Collaboration

A few weeks ago I received an email via the SoundClick site: someone wanted to 'be my friend'. I contacted this person and discovered that she lives in a suburb of Tel Aviv! The whole world uses the internet and I get contacted by someone who lives maybe 30 kilometres from me! Anyway, we started corresponding and one evening I idly suggested that we collaborate on something.

After she told me that she doesn't write, I suggested that I create a music track for her and that she sing it. After a bit more to-ing and fro-ing, we agreed to do a version of 'Halicha LeKesariya' ('Walking To Caesariyya') which is colloquially known as 'Eli, Eli' ('My God'). This song was written by Hanna Senesh, a young immigrant to Palestine (as it was then) who volunteered to parachute into Nazi occupied Europe in 1942 and was never heard from again.

I wasn't too sure how to approach this song, as it's very much a classic Israeli song; due to the sombre meaning which has been attached to it, I felt that a very simple arrangement was in order. My original intention was to have a very dark and engulfing pad against which would be set the crystal vocals of my collaborator. We did indeed make such a version, but I got tired of the sound and decided to remix the music, changing the instruments. I then sent the music file via a file sharing website (essential for collaborations) and was sent a version back complete with vocal.

I didn't like the sound of this version, and a quick look with a wave editor showed that there was a large dynamic range: the vocals were creating very loud peaks and the music was very quiet. After a few more emails back and forth, I requested that I be sent the vocal file so that I could make my own mix. I had to apply very heavy compression to the vocal and some eq, but this enabled me to make the music much louder and better balanced.

Both of these versions can be found at my collaborator's website.

After having spent a few hours on the remix, I decided to take the dog for a walk. On the way, I was listening to some of my instrumental pieces, and I realised that the song would sound better if I ditched the current arrangement and swapped it for one of my patent arpeggio based tracks. So when I came back from the walk, I started yet another arrangement. I kept about 50% of the original and then added two electric pianos playing arpeggios, one on each channel. The second piano is playing the same notes as the first, only delayed by one beat, thus producing an interesting effect. Another couple of hours working on this, getting everything just right, and now a third version of the tune was finished. I think that this one is the best; it's more open and sounds much better.

One part - a high pitched violin or voice, it's difficult to tell - is playing notes which are generally a fourth or a fifth apart. Thus the part starts with an A, jumps up to D, then up a fifth to a higher A and then down to E. I wasn't really thinking about it at the time, but that second A is played over a Bb chord, and thus is a major seventh; it sounds very cool. The chord sequence which I used is one slightly more adventurous than most people might use to accompany the song, and includes a very interesting sequence - F Bb Em A. The transition from Bb to Em is thrilling.

For the time being, I'm putting this third version up on my SoundClick site.

In the mean time, I've been sent another song to arrange. I've listened to this only once, and it was absolutely dreadful, featuring a guitar which sounds totally out of time. It's going to be interested creating a track for this, as first I have to learn the song and that's going to be hard. I'll just try and write down how many bars there are of each chord and start from there.

Metadata and information

I wrote a few days ago about reports which give statistical data. These reports provide metadata: data about data. Such reports tend to be more interesting and higher level than reports about 'ordinary' data, and in fact management should be interested only in such reports, but there is a natural tendency to sink down to the data level and start checking each specific order instead of looking at trends.

I participated in a course about knowledge management once; one of the simplest things to come out of this was the following hierarchical model. At the lowest level, one has data - eg specific orders. Above this level is information - eg what percentage of orders are being delivered on time. The highest level is knowledge - how to create conditions such that all orders are delivered on time. The transition from data to information isn't very difficult, but the transition from information to knowledge is much harder, and that is the reason why companies try to hang on to employees who have knowledge.

The course itself was about the formal storage of knowledge within an organisation: how to know what knowledge people have, how to formalise that knowledge and retain it, and even more important (my project in the course) how to know what knowledge does not reside within the organisation (that's where I first used the theta query). Unfortunately the course fell prey to problems within the college where it was taught, and so it didn't fulfill its initial goals.

Is it surprising that I work in information technology and not data processing?

Today is my best friend's birthday (you know who you are!) and tonight marks the beginning of the Shavu'ot festival.

Train journey

I spent Thursday giving training sessions to users (both new and advanced, although not at the same time) with our ERP program in Haifa. This was cunningly arranged so that I could spend Thursday evening with friends in the north of Israel and then return home the next day without causing any problems at work (our work week is Sunday - Thursday, although I always work a few hours on Friday). As fortune would have it, there is a train station near where I live and one very near where I was giving the training sessions, so it was a no-brainer travelling by train instead of car.

On Friday morning, I was taken to the train station in Nahariya (11 kilometres from the Lebanese border) and boarded a train which was headed for Ben Gurion airport. My intention was to alight at one of the stations in Tel Aviv and then change to a train from Tel Aviv to my station (Bet Shemesh). But once the journey got underway, the conductor said that the train would continue past Ben Gurion airport, stopping at Lod, Kiryat Gat and Be'er Sheva. These names probably won't mean to non-Israelis, but the point is that the train was leaving the most northern station of the rail network and continuing through to the southernmost station - a very long journey (it's like a train I once boarded in Britain which went from Liverpool to Bournemouth).

