Still working even when feeling lousy

I was feeling lousy yesterday afternoon/evening. This has been happening a lot lately, and it always starts around 5pm (maybe sometimes earlier and maybe sometimes later). This is probably due to the fact that I seem to have reasonably high blood pressure and that the bp rises during the day. I spent two weeks at the beginning of the month measuring my blood pressure twice a day, and although the results showed that the bp tends to change and reach an undesirable peak, they weren't conclusive enough for my doctor, who ordered a 24 hour continuous measurement. I have a followup meeting with him on Thursday to discuss those results, which apparently too weren't totally conclusive. In the mean time, there are days when I have a headache and don't feel well; analgesics might hide the pain but they make me feel weird as well. Yesterday was one of those days.

I was trying to revise for the Organisational Behaviour exam which is in another 10 days. Whilst I feel more confident about knowing the material, I am suffering from an inability to turn that knowledge into an essay which answers a question posed. The exam does not consist of questions like "Discuss the differences in the content theories of motivation" but rather will present a short story about someone and ask "How would your knowledge of OB help this person?". I read about leadership styles in the morning (there are basically four theories, but I'm not going to go into that now) and got them organised in my head, but in the afternoon I couldn't think about anything connected with OB.

I took the dog for a walk and thought about what I could do in the hours remaining before I go to bed. I decided to do some work for my occupational psychologist, hoping that I would be capable of doing something which required me to use knowledge which I already possess as opposed to trying to cram more knowledge into my hurting head. Our flagship exam consists of 400 questions and takes about 40 minutes to complete; she has contracted with some kibbutz to present a smaller exam which tests for only about six or seven characteristics. My job was to figure out which questions needed to be asked for those characteristics and prepare an exam program which asked the minimum number of questions needed – as opposed to a plan which we had several years ago in which the examinee answers all the questions, but scores are generated only for the characteristics that we want to measure.

The first part of this was easy, setting up a resource file which contained the necessary questions in English and Hebrew. Then I wasted about an hour trying to automate the production of an equivalent resource file with Russian questions before I realised that I was on the wrong track (does the word 'unicode' mean anything?). Once the penny dropped, I hand edited the existing Russian resource file, whittling it down from 400 questions to 246 (which is the number of questions in the new exam). This effort may be pointless as there may be no Russian speakers who will answer the questionnaire, but it's better to do the work now then later.

Then I started trying to convert the exisiting exam to use only 246 questions instead of 400. This actually shouldn't be too difficult as the code is fairly parameterised. As I want to use the existing report generator and store examinees' results along with everyone elses, the exam program has to use the same file format for its output, and this includes a 480 element array for the answers. Why 480? Because originally the exam had 480 questions before we scaled it down slightly to 400. The current resource file has a list of non-existing questions (80 numbers) and sets the appropriate elements in the results array to a certain value. I hit a conceptual block when considering how I was going to implement this list in the new exam. I had done enough work for one evening, so I tried to watch the news and then had a shower.

As funny as it may seem, I do a lot of creative work in the shower, and the answer to my conceptual problem swiftly appeared. I had been storing the list of non-existing questions as a string in this format '1,5,12,218, 337', etc. As a (small) string in Delphi can hold only 255 characters, it would seem that the list is limited to only about 90 questions. This was ok when I had 80 questions not to be included but was unsuitable for 234. The answer in retrospect was easy: store in the resource file two strings (because the length is limited), where each element represents a question. If the element is '1', then the question is valid, and if the element is '0' then the question is not to be asked. Thus the strings stored in the resource file will be something like '00011110011010….'. In the exam, I will load these strings from the resource file, traverse them and mark the array in the output file appropriately.

I also need a flag in the results program to signify the fact that an examinee took the shortened exam and that results should be calculated appropriately. I know how I'm going to do this, but haven't got there timewise yet.

Organisational Behaviour/2

I was not in Dubai and neither was my passport. It happens that I know (or rather, knew - I've haven't seen this person in maybe 20 years) someone whose passport apparently was in Dubai. Not surprisingly, he is somewhat upset, especially as his real passport is in his possession, and that he wants to travel to the 2012 Olympic Games; he is afraid that he will be stopped and arrested when he arrives in Britain.

I started a new MBA course in economics two weeks ago and am enjoying it. This reminds me why I am studying for an MBA degree - the intellectual challenge and enjoyment. Organisational Behaviour has cast such a shadow that I forgot that learning can be fun. Regarding OB, I am revising and reviewing the material almost daily, but it is so difficult to retain anything. Today I was doing multiple choice questions on the home university's website; the advantage of doing is this that one gets to know the answers and why they were chosen. Out of four answers in a multiple choice question, there can often be three which are right - but one will be 'more right' (or optimal) than the others. We have another revision meeting next week, and the exam is in two weeks time.

