Two weeks of Erythritol

Yesterday I had my regular three month appointment with the dental hygienist. In advance, I had printed for her a copy of a short paper (maybe it was just the abstract) in Hebrew about the beneficial effects of erythritol in the mouth, primarily the reduction of dental plaque and caries. We talked a little about this sugar alcohol before she got down to work. Her first remark was that there was a definite improvement in the state of my teeth since my last appointment. As I have not changed my daily routine regarding teeth cleaning (except for substituting a toothpaste sweetened with erythritol as opposed to one sweetened with sorbitol), I can only conclude that this improvement is due to two weeks' usage of erythritol! I didn't expect it to have such an immediate effect; I was thinking of using yesterday's visit as a control, to see how much improvement there is in the next three months. Normally I have to use chlorhexidine mouth washes for a week after each treatment (this provides a continued inhibitory effect on plaque formation for up to 14 hours. The effectiveness of chlorhexidine is documented in many controlled clinical trials showing a 50% to 60% decrease in plaque, a 30% to 45% reduction in gingivitis, and a reduction in the number of oral bacteria), but the hygienist said that there was no need this time. Way to go, erythritol.

Until recently, I have always been hungry - yes, I know, I live in a pampered Western society where almost no one suffers from malnutrion, so 'hungry' here does not mean real hunger - and as a result, my hourly cups of tea (during work hours) are always accompanied by a biscuit, a slice of bread or a piece of chocolate. I realised a few days ago that I ... am ... not ... hungry! I have ceased eating between meals, without any conscious effort. I attribute this to the erythritol; as I quoted in my second blog on the topic, [erythritol]  induces gut hormone secretions that modulate satiety to promote weight loss. Indeed: it might well be that my appetite has decreased due to the action of erythritol on the gut hormone controlling satiety (leptin). Not only am I not snacking, my weight has also decreased by 1 kg in two weeks!

It would thus seem then that erythritol is having a very beneficial effect on my body. On the other hand, I have been having problems sleeping in the past week; I haven't found any paper linking erythritol with sleep problems so this may be for other reasons. I normally wake up twice in the night, go to the toilet, come back to bed then fall asleep almost immediately. In the past week, I haven't been able to resume sleeping after the second visit. I noticed that the restless leg syndrome had come back to haunt me, making it very difficult to find a suitable position for my legs. I also noticed that the skin on my legs was very dry, causing me to scratch a great deal. These problems were dealt with easily, by taking a certain type of magnesium additive that includes both vitamin B6 and vitamin E; whilst I have been taking magnesium supplements, they were without these two extra ingredients that contribute much to reducing the RLS. Skin cream took care of the dry skin. I've also started taking vitamin E capsules; these are supposed to improve the state of my skin. Not being able to fall asleep has caused me to become very tired over the past few days: it's just as well that I don't have to operate any machinery.

I have just seen my GP, who whilst impressed with the various improvements, is willing to consider that there might be a link between erythritol and sleep: I had looked at a paper that showed a link between glucose levels and sleep problems. It might be that the increase in satiety is causing lower blood glucose levels that the brain's feedback mechanism is used to and so glucose may be released, in spite of everything else, and this glucose may be causing the sleep problem. 

I remember discussing once with our previous GP the topic of artificial sweeteners (aspartame) and how they can have an effect on glucose levels, even though theoretically there should be no effect. He told me not to drink tea sweetened with aspartame before blood glucose tests for this reason. So my current GP wants to check the hypothesis that there is a causal link between erythritol and sleep problems: I am to stop using erythritol for a few days and to have comprehensive blood tests. She also prescribed a few sleeping tablets for those nights when I can't sleep - only a few and only for specific use. We both know the dangers in using such tablets for longer periods. This is evidence based medicine.

That said, there's a problem with the 'experiment design': if I stop using erythritol but do take the sleeping pills (because I want to sleep properly and feel normal during the day), then what is to say what the cause is. It should only be when I stop with the sleeping pills that I should also stop with the erythritol.

I was so tired that I forgot to publish this blog after having written it.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
73	09/05/2007	Killarney Boys Of Pleasure	Soundclick, Folktronix, Lunasa
358	09/05/2011	Running a database query which automates Word in a background thread	Programming, Delphi, Office automation, background thread
479	09/05/2012	Early footage of The Band	The Band, Youtube
582	09/05/2013	More sleep analysis	CPAP
840	09/05/2015	Preparing for Florence (2)	Holiday, Florence, Italy
1028	09/05/2017	Zingers	Personal, Films
1315	09/05/2020	DBA news in May: it's getting very near the end	DBA

Passports/2

Way back when at the beginning of January, I wrote that I had made an appointment for new passports in Karmiel on 2 May: a four month wait. There have been various noises in the past month or so that new procedures will be put in place in order to shorten this wait, but I'll believe it when I see it. 