I was very surprised at this information as I wasn't aware that the network had been extended past Ben Gurion airport. The airport had only been added as a station about a year ago and I had yet to travel there as it was the end of a line. But for the past few years I have been watching in awe as a bridge had been built by the airport, arching over the motorway from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. Step by step this has been a fascinating process to watch. Listening to the conductor's announcement, I realised that the bridge had become operational, and so decided to stay on the train until Lod, where I could switch trains.

The track from Tel Aviv to Ben Gurion is short and mainly underground, arriving at the basement of the airport. This line could be very useful for people flying, although of course it depends on the hours that the train runs. Then we continued out of the airport and over the main road - not as fast as I would have liked, but still impressive. A few minutes later we were in Lod, where I alighted.

I suggested later to my father that he spend a few hours having fun on the railway (he doesn't have much else to do): take a train from Bet Shemesh to Lod, change and wait for a train going to Ben Gurion and points north. Change at Ben Gurion and then come back. It's good for a morning's entertainment and won't cost very much.

I still haven't travelled to Jerusalem by train, something which is more enjoyment than necessity. Apparently the views are astounding (and having walked several times along that region, I can appreciate this), but the journey is slow.

The 'theta' join and SQL arcana

A good day at work yesterday and the day before. I managed to solve a syntax problem preventing the execution of a new report, and in doing so learnt a lesson which I had been taught before and forgot. This gave me renewed confidence regarding the report generator in our new ERP program, and so yesterday I was able to create a few new reports.

These are statistical reports, showing how long the order approval process takes, how we stand regarding supply dates (as opposed to what we promised the customer), how long it takes to repair a chair and how long it takes to complete a service call. The quality management system (which I used to run) has goals for each of these services, and it is important for us to know where we stand in relation to these goals. In case we should surpass them, it's always possible to move the goal posts.

Coming off these reports, I had an 'a-ha' moment when I saw how I could write a report which shows which parts don't have a bill of materials. This can be generalised to "give me a list of something which doesn't have ", for example chairs which no one orders or unordered upholstery colours. I read somewhere once that this is called the 'theta' join: how to find values which are in one table but not another. In 'classical' SQL, this can be written as

select customer.name, customer.ip
from customer left join subscrip
on customer.id = subscrip.customer
where subscrip.ip is null

(this is an example from a program I wrote which manages the billing for internet access on my kibbutz and will find end customers who don't have billing data).

Unfortunately this syntax doesn't work as a 'naked SQL' query in the ERP program, let alone translated into the version needed for the report generator, so I had to shelve the idea originally. Yesterday I remembered seeing a query for a report which someone had written which used a subquery; I realised that I could use this as a replacement mechanism for the theta join. Translating back into SQL, I wrote

select part.partname, part.partdes
from part
where not exists
(select 'x' from part p1, partarc pa
where p1.part = pa.son
and pa.part = part.part)

What is this saying? If the subquery returns a value (that's the select 'x' part), then the where clause will be false and so there will be no value for the query. But if the subquery fails, then the where clause succeeds and so there will be values for part.partname and part.partdes.

A large step for (New) man, a small step for mankind. Or maybe it's the other way round: an hour's work from me and we can now produce data which other companies can only dream of.

C. Arthur Milton

I learnt today in a roundabout way of the death of C. Arthur Milton:

"In his time, the footballer and cricketer Arthur Milton was as big a name as Alan Ball, the World Cup hero whose death preceded his by a few hours. Milton played on the wing for Arsenal and England and opened the innings for Gloucestershire and England. As such he was the last of the double internationals." - taken from his online obituary.

Normally, the death of such a has-been sporting star wouldn't mean much to me, but Mr Milton was special to me, as he was the father of Robert, my best friend in junior and secondary school. I wrote a little about this here.

I didn't exactly "finish" secondary school, I sort of "evaporated". In those days, there weren't any lessons in the summer term for the upper sixth form; pupils stayed at home and revised for their A-levels, coming into school only to sit the exams (or play cricket). My parents moved from Bristol to Cardiff before my exams had finished, and so I was a very rare sight around the halls in the summer of 73. As a result of our move and my spending the 1973/4 academic year in Israel, I lost touch quickly with almost all the people with whom I went to school.

A few days after coming home in July 1974, I took a train to Bristol and met up with Robert again. We spent a pleasant day talking and making music, and then went on our separate ways again. We next met up about a year later when Robert came to see me in London; he came loaded with a guitar and an amplifier which I had to shlap from West Hampstead tube station to my London residence. Again, we spent a weekend making music together and then went on our ways.

I suspect that I wasn't too hospitable towards him (a charge which had been levelled against me by someone else at around the same time regarding another event) or maybe we had just grown too far apart (I was quite different from my old schoolfriends by virtue of having spent that year in Israel, being dedicated to emigrating and being gung ho about my youth movement), but for whatever reason, we never got in contact again.

I have tried over the past few years looking for Robert over the Internet but have not been successful. Even today I tried and failed again, although I did find the address of the Milton family home in Bristol. I didn't remember the name of the street, although when I looked at the address on a map, the old neighbourhood came into focus, with my old house at the top of the map, our primary school in the middle and Robert's house at the bottom.

I'll send a condolence card tomorrow along with my email address and we'll see if anything transpires.

