The big chill

"The big chill", one of my favourite films, was broadcast last night on television. My family dismissed the film, saying that it consisted solely of a bunch of people sitting around a house and talking. I pointed out that occasionally they leave the house, in order to attend a funeral, to play football, to go shopping and to throw out the trash, but the family were unimpressed. As it happens, I hear the same criticism about Woody Allen's films, "a bunch of people sitting around and talking". Nothing ever happens.

So what? Surely these films are more like our lives than "Kill Bill", for example, or any adventure film. Obviously our lives don't make very compulsive viewing.

It's fairly obvious why I feel so emotionally attached to TBC: I could be one of those people. I spent my university years living in a communal house, as did the seven stars of TBC, and felt very close to most of the people there. I was a member (and later, leader) of a group that we established in order to emigrate to Israel, and at the time, this group (and its purpose) was one of the most important things in my life.

As far as I know, no member of that group has committed suicide nor died, but then I wouldn't really know as I am not in contact with any of the members any more. Most upped and left Israel after a year or two, and without that connecting thread, our lives had nothing in common any more.

I didn't feel betrayed by these people's return to Britain, but I did feel sad that several beautiful friendships were now over. Had those people been deceiving themselves all the years in thinking that their future home was in a kibbutz? I am sure that everyone had suitable reasons for leaving.

Anyway, TBC reminds me of what might have been: a group of friends, 15 years on from the crux of their friendship, trying to come to terms with why one of them committed suicide. "I would have helped had I known", says someone towards the end (I may not have the exact wording), but another character casts doubt on that statement, and I tend to agree. What could we have done? We might have known each other reasonably well (or so we thought) a long time ago, but people change over the years.

After complaining loudly, my wife agreed to watch TBC from the beginning, and so maybe understand the film, instead of watching bits taken out of context.

Left/right hemisperes of the brain

I've been traveling fairly frequently in the past few weeks, and my companion in these trips has been the book "A whole new mind" by Daniel Pink. After explaining what the left and right hemispheres of the brain "do", the book argues that most people can "do" left directed activities, and that in order to get ahead and be employable in this day and age, people must now embrace the functions that the right hemisphere runs. According to Pink, we are no longer in the Age of Information, but rather the Age of Conception.

I am a typical left-directed person, and in the past few weeks I have been required more and more to exercise those left directed characteristics which make me very important to my company. Even though there is an economic squeeze and people are being made redundant all across the board, I can't see my position being outsourced, neither to someone in Israel and certainly not to someone in the Far East, with whom contact is electronic. My industry is still based firmly in the mid-20th century, where a knowledge worker such as myself needs to interact face to face with people (especially managers).

I try to work on right-directed functions in my non-work time; music and literature are good examples of this, but I notice that when I create music, I tend to do it in a left-directed manner (stylised, computerised, very structured) and not in a right-directed manner (free flowing, live playing, improvisation). I have never been comfortable playing over one never-ending chord and much prefer an interesting chord sequence to stimulate my brain. There is much connection between mathematics and music, and the structured type of music which I play is much more 'mathematical' than free jazz, for example.

Most of the non-fiction books which I have been reading in the past six months are connected with the brain, in some way or another. Examples include Martin Seligman's "Learned Optimism", Daniel Goleman's "Social Intelligence" and John Medina's "Brain Rules". Am I becoming a better human being after reading these? Unfortunately, the answer is no. I am too entrenched in my ways, and the needs placed upon me (at work) don't allow (or require) me to change. Couching my response in Darwinistic terms, there's no need for me to develop extra capabilities because I don't need them in order to survive.

I believe that the current economic crisis is going to reverse several of the advanced trends which have been occurring in the past few years (not so much so in Israel), and that workplaces are going to revert to more traditional forms. Social intelligence is always required, but I don't need it that much (although I would like to have it!), as I don't manage people and generally work alone. I would like to be more optimistic, but Seligman contends that workers in the financial and computing areas have to be more pessimistic than salespeople (who are the biggest optimists). Pessimists see things more clearly, and my job demands that I see things as clearly as possible.

Share with you (continued)

After a few more days of cogitation, the new "Share with you" has been uploaded to Soundclick.

Over three days, I recorded vocal tracks which were ok, but not wonderful. The problem, I realised today, was that the close harmony in the second verse was cluttering up the sound of the song and so I decided only to sing harmony on the "share with you" hook (not that's it's much of a hook).

As there is also a mini-modulation in the second verse causing me to sing very high notes, I decided to take the song down a key. At the same time, I decided to speed it up a little (104 bpm instead of 100).

Whilst in the mood for changes, I changed the introduction and also a few lines in the 7/4 solo.

