am, one would also guard from 6 pm - 9 pm and then again from 3 am to 6 am; 10 hours out of 24. This went on for a few weeks.

The point that I am trying to make is that we were sleep deprived; our powers of concentration were shattered, so how exactly were we supposed to learn and internalise what we learned during basic training, or act appropriately during guard duty? 

I know that the sleep deprivation during basic training is one method by which the individual is 'broken down' then gets reintegrated into a unit, but it has always seemed somewhat cruel.

I wonder whether the orders about sleep are still the same; I wouldn't be surprised if nothing has changed despite all the research into sleep deprivation during the last forty years.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
453	15/02/2012	Maslow's hammer beats again	ERP, DBA
674	15/02/2014	In Lambeth	Ambient music
927	15/02/2016	Two films	TV series, Enigma, Films, DCI Banks
1291	15/02/2020	Appropriating the 'HTML document' framework	Priority tips

Putting words into action

In September 1982, there was a series of demonstrations in Jerusalem: a march that ended at the knesset. This was in response to the Sabra and Shatila massacre, and the entire (first) Lebanese war. Obviously my memory is at fault because apparently the demonstrations that I recall took place in February 1983. At that time I was studying accountancy near Netanya so maybe I wasn't too free to take place. The week before I did go, the demonstration resulted in the death of Emil Grunzweig, thrown by an Israeli right winger. The following week, the size of the demonstration doubled. Even so, I came away with a feeling of a wasted evening: all I did was walk a kilometre or so in Jerusalem.

Today I returned to Jerusalem in order to demonstrate against the judicial reforms: today, The Knesset Constitution Committee has approved the first stage of the government's judicial overhaul. The amendment to the law on the changes to the composition of the panel which chooses Supreme Court judges was passed by the votes of 9 MKs from the coalition while 7 MKs from the opposition voted against. The amendment, which will allow the government to choose future Supreme Court justices, will now move on to a first reading in the Knesset plenum.

This is despite an empassioned plea by the President yesterday evening for the coalition to suspend its plans for some time in order to allow some form of dialogue to take place. But no: the coalition (and especially two people, Justice Minister [some joke] Yariv Levin and chairman of the Constitution committe, Simha Rothman, seem determined to pass the new laws, regardless of how many people may be against them. 

Two people are holding the country to ransom.

The Prime Minister is barred from taking an active role in all this as at the moment he is involved in a court case where he has been charged with receiving bribes, etc. This is, as the Americans would say, an 'easy out' for him, as any requests for him to take action are refused because of conflict of interests. Despite this, he requested that the Attorney General release him from this bar; she apparently refused.

Estimates vary as to how many people took part in the demonstration today: anywhere between 60,000 and 100,000. Not only that, as I was leaving, more people were coming in, so the total number of participants will certainly be higher than any one-moment estimate.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
452	13/02/2012	Gateway	Gateway
673	13/02/2014	A flaw with spreadsheets	ERP, DBA, Excel
926	13/02/2016	ERP thoughts	DBA

Memories

It has long bothered me that I am able to recall (hopefully with some degree of accuracy) events that happened 50 years ago but have difficulty in remembering much about later events. Specifically, I am referring to the various blogs that I have written about my teenage, pre-emigration, years (1970-8), as opposed to many of my adult years (e.g. 1982-1989). I've always assumed that this was because many of my 'British' memories came from specific individual events, whereas my 'Israeli' memories came from the years that I was working full-time, where one day was very much like the next.

I am currently reading a book entitled 'The body keeps the score' by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. Roughly speaking, the thesis of the book is that a child's early environment, specifically how well she is loved and treated by her parents in her formative years, will determine her emotional outlook later on in life. A 'good' environment will lead to a balanced personality, whereas a 'bad' environment is liable to lead to a personality that 'shuts down' when faced with adversity.

I want to share a paragraph that comes from chapter 11, 'normal versus traumatic memory': Whether we remember a particular event at all, and how accurate our memories of it are, largely depends on how personally meaningful it was and how emotional we felt about it at the time. The key factor is our level of arousal. We all have memories associated with particular people, songs, smells, and places that stay with us for a long time.... We remember insults and injuries best: The adrenaline that we secrete to defend against potential threats helps to engrave those incidents into our minds. Even if the content of the remark fades, our dislike for the person who made it usually persists. 

I don't seem to remember insults and injuries best; to be honest, I barely remember most of the insults although there are a few mental injuries that I remember only too well (and I've documented them here).

