Reviewing someone else's academic work

I wrote last time that I had been invited to review a paper about an ERP implementation. I was sent this paper but discovered that the document was empty - for a while, I wondered whether I had been the victim of a scam or a virus attack - but after contacting the journal editor, the documents were sent again and this time were readable.

The paper discusses an ERP implementation for a national electricity company in Africa. The paper shows that so far, the implementation has failed, which does not come as much as a surprise to me. There isn't a particularly good fit between such a company and ERP to start with. It seems that the vendor, contractor and company didn't do their homework very well and that the users were not prepared in advance. Unfortunately, this happens frequently.

Also unfortunately, I couldn't recommend the paper for publication. There were many mistakes in English and strange adjectives used (e.g. "unappealing commitment"). But even ignoring such issues, the paper wasn't very good. There were very few references, which is odd considering the number of papers about ERP implementation (I don't remember the exact figure, but my literature survey states that about 80% of ERP research is about implementation). The methodology is ok, but data is presented in a haphazard way and the conclusions aren't stated in terms of the original objectives.

I can understand how the writer(s) will feel when they receive the feedback - I have been in the same position three times. At least I totally understand the subject matter, which is more than can be said for those who reviewed my work. I have tried to point out where the work can be improved. I was sorely tempted to send back a copy edited version of the manuscript, but that's not my job.

It will be interesting to see whether there is any follow-up to this review.

A certain kind of academic recognition

I received an interesting email today, asking me to review a paper for a professional journal. Not surprisingly, the paper is about an ERP installation. As reviewing is supposed to be anonymous, I can't publish here the name of the journal nor of the paper. I don't think that this journal is very well known (I certainly have never heard of it), but it does have a presence on the Internet and one can read papers published within. 

So, this is a certain kind of academic recognition, although not necessarily the kind that I crave for. 

[SO: 4422; 5,21,43

MPP: 802; 1,4,6

ELL: 926; 0,2,7]

The City Boy

It happened twice during the years 1969-70 that I found abandoned library books on benches in my school rooms. One time, the book was "Tiger, tiger!" (aka "The stars my destination") by Alfred Bester, which was a stupendous find; this was one of the strongest and most colourful science fiction stories that I would ever read. I suspect that I had difficulty understanding the story at first, but later understood its intricacies.

The other book was "The city boy", by Herman Wouk (certain editions seem to have lost the definite article). Whilst obviously I was not living in 1922 (or thereabouts) in the Bronx, with a father owning a factory which made ice, I was aware on first reading of several similarities between the story's protagonist and myself: we were both plump Jewish boys who preferred intellectual pursuits than sports and we both went to summer camp - although mine lasted two weeks as opposed to Herbie's two months. It is no wonder, then, that this book spoke to me.

I haven't read it for at least twenty years (if not more), but recently found an ebook version which I loaded onto my Kindle. I read the book in its entirety yesterday and was once again charmed by this story which apparently was a failure when first published (although this may have been a backlash to the success of Wouk's previous novel, which was his first). Now, I find it amazing how Wouk understands and writes about the behaviour and motivations of an eleven year old.

The serendipity of finding these books abandoned in classrooms helped fuel my eclectic and scattered approach to reading in the formative years of my adolescence. It's a shame that I found only two books - who knows what a third might have been? By 1970, though, I was off and reading books which I found through books which I had already read.

Grand-daughter is nine months old

Shaked is now nine months old and has a wide variety of behaviours and responses. Here she is, sitting on the sofa between me and her mother, trying to collect scraps of apple pie with her finger so that she can eat them. I'm trying to distract her with a samba rhythm on the shaker.

[SO: 4412; 5,21,43

MPP: 802; 1,4,6

ELL: 881; 0,2,7]

John Wetton, RIP

"Spinal Tap" notwithstanding (five drummers mysteriously die), it seems that being a bassist in a prog-rock group is a work hazard: I was sad to hear this morning that John Wetton, bassist in the 1972-4 configuration of King Crimson, died after a long battle with cancer. Wetton joins recently departed Greg Lake and long departed Boz Burrell in the King Crimson bassist casualty list (there are also two Van der Graaf Generator bassists to keep them company).