The song still sounds basically the same as it did a week ago, but now I hope that it's better.

Jackson Browne - a reappraisal

I first heard of Jackson Browne in the autumn of 1976. Until then (and in fact, since then) I had listened almost entirely to British music, but the music magazines of the day suddenly gushed enthusiastically about Browne, which persuaded me to give him a chance. I distinctly remember an excellent piece about him in Rolling Stone, but there were other articles as well.

I still remember walking to the Golders Green branch of "Our Price Records" (which was near enough my "local") and asking to hear Browne's latest (and fourth) recording, "The pretender". This album starts with "The fuse"; I heard the opening E minor chord and immediately knew which chord would follow (C). "The fuse" is actually a very powerful track, and on the basis of that alone, I bought the album. Although there were a few tunes which were a bit naff, I very much liked the album as a whole and so started a Jackson Browne binge which lasted several years.

I listened to "The pretender" again the other day and I have to admit that my opinion has changed somewhat. This is the most produced and arranged of the early Browne albums, qualities which can be both a good thing and a bad thing, especially as I gave up on his albums due to a serious lack of harmonic language. It's certainly much more varied than the obsessively monotonic "Late for the sky", which was its direct predecessor (I would like to think that Browne realised that he needed a little more variety in his music after LFTS and so turned to Jon Landau as his first external producer).

"The fuse" is certainly powerful in its execution, features several interesting chord changes and also some intriguing vocal stylings as well as a real instrumental performance. Unfortunately, it stands almost alone in the Browne discography. Both of the following two tracks come from different musical backgrounds, ones which I admit I do not like, and neither displays much in terms of harmony. "Here come those tears again" is a well-executed pop song, but not much more. "The only child" is another standout, as is "Sleep's dark and silent gate". At the time, the schizophrenic nature of "Daddy's tune" didn't bother me, but now it does. Again, an inventive arrangement, but Browne is forced to sing loud and this exposes the weakness of his voice. The eponymous title track which closes the album is almost a tour de force: on the one hand, it does have a lot going for it, but it too suffers from that generic LA sound which I dislike.

On reflection, the major culprit of my dislike would be Waddy Wachtel's guitar sound: a thin, anaemic, LA sound, far away from the bite of David Lindley's slide guitar (as featured on "The fuse"). Unsurprisingly, Lindley had been a major contributor to Browne's earlier albums, and would return for the following "Running on easy" album, recorded on the road (but not really a live album).

As monotonic as it is, Browne's third album "Late for the sky", with its Magritte inspired cover, has a run of three songs which are amongst the best he has ever recorded: "Fountain of sorrow", 'Farther on' and "The late show". But it is his 'sophomore effort' (as the Americans breezily term it), "For everyman", ironically composed mainly of songs written prior to the release of his first album, which is, in my humble opinion, the peak of Browne's achievements.

It's acoustic (except for a raucous (and disposable) "Red neck friend", featuring Elton John), it's lyrically inventive, it's highly melodic and it's also intimate ... which leads me to believe that that's how I like Jackson Browne: quiet, acoustic, melodic and bearing good lyrics. Some of the arrangements tend to the homogenous (the title track is an example), but some are outstanding ("Colors of the sun", "These days") and some are like meeting an old friend ("Sing my songs to me").

The fact that I have eight Browne albums on vinyl and only three on cd (of which only one gets played fairly regularly) speaks for itself.

Share with you (story of a complex arrangement)

I am working at the moment on sequencing a song which I wrote 31 years ago, called "Share with you". I had sequenced this about ten years ago, but thought it worthwhile to update the arrangement. As usual, I discovered that 50% of the notes should be discarded before importing into Reason.

This new version is more laid-back, as a result of slowing the tempo from 120 bpm to 100 bpm and by virtue of having less 'busy' parts. It is debatable whether this version is better than its predecessor, but it's certainly more contemporary.

There are sixteen bars in the middle which form an instrumental section. Previously, these bars had four different instruments playing different lines, and it sounded a mess in Reason. Use of 'Warfarin', the blood thinning compound and rat poison, was needed! My first attempt at sequencing this section kept two of the four solo lines, but I felt that something was lacking. A day or two later, I remembered an attempt I had made a few weeks previously to sequence something in 7/4 time. Whilst that attempt wasn't particularly successful, I felt that moving the instrumental sequence to this time signature would certainly make things interesting.

So change I did. This was technically awkward to do in the MIDI sequencer, so I ended up making a copy and discarding everything from the time signature change onwards. I then copied back and edited the rhythm guitar and bass parts, and when this was done, I imported back in the original ending. Then I had the pleasure of playing two solos in 7/4 time ... one I managed, but the other was elusive. I had another go at it last night, and for certain bars, the second solo is simply harmonising with the first, albeit a sixth lower. As the final bar features almost only triplets, this is quite awesome (triplets in 7/4 time, yeah!).