Anyway, yesterday was the long awaited date and we travelled to Karmiel by train - no problems, 2½ hours travel (we had a direct train from Tel Aviv to Karmiel). Outside the station, a taxi was waiting for us, to take us to the Interior Ministry office. I doubt that this was further than 1 km from the train station, but my wife would have had difficulty getting there. Once inside the office, we gave our identity numbers to the guard who checked that we were on today's list; indeed we were, and we settled down for a short wait.

We were dealt by the deputy manager of the branch in a side office - luck of the draw. We received excellent service; we were told that next year, it will be required that all identity documents over 10 years old will have to be replaced by new, biometric, documents - the manager filled out the necessary forms, to save us another journey next year. She also noted that I had paid twice for my passport (this was because I paid in advance in January, only to discover that this was an option only for someone who had an appointment until the end of March); she said that the period had been extended and so she would use my original payment for the passport, instead of the second payment, for twice the original amount.

After dealing with the bureaucracy, we found a nearby restaurant and had a light lunch. I was feeling as if I were abroad, having lunch outside a restaurant, then ordering a taxi to take us back to the train station. At that time of day, there are trains from Karmiel only once an hour; fortunately, we arrived there 10 minutes before a train was due to leave, not 10 minutes after a train had left.

So we were back in Bet Shemesh at about 16:45 - a long but successful day. 

Instead of coming straight home, I wanted to go to the health foods shop to buy more oat 'milk' and stinging nettle tea. Once there, I looked for sweeteners: I found several interesting items, including 310g containers of erythritol for 19.90 NIS: this works out at slightly over 61 NIS/kg. As it happens, yesterday I received a delivery of 3 kg erythritol that cost about 210 NIS, including delivery. This is more expensive than the health foods shop, so I doubt that I'll be buying from the special supplier again. On the other hand, 310g is enough for about five days, meaning that I'll have to buy two containers each week. They did not have the erythritol/sucralose tablets, but they did have a variety of other sweeteners that surprised me. Why would someone want to buy mannitol or fructose? Mannitol is used as a medicine to decrease intercranial pressure: in medical dramas, one often sees doctors using mannitol when a patient has a brain bleed. Whilst it has a lower glycemic index than table sugar, making it suitable for diabetics, it can also cause stomach problems. Erythritol does not cause such problems.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
477	03/05/2012	Some MBA metadata	MBA, Project management, Finance
837	03/05/2015	Preparing for Florence	Holiday, Home movies, Florence, Italy
949	03/05/2016	Grandpa No'am	Personal, Grandfather
1214	03/05/2019	Diet (part two)	Health, Diet
1314	03/05/2020	A good weekend	DBA, Kindle, Grandfather, Covid-19
1497	03/05/2022	ShoesOnLine (another pointless day-in-the-life-blog)	Shoes

Erythritol - continuing the story

Yesterday afternoon I finished all the erythritol that I had received from iHerb. This means that in 7 days I consumed 454 grams, or 65 g/day. As the recommended usage is 1 g/day/kg body weight, I used less than the recommend usage. So far, so good. But I can't really say that the tea that I sweetened with erythritol was sweet; on the other hand, it wasn't bitter or sour, nor did it have an aftertaste. 

As I had no more erythritol, I was 'forced' to use my old sweetener, saccharin, for my first few cups of tea. Since then, I've been down to the kibbutz store and bought a different type of sweetener: sucralose. As sucralose is at least 300 times sweeter than sugar on a per weight basis, obviously one needs a very small amount. It is sold in sachets, where 0.7% of the sachet is sucralose and the rest is erythritol. As each sachet weighs about 1gram, let's assume that the amount of erythritol is 1 gram. The sucralose is also not metabolised by the body.

My first cup of tea with this sweetener was very sweet but with a bitter aftertaste. I didn't notice it before, but the sachet says that one sachet is equivalent to two teaspoons of sugar; I of course put two sachets in the cup of tea. I wonder whether one sachet will give the same bitter aftertaste. I have seen on websites pellets of sucralose (see the picture on the left) - I may order this in the future. One interesting fact is that there are 200 pellets in the container, but the net weight is only 17 grams; I take this to mean that there is much less erythritol in the pellets than is in the sachets.

Sucralose is produced by the selective chlorination of sucrose (table sugar); the food scientist in me does not understand why this should make sucralose so much sweeter than sucrose. I assume that the chlorine atoms force the compound to assume a physical configuration that fits well onto the receptors on the tongue. The learned article that discusses this can be found here: I'm going to read this with interest.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
836	01/05/2015	Vinyl log 8 - 1 May	Vinyl log, Peter Hammill, Steeleye Span

Shmulik Budagov

About five months ago, I wrote about the guitar shop run by Shmulik Budagov. Today I had to return to that area but purposely went later so that I could check out the shop. Indeed, the shop was open and Mr Budagov was there. He kindly signed the sleeve of my cd copy of 'Sheshet', telling me that it's been issued on vinyl. I told him that I bought my vinyl copy at the end of 1979! Budagov is third from the left; I doubt that I would recognise him from that picture, but then 46 years have passed. He no longer has the beard. 