Wetton had been in a variety of groups before King Crimson, most notably Family; he sings second vocal to Roger Chapman on one my favourite Family songs, "My friend, the sun". In KC, he played bass, sang, wrote songs and played uncredited instruments, his apotheosis being "Starless".

After KC, he went on to play with Bill Bruford in UK, then hit the big time with Asia (I have no acquaintance with them). Apparently, he was an active musician until the last few years, when the cancer came.

Tonight, as a tribute, once more I will float down the river of music that is entitled "Starless" and enjoy his bass and voice.

Edit from the same evening: listening to the radio today, I heard the announcer mention the death of JW, and in tribute played a live version of 'Book of Saturday'. I didn't recognise this version - it may not have been by KC.

Fripp writes:
John was a pal over almost forty-two years, beginning at Bournemouth College in 1965, two teenage students and local gigsters. We continued in touch during our early professional lives in London, speaking from time to time, before John joined King Crimson in 1972-74 with David Cross, Jamie Muir and Billy B. JW was, for me, the leading bass player of his generation, a player of international class, before John moved increasingly to the front as singer and songwriter: Asia’s debut album was the world’s biggest seller in 1982. We continued as chums, working together when John lived in LA in 1992; and increasingly met for coffee and cakes after John moved back to Bournemouth in the Noughties.

Edit from a month later: I found this article (it's more like a book chapter!) about John, mainly before he became famous.

TV Series in January 2017

It's been two months since I last wrote about the TV series which I watch; during that time, almost all of the series which I mentioned then have finished, being replaced by a motley selection.

One series, 'Unforgotten', started being broadcast just after that blog entry. This is basically a police procedural, but it's more about the people involved in the crime (the death of a 17 year old boy, 30 years ago) than it is about how the police solve the crime. In other words, it's much more a drama than it is a procedural. In a strange piece of casting, Nicola Walker, otherwise known as Ruth from 'Spooks' plays the senior detective; the initial episodes were broadcast here at the same time as series 3 of 'Scott and Bailey', in which Walker plays a somewhat deranged character. Here, Walker plays a slightly hesitant detective, which seems somewhat unlikely: surely someone at the rank of DCI would be much more self confident and decisive.

'Madam Secretary', as befits an American series which has about 22 episodes per season, is still being broadcast. Episode 12 of season 3 was shown on Thursday night; this means that we are seeing the episodes only a few days after their broadcast in USA, according to IMDB (this link probably will change in the future). They show episode 12 being broadcast on 15 January and episode 13 on 27 January, although no indication is given as to which country those broadcast dates refer. This programme is consistently good (but not excellent), even though its stories are somewhat facile.

With no advanced warning, I discovered that Sherlock season 4 is being broadcast in Israel! We're about two weeks behind Britain, which is also not bad. The first episode ('The six Thatchers') seems to contain more action and is less cerebral than the earlier episodes; still outstanding, but less groundbreaking. I watched the program yesterday when something strange happened: the transition from one specific scene to another seemed very strange - I thought that this might be some kind of dream sequence, but it still didn't seem right. Fortunately, the episode is broadcast several times during the week, so I recorded it again today and discovered that there was a whole ten minutes missing from the version which I had watched the first time.

Another British series which I'm watching is called 'In the club', which follows the lives of six very pregnant women (one gives birth every week). It's a 'bunker' series: dependable, but too much happens per episode to be realistic. This series dates from 2014 so we most certainly are not watching it concurrently. Hermione Norris (Cold Feet, Spooks) appears in this, as does Sacha Dhawan, who is a new name to me, but coincidentally appears in the above episode of 'Sherlock'. I'm not recording this.