Killarney Boys Of Pleasure

I uploaded a few new instrumentals to my SoundClick page, including a traditional Irish tune bearing the very politically incorrect name of 'Killarney Boys Of Pleasure'. I was in Killarney once but I didn't meet any boys of pleasure (and probably would have run a mile had I done so). I imagine that the meaning of "boys of pleasure" has changed somewhat over the years....

Anyway, this is normally a fast paced violin tune, but the version which I know by Lunasa slowed it down "to make it sound groovy", to quote the sleeve notes to their "Merry Sisters Of Fate" disc. Their version informed and inspired my version, and to give credit where credit is due, I think that their version is better.

I saw Lunasa when that disc came out, and reviewed both their concert and the disc for the GreenMan review online magazine. I couldn't find those reviews now after a quick search on GMR's website, but my review of then Lunasa guitarist Donogh Hennessey's music book is still there. I thought that I was doing the band a favour by giving this book a positive review (and I bought it with my own money), but Donogh sent a vicious and personally insulting reply in return which totally turned me off reviewing.

When in Ireland in 2002, I bought their followup disc, "Redwood", but didn't like it. I still don't like it, not for personal reasons, but for professional ones: the dynamics which made MSOF so good are totally lacking in "Redwood" and turns Lunasa into "just another Irish band".

Anyway, I digress (and what's the point of blogs if one can't digress every now and then?). My version of 'Killarney Boys Of Pleasure' is up at SoundClick, I hope that you'll listen and give it a 'hot' vote.

(Welcome to the) Hotel California

I've been reading "Hotel California" by Barney Hoskyns over the past few weeks. I purchased the book because I had been led to believe that it contained a fair amount of information about Randy Newman (and because British Amazon had it on sale for a ridiculously low price) and some about Jackson Browne. It turned out that there was plenty of information about Jackson Browne but little about Randy Newman, who didn't really belong to the Los Angeles singer-songwriter circle of the late 60s/early 70s.

This book talks about a period of music which isn't well represented in my collection. Apart from the Newman albums, I have all the early Jackson Browne albums along with "Crosby, Stills and Nash", but my Joni collection starts with "Blue" and concentrates on the following years. Once I bought a 'greatest hits' collection by The Byrds, which I listened to on Saturday. Almost every track sounds the same and almost none of it sounds interesting.

This is a concise description which I could apply to most of the music described in Hoskyns' book: most of the faux cowboy material fell on deaf ears and I never could stand The Eagles. As someone rightly pointed out, almost all of the musicians which one considers to be part of this scene are not Californians (the exceptions are Newman, Browne and Crosby).

The book is a bit muddled, unsure of whether to tell a strictly chronological tale or whether to concentrate on people and/or groups. As a result, there's a bit of both which makes for haphazard, if informative, reading.

I knew nothing about the early life of David Crosby (all I did know was his sailing, his drug problems, his liver transplant and his jail sentences), so this book clued me in. To me, the standout track of "Crosby, Stills and Nash" is C's "Guinevere" and I have always wondered why there were no other tracks of a similar standard created by him. Now I know.

I have the "remixed from the original master tapes" cd version of CS&N which I bought about ten years ago. The production on this is strange to my way of thinking: whilst the guitars (especially in "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes") have careful spacial placing, the vocals (with one notable exception) are mixed together, dead in the middle, thus making it difficult to separate each singer's contribution. Strange for a harmony group - unless they wanted to provide a blend of three voices as one. The notable exception is "Helplessly hoping", which has clean separation on the vocals (and showing again that Crosby has a lovely voice); this track only has a single acoustic guitar, which may have something to do with the vocal separation.

I've never been one who looks for the perfect vocal (I have been given to understand from other sources that both CS&N and The Eagles would record multiple vocal tracks and then edit on a word by word basis!), as one can imagine from listening to years of Randy Newman, so most Californian perfect vocal songs leave me cold. Where is all the expression and emotion? Rank The Eagles against Van der Graaf Generator, and whilst it's easy to understand why one act has sold millions of records whereas the other has not, it's also clear on which side the true emotion and passion lies. And the musical ability.

Speying the dog

For some unknown reason, I haven't felt like updating this blog in the past few weeks. Too many days off work (for holidays) cause the mind to go mush-like, and blogs don't get written in this time.

A few weeks ago I took our young dog (Mocha) to be speyed. I should really call her a puppy as she's only six months old, but to me a puppy is a small dog, and this one is anything but small!

This picture was taken about two months ago and doesn't really give a good idea of her size, although some people who have seen it say that they can judge by the size of her feet. Anyway, this is a big dog who hasn't finished growing yet.

I stayed to watch the operation as I thought it would be interesting (I also didn't have anything else to do at the time). Anaesthetising the dog was amazing: after the vet managed to insert a cannula into Mocha's leg, she injected some liquid and in literally two seconds Mocha relaxed from heavy breathing into heavy sleep. The cut in the abdomen produced disappointingly little blood and in fact, no real bleeding could be observed at any time during the operation, although of course subcutaneous blood vessels were leaking all the time.

Again, to my disappointment, the vet didn't lay Mocha's abdomen open for me to see inside; instead, she reached inside the cut, felt around a bit and then brought out some filmy tissue which she said was the ovaries, Fallopian tubes and uterus. She carefully cut and stitched, and within about 40 minutes the entire operation was over: careful and slow.