He also told me that he has got 'a band' together that are going to start playing concerts, where their repertoire will be "all the old material"! I told him that I'll keep an eye out.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
579	30/04/2013	Automating Outlook - adding/updating a contact	Programming, Delphi, Office automation
948	30/04/2016	Writing lyrics (2)	Song writing
1025	30/04/2017	April 1977	Israel, Personal, Food science
1128	30/04/2018	The Americans	TV series
1496	30/04/2022	Covid and teeth	Health, Covid-19

The seer (new song)

Way back at the end of August, I started work on a new song, whose arrangement was finished by mid-September. As usual, I had no ideas for words; this might be because of the difficult-to-sing tune that was fine to play on an instrument but made writing words hard.

Yesterday afternoon, I was thinking about Yehonatan Geffen, and how his words formed the backdrop to my adult life. Better contenders for this accolade are Peter Hammill, Richard Thompson and Randy Newman. I imagine that those born a few years before me would consider Dylan to be the soundtrack to their lives, but I can't imagine who someone born three to four (or more) years after me would choose. I resolved that this would be the idea behind the lyrics for this song.

My first task this morning was creating a simpler tune for the song: this was very easy, although in the course of singing the song, I changed part of it again. Once I had the rhythm for the tune, I was able to write the words. I don't think that they are very good, so I'm not going to quote them here (although my appreciation will probably grow in the future). In the end, the hidden inspiration is Peter Hammill; as it happens, "in the end" is one of his song titles. I had intended to throw in a few hints to songs of his; the only ones that made it are pilgrims and angels (from 'Man-Erg'). The final line at one stage was something like 'lemmings falling over the cliff edge', that would reference another song (the eponymous "Lemmings"), but this line became replaced as it didn't connect to the previous line. 

Listening (once again) to the recordings of the 'First Generation' (i.e. from "The least we can do" to "Pawn Hearts"), I remember how important Peter (or more accurately, his words and music) was/were to my life at the time. He seemed like some latter day prophet, although he wasn't prophesising anything in particular (except for disaster, "Eyewitness").

Musically, the only interesting thing about the song is the bridge: this has the same chord sequence repeated three times, where the first two times are sung and the third time has a guitar solo. That in itself is unusual, but what makes it more so is a little serendipity: the first time round has the first two lines sung in half time, whereas the second time round has the complete four lines of lyrics for this section. The bridge also starts with a suspended chord, the likes of which I don't use enough.

Recording the vocal was straight-forward, probably because of the simple tune. Mixing again took some time; I was using a previously saved template that in retrospect has a noise gate not defined well. I think that I am going to save the mix template from this song as the new default template.

What lies ahead? No musical ideas at the moment. The problem is always the second chord: to a certain extent, this will set the tone of the song. Whilst walking the dog, I had the idea of I bIII vi bVII, which would be D F Gm C in the key of D. Sandy Denny has a song ('It suits me well') that starts off D F C Dm, which is similar but not the same. Time will tell.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
476	29/04/2012	Two films	Films, Meg Ryan, Steig Larsson
703	29/04/2014	Yo'av Tibon, RIP	Personal, Obituary, Kibbutz
1127	29/04/2018	DBA update	DBA
1313	29/04/2020	Stormbringer!	Nick Drake, 1970, Joe Boyd, John and Beverley Martin
1389	29/04/2021	DBA: Methodology chapter	DBA

Erythritol - further remarks

Following are several items that I left out of my first blog on the topic: firstly, this sugar alcohol occurs naturally - albeit in very low concentrations - in fruit, so it is not an artificial product. That said, erythritol is produced commercially by engineered yeast fermentation of glucose. As erythritol is metabolised neither by humans nor by gut flora, it is of course good news for diabetics. Quoting one of those National Library of Medicine articles, Evidence shows erythritol has potential as a beneficial replacement for sugar in healthy and diabetic subjects as it exerts no effects on glucose or insulin and induces gut hormone secretions that modulate satiety to promote weight loss. That final statement modulate satiety to promote weight loss is very interesting to me.

A question: why is it that bacteria haven't incorporated a mutation that allows them to metabolise erythritol? I am always reading about how versatile bacteria are and how they mutate, adapting themselves to new environments. So why don't they have this mutation? And if nothing can metabolise erythritol, what happens to the erythritol that we excrete?

I have found an Israeli supplier that is cheaper than iHerb: 1 kg costs only 54 NIS, whereas I bought 454 g (1 pound) for 37 NIS. That said, I wonder whether this supplier will deliver a 1kg bag. [I ordered 3 kg with home delivery - there are also erythritol tablets at 52 NIS/800g instead of powder.]