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
809	12/02/2015	Frankie	TV series, William and Mary
1470	12/02/2022	You hold me (yet another new song)	TV series, Song writing, Home recording

Hot filling soup

The weather has been bad almost all week. Fortunately the earthquakes that happened in Turkey and Syria did not affect Israel; there were also some minor earthquakes in the north of Israel but these were barely felt (3.5-4.5 on the Richter scale) and caused no damage. Instead we had heavy rain and strong winds for three or four days. All week long I have had a runny nose, and twice I had to go to bed early as I felt very tired and/or very cold.

Today was dry and colder than the thermometer would have me believe. Whilst walking the dog in the afternoon, I decided to make soup in the evening, so that we would have something warm and nutricious to eat (and not fill ourselves with bread all the time). I checked what we had in the fridge - onions, carrots and parsley - but no courgettes or anything more interesting, so I ran down to the kibbutz shop and bought some courgettes, a leek and a can of black beans (I don't know what these might be called in English).

Before starting to cook, I first peeled some carrots then diced them. Following this I diced the courgettes and then the leek. I put some olive oil into a deep saucespan and heated it whilst I diced an onion; this went in first. After a few minutes of frying, I added the leek, and then a few minutes later, the carrots and parsley. After this mixture cooked for a bit, I threw in some pearl barley and quinoa (much less than a handful each), along with the black beans and their accompanying sauce. After a few more minutes, I began adding water, at first mixed with (vegetarian) chicken and onion soup powders, and then plain boiling water. I added various condiments, such as cumin, ginger and oregano. I then let the soup boil before reducing the heat and continuing to cook for another hour.

By the time it came to taste the soup, the level in the saucespan had reduced somewhat - a sign that the liquid had been absorbed by the barley and quinoa. My first bowl was very tasty. This kind of soup is somewhat different to the vegetable soup that my wife sometimes makes; in fact, there's almost nothing in common except for onion and carrot. She was somewhat sceptical about the soup before she tasted it, but afterwards was very generous in her abundant praise; "better than soup one gets served in a restaurant", she said. We both had a second bowl each. 

As usual, the soup looks like something the dog brought home, but I concentrate on taste and not on appearance. It looks more the CMB than something edible [scroll down to the section 'Microwave background observations', where there is an image of the CMB].

I don't think that I've ever made soup at home; I used to make it in the kibbutz kitchen on Saturdays when I worked there, but even then, that soup was different. Certainly I never added barley or quinoa (I don't think that we had even heard of quinoa in the 1990s). I may have to add more water later on as the barley is liable to continue absorbing liquid. Now we know what we'll be having for supper tomorrow evening. 

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
24	11/02/2006	One small step	Programming, Psychology, Kaizen, The brain
451	11/02/2012	A change is gonna come	Films

This week's rant

The week's rant comes from the financial paper/website, Globes, with the headline Moshe Gafni's attack on the governor of the Bank of Israel illustrates precisely what critics of the proposed judicial overhaul fear. "You are the governor of the Bank of Israel, the economic adviser to the government, and suddenly I hear you talk about the judicial reform being liable to harm the economy. There’s a political debate here that goes to the root of the matter. Why do you have to express a view on it?" Knesset Finance Committee chairperson Moshe Gafni asked Governor of the Bank of Israel Amir Yaron at the opening of a committee session yesterday. "Do you think that the governor of the Bank of Israel should express a view when half the residents of the State of Israel think otherwise?" Gafni continued. [end of quote]

I want to stop here, because that final sentence deserves some attention. It's true that "half the residents of Israel" voted for the political parties that comprise the ruling coalition; it's good that they don't claim that 55% or 60% or even more voted for those parties. This statement acknowledges that for every person that voted 'for', there is another person who voted 'against'. It is only the peculiarities of the electoral system that awarded a majority to those parties.

In my 'enlightened leftish traitor' world view (deliberate sarcasm), when there are two people who have to decide on something and their opinions are opposed, normally the option that causes the least damage is the one chosen. Obviously Gafni et al. have never heard of this; they don't mind causing damage if the decision taken will improve their position.

Also, as we were informed on the Friday night news (admittedly from the supposedly leftish Channel 12 news), 42% of those who voted for the ruling parties want to stop or delay the legislation regarding the judicial system; 45% of those who voted for those parties want to continue the legislation. This translates to 71% of the population want to stop or delay this legislation. That's not a statistic that one hears.