Last night I recorded a new - to me - American series called 'Mind Games'; this too dates from 2014. Although thirteen episodes were recorded, apparently only about six were broadcast before the series was cancelled: it will be interesting to see how many episodes are broadcast here. I didn't see the first episode, so the beginning of the second was quite bewildering. Most of the actors spoke too fast so I had difficulty understanding what was happening. So why did I watch (and record) this? Because the theme of the programme seems to be industrial psychology - a strange basis for prime time television (probably the reason why it had low ratings) but definitely up my street. Starring are Steve Zahn (who always seems to play manic people) as an academic psychologist, and Christian Slater as Zahn's brother, who is more of a 'folk psychologist'. In the episode which I saw, they dramatised a psychological experiment straight out of Dan Ariely (this is a true experiment): sometimes it can be very hard to make a choice between two alternatives (let's call them A and B), but if one adds a third alternative - a demonstrably inferior version of one of the original two alternatives (let's say C is comparable to B, but worse) - then choosing becomes easier: it will be the superior version of the third alternative (ie B). A few other psychological techniques also got some air-time. It will be interesting to see what the following episodes are like: whether it calms down, whether we get more real psychological techniques and whether the back story - one brother (Slater) apparently hires a girl to fall in love with the other brother (Zahn) - makes any real sense.

Priority trick for screen procedures

Whilst checking something buried in a screen procedure within Priority, I came across the following nugget:

SELECT 420, 539 INTO :WRNMSG, :GOTO FROM DUMMY 
WHERE :RETVAL <= 0;

I wrote a quick procedure which confirmed what I thought this snippet does: if the variable RETVAL is less or equal to zero, then warning message 420 will be displayed and execution will skip to label 539. As it happens, earlier this morning I had written something much less concise than this to achieve the same result, so the find was quite serendipitous.

Here are two more undocumented variables which can be added to one's private toolbox.

A cold day in London

It's comparatively very cold here, although I know that the temperature is at least 5-10 degrees C higher than Europe. We feel the cold more, though, as the area where I live is open to winds which blow the cold air from the Russian steppes. The wind isn't as strong in cities.

Driving home on the motorbike today, I was reminded of a day 39 years ago (I don't remember the exact date, only that it was in the first week of the spring term of 1978), so it may as well have been exactly 39 years ago. I came out of the university - I think after lunch, as there was plenty of light - and started driving home. I don't remember which route I used to take from the Elephant and Castle/Borough area to Hampstead, although I do remember that I would drive through Camden, Chalk Farm, up Haverstock Hill, onto Hampstead High Street, then skirt around the Heath until I got to the back street which led to where I lived on Finchley Road.

When I left the university, it was cold but dry; some time after Waterloo Bridge, it began to rain. As I drove further north, the rain turned to sleet, and by the time I was nearly home, snow was falling. It's very difficult driving on in a motorbike through snow, and I remember that the final back street was almost virgin - no one had cleared a path. My coat had a layer of ice on it!

Unsurprisingly, I decided to travel to the university the next morning by underground.

1000 blog entries

I wrote my first blog entry in 2005, after we had come back from a three week tour of America. I remember telling a friend that there were things which I wanted to write about which wouldn't fit particularly well into the format of a letter - thoughts about music, books and programming - but which matched the format of a blog. She was supportive but remarked that I would probably stop writing to her; I said that I would continue, but I was wrong and she was right. I do have a life outside of this blog but I don't write about it to anybody.

So: 1000 blog entries!  I do find this blog useful - I refer to it occasionally in order to read how I solved certain programming problems or to read what I thought about a certain record. It's also been a place to store memories of a life which changed dramatically nearly 40 years ago.

As has been my custom for the past few years, here is the 'top twenty tags' - the subjects which I have written about most in the last 100 blogs (it's actually 21 subjects as there is a tie for position 20).

Position	Tag	Count
1	DBA	14
2	Priority tips	9
3	Health	8
3=	Holiday	8
5=	Obituary	7
5=	Sorrento	7
7	Personal	6
8	Computer	5
8=	Cooking	5
8=	DCI Banks	5
8=	Grandfather	5
8=	Musical instruments	5
8=	Programming	5
14=	Films	4
14=	Kindle	4
14=	Mobile phone	4
14=	Song writing	4
14=	TV series	4
14=	Vinyl log	4
20=	Dog	3
20=	Theanine	3

Comparing this to the previous 100 blogs, 'DBA' was in third position with 13 entries, 'health' was in 18th position with 3 entries and 'holiday' was second with 14 entries. The statistician in me would say that there isn't enough spread in the results to make any conclusions.