I had also produced a drum pattern by taking the opening two bars (of 4/4) and surgically removing the final beat, whilst adding an extra snare hit on the seventh beat. This was pasted in to its correct position.

This sounded ok in Reason, but still seemed to be lacking something. After trying a few unsuccessful ideas, I hit on using a drum loop for those bars. Now, all the drum loops which I have are either one or two bars of 4/4 time (I am still looking for loops in other time signatures), which theoretically are of no use whatsoever. If one, however, looks at the problem mathematically, then eight bars of 7/4 time are equivalent to fourteen bars of 4/4 - both have the same number (56) of beats/crotchets. So I pasted in seven copies of a two bar loop, and surprisingly the result sounds good. This is, in fact, an example of polyrhythms - seven against four.

An amusing coincidence: the bar number of the switch to 7/4 time is 74. What does this mean? Actually, nothing, as I always leave a spare bar at the beginning of every tune, and I could vary the length of the introduction. But the coincidence is too good to pass up!

I hope to record vocals at the end of the week and then post the resulting song at SoundClick.

Diet

I am at least 10 kilos overweight, and I want to get rid of that excess baggage. Unfortunately in the past few years I have developed the tendency to add weight instead of staying at about the same, and it's beginning to annoy me.

I read with envy one of Jeff Duntemann's postings a few weeks ago about how he was easily losing weight via diet. He certainly doesn't follow Jewish dietary law, and he also seems not to have any health problems which might dictate or at least influence what he eats. So his example, whilst encouraging, is not exactly useful for me.

My wife took me to a WeightWatchers meeting last week, which met in a rec hall in Bet Shemesh. There were maybe 30 people there, 27 of them women, and most of those were religious. There were even a few women from the kibbutz present. I heard the lecture but wasn't very impressed, especially the bits about nutrition. The lecturer's mantra seemed to be 'substitute protein for carbohydrate whenever possible, and if one must eat carbohydrate, let it have a low glycaemic index'.

I have tried to cut out as many carbohydrates as possible from my diet, but I notice that supper for the past few months has been two slices of brown bread toasted, along with a slice of low fat cheese. I also have a tendency to eat biscuits and cakes, and the only safe way I have found of avoiding this tendency is not to have biscuits or cakes in the house. As George Bush used to say, "Just say no".

The one proactive step which I have taken is to change my supper. Instead of toast, I concocted a mixture of tofu, tomato sauce, onion, bean sprouts and peppers, and cooked it all in the wok. This amount is enough for three meals. Tofu is supposed to be very nutritious whilst being a minimal source of calories, and so it would make sense to try and eat plenty of it. The only 'problem' is that tofu has no taste. This doesn't bother me very much as I prefer bland food anyway. I am also trying (and succeeding at the moment) to cut down all the little 'extras', which certainly add that little extra to my waistline.

After cutting down carbohydrates, the next target should be reducing the amount of fat. Even though I only use canola and olive oil, both of which are 'good' oils, they are still oils, and oils still produce more calories per gram than carbohydrates do. I use a little oil with the wok, but maybe some of this can be reduced. Otherwise, I'm not sure exactly where else I can reduce the amount of fat. The dairy produce which I eat (mainly yoghurt) is all low fat, so there aren't really any savings to be made there.

Doctors tend to talk more about exercise than diet, and I am trying to walk more with the dog and get the metabolism moving. Of course, I have many leg problems over the past year which have prevented me walking, but they all seem to have gone now, so no more excuses!

I weighed myself on Friday (and was appalled at the results), and I'll weigh myself again this Friday. Hopefully some weight will have been lost.

Increased production

Again, a few weeks of silence, which normally means that I've been working hard. During January there were a few personnel problems at work which cast a very dark shadow over my future. Fortunately these problems have been resolved, and the past few weeks have seen me developing programs and reports, creating work procedures, instructing people, and generally moving the company forward (or at least, lessening the backwardness which was present in certain circles).

It's hard to be specific about what I've been doing because it won't mean much to someone outside of the company (and sometimes won't mean much to someone inside the company), but basically I see it as an end to the Dark Ages!

A web site which I read frequently is called 'The Daily WTF', which tells of "curious perversions in Information Technology". Normally the pages consist of badly coded procedures and odd error screens, but the other day a column was posted which spoke very much to my heart. Although I found the entire column very pertinent, I'll just quote one snippet:

It’s not easy to reconcile the fact that the software we write each and every day is, for all intents and purposes, mind-numbingly boring. Magazine subscription management. Medical billing reports. Realty inventory management. This is not the type of software that changes the world. In fact, it probably won’t even put a smile on someone’s face. Its sole purpose is to add to the bottom line by making other workers be more productive.