If I'm writing about the Channel 12 Friday evening news, then I have to mention that in order to balance things up, they have introduced a right wing commentator who in my humble opinion is exceedingly annoying because of his total inflexibility and his undying belief that 'right [wing] is always right'. It was bad enough last night, but the previous week he was so obnoxious that it was unbelievable. The discussion then was not about the judicial system legislation or even anything political; it was about women's rights, especially after a horrifying report of a man who broke into a flat on the second floor of a building (of maybe eight floors), then tied up the woman living there and raped her. This commentator automatically attacked the (female) reporter who delivered the story and widened it to include other cases of abuse. His attitude to the three female commentators (out of six) appearing on the show was extremely rude and should be condemned.

I hesitate to bring evidence coming from the 'Wonderful country' [ארץ נהדרת] satirical tv programme (also channel 12); they had in the past a popular section based on one of the cast who posed as a taxi driver and would make provocative remarks to the people that he transported with their responses being shown. If one thinks about this, the people filmed would have had to give their consent to having their remarks broadcast, so this is hardly an unbiased sample. Anyway, the programme restored the taxi driver to life and showed him talking with various people who 'naturally' voted for the right wing parties. They were all against the judicial system reform/ruin, especially once it was explained to them (most of them did not know what the 'override clause' was, where the Knesset can override decisions taken by the Supreme Court, thus making the court superfluous and allowing the government to do whatever they like).

One of those days

As today is Saturday and I went to bed relatively late last night, I allowed myself to sleep until I awoke naturally at 7:15 am. Actually, I only partially awoke naturally; the other part that woke me was the sound of the rain that was falling outside. We have had a very dry winter so far, but on Tuesday the rain started to fall and didn't really stop until Thursday evening. Friday was dry, but again the rain fell on and off all day today. 

I waited for the rain to stop so that I could take the dog for a walk without her getting wet, but the weather had other ideas, so eventually I buttoned up and took her to the local school, which is two or three minutes away from my house. There is a long corridor that I can walk up and down, sheltered from the rain. It's not as good as a real walk but it's better than nothing . Later on during the day I was able to take advantage of the few dry periods to take the dog for real walks (enabling her to do her business properly).

During breakfast I watched a YouTube video analysing part of the song 'Starting over' by John Lennon. My wife was also listening but she didn't understand the point of the video; "how does she [the presenter] know what Lennon intended", she asked, missing the discussion of the interesting chord progression. 

I listened and internalised, for later on in the day, I sat at the piano and started messing around with some of the chords from that song, specifically A A+ Bm9 E. I shortly found a tune that would sit on these chords (not the tune of 'Starting over'), but intuitively decided that I too would let the melody dictate the chords. So after two iterations of those four chords, I found myself adding a little phrygian flavour by descending to Dm before returning to E; the tune again went down to Dm, this time for twice as long. Although the phrase ended up on the note E, I decided to harmonise this with a C chord (half a bar) before a short triplet turn over Bb (I realised a bit later that this comes from Fauré's "Pavane") and a resolution to A, the tonic (a slightly weird cadence). The second time around, after the A chord, I found myself improvising something similar with Gm and A: again, I let the tune (the same phrase but first starting on D, then on F and finally on G) dictate the harmony. The third time around, the tune ended on a B that I harmonised with a B minor chord, and thence to E, creating a ii V I turnaround.

After playing this through a few times, I recorded it onto my phone then started the task of transcribing the music. I discovered that the four chord opening required two bars of each chord to support the melody, whereas the phrygian part varied from two bars per chord down to two chords per bar. The Gm/A part was one bar per chord. I created only a simple chords and melody version; I'll leave arranging it for later. 

Thinking about the tune later on, I'll definitely have to lower it by about a fourth (i.e. from A down to E). The highest note is an F, that is far too high for me; if I lower this to C, then the lowest note will be an A (an octave and a bit below that C), fitting my range perfectly.

I haven't done much musically in the past two months, both because I've had plenty of consulting work, but also because I have two completely arranged songs that can't be recorded as I don't have any ideas as to what their words could be. As it happens, this new tune may get words quite quickly: while I was playing it, the words "What makes you think that our time together" fell quite naturally on the tune. I can definitely make something from this; whilst I could be the cruel one, trying to get my partner to understand that 'our time' is over, I could also be the person who is being told that 'our time' is over. This role playing may make writing the lyrics a bit easier.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
448	04/02/2012	An untypical Thursday	ERP, Sandy Denny, Peter Hammill, Diet
804	04/02/2015	Copper socks (2)	Health
925	04/02/2016	Intermediate submission not accepted	DBA
1469	04/02/2022	Completing a new song ("Blind as a bat")	Song writing, Home recording