I don't have specific data for all 1000 blogs, but Blogger itself maintains a count, albeit in alphabetical order. Here are the top subjects, as far as I can see

Position	Tag	Count
1	Programming	133
2=	Holiday	95
2=	DBA	95
4	Delphi	63
5	ERP	52
6	MBA	51
7	Personal	49
8	MIDI	44
9	Cooking	38
10	Films	31

Farewell 2016 - a summary of the year from my idiosyncratic viewpoint

1. External
1. Brexit: whilst I don't live in Britain anymore, and haven't lived there for nearly 40 years, I am still a British citizen and certain decisions that Britain takes affect me. I can't begin to understand why so many people wanted to leave the EU; it seems that in the face of globalisation, people want to assert their tribal identity. The worst thing that Brexit has already done to me is the drastic depreciation of Sterling. Who knows what else is to come?
2. Trump: I am fairly sure that Trump could not have been elected as US President had it not been for Brexit. All through the early months of the year, I could not understand how someone so seemingly uncouth, loud and uncultured could be taken seriously by the American electorate. He seems to be the opposite of everything that Obama stood for, although to be honest, Obama wasn't much of a success, either. His major achievement was being the first black president; he certainly wasn't much of a friend to Israel. 
3. Deaths: does it just seem this way or was 2016 a bad year for musicians? David Bowie, Keith Emerson, Dave Swarbrick, Sir George Martin, Leonard Cohen, Greg Lake, and in the final days of December, Rick Parfitt (Status Quo) and George Michael. Actors, too: Alan Rickman, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds. Strangely enough, apart from Swarb, I only have one record each from most of the others, and only a few films for the actors. I think that it's a function of statistics: I'm 60, and most of the musicians that I appreciate are 7-10 years older than me, meaning that they're in their late 60s/early 70s. A fragile age to be, approaching death. George Michael is the anomaly, being only in his early 50s. Immediately after having written this, I see that Jeff Duntemann has written on the same subject  (although without the musicians!) and at greater depth.


2. Internal
1. Health: the year started very badly for me, with a three month period of flu complications, culminating in a blocked ear. This was treated at the end of March, and since then, I've been in pretty good health.
2. Theanine: I've written about this a few times during the second half of the year. I think that this supplement has made a quiet but definite difference to my life. I've become less moody, less given to turning things over and over in my mind and generally more cheerful. 
3. Doctorate: after having my initial intermediate submission rejected - the rejection was expected but not the manner of its rejection - I worked hard on improving the text and in August, the second version was accepted. This means that the end of the doctorate is within sight, a fact which has also greatly improved my general outlook on life. Over the past two months, I've been collecting data; this is going slower than I would have liked, but I am making progress. Soon I will have to start thinking about how to present the data. Of course, I can't make any conclusions until I cease collecting data and begin to analyse it, but it will be easy to present the conclusions.
4. Songwriting: the return to songwriting has taken me quite by surprise. I've known for a few years that if I want to continue recording (which I enjoy despite the effort), then soon I will have to start writing new songs as I exhaust my supply of old ones which have yet to been rejuvenated. But somehow I have managed to defer this ... until this year. By December, I had written four new songs as well as new lyrics to two old songs; over the past week I have almost completed another song (the music and arrangement are complete; I have two unconnected verses which I wrote yesterday). I don't have too much difficulty in writing the music for new songs but  have difficulty with the words as I don't have anything in particular which I want to write about. 
5. Reaching the age of 60: maybe once this was a milestone, but "60 is the new 40".
6. Becoming a grandfather: although the impact is growing, this still isn't a major factor in my life.

After having written all of the above, I have to conclude that however bad 2016 was for the general populace, for me it was actually a very good year. I am very optimistic about 2017 (it must be the theanine talking).

This is my 999th blog, so the next blog will be dedicated to blog statistics.