I have been trying the 'learning with smell' technique but it isn't too successful as I don't have a good sense of smell. I think that I ruined it during my last year of university when I did a two month lab project which had me working with acetonitrile all the time. This is a rather foul smelling liquid, and I don't think that the lab was too well ventilated. I have been 'learning with sound', but of course I can't take the exam while listening to an mp3 player. Fortunately, I have a musical mind and can normally remember most pieces of music.

If I am worried about the OB exam (and believe me, I am worried, and even have nightmares about it), then the focus lies not in the multiple choice questions (which carry only 25% of the marks) but in the three essay questions. I look at sample questions and haven't a clue what to answer.

Licensing a song/2

I wrote about a month ago about the process of licensing Randy Newman's "Something special" for a new Little Criminals disk. I finally received an answer

In order to issue you a one-time mechanical license for our minimum of 1000 units and a one-time DPD license for our minimum of 1000 units, please complete the requested information below.

The mechanical rate is dependent on the length of the composition, as per the US Copyright act. Each unit is $0.091 (9.1 cents) as long as the composition length is under 5 minutes, which your recording of "Something Special" is. 

Once licenses are issued you will pay $91.00 for a mechanical and $91.00 for a digital download (DPD) license.

The only problem with the above is the quantity: I doubt that we'll even get to 200 copies (hard and soft combined), so the above license is ten times too large. I have written back asking the publisher to lower the minimum amount but I'm not expecting too much.

In lieu of including 'Something Special', I decided to prepare my version of 'Dayton Ohio 1903', a somewhat nondescript song which earned a slightly jazzy arrangement. Thinking about it today, I realised that the opening flute lick could be harmonised, so I slightly revised my arrangement. One good thing about digital music is that I can change notes for one instrument without affecting anything else - and still have my vocals perfectly synchronised. 

The body

Our satellite TV supplier broadcast a film, "The Body", during the week. I only recorded it because I saw that it starred Olivia Williams, an actress of whom I can never get enough. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the film was what might be termed an 'archeological thriller' set in Jerusalem (and totally filmed on location). Ms Williams is an Israeli archeologist, although no attempt whatsoever was made to explain away her British accent. Similarly, British workhorse actor John Shrapnel was also cast as an Israeli (and spoke some words in Hebrew, correct grammatically, but with a ludicrous accent), despite his British vowels. 

Both these actors were seldom without a cigarette in their mouths; this was shown so much that I wonder whether the film was hinting that Israelis are heavy smokers. Fortunately, the percentage of smokers has decreased dramatically and the ban on smoking inside buildings means that I rarely - if ever - have to smell cigarette smoke.

At one stage, Antonio Banderas, cast as a Spanish priest (at least they got his ancestry correct), drives to a monastery to visit another priest who is hiding lest someone kill him (one has to watch the film to understand why). That monastery is only a few kilometres from my home, and as it is floodlit every night, I can see it from my balcony. As shown in the film (and in real life), the building has two stories, but one sequence apparently has Banderas running up three flights of stairs....

The film is primarily concerned with the discovery of a set of bones belonging to someone who had been crucified. As someone points out at the beginning, Romans only crucified poor people, yet the skeleton was found in a rich man's grave. People begin to suspect that the bones belong to Jesus, which is why the Pope dispatches Banderas to investigate, alongside his Israeli colleagues. 

Not being a Christian myself, I can only partially understand the emotional upset which would be caused by finding Jesus' bones (although at the end, one realises that the bones belonged to someone else). I can understand how important this would be, but the part about the find negating their belief I can only appreciate intellectually and am not qualified to comment whether it would be true.

Incidentally, no Jew would refer to Jesus as Christ, this being 'Messiah' in Greek. As far as the Jews are concerned, the Messiah has yet to come. The Jewish Israelis in the film refer to Jesus as Christ, and this seems to be a mistake in my opinion (no one has yet pointed this out in IMDB). One interesting point of interest appeared when I looked at the Hebrew subtitles: Jesus in Hebrew is 'Yeshu', spelt yod, shin, vav, ayin [ישוע]. The word for 'saviour' is 'moshia', spelt mem, vav, shin, yod, ayin [מושיע]. The laws of Hebrew grammar suggest to me that the two words have the same three letter root, yod, shin, ayin; very interesting theologically if this is true.

Strict Joy

The last few weeks seem to have been quite manic, with not enough hours in each day to complete all the tasks. The only thing which I remember clearly are several lectures on Organisational Behaviour (if only I could remember the contents of the lectures and not just the fact of the lectures' existence!), and these were set against a backdrop of the album 'Strict Joy' by The Swell Season. I had read about them in the arts supplement of the weekend newspaper and my interest had been piqued.