The vet says that current thinking says that it is best to spey dogs prior to their coming on heat for the first time; this improves their hormonal balance (or prevents hormonal imbalance) and will lengthen their lifespan. I'm used to thinking about gynaecological details of women, and of course bitches are somewhat different!

It took Mocha a few days to recover her normally undending enthusiasm for life, a period longer than the vet had said, so much so that I was tempted to take Mocha back for a checkup. But soon her lethargy departed and she was back to her old tricks (chewing shoes, scratching the carpet and generally running around). I'm not too sure which behaviour I prefer; we are waiting for her to grow out of this phase.

Next time: thoughts about two new books.

An end to headaches?

I would like to claim that I've had difficulty logging into the blog (true) as a reason for not posting recently but that wouldn't be fair. As Robert Heinlein wrote, the best way to lie is to tell the truth ... just not all of it. So yes, I've been having difficulty logging into the blog.

I had my BCC removed surgically two weeks ago and a long row of stitches inserted, which were removed two days ago. Apparently the scar is 6mm in length, which is comparatively long for this sort of thing. Fortunately, it's on my back, so I don't have to look at it (neither does anyone else) and it also made the surgery easier. I have a checkup with my skin doctor in another few weeks and I am hoping that she won't find anything else to have extracted.

Whilst having the surgery, another piece of the headache issue fell into place. My blood pressure was measured before and after; before it was something like 145/90, whereas after it was 135/90. I had a slight headache at the time which intensified as the day went on, which leads me to the tentative conclusion that elevated blood pressure will give me a headache. I looked a little at the online literature, and whilst this observation has been made, it is generally accepted to be false. But the elevated bp can be a sign of something else which is causing the headaches.

Fortunately I've been headache free for almost the past month (except for the surgery day) which has been a blessing, so I haven't really had a chance to test this theory. Theoretically, I should be walking around with a mobile sphygmomanometer (don't you just love that word; I pasted it in directly from the Wikipedia) so that I can have advance warning of a headache but I can't really see that happening.

Something has happened to my sound card which is making recording vocals very difficult. I replaced the microphone with another which had been very 'live' in the past, but this too was hardly producing any output. After increasing volume levels by 25 and judicious silencing, I obtained a reasonable - if bassy - vocal for a song which I am currently recording. This silencing has happened before - last Summer, if I remember correctly - and mysteriously went away after a few days. Maybe the soundcard also suffers from high blood pressure or the equivalent.

Weekend migraines (part 2)

As my late mother used to ask, do you know the story of the three wells? No, I would answer. "Well, well, well".

No pain on Friday. Almost no pain on Saturday (I woke up with a slight headache which might have been caused by mild dehydration - my wife left the electric blanket on all night). No pain so far today.

Can it really be that going to bed frustrated and not sleeping well can cause migraines? There are people who would say definitely so, those who believe in a holistic approach.

I come from a scientific background, which means that the experiment has to be repeated several times in order to reach a conclusion. So: no basketball this Thursday night. Maybe I'll tape the game and watch it on Friday afternoon, depending on the result.

My clinical psychologist friend laid out some new exams which she wants me to computerise. Being in stout mind over the weekend, I completed one from scratch and I'll show her the results in the next few days. There's another exam which looks fairly easy to implement; the only decision which I have to make at the moment is whether the interface should be only keyboard or only mouse (I suppose I could do both). Sometimes the people being tested are not too familiar with a computer, although I imagine that this kind of person is disappearing, especially considering the nature of the exam. So it looks like I'll go with the mouse interface.

Weekend migraines

As I wrote previously, I went to see my doctor about migraines. First of all, he checked my symptoms to see that they are indeed included in the list which indicates migraine - not everybody has the same symptoms and even not every migraine which I suffer has the same symptoms. Then he gave me a neurological examination - checking reflexes, getting me to touch my nose with my arms outstretched and my eyes closed. After I passed this test, we talked a bit about causes.

Almost all of my migraines start on a Saturday morning, so the natural question is what is different about Friday night. Well, it's the only time of the week that I eat meat - roast chicken, in fact. Now, there are certain foods which are known to trigger migraines such as chocolate (which I rarely eat), but no one has yet indicated roast chicken! The doctor expressed surprise, and joked that if this is really the cause, then he can write an article about it and become famous. He advised me not to eat chicken that evening (the consultation was on Friday morning) to see whether that would have any effect. He considered prescribing me beta-blockers, specifically propranolol, but first wanted to see what my blood pressure was and whether there is any identifiable trigger.

My BP was measured three times, with an average value of 140/80, which is very high for me and hopefully unusual. I left the clinic at about 11:30am, and by about 3pm I already had a developing headache, obviously not due to the roast chicken which I was just about to start preparing. Then followed two and a half days of intermittent pain and nausea, a classic migraine for me.

Several people have mentioned to me that many people suffer from 'weekend migraines', which arise from a change in lifestyle. I was told about one person who normally drinks several cups of coffee a day but not at weekends and so suffers migraines as a result (caffeine withdrawal); as I drink herbal tea, this isn't a problem for me, but I understand the basic idea. Another person pointed out that we normally get up later at the weekend, which can upset the body rhythm.