A scientific paper on the action of xylitol and erythritol on oral Streptococci shows that these sugar alcohols not only inhibit bacterial growth but also have some positive effect on the biofilm matrix (aka dental plaque).

Here is a general article on the pros and cons of erythritol. I don't like how the article discusses the problems with large doses of sugar alcohols - that they are generally metabolised by gut flora leading to gas and bloating - without mentioning until much later on that this is not the case with erythritol. As I wrote earlier, gut flora too do not metabolise erythritol.

Where's the downside? Apparently, erythritol, in both in vitro and in vivo assays, enhances platelet aggregation. This means that the risk of stroke and cardiac events by blocking blood vessels is increased. I take aspirin daily: this reduces the ability of blood to clot. So what happens with the concomittant usage of erythritol and aspirin? I've only read the abstract of that paper, so I don't know what were the levels of erythritol in the blood of the people being tested.

Looking through the Molecule of the Month website, I found a reference to erythritol, right at the very end.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
34	25/04/2006	Creaking bones and aching muscles (Slouching towards Jerusalem, part 2)	Israel, Bar mitzva, Jerusalem
168	25/04/2009	Positive changes	ERP, Psychology
473	25/04/2012	Debt of Honour	MBA, Tom Clancy, Negotiation
578	25/04/2013	New TV series	TV series
1311	25/04/2020	VideoPad	Home movies, Covid-19
1388	25/04/2021	Has the culprit been found (hypertension)?	Health, Blood pressure

Yehonatan Geffen - the aftermath

I have to admit that I was surprised by the amount of coverage in the current events news programmes on television about YG; we were treated to some of his songs, a short film of some people performing a song for a Memorial Day ceremony (in which YG looked skeletal - I doubt that I would have recognised him) and interviews with musicians who had worked with him over his long career. The most surprising event was live coverage of his funeral - generally not something awarded to poets or songwriters. One of the mourners who spoke was Yair Lapid, current leader of the opposition and short serving prime minister.

Of course, all of this was on Channel 12, that is well-known to right wingers as a hot bed of left wing anarchists. I wondered how 'the other side' would relate to his death; although I didn't see it, the Minister for Culture was ridiculed because he couldn't name any songs that YG wrote.

But the more expected reaction was that of extreme right wing Member of Knesset (and lawyer of 22 years, as we are frequently reminded) Tali Gottlieb, who said that "YG did not represent the state of Israel. He represented loose women*, alcholism and drugs" (in a radio interview). Prime Minister Netanyahu, who did not eulogise him, said "One who used to write terrible newspaper columns about the right wing and religious people". Well, what did one expect?

* I'm fairly sure that this was a misprint in the quote. The actual word used means 'break-ins' (as in criminal access to people's homes), but a simple error could cause this. Excuse the Hebrew...

היה כתוב "פריצות" ולא "פרוצות" כפי שאני מניח שנאמר

Whilst looking for a disc on my shelves, I found a 3-cd set entitle "The best of Yehonatan Geffen": two cds of songs and one of skits from his various satirical shows.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
71	24/04/2007	Speying the dog	Dog
946	24/04/2016	New mobile computer	Computer
1125	24/04/2018	New mp3 player	mp3

Erythritol - the story begins

For about a month, I've been buying lemon-lime flavoured water from the kibbutz shop; what is special about this water is that it claims to have 0 calories per 100 ml, as opposed to the previous flavoured water that I used to purchase, with 15 calories/100 ml. Eventually I got around to checking what the ingredients of the 'new' flavoured water are and how it can have 0 calories/100 ml. After all, my bachelor's degree is in Food Science and my dissertation was on analytic methods for calculating the amount of xylitol in foods; xylitol is a 'sugar alcohol', sweet but not a sugar like glucose. 45 years ago, xylitol was a new and exciting sugar replacement.

The sweetener used in the flavoured water is erythritol, and like xylitol, it too is a sugar alcohol. Glucose has six carbon atoms in its structure and is thus a monosaccharide; xylitol has five and erythritol has only four. It is non-caloric as the body cannot metabolise erythritol; this in itself doesn't mean too much as often the gut flora can metabolise what we can't. If that happens, then one of the end products is gas. Interestingly, the gut flora also cannot metabolise erythritol, and so all that one ingests is excreted as is.

When I was a child, I was told not to eat sweets as they would cause holes in my teeth. Whilst this is accurate, it's not the scientific story. Bacteria in the mouth, primarily Streptococcus mutans, metabolise sugar that is left on the teeth and create lactic acid that is the factor that creates holes in the dental enamel. These bacteria also cannot metabolise erythritol.

From what I have learned so far, erythritol is the perfect sweetener (better also than any artificial sweetener), so of course I had to order some. I doubt that it is sold as is in Israel, so I had to order from IHerb. I wasn't really on the ball at first, so I only ordered the powder for use in tea. Later on, I looked for further products - toothpaste and chocolate - and ordered these. Today the powder arrived and I shall be examining its effect upon me.