This is a very sparse album, much sparser than the usual fare to which I listen, but this sparseness is offset by the raw emotionality presented by the duo, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. Their previous (and initial) recording apparently was about their falling in love, and this album is about their personal - but not professional - separation. The reviewer in the newspaper pegged it as a one of the great breakup albums, but this time with a twist: both protagonists participate in the record. 

I can't say that Glen presents his side of the breakup and Marketa her side; I don't really listen to the lyrics properly and put them together in the sense of a song. In a very limited sense, I listen to the words in an autistic matter: I can see the parts but can't put the whole together as a whole. The same thing cannot be said for the music, though. The opening "Low rising" is presented as a soul song with full band and brass accompaniment, but other songs feature only acoustic guitar and/or piano. There is good variation in the rhythms: 4/4 is followed by a fast 3/4, there's at least one song in 12/8 and one in 5/4. That's the sort of thing that appeals to my brain.

The reviewer mentioned other breakup albums, such as 'Over' by Peter Hammill. The Hammill connection is interesting, as one of the songs on the bonus, live, disc entitled "Lies" sounds remarkably as if it were written by Peter. [Side note: maybe in recognition of this fact, I played "Chameleon in the silence of the night" for the first time in years and was blown away by the intensity of the recording].

The same reviewer, in an earlier column, mentioned a group called The Clientele. I managed to lay my hands on their four albums, but found them much less convincing than The Swell Season. At their best, The Clientele are somewhat poppy and reminiscient of earlier musical days and are good. Unfortunately, the songwriting seems to have taken a step back on their latest release, "Bonfires on the Heath", and there are a few songs which actively annoy me, so much so that I find it difficult to listen to this album after the opening three songs. Have they not heard of syncopation? I would have written their horn parts with different rhythmic accents, and the insistence of falling straight on the beat has me pulling my hair. That said, their second and third albums, "Strange Geometry" and "God save the Clientele" are better.

Reading matter: "The Goal" by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox was recommended in my studies, and I definitely pass this recommendation on. This is essential reading for any MBA student. The only real problem with this book is that it is dated; it was written at least twenty years ago when there were no cell phones and no Internet, a time when ERP programs were in their infancy. Any manager working in a factory will understand and identify with the issues, even if they seem to be dealt with too easily. 

The other book of the past few weeks has been "Juliet, Naked" by Nick Hornby. The author returns to his music based background of "High Fidelity" and presents a very familiar picture in the first two chapters of a non-entity engrossed and obsessed with a singer songwriter who disappeared after releasing his masterpiece "Juliet", also a breakup album. It seems that nothing so inspires art so much as breaking up with one's significant other. As Neil Sedaka once wrote, "Breaking up is hard to do", or as my mates and I parodied/paid tribute to it, "Breaking down ain't hard to do" (a motorbike song). After the opening two chapters, two of the novel's major characters have a breakup of their own, and the the book turns to a new direction when the long lost s/s becomes a major character in his own right.

Keith Tippett Group – "Dedicated to you, but you weren't listening"

Remember Keith Tippett? He was the weird pianist who played on two early King Crimson records ("In the wake of Poseidon" and "Lizard"). He had a 'style' which sounded like he gathered up all the keys and tossed them in the air. At one time, Robert Fripp offered Tippett the job of joint musical director of KC.

I was quite excited when I found an online copy of  this album, expecting some striking but challenging music. How wrong can one be! Not surprisingly, the album sounds like the Soft Machine (six of the eleven musicians playing on the record had already recorded or would record with the Softs), specifically "Fletcher's Blemish" on "Soft Machine IV". "Fletcher's" is the track which I like least on that record, and unfortunately the Tippett record is forty minutes of squealing in the same manner.

I had burnt a copy of the album onto cd for listening purposes, specifically for the car journey from home to my MBA studies on Friday morning. The disk found its way into the nearest dustbin when I arrived.

Organisational Behaviour

The second course which I have taken for my MBA degree is in Organisational Behaviour (OB). I thought that this would be a relatively simple course after the rigours of Accountancy, but I was mistaken. It is clear that some courses are maths based (accountancy, economics, finance) whereas others are word based (ob, sales, human resource management). I am definitely maths orientated, making those courses which are considered to be 'hard' easier than those courses which are supposed to be 'soft'.

It's not that I don't understand the material; a fair amount seems to be self-evident. It's more that it seems that one simply has to remember a large amount of material and regurgitate it the exam, as opposed to learning a set of rules and how to apply those rules to differing sets of numbers (accountancy). The ob material has to fight for valuable real estate in my memory and needs a larger area than the abstract rules necessary for accountancy.