So I started thinking: if I already had the headache by Friday afternoon, what is different about Thursday evening/Friday morning to the rest of the week? Well, for a start, I only work a few hours on Friday morning (my company officially works Sunday to Thursday, but I do a few extra hours on Friday when it's quiet and no one bothers me) and don't drink very much. I also watch frustrating basketball games on Thursday evening, don't shower and go to bed late, so I am often more tired on a Friday.

As it happens, Maccabi Tel Aviv played basketball on a Wednesday this week, the first time in several years, and as they were totally dominated by Tau Vittoria, I didn't bother watching the entire game. Instead I elected to shower and go to bed at a reasonable hour, unaffected emotionally by the game. Yesterday I had my blood pressure measured at a much more reasonable 119/75, today I've been drinking, and it will be interesting to see what happens this weekend.

I keep my fingers crossed.

Donating blood

Yesterday, the 'bloodmobile' made its semi-annual journey to the kibbutz so that people could donate blood. There's always a shortage of blood available for infusions, so Magen David Adom (the equivalent to Red Cross) are always trying to get people to donate. On the other hand, in the past few years, they have also tried to make things as hard as possible for people to donate, in order to ensure that they blood that they do get is of the highest quality. There is a questionnaire which one has to complete which asks all kinds of questions: does the donor suffer from epileptic fits? Is the donor an intravenous drug user? Has the donor undergone dental treatment in the past seven days? Has the donor lived abroad for a period of six months during the years ....? What medication has the donor taken in the past two weeks? Has the donor been feeling well in the past few days?

One gets the picture. Had the bloodmobile come a few days ago, there is no way that I would have gone as I had been feeling very unwell (probably migraines, although I'm going to the doctor tomorrow and may get a new diagnosis), and donating blood was completely out of the question. But I've been feeling much better and thought that there would be no problem this time.

After completing the questionnaire, one goes to a paramedic who checks the questionnaire, asks some more questions (some of which are covered in the questionnaire), checks pulse and blood pressure, and in the case of women and vegetarians, haemoglobin levels. During this chat, I mentioned that I had had an appointment with a skin doctor a few days ago for the removal of a small growth, but that nothing had happened as the growth was too big to be removed, considering the poor sterility conditions of her office (as the growth is on my back, I can't see it very well, but it's maybe two centimetres in diameter). I thought that I would be ok to donate as I hadn't had it removed, but it turns out the opposite. Once the paramedic heard this, he phoned a doctor in Jerusalem who asked me what the growth was. When I told her that it was BCC (basal cell carcinoma), she immediately said that I could not donate, but that I will be able to after it has been removed.

So: another visit of the bloodmobile goes by without me donating. Everyone thanked me for at least wanting to donate (most people don't even want to), but I was left with an obscure feeling of having been rejected

Another one bites the dust

Today I read about the death of Ian Wallace, drummer for the 'Islands' line up of King Crimson. Full details here .

Obviously Ian did a lot more than just play in that incarnation of KC; when I first found his website a few years ago, I was surprised at the names who had used his talents. I found his diary very amusing and informative, telling about his life as a LA musician.

God rest his soul.

Post Mortem

I promised a report on last week's cholent: it tasted fine, but there was far too much liquid in it. I'll have to take this into account the next time I make the dish, probably next week - my wife loved it and lobbied me all week to make it again.

When not battling with the report generator at work (the documentation turns out to be not too useful and totally lacking examples), I've been working on a song at home. This one contains quite a few musical surprises.

I spent today working on Word and Excel automation from within a Delphi program. Maybe for some people this is old hat, but the Word automation is new to me. I suppose that I've never needed it before because I've always maintained that the Delphi program should and can do anything which it needs to do. In this case, it's part of a pyschological testing progam, and we want to give the testee a report of how s/he did; there's some complex formatting to be done along with boilerplate text, and it does make sense to do this in Word - match the tool to the task.

I've also been battling with an unusual migraine all day, which is why I don't feel like elaborating very much on any of the above subjects.

Working hard (but seeing the light at the end of the tunnel)

Well, if I thought that I had been working hard during December, then that was nothing compared to what awaited me in January! Most working days lasted 12 hours, and there were even a few 16 hour days ... not surprisingly my private life was virtually non-existant during this time. It was like being in basic training in the army again - come home at weekends and sleep almost all the time.

The first two weeks in February were a bit easier, and I could definitely feel the pressure easing. For most of this time, I've been helping other people get to grips with the new ERP program (which I barely know myself) and trying to figure out how to get done what needs to be done. Now most of that is ... done, and I can start applying myself to the important work: writing reports with the report generator. This is my bread and butter, my speciality, and I imagine that quite a few people, myself included, have been waiting for the day that I can start writing reports.

Although to someone on the outside this may seem a trivial job, in fact it is quite crucial. The reason why we were able to get so much mileage out of our previous ERP program was that the reports which I wrote were extremely sophisticated and did all kinds of things which many people (maybe even the program's architects) might not have dreamed possible. The new ERP program seems to have sufficient built-in reports, but when one starts examining them, they suddenly seem not to be supplying the goods.