What really makes me happy these days

A month and a half ago, I wrote in connection with meeting companies who work with Priority, "There is an engineering college near our offices in Tel Aviv where I want to  ... pop in and say hello". It took a few weeks, but eventually I did pop in, and after going here and there, I managed to find the person who is responsible for Priority in the college (they use the program for accounting and for purchasing). I stated my case; the person said that she would look into the possibility, but eventually replied that the college would not participate. So much for the academic brotherhood!

Countering this: I saw that one of our customers uses Priority (to me, it's obvious when I see their purchase orders). I made the pitch ... and the customer agreed to participate! This makes me happy.

But what really makes me happy is when completed questionnaires begin to arrive from this company! I don't know anything about them (although I had a quick peek at their website yesterday and it seems impressive) which makes their participation even more heart-warming.

Everyone is busy at the moment with completing the year and stock taking, but in the next few weeks I want to overcome my tendency to stay at home by hitting the road and visiting some companies in the North. Maybe I'll take my wife along and have a conjugal outing!

[SO: 4357; 5,21,42
MPP: 772; 1,4,6]

Biscotti again

I baked the first batch of biscotti at about 4pm on Friday afternoon; they had all gone by 8pm on Saturday night. I had to wait for my wife to buy more flour and almonds before I could make a second batch on Monday evening. Whilst I used approximately the same ingredients as before, I also made a few minor changes. 

• My wife bough almond slices whereas I had used small almond chunks which were more akin to flour; this probably affected the dough negatively.
• I added a fair dollop of blackcurrant jam this time - I had bought a new jar so it was easy to remove a generous spoonful.
• I added a little orange juice to make the dough more smooth and pliant.

As a result of the above, the dough was less thick and easier to mix. I spread it out on the baking tray as a very large 'log' - I was aiming for a lower height than previously, which help the dough cook more evenly. The baking technique was the same as before.

I think that the results from this batch are better than from the first; these really are tasty!

My daughter suggested that I use spelt flour instead of white flour; at first, I thought that Google Translate had made a mistake in its translation of the Hebrew name, but it transpires that there really is a type of grain called 'spelt'. This isn't an ingredient which we keep (although she does); yesterday, I was in Tel Aviv and next to our offices is a shop which stocks a very wide variety of ingredients and cooking utensils (they're also very expensive), so I bought a bag of this flour. Next time, I'll use half white flour and half spelt in order to see the result. 

At the rate at which the pieces are being eaten, the next batch will be baked on Friday again.

Puzzle

My daughter sent me this puzzle; can you solve it?

What's intriguing to me is not the solution but how I arrived at the solution. I'll try and reconstruct my thought processes, row by row.

Row 1: This doesn't tell us very much on its own.

Row 2: The 6 is in the same position as it was in the first row. If the first row has one correct number which is in the correct position, then this number can't be 6.

Row 3: As the 6 has been ruled out, we now know that two of the three numbers are 2 and 0 and that they are in the wrong position.

Row 4: This doesn't tell us very much on its own.

Row 5: The comment from row 4 tells us that 7 and 8 are wrong, so we know that 2 is one of the numbers – we knew this from row 3. But we now have the additional information that position 3 is the wrong place, and from row 3 we know that position 2 is also wrong – so the first digit in the solution must be 0.

Once we know the first digit and position, the rest can be calculated. The second number is 2 and should to be in position 3 (see row 1 – 6 and 8 have now been ruled out). So what is the number in position 2? Row 2 tells us that there is one correct number but in the wrong place. As 6 has been ruled out, this leaves us 1 and 4; the final number can't be 1 as 'correct number, wrong place' would put it in position 3 – which has already been filled by 2. Thus the middle digit to the solution must be 4, giving the solution 042.

Hmmm – 42 … the answer to life, the universe and everything.

Monthly grandfather picture

My daughter downloaded an app for her phone which distorts pictures. Some of the results are of the kind where one would pay good money not to see them, whereas a few have some artistic value.

This is me and the granddaughter yesterday evening. No wonder she looks a bit skeptical - she knows what the end result is going to be.