When I was young, I was blessed with a prodigious memory, and this memory helped conceal the fact that I wasn't used to synthesizing knowledge from what I had previously learnt. This became apparent at around the age of fifteen, and for a few years I floundered until I acclimatised, taking in basic facts, abstracting from them rules, and then using those rules to apply the basic facts in new settings. This is basically what I have been doing at work for the last twenty years and is the basis of my professional 'fame'.

This approach isn't working with ob and I am becoming slightly worried about how I am going to perform in the approaching exam. To add to my worries, I checked the MBA timetable. The ob course is scheduled to finish at the end of January, but the exam will be in March. My third course, Economics, will start in the second week of February. So there will be a two week period when I have no studies and then a three week period in which I will be studying one course but revising for a previous one. This might have been acceptable when I was a full time student, but now it's going to be difficult, especially as I have a mentally challenging full-time job which occupies me during the day.

How can this be? I assume that the following theory is true: the exams for the semester beginning in February are held in June. Counting back to allow for fifteen lectures and a short revision period means that the course has to start in February. Heriott Watt University has determined that exams should be held in December, March and June (basically every three months). So there is a small overlap in February and March. Ok, I hear you ask, why can't the December courses last longer or start later than a few days after the previous semester's exams? Because the students have already started a new course, and because the lecturer teaching the ob course has embarked upon teaching yet another semester of ob. 

I am tempted to attend the first few lectures of the new semester's ob course whilst simultaneously studying economics, in order to help retain the material. Fortunately there is no time table clash, but on the other hand, it means carrying on making two journeys a week to the college (economics will be at my favourite time, Friday mornings between 8-11am, whereas ob will be on Wednesday evenings, 6-9pm).

In an attempt to help me study and remember the ob material, I am about to attempt a technique described in the book "Brain Rules". I am going to dab a little perfume on the back of my right hand and then read the material. I am going to do this every time I study. I am going to do this prior to the exam. The theory is that the brain makes a connection between the perfume and the ob material, or as we could call it in database theory, the perfume serves to index the ob material. Thus smelling the perfume is supposed to cause immediate recall of all the material.

Licensing a song

The Randy Newman Internet mailing list (aka 'Little Criminals') is girding up its loins for a new cd. There have already been previous cds: the first was a single cd (including my version of "Last night I had a dream"), the second was a double (my contribution being "Jolly Coppers"). So I don't know whether the new one will be our third or our fourth. Complicating matters is another double cd in which Little Criminals performed their own songs ("All I want" and "Before noon" being my songs), so maybe the new cd will be the fourth, fifth or sixth. Complicated!

The cd's organiser (Susan) has asked for every contributor to produce a valid mechanical license for the song being performed. As the first LC cd was organised by someone who worked in music publishing, she worried about getting the licenses; the second cd organiser also worried about the licenses. The wikipedia article states that a mechanical license is not generally required for an artist who is recording and distributing their own work, and so the problem did not arise in the third cd.

I want to contribute my version of "Something Special", which has been laying in the vaults for several years, gathering dust. Susan suggested that all contributors first try to get a license via the Harry Fox Organisation which easily allows one to obtain a limited quantity license. Unfortunately, the song which I want is not available via HFO and so I have now written to the song's publishers to ask for a license.

I am hoping that they will ask a nominal sum for the license. According to Susan, a license from HFO for the quantities that we will produce will cost about $20, which is definitely nominal. If I get quoted a sum which differs radically from this, I will have to consider contributing a different song, one which is in the HFA catalogue. The first song which springs to mind is "Every time it rains", but this song has already been covered twice on previous cds. Whilst my version is somewhat different, I would prefer there to be no comparisons.

Does Satie have friends in Hollywood

It seems that Erik Satie, French minimalist composer from a hundred years ago, is having a renaissance in Hollywood. Last week I saw the film 'Elegy', in which Ben Kingsley, amongst other things, is a pianist who likes to play Satie's "Sarabandes" in order to get the juices flowing.

Today I saw bits of the film "The painted veil" (Edward Norton, Naomi Watts), and this too had Satie on the soundtrack.

Neat tricks in the 'management' program/2 - MDI

I wrote a week ago about the use of non-modal dialogs, and how I was trapping the OnDeactivate event in order to minimise them. Whilst showing the program yesterday to the client, I discovered an unwanted side effect of this: it was impossible to show two opened child dialogs simultaneously. As one would open, the other would minimise; if I clicked on the second, the first would minimise. Ooops.

In a strange case of serendipity, the evening before found me playing around with MDI forms. I have never used this multiple document interface technique before, but it seems to match perfectly with the non-modal dialogs. Once I had realised my mistake yesterday, I realised that the entire program had to be revised in order to use the MDI model. The original main form did not use a menu, which precluded MDI, so I created a new main form, defined a menu and based all the MDI child dialogs on that menu. To make things easier for the client, the program automatically displays what was the main form upon starting. Of course, I removed from all the child forms the 'minimise on deactivation' event.