I was supposed to have gone on a three day course to learn the report generator; the day before the course started, I was sent a preparatory document which would hold me in good stead for the course. The document was like the first step in database design, something which was way, way, way beneath what I need to know. When I pointed this out to the course organiser, she suggested that I not bother going to the course and instead speak to the head of the technical team who might better be able to help me.

So speak I did. It transpires that they have an advanced db course, which is really a one on one session with a developer at the (ridiculous) cost of $1900 - the simple course would have cost $500. But, she said, download a certain document from our website; this will tell you all you need to know. If you manage with this, fine. If not, do the course.

I downloaded the document (it turned out that I had already downloaded it a few weeks previously but hadn't looked at it yet) and tried reading it. It was all gibberish. Another day passed, I tried looking at it again and some of it started making a little sense. I even tried a simple example, in order to get my feet wet, and this encouraged me. The next day I looked at it again, and realised that out of the six or seven chapters, there is only one chapter which interests me at the moment and that it would be worth my while to concentrate on this chapter. So concentrate I did and after an hour or so, I tried my hand at writing a simple report.

This turned out reasonably well (although there were several things which I wanted to improve but couldn't see how) so I tried another example. And suddenly there was light at the end of the tunnel! I was understanding what I was doing! The next day (yesterday) I was very confident, figured out how to do some of the things which had stumped me before and wrote some more complicated reports. Today I continued the trend and figured out how to do something quite complicated. RTFM, of course.

These manuals only make sense after one has already figured out (with a great deal of mental sweat) how to do what is written there. Once it makes sense, then it's time to read the manual properly and thoroughly and suddenly all kinds of things make sense. I even discovered that I had inadvertedly started using material in one of the chapters which I hadn't looked at - to my pleasure.

One problem which remains unresolved is that the manual is written in English (obviously not a problem for me) whereas the program displays itself in Hebrew. The manual says "use the ___ option which is a secondary window of the ____ form", and I'm thinking, "yes, what's that in Hebrew?" Microsoft were well known for inventing their own variation of Hebrew, translating English concepts into words which weren't exactly the most obvious. So it is with this program - but that might be the least of my worries.

Having personal time means that I've been getting on with my music. I actually wrote a new song a few weeks ago (called "Everything reminds me of you") which then spent a week being arranged and recorded. Last week I did a new arrangement of a old song ("Chance encounter") and that too has been nailed. I'll be putting the songs up at SoundClick when I finish this entry.

It's now the weekend, so it's maximum cooking time. As always (for the past year) it's roast chicken and roast potato for dinner tonight, a remarkably easy dish which always tastes lovely. For lunch tomorrow I've decided to be adventurous (no doubt in due to a combination of buying a new cooking dish and my success with the report generator) and so I'm making cholent, as the East European Jews would call it, a mixture of beans, potatoes and meat which cooks slowly from Friday afternoon until Saturday lunchtime. This meal is popular with religious Jews as they can prepare it before the Sabbath comes in and yet serve it hot a day later (they don't turn on or off power sources - these days, electricity, in those days, candles or fire - during the Sabbath, although what is turned on beforehand will stay on during the day). Thus it's common to find a hotplate running all day which will have on it a large urn of water (a source for hot drinks) and a tureen of cholent.

I've never made this before, which makes me slightly nervous, although it's also fairly simple: just put all the ingredients in a pot and cook slowly for 15 hours. I'll let you know what it tasted like later....

January 1

As someone in the "William and Mary" tv series said, "I'm knackered with a capital N".

I don't normally like to write about my work in this blog, but the past month's activities have left me with little choice. In the real world, I am the IT manager for "one of Israel's leading office furniture manufacturers", or at least I was until yesterday. Now I am the IT manager for Israel's leading office furniture manufacturer.

Several years ago, a Canadian company bought one of Israel's furniture manufacturers and also bought a majority of the shares in the company for which I work(ed). About six months ago, they decided to buy out the minority partner and combine the two companies. Although a complete merger has not yet been obtained, due to legal reasons, the two companies as of today are one.

In September I was tapped to become the IT manager for the entire group, and in that guise I examined the IT setup in our sister company and compared it to ours; whilst our company might be well ahead in terms of exploiting the ERP program, our ERP is very old fashioned, and the full exploitation was mainly due to satellite programs which I had written. With a slightly heavy heart, I had to recommend that the program used by our sister company was more modern, and if we were going to combine forces, then we would have to use this other program.

Since October, I've been learning how to use this program; unfortunately progress was exceedingly slow until the end of November, when we established a direct telecommunications link between the two factories. Since then, I've been working hard, trying to implement all our data in the new program whilst carrying on with my normal full schedule. If there is anything which I regret doing, it was leaving the physical connection so late.

The last month has also been taken up with weekly meetings and all day training sessions which have been interesting but also time consuming, time which might have been used more constructively on implementing things.

Anyway, today the switch was thrown; from now on, we will work only with the new program, although the old ERP program will stay in use as the production module in my factory. Whilst we all know what we want to do with the program (create price quotations, place orders, make out invoices, etc), the problem - at least for now - is how to do it. The 'how' is probably easier for me than for most of our staff regarding these real jobs, but most of my time has been spent importing data, setting up privileges, setting report formats and so forth, which can be just as frustrating for me as trying to create a price quotation can be for a less computer literate fellow worker.