The toothpaste will be interesting: anything that reduces dental plaque will be good, although I doubt that the small amount of toothpaste used each time will contribute much. I found an article in Hebrew about erythritol's dental applications that I printed for my oral hygienist.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
33	23/04/2006	First aid	Obituary, Hospital
353	23/04/2011	The Unthanks	King Crimson, The Unthanks
577	23/04/2013	Red Rabbit	Tom Clancy
1387	23/04/2021	How to deal with shoes that are a bit too large (and are ordered without trying them on)	Shoes

Songbird

Back at the beginning of November, I wrote about writing a new song - or at least, the music for a new song - but that as usual I had no words for it. A week or so later, I had an idea as I was riding my motorcycle to Bet Shemesh; the song would be called 'Songbird', and the lyrics would be something like 'If I were a songbird, I would sing for you all day'. Great start! I entered notes into my mobile phone so I wouldn't forget.

But once I sat down to write, the words simply would not come. I had to fight very hard in order to write a verse, a chorus and half of a second verse. The chorus doesn't really count, as it's basically the line 'I would sing so loud/proud' a few times. Then I was stuck.

During the week I spend my time working for other people. Most of the time I am doing what I like and enjoy, but not always; this week I spent several hours explaining to annoyed/exasperated people why I had changed something in Priority. The change would be for better but they were not convinced. In retrospect, I handled the change badly, which is rather ironic considering the topic of my doctoral research. Anyway, my point is that the only time that I can do things for myself is Friday afternoon and Saturday morning; sometimes the Friday is out, too.

So yesterday afternoon, I had a look at the meagre lyrics that I had written for 'Songbird' ... and wrote the remaining one and a half verses in about fifteen minutes! That's the way it goes. This morning I spent an hour or so recording the vocals (including overdubbed choruses) and maybe two hours mixing. This is a fairly simple song and definitely 'up'; maybe this is my new direction.

Now only one song whose music I worked on in September is awaiting words. 

Ironically, I started reading this morning (after a pointer from Peter Viney) the book "Daisy Jones and the Six", a gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic [fictional] 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer. I'm probably about half way through the book and am very envious of the writing relationship between Billy and the eponymous Daisy, how they come from different backgrounds but manage (after a poor start) to get the best out of each other (aka synergy).

I have to do it all on my own.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
127	22/04/2008	Holiday week	Programming, Delphi, Cold feet
702	22/04/2014	More research	DBA
1024	22/04/2017	Jerry Lee Lewis rides again	Grandfather

Again, vertigo

In the past few days, I've noticed that I've suffered from dizziness much more than normal. I should qualify that statement: normally I don't suffer from dizziness at all, but if I am sitting down and get up quickly, I feel a bit light-headed. This is normal! As I had a doctor's appointment yesterday for something else (an odd pain in my foot), I thought that I would mention the dizziness.

The doctor asked me to sit on the examining bed; he took my head in his hands and said that he wanted me to quickly lower my head until it rested on the bed. I did so and suffered immediately from a severe attack of dizziness. "Aha", the doctor said (or would have, had he been British): this is a clear case of vertigo.

I told him about my previous encounter with vertigo and the tests that I underwent. He said that there was no need for the ENG test again; instead he would prescribe a medication (that apparently is not very effective), but that the best way of curing the vertigo was by performing the Epley manoeuver. He asked for my phone then searched for this term in YouTube, finding a couple of videos that explain what to do.

The home Epley maneuver is a type of exercise that helps to treat the symptoms of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV). You can do this exercise at home. BPPV is caused by a problem in your inner ear. Your semicircular canals are found inside your ear. They detect motion and send this information to your brain. The utricle is a nearby part of the ear. It contains calcium crystals (canaliths) that help it detect movement. Sometimes these crystals detach from the utricle and end up inside the semicircular canals. When these crystals move inside the canals, they may send incorrect signals to your brain about your position. This can make you feel like the world is spinning. This is called vertigo. Dr. John Epley designed a series of movements to dislodge the crystals from the semicircular canals. These movements bring the crystals back to the utricle, where they belong. This treats the symptoms of vertigo. [whoever wrote this has apparently never heard of the semicolon; this is very simple English]

So yesterday evening I laid down on my bed, trying to approximate the position shown in the video. I was turned to the right, but had no vertigo when lying down. I then turned 90° to my left; this gave me intense vertigo, and shows that the 'active' ear is my left ear (rereading my blog from seven years ago, I see that there also I noted that the left ear was more sensitive than the right; I also hear better in the left ear). I waited until the dizziness went, then turned back to the original position; more dizziness. I waited again until this passed and then assumed the third position, lying on my stomach with my head turned. I don't recall now, but I think that this wasn't so bad as the two previous turns. After waiting a bit, I got up and carried on as usual, although I was feeling a bit nauseous and fragile - normal responses to the manoever. 