The code to activate these forms is becoming simpler and simpler. Contrast the code for a modal dialog box
with TModalDialog.create (nil) do
 try
  showmodal
 finally
  free
 end;

with the code for a non-modal dialog box
with TNonModalDialog.create (nil) do show;

and finally the non-modal MDI child dialog box
TMDIChild.create (nil);

After creating the MDI child, I call the main program's cascade method in order to ensure that the dialogs don't lie on top of each other. Each child dialog frees itself in its OnClose event.

Most articles about MDI assume that the MDI child dialogs will be identical - the easiest example of this for a Delphi programmer is the IDE itself; the windows displaying the code of the different modules are identical MDI child dialogs. But it doesn't have to be like that, and my program shows how to use non-identical child dialogs. Had those articles been clearer on the subject years ago, then I probably would have been a veteran MDI user and wouldn't have had to write this.

The latest bright idea

Today I was leafing through Alan Cooper's "About Face - the essentials of user interface design". I bought this book years ago - the cover bears the proud sticker "Covers Windows 95" - and I try to read it every few years. I see that the book is now in its third edition, but the ideas presented in the original edition are just as valid now as they were 14 years ago.

Cooper pours much criticism on the overuse of modal dialog boxes, especially those which report on some error. What really annoys him is when a dialog box pops up to inform the user, and the user has to press OK! Here is the paragraph (page 131 in my edition, from chapter 11) which caught my imagination today:

When the program has information or feedback for the user, it has several ways to present it. The most common method is to pop up a dialog box on the screen. This technique is modal: it puts the program into a mode that must be dealt with before it can return to its normal state, and before the user can continue with his task. A better way to inform the user is with modeless feedback.

In the management program which I have just completed (for the time being), there are several dialog boxes which the user fills in. This is a justifiable use of the modal dialog box. When the user presses the 'ok' button, telling the dialog that the data can be entered into the database, a few checks are made, ensuring that key fields have values in them (for instance, a field holding a therapist's name should not be left blank). The check itself is very easy, but should the field be empty, a modal dialog box pops up, telling the user that the field is indeed empty. This is exactly what Cooper was writing about.

How can the program provide modeless feedback? The solution is actually very simple: add a statusbar to the dialog; the statusbar will normally not contain any text and its colour will be neutral.  When the 'ok' button is pressed and an empty text field is found, the error message is displayed on the statusbar, whose colour has now been changed to red. At the same time, the focus returns to the empty edit box. As soon as the user presses a key while the focus in on the edit box, the statusbar reverts to its original state. This solution requires a variable declared global to the form, which I've called 'errflag'; initially its value is false. Here is the specific code:

procedure TEditTherapist.OKBtnClick(Sender: TObject);
begin
 if dbedit1.Text = '' then
  begin
   with sb do
    begin
     simpletext:= 'You must enter a value for this field';
     color:= clRed;
     errflag:= true;
    end;
   dbedit1.setfocus;
   modalresult:= 0;
   exit
  end;
end;

procedure TEditTherapist.DBEdit1KeyPress(Sender: TObject; var Key: Char);
begin
 if errflag then
  with sb do
   begin
    simpletext:= '';
    color:= clSkyBlue;
    errflag:= false
   end
end;

What is the connection between King Crimson and Organisational Behaviour

The other night, we learnt about the Expectancy Theory of Vroom. Maybe Robert Fripp and his merry men were thinking of this when they released the "Vroom"  mini cd?

A new Word automation technique

Often in my Word automation code, I need to create a table in which to display data. To the best of my knowledge until now, there have been two ways to create and populate a table; in the first method, one declares a table (wrdTable:= WrdDoc.Tables.Add (wrdapp.selection.Range, 10, 5, 1, 2)), which is then populated by accessing specific cells in the table. The other method is to create a huge string in which the cells are separated by a specific character (for example, ^); after the huge string is created, the ConvertToTable method is called which converts the long string into a table.

Both methods have their problems: the first requires that the number of rows be known before the table is declared, whereas the second does not always work (maybe one day I should investigate this further, although I should point out that one time the code worked perfectly on my computer, but not on my client's computer, despite the fact that we have the same operating system and same version of Word).

Today I had to write Word code to populate a table, not knowing in advance how many rows would be in the table. Which horn of the dilemma should I choose? At first, I tried the ConvertToTable method, and as usual, it didn't work. So I used the first method. In the past, I have used a query inside the Delphi program to calculate how many rows would be returned from the real query, but this doesn't seem to be the optimal approach. Remembering that if one creates a table in Word, one can always add rows to it using the 'Add row' command. So I ran a quick macro check in Word, and discovered that there is a 'InsertRowsBelow' method belonging to the current selection.