Eggless almond biscotti

Over the past few months, I've been ordering various items from I-Herb; this started with theanine, moved on to magnesium supplements, through herbal teas and mint chocolate and onto peanut butter and almond biscuits. The peanut butter is fine but I was a bit disappointed in the almond biscuits: these are cut very thin and they're very brittle. I was expecting something else.

A few days ago, I was in our company's offices in Tel Aviv and helped myself to a biscuit - very similar to the almond biscuits (aka biscotti) that I had bought, only these were softer (more chewy). When I asked where they came from, I was told the name of a bakery. A day later, the penny dropped: I could probably bake some myself and in doing so, achieve the consistency and size which I would like. I should point out at this stage that apart from a short period when I was in the army and used to bake myself a cake which I would take with me when I stayed over weekends, I don't bake. I don't like the fussiness of having to follow a recipe exactly.

So yesterday I researched recipes; there are plenty on the Internet so I could choose the most suitable. I ignored all those that use butter - so that we could eat the biscotti after meat. Then I thought that it would be caring if I could find a recipe which doesn't use any animal product, such as eggs, so that my vegan daughter could eat them. Here is the recipe on which I based my biscotti (I love the ignorance of calling them 'biscottis' - biscotti is the plural of biscotto, in the same way that panini is the plural of panino. It seems that the biscotti recipe is open to mild alterations in the flavouring.

This morning I bought applesauce and slivered almonds; the rest of the ingredients we have at home. I added to the list of ingredients a little blackcurrant jam which was left over in the fridge, along with fresh blackcurrants and goji berries. Mixing the ingredients was fairly easy until I added the wet items (sugar, applesauce, oil, berries, almonds) to the flour; this mixture got progressively harder to mix. Eventually I dumped the entire mess onto a baking tray covered with parchment, and tried to shape it into a 'log' as per the instructions.

I then put the tray in the oven for 25 minutes at 175C as instructed, before taking it out in order to allow the 'log' to cool. Here is a picture of the result (I had already started cutting it before remembering that I should take a picture).

An alternative name for what I was baking is mandelbrot - Almond Bread in German (also the name of the computer scientist who discovered fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot - and indeed, it does look like a loaf of bread at this stage. But the name is biscotti which means 'cooked twice' (like biscuits), so I chopped the loaf into small pieces; in my opinion, I should have spread the loaf out more so that it would have been less high and would have baked a bit better. I then put the tray back in the oven for another ten minutes at 150C, which finished the baking; cutting the loaf in this manner (and turning the pieces through 90 degrees) allows slices taken from the thickest and central part of the loaf to cook properly.

Here is the final result - they look quite different from the commercial versions, each slice being much larger and probably containing slightly less fruit than I had intended.

My wife had a slice and gave her approval, which means that I'll be baking this every now and then. I hope that my daughter likes this too.Next time, I will add more blackcurrants and/or goji berries, and I'll try and reduce the thickness of the 'log' before baking, probably with a rolling pin.

The best of our spies

This book, by Alex Gerlis, was one of those which turned up on my Kindle after its resurrection (the battery is doing very nicely, thank you); its title was intriguing enough to earn it an early read.

The book is set during World War 2 and is a twist on the more conventional type of WW2 spy stories. It open with a French refugee woman being stopped at a checkpoint (a good way to get our sympathy and turn this woman into the protagonist) - it turns out that this woman had been recruited by the German secret service and had absconded. She is then sent to Britain with an undefined mission. Do we cheer for this woman or hope that she gets captured?

MI5 were aware of her as they found her radio man; via this man they found the female spy and then constructed a mission for her, of which she is unaware. Eventually the woman is overtly recruited by the British SOE and sent to France as an agent; there she joins the resistance, and the information that the SOE send her  (which is passed on to her German control who is aware of her return) states that the Allies' landing with be in the Calais area and not Normandy. It transpires that there really was a deception operation such as this, although of course the details vary.

This could have been a fascinating read but unfortunately the writing let it down. The novel is too long, almost everything is spelt out for the reader (at one stage, a character recapitulates the plot as it then stood in case someone didn't follow) and the ending was slightly predictable.

A good spy novel is one which leaves you scratching your head at the end and trying to work out what really happened. This isn't such a novel.