That's always been my goal: to add to the bottom line by making other workers more productive. My work of the past few weeks has been to make them productive, and to help them produce more correct work.

The Goodbye Girl

At about one month preceding the Oscar ceremony, our satellite TV provider begins screening 'good' films (ie films which have proved themselves over time) as opposed to screening whatever is available and reasonably current. This month is a good month, as far as I am concerned, as I can record films which I have seen in the past and enjoyed, but which are never shown anymore.

The opening salvo was a few nights ago, on the 'arty' film channel (which normally shows French films): 1977's "The Goodbye Girl". I know that I loved this film when it came out, went to see it more than a few times in cinemas, and even bought a novelisation of it. But I haven't seen the film in the past 30 years, so this was an interesting opportunity to see whether the film was as good as I remembered it.

Instead of writing at length, I think that I'll just condense the points:

• Richard Dreyfuss was spectacular and well deserved the Oscar that he won for his performance
• Marsha Mason might have been considered good looking then, but now my tastes seem to have changed
• The dialogue was far too sharp and witty to be considered realistic
• The 'falling in love' part seemed incredibly quick. Thinking back, I'm not really sure why MM changed her tack from being an acidic bitch to being lovey-dovey. Presumably, it was seeing RD fail as Richard III aligned with his kindness at her desperation, but it seems to be more than a little contrived
• The ending seemed too short as well

So: obviously I didn't enjoy the film as much as I did once. I don't know how I would have ranked GG against "Annie Hall", but I still enjoy the latter film, being full of great one-liners (actually GG has some good lines as well which I had forgotten over the years, but they came back to me whilst watching). Probably the most important thing is pace: GG comes over at a very fast pace, especially at the beginning, whereas the middle and ending seem to be too short. AH is more episodic, not really trying to tell a linear story, but it is also more relaxed.

Long time no blog

Generally, the times when I don't write anything here are the times when I am busy, or at least, involved in projects which take up most of my spare 'head space'. This last month has been no exception to that rule.

We (my occupational psychologist and myself) have been working on several new programs for our analytical suite. The one on which I seem to have spent the most time is a variant on an already existing program: the examinee is presented with a list of adjectives which describe a person (warm, caring, methodical, arrogant, etc) from which s/he is supposed to choose those which describe him/herself. A diagnostic is made from the adjectives chosen.

This time around we've improved several aspects of the program. I was never enthused with the user interface which presented 300 adjectives sorted alphabetically on a pair of components called TPageControl and TTabSheet.The program had to ensure that the user visited all six tab sheets before collating the adjectives chosen, from which the user had then to pick the ten adjectives which most described him/her. The adjectives themselves seemed to be picked at random, and there were several synonyms as well as opposites. The interpretation seemed to be unscientific.

The first task in creating an improved version was to winnow the list of adjectives, eliminating synonyms as far as possible and making the whole thing more stream-lined. The second task was to adopt an approach suggested by another psychologist, who divided personalities up into four groups (this is hardly a radical idea); everyone has elements of these four groups in their make-up, some more dominant and some less so. So from four groups are developed sixteen subgroups, which differ in the order of the various bases. To each of these sixteen subgroups are assigned the various adjectives; the idea is that we can quantify a person's responses according to which subgroup has the most adjectives chosen.

In terms of user interface, the program was completely rewritten. Instead of the clumsy existing interface, I designed a program (influenced by Internet exams) which displays screens of five adjectives, each displayed in what's called a radio group. The user can choose either "Describes me", "Doesn't describe me" or "Don't know" for each word, and of course cannot progress in the exam until marking all five adjectives. This is a bit long-winded as there are now just under 200 adjectives, but is very thorough.

All this work on personality describing programs has made me more aware of some of the personalities at work (aka 'the day job'). Unfortunately we have been having personnel upheavals at work, partially due to the economic situation, and lately I have been seconded (without my knowledge) for a few days a week to a manager whose style leaves something to be desired.

With all the psychological training which I am absorbing by osmosis, it's very easy to categorise this manager: very much an alpha male, very dominant, "my way or the highway", etc. Whilst he does have good ideas, they tend not to be compatible with an ERP system, and it's my job to try and fit those ideas, or business practices, into the confines of the ERP system. He runs a furniture (wood) factory, which tends not to sell standard items (such as Ikea) but items personalised according to a customer's needs, and of course such items are much more difficult to run via ERP. That's not to say that it's impossible, but simply more difficult.