So my code became (in pseudocode):

create a table of size one row and how ever many columns

insert the row headers into the first row

for every tuple returned from my query,

 add a row to the word table

 insert into this row the various fields of the tuple

until there are no more tuples

Voila! A perfectly sized table. Here is the Delphi code to do the above:      

         wrdTable:= WrdDoc.Tables.Add (wrdapp.selection.Range, 1, 5, 1, 2);

         wrdSel.paragraphformat.alignment:= wdAlignParagraphRight;

         wrdTable.cell (1, 1).range.text:= 'column 1';
         wrdTable.cell (1, 2).range.text:= 'column 2';
         wrdTable.cell (1, 3).range.text:= 'column 3';
         wrdTable.cell (1, 4).range.text:= 'column 4';
         wrdTable.cell (1, 5).range.text:= 'column 5';
         row:= 1;
         while not eof do
          begin
           inc (row);
           wrdSel.InsertRowsBelow (1);  // add new row
           wrdTable.cell (row, 1).range.text:= qYomanTaarich.asstring;
           wrdTable.cell (row, 2).range.text:= qYomanForename.asstring;
           wrdTable.cell (row, 3).range.text:= qYomanSurname.asstring;
           wrdTable.cell (row, 4).range.text:= qYomanName.asstring;
           wrdTable.cell (row, 5).range.text:= qYomanTherPrice.AsString;
           next
          end;

         wrdTable.borders.insidelinestyle:= true;
         wrdTable.borders.outsidelinestyle:= true;
         wrdTable.AutoFitBehavior (wdAutoFitContent);
         wrdTable.cell (row, 1).select;
         wrdSel.MoveDown (wdLine, 3); // Get out of the table
 

I suppose that the next step is to go over all my 'legacy' code and update those tables in which I don't know in advance how many rows there will be. This type of coding could be referred to as 'overhead' or 'excise', and a case could be made that my client should not have to pay for this. Fortunately, I think that there only two or three cases, so it shouldn't take very long to correct them. I often discover a new technique and then retrofit it into existing programs. It makes my maintenance easier, and generally improves the programs' performance.

Dollhouse 2

Despite writing previously that I wouldn't watch the program again, I was drawn to it like a moth to a light. True, the first few episodes weren't very good, but around the fifth episode things started to get better, and indeed there has been a continual improvement ever since (except for the current episode, the 10th, which was a return to the opening episodes).

Most television programmes could be described as moderately good ideas executed well; occasionally there is the really good idea executed well, in which case the result is excellent. Unfortunately, "Dollhouse" seems to be a good idea executed poorly.

I think that the programme can't decide what it's supposed to be. Is it a run of the mill adventure series centered on "programmed people" ("actives")? Is it a thriller about an FBI agent trying to find the Dollhouse? Is it a philosophical programme about the morality of "programming" people, taking away their identity and establishing new albeit temporary ones?

When the programme is an adventure series, then it is dull and uninteresting. When it's a thriller, it's more interesting (especially when the agent's girlfriend suddenly turned out to be an active herself, a possibility which occurred to me long before it occurred to the FBI agent, and just before it was shown to be true), but it's at its best when it's working on the philosophical level. Unfortunately the proportions of screen time seem to be about 60%, 30% and 10% (an unscientific observation, more of a guess).

Only three more episodes until the end of the series ... I wonder whether there will be any form of resolution. Apparently there is a second series, after which the show was cancelled.

Neat tricks in the 'management' program

I wrote about two weeks ago about a management program which I am developing for my weekend job. This program incorporates many techniques which I've never used before, and I want to talk about two of them here. The use of the ttabcontrol is such a first, as was the use of the tdbnavigator, although that has now been retired and has been replaced with a tdbgrid.The navigator control was causing more problems in terms of ease of use than it was solving, and doing away with it enabled me to remove three dialogs from the program, making it simpler and smaller.

The first technique which I want to share here is the solution to a problem which has plagued me since I started working with the dbExpress components and the Firebird database. In order to develop the program, the data module contains an TSQLConnection component which holds data regarding the location of the database. This component has to be left open during development time, but I aways had to remember to remove the database location from the component before installing the program on my client's computer. I found the other day a better discussion of the problem, and the article cited also purports to give a solution.

I have learnt a great deal about Delphi programming from Zarko Gajic's 'About Delphi' site, but I have to say that in this case, he is wrong - or at least, his solution does not work. There was enough information given which enabled me to find a working solution, which is what I present here.