Robbie Robertson - Testimony

Over the past few days, I've been reading Robbie Robertson's autobiography (or at least, partial autobiography) "Testimony", which begins with him joining Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks and ends with 'The Last Waltz' – in other words, the pre-Band and Band periods in his life. It is very interesting to contrast his version of events with the version of Levon Helm, The Band's drummer, singer and occasional mandolinist. Serious historians could also reference Barney Hoskyn's book "Across the great divide", which I have only in hard print. The title of this book was chosen carefully; not only is it the title of the opening song from their best known album, it also hints at the great divide in the group.

What amazes me is how Robertson is able to recall and write about minor incidents, some of  which happened over 50 years ago, including dialogue. True, Robertson does say at the beginning that he is blessed with a prodigious memory (this is in connection with some of his relatives), so his recollections may well be accurate.

Robertson and Helm basically tell the same story until The Band's eponymous second album (aka 'The Brown Album'). Not surprisingly, Robertson devotes more than a few pages to the electric Dylan tours from 1965/6 which Helm chose to forego, as well as to the early Woodstock days.

Only after the second album did The Band taste success, and with it become rich overnight. Their riches led to a surfeit of drug (ab)use and the creation of two versions of history. There are a few questions which arise from reading Robertson's book, such as...

•    Did Robbie sing very much in The Band? Robertson writes about singing low harmonies and basically being a fourth, live, singer; Helm says that Robertson didn't like singing, that his vocal mike used to be turned off when performing live, and that their Woodstock performance was ruined by Robertson's vocals.

•    Was Robertson the musical director of The Band or was it Garth Hudson (as per Helm)? Mention is made of Robertson 'conducting' by means of his guitar neck, which Helm disparages. As an outsider, I have to say that Robertson receives more than his fair share of screen time in “The last waltz”, whereas Richard Manuel can barely be seen.

•    Who wrote 'Life is a carnival'? Robertson, Helm and Rick Danko receive a rare shared writing credit. Robertson writes “Rick and Levon came over to my studio in Woodstock one day, and I played them a song I was just finishing called ‘Life is a carnival’, whereas Helm writes the opposite: “The exception for me was ‘Life is a carnival’, which Rick Danko and I worked out music-wise and Robbie put to words”.

One very telling anecdote is that before ‘Music from Big Pink” was released, Robertson signed an agreement which split the songwriting royalties evenly between all five members. Not only this, but later on, Manuel, Danko and Hudson sold their shares back to Robertson; Helm requested time to think, but the subject is not raised again, so one doesn’t know whether Helm retained his rights. If this story is true, then most of Helm’s bitter tirade against Robertson is negated.

As Greil Marcus writes in "Mystery train" (197?), "In order to save the group, Robbie took it over. He took it over as lyricist, manager, strategist, savant, visionary and spokesman”. This is the impression that one gets from reading “Testimony”. Was it a good thing? As Robertson writes, after the second album it was him, three junkies and a musician suffering from narcolepsy. He had no choice.

History belongs to the victors; Manuel, Danko and Helm are dead and can’t react to what Robertson writes. All those who enjoy the music of the Band will be rewarded by reading this book.

Repairing the Kindle

After the panic/distress of having lost all of my e-books dissipated, I set about restoring the books. Once that was done (and after backing them up!), I downloaded the Kindle Collection Manager and tried to assign books to collections. I knew where about 70% belonged, but as the program's interface is minimal (to be polite), I could only see the books' titles and not their authors, so some books will have to be collected manually.

The Collection Manager updates the Kindle which then has to be reset in order to recognise the assignments. Resetting the Kindle always requires a leap of faith but especially after the previous escapade. When the Kindle came back up, the collections appeared with their books; I was, however, unable to assign books to collections via the Kindle: the 'Add to collection' option was greyed out.

Checking the Amazon web site, I discovered that this problem gets fixed once the Kindle connects to Amazon. Even though the Kindle was connected to the Internet via its wireless connection, it still wasn't connecting to Amazon. I discovered that the hard reset also unregisters the Kindle, so I tried to register anew. I know the required email address but had no idea what the password was, so I had to go through the awkward process of resetting the password. There's a problem with the website - I thought that I had reset the password (and quite probably had), but instead of seeing a screen saying that the password had been reset successfully, I saw the opening screen in the sequence which invites me to enter a password.