This morning I repeated the manouever but felt no dizziness as I turned: this is good! I did feel a bit unsettled afterwards, but this feeling went fairly quickly. Later on my wife went to the pharmacy and bought the prescribed betahistine; I took one immediately when she returned, and to be honest, it made me feel a bit unsettled again. I will repeat the manouever at least twice a day until all dizziness has ceased.

Obligatory Peter Hammill quote: Cathedrals spiral skywards, I think I'm getting vertigo ("German overalls").

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
32	20/04/2006	Printer ate my fours	Programming
472	20/04/2012	Levon Helm, RIP	Obituary, The Band, RIP
574	20/04/2013	Emerging from the morning mist	Dog
700	20/04/2014	700 blogs	Meta-blogging
701	20/04/2014	Musical progress	MIDI, Song writing
945	20/04/2016	Programmers at work (2)	Kindle
1386	20/04/2021	Yet another new song ("There she goes")	Song writing, Home recording
1495	20/04/2022	Still positive	Health, Covid-19

Yehonatan Geffen (1947-2023)

With a great deal of sadness, I have to report the death of Israeli author/poet/songwriter Yehonatan Geffen. I wrote extensively about my connection with him here. In fact, I don't think that I have paid much attention to him since.

He was a huge influence on me in my first years of living in Israel and he will be missed.

Here is an obituary in English.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
31	19/04/2006	Strumming the guitar - stage one	Programming, MIDI
246	19/04/2010	Books and films	Films, Nick Hornby, Time traveler's wife, Hugh Grant
699	19/04/2014	Researching during the Passover holiday week	DBA, Psychology
944	19/04/2016	Programmers in MOBI	Programming, Computer, Kindle
1023	19/04/2017	Donating blood (2)	Health, Donating blood
1123	19/04/2018	70 years of independence	Israel, Kibbutz

Revisiting the Hebrew song "Birthday"

I wrote two and a half years ago about this song. I had occasion to listen to the recorded version a few months ago and did not like it at all: it seemed too fast and the arrangement was too 'busy'. I started work on a new arrangement that would be much slower, 80 bpm instead of 100 bpm. I'm not sure about the original key of this arrangement: the previous version started in B minor (mutating in the middle to A minor), whereas this new version seemed to start in C#m minor.

I tried recording the vocals to this in a few barren sessions without getting very far. The major problem is that the tessitura is very large, from the absolute bottom of my vocal range until the absolute top. Whilst I can normally reach the high notes (although without much power), the low notes are very much hit and miss. I even tried adapting my current arrangement such that I could place the original vocal on top, which is when I discovered that I had removed breathing noise from the original vocal in such a way to cause 'pumping'. This didn't sound very good and as I couldn't achieve reasonable sounding tone settings, I abandoned this idea too.

Considering the song one night in bed, I hit upon a rather radical solution: record the lower parts of the vocal in D minor, then record the high parts in A minor. By means of vocal tuning software, I could lower the first part and raise the second part, having the finished song in C minor. So today I set out to accomplish just that. It turns out that almost all of the song was sung in the first part, with only a few lines sung in the second part. After several takes and a great deal of technical manipulation, I had a completed version.

Listening to it with fresh ears, it seems obvious to me that certain lines were recorded at a separate time (the high lines); this is primarily because there is less of a pause between the end of a line sung by vocal #1 and the beginning of the line sung by vocal #2. Tonally there is also a difference, but this can be explained away by the different vocal register.  Also, there were a few lines towards the end of the first verse with which I had trouble, so I sang these again at the end (in C minor): it seems that my vocal technique had changed over the hours working on the song, as this part sounds like the pasted high part.

Cheating, but the end product is what counts, and quite probably no one else but me will know how I managed to record this song. A clear conclusion, though, is to try and find songs with a smaller range; this was an undocumented conclusion to my previous song, 'Wonderful days', from two weeks ago.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
469	15/04/2012	[no title]	MBA
1022	15/04/2017	Return to Kaizen	DBA, Kaizen
1210	15/04/2019	Communications	Mobile phone
1309	15/04/2020	Italian holiday film	Holiday, Home movies, Covid-19

Rain, rain, rain

I mentioned a few days ago, almost in passing, that the temperature on Sunday was at least 35°C. Since then, the rain hardly seems to have stopped. On Monday evening, there was a little rain, but on Tuesday, 11 mm fell. Yesterday 36 mm fell, almost continuously, making it very difficult to find time to take the dog for a walk. Rain fell at 5:30 am this morning, but stopped shortly afterwards, thus allowing me to walk the dog. Since then, it's been bucketing down, sometimes with thunderclaps. [46.9 mm]

Three young people were killed a few days ago when crossing what would normally have been a dry stream in the Negev; instead they were swept away by the strong flow and their bodies were found a few kilometres away.