The source problem is that the sqlconnection gets opened almost immediately on program invocation, even before code in the project file (dpr) executes. Thus any attempt at correcting or changing the connections' properties post facto are doomed to failure. What Gajic gets right is that the sqlconnection component's "BeforeConnect" event has to be hooked into. This is code which - as its name suggests - gets called before the connection to the database is opened. Gajic's solution involves creating a new constructor and various boolean fields, but seems to be lacking a line or two, without which the component does not know that it has to change its properties. A much simper solution follows, which does not involve private constructors nor any fol-de-rol. One simply has to write an event handler for the 'BeforeConnect' event as shown below:

procedure TDM.SQLConnection1BeforeConnect(Sender: TObject);
var
 dir: string;

begin
 with TRegIniFile.create (regpath) do
  begin
   dir:= ReadString ('firebird', progname, '');
   free
  end;

 with sqlconnection1 do
  begin
   close;
   params.values['database']:= dir;
   loginprompt:= false;
  end;
end;

I keep the database locations in an .INI file; this is what is being retrieved in the first half of the code (with TRegIniFile.create ...). The second half (with sqlconnection1 do ...) is where the action happens; the first statement closes the connection, which presumably was left open at design time. The second statement inserts the new location of the database, and the third statement is optional - sometimes I forget to set the loginprompt property. This simple code solves the problem! After this event fires, Delphi will open the connection, and as now the database location is correct, the database will open correctly. 

I hate to think how much time I have wasted because of this problem. Several times I have installed my firebird programs with the sqlconnection open and pointing to the wrong location, causing embarrassment and lost time when I have tried to demonstrate the programs. This is one technique which will soon be migrating to other programs!

The second technique is to do with non-modal dialogs. Until now, I have never used such dialogs, preferring instead to use their modal siblings. Whilst I was aware that maybe the modal dialog is not the correct solution to every problem, it seemed much easier (from a user's point of view). The management program is the first program that I have written that uses non-modal dialogs seriously. There are several tables containing data which could be classed as 'secondary' - customers, therapists, types of activity and so on. These tables are accessed rarely after the data have been defined, but they still have to be accessible. I chose to define a non-modal dialog which allows data entry for all of these tables; one (non-modal) dialog displays all the names of the various records for all the tables, and then specific (modal) dialogs allow editing of all the chosen record's fields. 

I was asked how one could display two such dialogs at the same time. No problem, I replied, as I swiftly displayed one dialog, clicked on the main dialog, then displayed a second dialog. But wait a minute: where had the first dialog gone? I knew that I hadn't closed it, but I couldn't see it anywhere. It turns out that it had "hidden itself" behind the main dialog and thus to all intents and purposes had disappeared. After thinking about it, I realised that I had to write an event handler for an 'OnDeactivate' event (if such an event existing), minimising the dialog. I assumed that if there were an 'OnActivate' event (one which used to be ubiquitous with me, but now I don't use it, preferring 'OnShow' instead as this gets called only once in a program's lifetime), then there should be an 'OnDeactivate' event. Indeed there is, and the implementation is simple. 

procedure TDoTables.FormDeactivate(Sender: TObject);
begin
 showwindow (handle, sw_minimize)
end;

Although I promised only to write about two techniques, here is a third which I have started to use. Frequently, my programs' main dialog would be defined as a modal dialog box; such a form cannot be resized which is what I wanted. Unfortunately, this also meant that such dialogs cannot be minimised; I developed a technique of defining the F1 key as a 'minimise key', trapping this keypress and minimising the dialog. A much better solution is to define the form's borderstyle as 'bsSingle' and to set the bordericons property as [biSystemMenu, biMinimize]. 

I know that these are techniques which I should have absorbed ten years ago, but at the time there was so much material to assimilate that these little points got missed. Programs got written, they worked and they even solved problems, so what is basic Windows behaviour was ignored. Better late than never.....

Tim Hart, RIP

Christmas Day in the workhouse.

I heard today about the death of Tim Hart, who played guitar and sang in most of the lineups of Steeleye Span. Tim died at the age of 61 after a long battle with cancer. No doubt there are other tributes about him scattered elsewhere around the Web , but this is going to be a more personal memoir.

As one recalls, Steeleye was the band formed by Ashley Hutchings after he left Fairport Convention at the the end of 1969. A first lineup, including Tim Hart, made the 'Hark the village wait!' record, but this lineup split before the record was released. A second lineup, which added Martin Carthy and Peter Knight, was more long-lived, and it was this group that I saw in Bristol's Assembly Rooms in early 1971. All that I remember about this is Hutchings' blue Fender Mustang bass and Carthy playing a Telecaster. 

I knew quite well the two records released by this lineup, "Please to see the King" and "Ten man mop", although I never purchased them (a mistake rectified 35 years later when I bought a two cd compilation of their first three albums titled "The Early Years"). There was something about their sound which both attracted and repelled me. I used to call it "severe", but by chance I heard this morning a similar sounding adjective which seems more suitable - "austere". Maybe it was the lack of drums, maybe the lack of a distinguished instrumentalist (pace Richard Thompson), maybe it was a surmised lack of humour or fun. It wasn't too clear what Hart's instrumental function was, apart from the occasional turn on the electric dulcimer (the chilling "When I was on horseback").