Eventually I realised what was needed and reset the password; I then entered this password into the Kindle in the correct place, and - lo and behold! - I could manually add books to collections. There was still no sign of the books which I had purchased via Amazon - I thought these would have downloaded as soon as I registered.

Whilst looking through the books which were on the Kindle, I saw that the final 'book' was entitled 'Archive items (22)'. I caused this list to be displayed and this is where I found the missing books. After pressing the correct sequence of keys, these books finally downloaded and found their place on the Kindle. I once again backed up the books!

Lessons learnt from this episode:  

• DO NOT USE 'resetmykindle' unless you are absolutely desperate! 😓
• Backup the books beforehand. 
• Make sure you know what the password for your Amazon account is.

I will now read some of the new books - for example, Robbie Robertson's version of what happened to The Band.

Kindle disaster

I've noticed that the battery has been running down fast on my Kindle. I remembered that I had similar problems a few years ago which I documented here, so I decided to use the same technique. First I set up the Kindle to accept a password, then I rebooted and entered the 'secret' password, 'resetmykindle'. The Kindle rebooted.

I didn't bother creating a backup for I assumed that the previous backup still existed, and there was no mention of restoring the backup onto the Kindle. I was surprised to see that there were no books on the Kindle after rebooting,  but not too concerned as I could restore that backup ... except that I could find no backup!!!

400+ books gone!

After several hours searching, downloading and converting, I've managed to restore most of what I had previously. I couldn't remember the names of some books so those obviously can't be restored, but I have found other interesting books. 

Moral of the story: backup the Kindle onto the mobile computer, and possibly to Mega. There is a problem with the latter option, as Mega does not store multiple copies of identical files and there is the possibility that someone else has stored one or more of the books which I have in mobi format. Maybe I'll create a giant zip file and store that.

It would seem that books which I have purchased from Amazon have yet to be downloaded, despite having the wireless connection set correctly. I'm more interested in the battery functionality. I also have to restore all the collections, which is going to take some time. Fortunately (or not), over the next few days, I'm going to have several hours in which I will have nothing to do (and no means to do anything), so fixing the Kindle will be a good way to use this time.

[SO: 4352; 5, 21, 42

MPP: 772; 1, 4, 6]

Greg Lake, RIP

I remember a day in the spring of 1970, sitting in someone's darkened bedroom in the early evening, hearing the words

Confusion will be my epitaph
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back and laugh,
But I fear tomorrow I'll be crying

I was too young to realise at the time that this was a song about the fear of a nuclear holocaust, but the dramatic singing and the majestic mellotron strings certainly moved me. 

We were listening to "Epitaph", the third track on the debut album by King Crimson. "In my opinion, it's Greg's best vocal performance - anywhere" said Michael Giles, the group's drummer (Sid Smith, p. 63). Greg Lake was the vocalist and bassist of the first incarnation of KC and as such entered the annals of rock fame.

After this line up splintered, Lake stayed with KC long enough to record some vocals for their second album, then left to join Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer in the supergroup Emerson, Lake and Palmer, about which I wrote a little here.

Greg Lake died a few days ago from cancer. I learnt about this from an email sent to one of my mailing lists early this morning (along with the death of John Glenn, first American in space, later a senator). To my surprise, both deaths were reported in one of the Israeli papers this morning (I can understand reporting the death of Glenn, but Lake seems a little esoteric for an Israeli newspaper).

As someone commented, it's a bad year for musicians - Bowie, Cohen, Swarbrick, Martin and no doubt others - but in a sense, it's to be expected. The majority of musicians that I and my generation like/adore/admire were born in the 1940s, making them all in their sixties and seventies. That's a reasonable age for dying.

Strangely enough, I read the other day that the life expectancy of Israeli males is 81, second highest in the world (I didn't notice where it was the highest), a fact attributed to basic training in the Israeli army, which improves cardiac function.