My son and his wife drove to Eilat yesterday afternoon; the road was blocked by the police at some stage because of the weather, but later on they were allowed to continue their journey and arrived safely in the evening. They say that it's a sunny day where they are. Meanwhile snow is falling in the north of Israel.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
349	13/04/2011	Advanced SQL for me - NULLIF	Programming, SQL
696	13/04/2014	Fifteen minute meals	Cooking
827	13/04/2015	Vinyl log 3 - 13 April	DCI Banks, Richard Thompson, Vinyl log
1021	13/04/2017	April thesis update	DBA

More bells and whistles for the 'Blog' program

In the course of retrieving the tag frequency counts for the 1600 blogs, I had some more ideas for improving the 'blog' program. The first (that I am not going to show here) appears in the 'choose entries' form: one now has the option of choosing tags either alphabetically or by frequency (this of course means that every now and then I have to recalculate the frequencies). I don't know whether this idea is going to be a keeper, but it definitely helped, at least for cataloguing this blog entry, as 'programming' and 'delphi' are in the top five tags.

The other idea took me by surprise. In the 'show entries' form that is fed by the above 'choose entries' form, I had previously added a popup menu with a few options and short cuts. Today I added another option; as one has to rely on one's memory in order to know which short cut does what, I thought that I would add the options to the screen's status bar.

Then I had a delicious thought: would it be possible to click on a pane in order to execute the appropriate command? I've never done this before so I did some Stack Overflow research and found this question. There are a couple of solutions given; I used the first method that uses the OnMouseDown event of the status bar. As this solution simply displays the pane number, I had to exend it in order to have the click execute something. At first I listed the various options in a case statement, but I wasn't very happy with this. Then it occurred to me that the panel index is the same as the popup menu index, so I could use this and save a case statement that was getting a bit awkward because the event handler had to exit if an option were chosen. My contribution below is the tmenuitem (popupmenu1.Items[i]).Click line. Maybe I can use this idea in the 'manager' program.

procedure TShowEntries.sbMouseDown(Sender: TObject;
  Button: TMouseButton; Shift: TShiftState; X, Y: Integer);
begin
 tcomponent (sender).tag:= x;
end;

procedure TShowEntries.sbClick(Sender: TObject);
var
 accwidth, i: integer;

begin
 accwidth:= 0;
 for i:= 0 to sb.panels.count - 1 do
  begin
   accwidth:= accwidth + sb.panels[i].width;
   if sb.Tag < accwidth then
    begin
     tmenuitem (popupmenu1.Items[i]).Click;
     break
    end 
  end;
end;

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
826	12/04/2015	How not to display data in graphs	Statistics
1121	12/04/2018	Apology to Israel Railways	Trains

Half truths and outright lies

Last night, we had the dubious pleasure of watching on television a press briefing by Israel's prime minister, ostensibly about the security situation. When he started with a tirade against the previous government for making an agreement with Lebanon and/or Hizballa about the disputed gas fields off the coast, I knew that there was no point in continuing to listen to his combination of half-truths, outright lies and the incapability of recognising that maybe he has made mistakes.

At the end, there was a question and answer session; I would have liked to ask the following questions 

• For how long are you going to blame the previous government (that existed for barely a year) for all of Israel's problems? When are you going to take responsibility yourself?
• Endlessly you repeat that you and your supporters were given a clear mandate by the electorate ... for reforming (or ruining) the legal system. Do you remember that your election message was about fixing the cost of living? And that the legal system was not mentioned? When are you going to do something about the cost of living?
• Again, you claim that the number of terrorist attacks doubled under the previous government. Please explain how it has doubled and trebled since your government was sworn in.
• As you say, you were given a clear mandate. How do you explain the fact that your ratings in opinion polls is very bad? How have you managed to do so badly in such a short time?

I bare my buttocks to you.

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
28	11/04/2006	Sitting shiv'a	TV series, Obituary, William and Mary
242	11/04/2010	Driving lessons	Films, Diane Keaton
243	11/04/2010	Surprised and pleased	Organisation behaviour, MBA
571	11/04/2013	Speeding up Excel	Programming, Office automation
942	11/04/2016	Farewell to Sorrento (2016/6)	Holiday, Sorrento, Italy
943	11/04/2016	Coda: Rome airport (2016/7)	Mobile phone, Holiday
1120	11/04/2018	Troubles with trains	Trains
1492	11/04/2022	Our son got married!	Personal

1600 blogs

Before I get started on the 'hit parade', I want to note that yesterday was a sharav, with temperatures reaching at least 35°C. Today has cooled by about 10°C; about an hour ago we had a thunderstorm and a little rain - the sort of rain that gets one wet but doesn't do much for the vegetation. I wonder what tomorrow's weather will be like.