I don't really want to go into detail about how the ERP system is run (or not), just to say how non-standard it has become. Due to the economic problems, the senior management wants more control or knowledge about what is happening in this factory (Are our orders profitable? Stock control? Export costs?), and the non-use of the ERP system has made such questions difficult to answer. Hence my seconding to try and improve things.

I, however, was ignorant of the senior management's desires, and so the first two meetings with this manager and his cowed team have ended in frustration, anger and insult. In the book "The soul of a new machine", there is reference made to the process of "signing up", ie getting people to work hard on something because they want to. In my after-hours job as a programmer and assistant psychologist, I signed up long ago, and my employer knows how to motivate me so that she can get better programs. When this sort of thing works, there is definitely a process of synergy.

As opposed to this, the manager of the furniture factory does not know how to sign people up, and manages mainly to get work from his people by threatening, shouting and doing the work himself. This approach does not work well with me, hence the anger and frustration. In desperation, I approached the senior manager who is responsible for the computer department, and poured all my frustration out. Whether deliberate or not, she does know how to sign people up, for at the end of the meeting I found myself agreeing to doing what had been demanded of me.

Another day, another RDBMS

I had been thinking about transferring one of our computerised exams to a database system (RDBMS) other than the Borland Database Engine (BDE) and so tried using Firebird. Whilst this system works (of course), it seems too much like overkill for the project. There is also the small matter of rewriting the application, as the methods of accessing the data are somewhat different in FB as opposed to BDE (because the components which I used - dbExpress - support only unidirectional cursors with no buffering).

The other day I was playing around idly, trying to write an on-the-fly database component using the TClientDataSet, which would read its data from a disk file into memory, manipulate the data (even add more data) and then write the data to disk on program end. Whilst this is a nice demonstration of something, it doesn't really help my project, as this system seems to be limited to a single database table.

Then I started googling "single file databases" and came across this link to "EasyTable - [a] single file embedded database, a BDE replacement for Delphi and C++ Builder". What could be better? So I checked the site, downloaded the demos and a few utilities, ordered a trial key to unlock the library and started checking out the demos.

After a few false starts (and a slightly misleading email from the support team, which at least pointed me in the correct direction), I was able yesterday to convert my 'cinema/dvd library' program to work with EasyTable. The conversion went extremely fast, limited only by my ability to type and to click on components. This program has a few slightly advanced SQL queries, and EasyTable absorbed them without complain. As far as I could see, there was 99% compatability between BDE and ET on the component level (no unidirectional cursors), but ET does not seem to support a datamodule.

Well, not quite. I discovered that certain code would not work while I was in design mode but worked perfectly well when the executable file was run on its own, outside of Delphi. This doesn't make sense, so I've written to the support team again to hear what they have to say about this.

The reason why I am evaluating ET is that I want one of my applications, which uses several tables, to have those tables embedded in the executable file. ET will definitely support this, although it's not clear exactly how I am going to test this. I imagine that I will write a function which tests whether the database has been appended to the executable, and set a file path name variable on the basis of this result. The various queries will then use this path name. Had ET support for a data module, then I only need call this function in the dm and set the correct value in the database component to which all the queries are connected. It looks like I will have to set each query separately, which is a bore but not too bad.

Apparently the database also becomes closed and read-only when it is embedded. I can think of times when this is not appropriate behaviour, but in the case of the computerised exam which is to be distributed to clients, it is exactly what I need. EasyTable produces single user tables, so it will be of no use for the 'results' or 'administration' programs, which run from two different computers.

So: it looks like Firebird is out, until I find a real reason to use it. EasyTable is in, but only for special cases. With no reason to change, the BDE will stay the dominant RDBMS until it has to be changed to Firebird.

I still have to decide which one of three 'cinema/dvd' programs I will use, but that seems to be the least of my worries. As at the moment I have more data in the FB version, I think I'll stay with that.

Most blogs are full of 2008 summations and 2009 resolutions

Most blogs are full of 2008 summations and 2009 resolutions. Here in Israel, the passing of the civil year isn't much of a big deal; celebrations are held mainly by the Russian immigrants, and certainly not by those who live by the Jewish calendar. I have a joke which only makes sense to the financial population: What's the longest day in the year? Most people would answer June 21 (or is it June 24?), but the real answer is 31 December, because financially that day seems to last for a week if not longer, as everyone tries to complete all financial transactions in the closing year.

Businesses do stock-taking on 1 Jan, but as we have learnt to our cost, the Russian workers are normally not in a fit state to count stock on Jan 1 (nor count anything else save for the amount of aspirin that they need to take), so we delay it for a few days. I'm at work, basically 'on call' if anyone needs anything, but otherwise it's very quiet here.