A new year and a new beginning.

Where have I been?

The last few weeks seem to have gone by very fast, but they also have been very intensive. All sorts of personal problems which I don't want to discuss here have occupied my time.

My father has just spent one week in hospital, and for someone who has always been healthy (he is 84), this comes as quite a surprise and quite a blow. As the diagnosis is not clear, everyone has been telling me stories about people going to doctors and not being diagnosed correctly. These days, so much depends on blood tests; it makes me wonder who devises these tests (how do they know what to test for, how do they actually perform the test, what do they mean) and how we managed say 20 years ago when there weren't such sophisticated tests.

I am trying to do an arrangement for an old song. I originally sequenced it in 1999 and sounded very good (in what I call a 'pointillist' style), but the transfer to Reason has changed everything. I get the feeling that by the time I finish, there will be only 25% of the original notes left; I've changed parts, thrown out a great deal and tried to make something new. At the moment, I am lucky if I can devote an hour a day to this - fortunately there is no rush.

Love

Is this an event which unites youth in a way that hasn't happened since June 1967? Is it an exercise in money grabbing?

I am referring to the "new" Beatles album entitled "Love". No doubt you've read about it elsewhere so I'm not going to delve into the background too much. I've known about the record for the past few weeks, a bit earlier than the general public here, who only became aware after last Saturday's tv weekly news roundup devoted a few minutes to the subject. By that time I had already downloaded a few songs which had been streamed by an Australian paper, and I was getting to know the material.

I thought that it would be instructive to see what other people had been writing about this album first before essaying my thoughts. I was really surprised: a large number of people were moaning about how the Beatles see this record as another way of milking the public; many were annoyed at how "new" tracks had been created and most of the opinions that I read were against the record.

I might have a few reservations, but I think that George Martin didn't go far enough in creating new tracks by mixing and mashing the old. One person was complaining that he bought the 45 rpm record of "Strawberry Fields" in 1967, and so he knows "what the correct version is". Is he unaware that the version to which he was referring was actually created from two different versions? For those who still don't know this, the invisible seam is at the 1:00 mark. Maybe it's because I spend much of my time creating music electronically, cutting and pasting bits and pieces from different songs and matching them up that I'm not horrified by this concept.

I may be a pathetic anorak, but one of my favourite Beatles cd contains only different versions and instrumental tracks of "Strawberry Fields". This was the first ever mash, and the "new" version revealed here is simply the "original" with yet another different first verse put on the front. To me, the differing versions reveal differing aspects of the music, and the new mixes enable one to hear things which were originally buried.

SFF was the first Beatles song which ever won sufficient respect to require a remake; often they were working to a schedule which didn't allow second thoughts. People have become so used to bands making a record once a year, or once every two years or even once every three years that they don't remember that in the sixties, bands were required to make two albums a year! Recording budgets were miniscule and recording techniques were caveman-like. For some reason, EMI issued an edict that the Beatles' tapes were never to be interfered with; as a result of George Martin's using two track recording to record two separate tracks as opposed to one stereo recording, recordings had been issued with all the instruments on one side and vocals on the other side - and he wasn't allowed to fix them! So even if there were no mashing done on "Love", the chance to remix the original recordings (as much as those recording allow remixing) is one not to be taken lightly.

These days, artists record a song. They make several mixes, maybe with different instrumentation, and have the time and luxury to choose the one which they think sounds best. Sometimes a mix will sound dated after a few years and sometimes the artists may choose to replace the original mix with a different version. Sometimes an artist will have second thoughts: I know that mentioning my music in the same breath as the Beatles' is pure sacrilege, but I'd like to give an example of my own.

As I've written before, I recorded The Band's "Whispering Pines" not so long ago. My original version had piano and organ on it, similar to The Band's version. After a while, I decided to remove the piano and organ, but kept the vocal. A few weeks later, I decided to change the music once again. Another week went by and I recorded a new vocal. I have four, maybe five, complete and different versions on my hard disk. Had I been pressed for time like the Beatles were, at least until "Sergeant Pepper", that first version would have been the one everyone would have heard. Now it's the fourth (or fifth) version that people can hear at The Band's site, the "Late October" mix.

Shouldn't The Beatles be awarded the chance to correct minor mistakes and have their music sound contemporary?

Regarding the mashing, some of it is amazing (especially "Drive my car" or "Within Without You"), some is interesting (SFF, "While my gently weeps") and some just is. But the "unadulturated" songs sound anaemic by comparion; one is always waiting for something new to happen and nothing does. But even a song which supposedly has been "left alone" can sound different - "I am the walrus" finally has a true stereo mix, and in the fadeout, the different vocal lines are much more apparent.

If anyone complains about the price - $18 list - I saw that Amazon were selling it at nearly 50% discount, but I imagine that most people will, ahem, acquire the album at no cost at all. It's not as if the Beatles need more money.....

Incidentally, if one studies their history, it wasn't until they broke up that they really started earning money (the story of many a band). Their original contract with EMI was miserly at best, and Brian Epstein let a lot of money slip through their fingers, not really because of mismanagement, but because they were the first and no one really knew how to handle their business. George Martin too had a raw deal with EMI and didn't make much money at the beginning, although by the time of "Abbey Road" he was probably getting a percentage.