---

1600 blogs. Here are the most popular tags, along with their position in the previous 100 blogs.

Position	Tag	Count	Previous	All time position
1	Israel	12	-	13
2	DBA	11	12	2
3	Personal	11	2	4
4	Programming	11	4	1
5	Bari	9	-	-
6	Holiday	9	-	3
7	Italy	9	-	9
8	Meta-blogging	7	-	36
9	Non-fiction books	7	(18)	49
10	Cooking	6	7	7
11	Weather	6	22	31
12	Obituary	5	17	10
13	Headphones	3	-	78
14	Health	3	1	5
15	Kate Bush	3	-	102
16	Kibbutz	3	-	19
17	Sleep	3	-	93
18	Song writing	3	3	16

Well, it's pretty clear that the 11 months and 100 blogs since 8 May 2022 are completely different from the 100 blogs previous to this period. Health has almost dropped off the charts - I've been healthy even since my blood pressure has been balanced, save for a minor incidence of gout that has not returned. 

No more Covid-19 means holidays! Italy! Bari! 

Unfortunately, the political situation of the past few months in Israel has forced me to write 12 blogs on the topic.

In these past 11 months I've done a great deal of work on my doctorate, performing all the research and writing it up. 

Non-fiction books is a new category, although I've back tagged previous entries; there were 3 entries between 1401 and 1500 that would have put this tag in 18th place.

Only personal and programming have held their position; these are activities that always take place.

There's barely been any blogs about song writing; this is a topic that has almost dropped off the radar. Since May last year, I've completed only one song.

I wouldn't dare make a guess what the next 100 blogs are going to be about.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
27	10/04/2006	What's been happening	Health, MIDI
241	10/04/2010	Speaking the statements	Programming, Delphi, Resource files
569	10/04/2013	Pictures from a balcony (6)	Personal, Dog
570	10/04/2013	A new CPAP machine	CPAP, Apnea, Gadgets
694	10/04/2014	Calibre	Kindle
695	10/04/2014	A picture is worth a thousand words	Personal
825	10/04/2015	Sandy Denny: songwriting and production	Sandy Denny
1308	10/04/2020	I like the sound of falling rain	Song writing
1491	10/04/2022	The view from our rear balcony	Personal

Problems with headphones

Five years ago, I wrote For walking around the kibbutz, I have a pair of headphones with a built in player; these are good, the player continues from the last song played which normally is good, but problematic if the 'song' is a complete album. The headphones themselves aren't as good as the Sony ones, which is not surprising; these barely cover the ears and don't fold, so I don't take them on the train.

Something happened to the phones a few weeks ago: the right hand speaker became detached from the arm; I'm not sure exactly how this happened. I tried repairing the damage with a splint and adhesive tape but this was clearly an interim solution. I quickly ordered a new pair of headphones with an internal mp3 player from Ebay.

These arrived about two weeks ago; whilst they look very good, the problems started as soon as I finished charging the player. After extracting the sd card from the old headphones and making some additions (and deletions) to the songs stored within, I inserted it into the new headphones - this was very easy to do. Then I turned the headphones on: the output was in mono but not even centred. I switched the headphones around - no difference. So it was time to write to the person from whom I had purchased them.

I tried a few experiments, like connecting the headphones via a cable to my external mp3 player; no change. The vendor suggested using the headphones with bluetooth, so I copied a few songs to my phone (including "Yours is no disgrace" by Yes, featuring various stereo effects), turned on the bluetooth and listened. Whilst the sound was very clear, Steve Howe's guitar did not alternately sound from left and right phones. The vendor wanted a video (!) of the phones, although for what purpose I cannot fathom (unless he sells many products), as the problem is with the sound.

A few days ago I decided to cut my losses and ordered another set of headphones, at only half the price. Maybe these will work properly.

In the mean time ... I was about to take the dog for a walk about an hour ago when the right hand speaker became detached from the arm! I'm going to try glueing the speaker as the damage seems easier to repair than with the prior set of heaphones. But even so, these headphones are destined for the rubbish bin.

For my walks, I will now use the external mp3 player connected to my very expensive noise cancelling headphones, although I won't turn this function on.

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
348	09/04/2011	dbProlog	Programming, Delphi, SQL, Firebird, Prolog
567	09/04/2013	Passover hall pictures	Jewish holidays, Mobile phone
568	09/04/2013	Mobile phone problem solved	Mobile phone
693	09/04/2014	Switching mentors	DBA
824	09/04/2015	Trevor Lucas trivia	Sandy Denny, Fotheringay
941	09/04/2016	A few quiet places in Sorrento (2016/5)	Holiday, Sorrento, Italy
1209	09/04/2019	Shadrach in the furnace	Kindle, Robert Silverberg, 1978
1307	09/04/2020	Pesach in the shade of Corona	Jewish holidays, Israel, Covid-19