31 December brings to mind the sleeve notes to Van der Graaf Generator's "Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other" album, which were written on 31/12/69, thirty nine years ago ("Well, it's the last day of an old decade; tomorrow we can start anew" - PH). I've been listening to that album recently, and I have to say that it has worn the years very well. VdGG had a habit of making records with very strong 'A' sides and less strong 'B' sides, and LWCD is no exception to that rule. Opening with the double punch of 'Darkness' and 'Refugees' (immediately displaying the two diametrically opposed poles of VdGG music) and following up with the incredible menace of 'White Hammer' (which also has an optimistic ending), that first side was a real jaw-dropper.

On the other hand/side, 'Whatever would Robert have said' is neat, but doesn't have the anger or menace of 'Darkness'. I love 'Out of my book', complete with its metrical games, but this is more of a throw-back to an earlier incarnation of VdGG, even if it was partly composed by David Jackson. The closer, "After the flood", always seemed to be over-theatrical, short on lyrics and over-exaggerating its punch; I have to admit that whilst listening to it again, my appreciation of its musicality has increased - 12 tone music, indeed!

It is also instructive to compare LWCD to a similar, almost debut, record released a few months earlier in October 1969 (not that I was aware of this at the time; my first listens to this record and LWCD came at around April or May 1970): "The Court Of The Crimson King". Widely claimed as the first progressive record, it certainly had a huge impact at the time, but I think that it hasn't worn well.

There's no arguing that "21st century schizoid man" is a one of its kind piece, the mind-blowing middle section compensating for the simplistic verse section. But of the rest... "I talk to the wind" is pretty but not progressive (as is "Out of my book"), "Epitaph" is massive, huge, but also harmonically simple, "Moonchild" is best not talked about, and the eponymous title track I find to be pompous, overblown and over-rated.

I don't want to be cynical, but one 'progressive music litmus test' is whether my wife can listen to a track; if the answer is 'yes', then the track is not progressive. I would never dare to play her LWCD, but ITCOTKC can be played at will, albeit without the opening track. "Epitaph" has even found its way onto one of her compilation discs (but not "Starless", which starts off as an Epitaph homage and ends up somewhere else entirely).

As far as I am concerned, LWCD is far better than ITCOTKC, and it is a shame that fewer people recognise its importance and value.

Firebird flies

Yesterday and today I converted my 'cinema/dvd library' database program to work with Firebird. Like everything else, at first my steps were hesitant, but by the end, the conversion went quickly. I was even able to revise parts which I had already converted.

As opposed to the first program which I tried to convert, 'cinema' is mainly a data-out program. Getting data out of a database is always easier than entering it, and the speed of conversion reflected this.

There was only one minor sql syntax change needed: when I was using the BDE, if I wanted to sort by a calculated field, I would have to use an alias:

select actors.id, actors.name, count(castlist.film) as cnt
...
order by cnt desc

This doesn't work with dbExpress/Firebird, and has to be expressed as

select actors.id, actors.name, count(castlist.film)
...
order by count(castlist.film) desc

BIts and pieces

The most important part of a television is its remote control. This has been brought forcefully to our knowledge over the past fortnight, ever since our remote stopped working. Such things didn't matter when I was growing up, as in those days we had only three television channels which could be hand tuned. Now we have over forty, plus AV inputs for dvd and video. It's impossible to get the tv to use those AV inputs using the manual controls. Fortunately today I finally got a replacement remote, and hopefully it will work with our tv.

On the way to get that remote control, I walked several kilometres in Tel Aviv. We are near the end of December, and the temperature was around 25 degrees Centigrade! I read an entry in Jeff Duntemann's diary about the temperature being minus 6 degrees - and he's using Fahrenheit. This works out to around minus 20 degrees Centigrade! There's a bit of a difference in temperature between where he is (Colorado) and I am (Israel).

But as we know, temperature is only a relative sensation: we can only say whether things are hot or cold, as opposed to saying 'hmm, it's 16.4 degrees in this room, better turn the heat on". So when I wake up in the morning and move from a warm bed into a cold living room, I only know that I am in a colder environment, and rely on the thermometer to tell me that it's 16 or 17 degrees. That could be the temperature of someone's warm summer day.

Firebird/2

After writing on Sunday that I had 'cracked dbExpress', I went home confidently and tried duplicating Dr Bob's code. Nothing worked, and I got the same error messages as I had been getting previously from my own code.

Yesterday I looked at my code and Dr Bob's again, and eventually found what the secret ingredient was. It transpires that my test databases had been defined as 'sql dialect 1', whereas I was trying to access them as 'sql dialect 3'. Dr Bob's code used 'sql dialect 1', which is why it worked.