I suppose that compared to most people, I am a Beatles freak, although I wouldn't consider myself a fanatic. I have studied their music both with my own ears and other people's commentary, and I've read their history. I did live through it, although I was too young at the time to go to their concerts. As a result, I hear this album in what is probably a completely different way from someone uneducated about the Beatles; but somehow I doubt that some unsuspecting purchaser is going to believe that these are the canonical versions.

The Band

I have a vague memory that in 1971 someone came in to the classroom with a couple of albums under his arm and tried to sell them at a low price. I think that they came without a sleeve, which would tend to imply that they fell off a lorry, as the euphemism puts it. I didn't succumb to temptation, although I did listen to a copy; the only song that I remember was an upbeat number called "Time To Kill".

Several years later, I buy a copy of "Mystery Train" by Greil Marcus (first edition); I bought the book for its chapter on Randy Newman, but of course read it from cover to cover. Whilst I wasn't too interested in Elvis or Sly Stone, the chapter on The Band caught my imagination (I should also note that the chapter on Randy Newman deepened my understanding immensely). I talked this over with a lecturer in the Arts department, and he was kind enough to give me a cassette copy of "The Band" (aka The Brown Album). I found this quite difficult to listen to, and couldn't reconcile easily what I was hearing with what Marcus wrote about.

After emigrating to Israel in 1978, someone was kind enough to give me another cassette, this time with "Big Pink" on one side and "The Band" on the other. Maybe it was the clarity of the recording and maybe it was listening to an album without interruption (the previous cassette had the album spread over both sides of a C60, instead of one side of a C90), but suddenly The Band started to make sense. Around this time, the soundtrack to "The Last Waltz" came out, and I became captivated by some of the tracks, especially "It Makes No Difference".

When I moved from purchasing vinyl to purchasing cds, some of my earlier purchases were the early Band albums, along with a now not available compilation. When the Internet became popular, it didn't take long to find the excellent Band site, which again helped deepen my understanding.

A few days ago, I was looking at this site and noticed that a new page had been added: covers of Band songs by visitors to the site. As it happens, I had recorded a version of "Whispering Pines" a few months ago (several versions, to be accurate), but due to restrictions on the Soundclick site, I was unable to upload it there. So I took this opportunity to make one of my covers available, and one can hear it here. Hope that you enjoy it.

Shopping

My son has started keyboard lessons (not piano, but electric keyboard), and we promised him that if he makes a go of it, we will buy him an instrument. So on Friday, we found ourselves heading towards Tel Aviv, where the major musical instrument shops are to be found. After a bit of humming and hawwing, we chose the Yamaha PSR-E 303, which I discover afterwards is considered to have very good value for money. One thing which I was looking for was touch response; to quote, "On an acoustic piano, striking a key harder will produce a louder sound, striking it softer will produce a softer sound. With Yamaha's "Touch Response" the PSR-E303 keyboard responds like an acoustic piano."

All the time, my wife was saying that if the boy doesn't continue playing, then I can always use it (no doubt trying to play [no pun intended] on one's natural tendency to buy for oneself something better). Indeed, when we got home and set the keyboard up, it was mainly me playing selections from Van der Graaf Generator (a nice bossa version of 'Man Erg'), rather than my son playing the few simple tunes that he's learnt so far.

After this purchase, we had lunch and then split up for an hour, each person doing his/her own shopping or just wandering around. I was "just wandering around" until I found a shop selling cds - a selection which one could kill for. There aren't very many cds on my wish list anymore, and the few which I do buy normally come from esoteric outlets on the Internet; I find it frustrating to walk into a cd shop and come out empty handed. Not this time: the first thing which I noted were VdGG albums (although not the remasters); following this promising start, I then looked for Peter Hammill and found several of his discs, including the series of remasters, which have been available only for a week or so. I decided to buy 'Over', which is simultaneously one of his most extreme but listenable albums. The price was seventy shekels, which works out as slightly less than nine pounds and thus much cheaper than buying from Hammill directly.

Emboldened by this success, I then found "Walking wounded" by Everything But The Girl; Robin has mentioned them several times, but I've never heard anything by them. For forty shekels (less than five pounds), I didn't think that I was taking much of a risk. To round things out, I bought an old album by an Israeli singer, one which I bought on vinyl when it came out but haven't heard in twenty years. I'm more interested in the musician who wrote most of the songs, arranged and produced the album; this record is like a missing link between his earlier, more straightforward material and his later, more jazzy style.

Once home, I listened to all the discs in rotation. "Over" was definitely louder and clearer than the original; the bonus tracks don't do much for me, but I understand why they are there. I have on order from Amazon the remastered version of "Godbluff"; I feel that the original cd release was sorely lacking the power and clarity of the vinyl version, and judging from what's been done to "Over", the result should be good. "Walking wounded" was ok; I find the percussion too loud and distracting - but then, I'm listening to it in the comfort of my home and not on the dance floor. Maybe their earlier material would be more to my liking. The Israeli disc was a pleasure to listen to, although some of it sounds very dated (early 80s synth technology).

So: even if that day did cost us a lot of money, I think that it was very well spent. My left hand hurts from playing extended chords on the piano and my head is full of Peter Hammill songs.