Following this eureka moment, things really did start falling into place, and I spent another hour or so tidying up code and trying different possibilities. I still have a few more ideas to check out which hopefully will make the code slightly more efficient.

Firebird

One of the programs which I have developed for my occupational psychologist needs to transfer relatively large amounts of data around the network, as it is retrieving pictures from a database. We have found that it is possible to work with this program only if the data resides on the same computer on which the program is running. This is not acceptable as we ideally want an administrator to update the 'clever' parts of the program from one computer, a secretary to enter new people's data from another computer, and people to sit the program's exams from other computers. Eventually we even want the program to work as standalone (I managed to convert our other programs to standalone by using stringtables).

Enter Firebird. This is a sql database manager (RDBMS) which can run as an embedded application, and so theoretically solve all our problems.

Downloading and installing the RDBMS was very easy, and within minutes I had set up a simple database, with the goal of accessing this from a Delphi program. Then the fun began.

I tried different sets of components before settling on the dbExpress set (to be honest, I could have stayed with the InterBase component set which comes with Delphi 7, as this seems to be equivalent). Unfortunately I couldn't find much documentation, and whatever sample programs I did find worked in such a way that all the data from a table was downloaded whenever a query was opened. As this seemed to be the complete opposite of what is needed from a db program (download as little as possible), these samples weren't much use.

I managed to cobble a program together which actually worked, but this required a fair amount of coding (especially coding insert and update queries) as opposed to letting the components do their work automagically. There had to be a better way, I kept telling myself.

Eventually I stumbled on some code by Dr Bob (not the Muppet), which at least showed the way to writing the code which I wanted. There was still a certain amount of work which I had to do myself, but eventually I nailed it. Now I have working code which can either insert a new record into a table, or take an existing record and edit it, posting the results back to the table.

Now this task is done, porting my application from BDE to Firefox will be fairly easy, if tiresome.

Learning to walk

I've been going to physiotherapy twice a week since I recovered sufficiently from my accident. Most of the time, the treatment is "traditional" - massages and exercises of various kinds. Most weeks, the flexibility of my left foot is measured with a tape measure, which gives an idea of how much progress is being made (it seems that in the past week I have made negative progress).

This isn't to imply that everything is traditional: today I spent six minutes on an exercise bicycle, pedalling at just over 20 kph, and so managed to "travel" a shade over two kilometres. During most visits I also have ultrasound treatment; as opposed to the kind of ultrasound with which the body is explored (not only during pregnancies; I had a chest ultrasound a few months ago), this kind warms up the muscles within. To misquote an advert for beer from my childhood, it reaches muscles that other kinds of treatments can't. Presumably these treatments do have some effect although it's not obvious.

But today we made the leap into the 21st century with a neat piece of medical technology. In order to measure how well I am walking, an inflatable sole was inserted into my shoe. This sole has pressure sensors within, and is connected to a control box which was strapped to my leg with velcro. In turn, this box transmitted its telemetry to a nearby computer. When walking, one places pressure first on the heel and then on the toes; the apparatus measured how much pressure I was applying to these two areas.

Walking 'normally' with the apparatus showed that I was applying 100% of the 'normal' pressure on my left heel but only 50% of the normal pressure on my toes. The apparatus was then switched into learning/feedback mode, which meant that it beeped whenever I applied the correct amount of pressure on my toes. Whilst walking in this mode, I realised that I had been pressing my heel and then the arch (the area just before the toes) on the ground, but not the toes themselves (because it still hurts slightly). In order to get the apparatus beeping, I had to walk making sure that I touch three areas on the ground: heel, then arch, and then push off with the toes. After a few practice runs, in order to learn the new technique, the apparatus was put back into diagnostic mode; my heel pressure had reduced to 80%, whereas my toe pressure had increased to 80%.

I am reminded of an incident in a book by Robert Silverberg called 'The second trip', in which a 'newborn' soul is transported into an adult body. In the first few pages, the character has to teach himself how to walk in a foreign body, and he strides down a boulevard muttering "heel and toe, heel and toe". In real life, we learn how to walk in the second year of our life, and the technique becomes imbedded in a neural pathway, allowing us to perform the action without thinking about it again. So for the next few days, I am going to have to walk with a conscious style, in order to teach my brain what to do.

I have to reburn that neural pathway and teach myself again how to walk properly.

Criminal Justice

We've been watching the television series "Criminal Justice", broadcast here only a few months behind its original broadcast in Israel. So far we've seen three episodes out of five, so I'm not looking at that wiki page to see how the whole thing turns out.

I actually had a nightmare about this programme last week, and there was another part in the third episode which gives me the chills whenever I think of it. I don't remember being so frightened by a television programme since ... when I was maybe seven or eight and used to hide behind a chair whenever the Daleks would appear on Doctor Who.

Prison seems to be frightening, not so much because of the lack of personal freedom (and hey, no one will be telephoning me to ask how to do such and such) but because of one's fellow prisoners. Maybe one should ask for solitary confinement; as it is, I'm quite capable of making my own pleasures so the solitary part wouldn't necessarily be too frightening.

Achievements

Work can be frustrating at times. Sometimes it's my fellow workers who frustrate, sometimes it's my work, and sometimes it's the lack of recognition.

Yesterday was a very good day at work for me, according to my metrics. I developed within our ERP program a module (well, a data-entry and retrieval screen) for monitoring commissions paid to architects, helped someone narrow down a report to contain data only about the customers she's interested in, finally figured out how to send a message to one user when any other user performs a certain action, and created a procedure which corrects the foreign currency exchange rate in copied price quotations.

The problem is that virtually no one understands what I do, and if they do have a glimmer, then they only see the results and not the work and time invested. And that can be very frustrating.

But I have to be my best critic, and applaud when I do something good (and criticise when I do something wrong). Sometimes that good feeling can last for more than an hour.

Surreal moment

Whilst watching an item broadcast on Israel TV Channel One news last night, there were a few surreal moments. The item itself was a rather muddled feature on the wife of the President of Iceland, who is an Israeli born in Jerusalem. As it happens, I had read an article about this lady beforehand, so I was aware of her background.

Anyway, during the broadcast, the incidental music switched to pizzicato strings, and after a few bars, I was able to identify it as "Song of the Gulls" from King Crimson's fourth album "Islands". This was fairly surprising, but - how can I put this? - possible, as SOTG is quasi-classical and doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. A few minutes later, though, it became clear that whoever edited the item must like "Islands", as suddenly part of the guitar solo from "A sailor's tale" (also from that album) was heard! This is something which I would never play in polite company.

Whatever could be next? The weather forecast accompanied by the instrumental section of "21st century schizoid man"?

Lonely at the top

The big musical event of the year - in fact, the event of the year - for me was supposed to have been Randy Newman performing in Tel Aviv. The concert was set for November 23, I had bought tickets, I had followed the set lists of his performances during an American tour preceding his European tour ... and then the tour was canceled for health reasons. During the tour, Randy had confided that his right arm was giving him a great deal of pain, and this obviously was bad enough to enforce rest.

I had been very excited when the concert was announced (at the beginning of October) and then my enthusiasm died down, waiting to be revived before the concert. So at the time of the cancellation announcement, I wasn't jumping up and down with excitement, and so the cancellation didn't cause me to slash my wrists in disappointment. Maybe the man can reschedule for next spring. If it's been nearly 20 years since his last appearance in Israel (Jan 1989), I can wait a few more months or years.

The timing of the American tour was very apt as it allowed airings of a song rarely played by the man: "Mr President (Have pity on the working man)". America in late 2008 is obviously similar to America in 1929. "A few words (in defence of our country)" is also a song which quite possibly could disappear from the set lists, and I have had arguments regarding the future of "Piece of the pie": at the moment, the rich are not getting richer but are losing more money in the stock market than those who don't have any savings.

In anticipation of Randy's visit, I dusted off a set of recordings which I had made in 2001, "Newman sings Newman", which preserved for posterity my take on 13 Randy songs. Listening to this with fresh ears, I was saddened to realise that half of the vocals were out of tune, and those that weren't sounded as if they had been recorded onto cardboard. Whilst the arrangements were ok, the instruments sounded on the hokey side. So I took it upon myself to rerecord the entire record.

This actually went extremely fast as the arrangements were good and simple. I would take a song, make a few changes and corrections, import the MIDI file into Reason, choose some instruments, create a sound file and then sing over it. In most cases, I needed only one or two vocal takes to nail a song, and most songs were completed within a matter of hours.

Listening to the new recordings again, I realised that most were competent but not outstanding, and so decided to improve my take on "Lonely at the top". One evening was spent changing the instruments - the original version was very brassy, and I decided to soften it up. Yesterday evening was spent tuning the arrangement, inventing new instrumental lines (I had been fairly lazy originally) and changing the ending, which now owes a lot more to my style of harmonic thinking than to Randy's. I need to do another mix, as the ending still sounds a bit too abrupt.

I also needed to duplicate the final sung line, "Oh, it's lonely at the top"; I located this line in my vocal file, isolated it, created a new file with just this one line, reversed the stereo, and slotted it in at the correct point. I find this kind of editing fairly hard, but yesterday luck was on my side and the entire process took only a few minutes.