My second meeting with the band was at the Lacock Festival, held in a small village "the other side" of Bath in May 1972. I went with my school friend Jonathan along with someone else whose name I can't recall (actually, I don't remember who the third person was at all, let alone his name). Maybe my mother or maybe one of Jonathan's parents took us to the village on the Friday afternoon, and I remember that we returned by bus. Steeleye were 'topping the bill', but arrived early at the village and hung out for a day before their show - it was an informal festival. There were singing and dancing workshops - I remember appearing at one of the open mic shows with my ratty acoustic guitar and spotting to my mortification Maddy Prior (lead singer with Steeleye) sitting in the front row. 

At some stage Jonathan and I approached the group and informed them that we had appointed ourselves as their official groupies (lackeys would be a better term) for the duration of the festival. I don't recall now what this function consisted of besides buying them the occasional drink. We were too cool to take mutual photographs or even ask for autographs, so all that is left is my failing memory. By this time, Bob Johnson and Rick Kemp had replaced Martin Carthy and Ashley Hutchings, and Johnson certainly brought a more fun approach to the group's music. 

This was when I first learnt how to Morris dance. At the time, I was fairly well versed (so I thought) in Israeli folk dancing, and had become aware of the fact that there was a vocabulary of dance moves; later on, dancing became a test of memory in which one had to recall the specific sequence of moves (I call them 'phonemes' for the moment, in imitation of spoken language) instead of letting the body react automatically. Anyway, I was sufficiently aware of the possibility of assigning a 'grammar' to the dance that I was able to distinguish the 'phonemes' of the Morris dance and catch on quite quickly. Let us not forget that this was maybe six or seven months after Ashley Hutchings' (again!) groundbreaking "Morris On" record, which taught polite public schoolboys like myself that there was a whole branch of English music out there of which we had never heard.

At the time I considered myself to be a folkie, what with the occasional visit to the Bristol Troubadour (mentioned elsewhere on this blog) and my connections to the Village Thing label. I vowed to find a Morris Dancing team in Bristol on my return; I did in fact find out where they met but never went. I did buy a concertina, though, and even learnt after a fashion how to play it, although tunes escaped me.

I saw Steeleye for the third and final time in 1973 at the Colston Hall; I have somewhere a cassette tape of this performance. This was the time between "Below the Salt" and "Parcel of rogues"; the music was much less austere than it was before - but still I didn't buy the records. 

When I came back to Britain in 1974 and went to live in London as a student, I bought Steeleye's "Now we are six" album as a raffle prize for an unsuccessful folk club which I was helping to run. I listened to it, probably taped it, and forgot about it. Maybe my tastes had changed (I certainly didn't consider myself an English folkie after spending a year in Israel!); whatever the reasons, Steeleye and I parted company.

It's interesting to note how much the repertoire of the early Steeleye stayed with me, and for that I have to thank Tim, Maddy, Ashley, Martin and Peter. When I came to record my 'Folktronics' disc a few years ago, I was surprised how many Steeleye tunes came to mind, even though at the time I hadn't heard the records for years (I should point out that all the tunes were traditional; I should have written "how many traditional tunes that Steeleye had brought to my attention").

Displaying tabs on the right of a TTabControl

I started a new MBA course in 'Organisational Behaviour' yesterday; I should be more excited than I am about it at the moment. I hope that I will become more enthusiastic about it as time passes.

At the moment I'm more excited about a program which I am writing for my occupational psychologist. This program is supposed to be one which manages all non-primary information about the examinees: who everybody is, where they come from, which tests they did, who interviewed them, etc. One of the outputs of the program will be a calculation for each psychologist how many clients they interviewed during the month, and what their fee should be. The program is very much open ended at the moment, so I've configned myself to doing basic design, including a few input screens.

The program's main data structure/table is the docket, to which are connected people, to which are connected treatments (exams), to which are connected pyschologists. I made a nice ERD before I started coding, and so far I've completed everything in that design. But there'll be a lot more to come.

I went through several options before I came upon what is at the moment the final design for the main screen. Instead of displaying a dbgrid with docket numbers and dates, and possibly the names of the people connected to those dockets (utilising a left join, because there can be a docket with no people connected), I decided to take a different approach, utilising a component which I have never used before, the dbNavigator. This component allows one to page back and forth between different dockets, and I've connected a few dbText controls to display the data in the current docket tuple (a docket is never entered manually, as it only has two fields: number and date, both of which are inserted automatically).

For each docket there is a wealth of information to be displayed, although at the moment I only have two screens' worth: the people connected to the docket and the exams that those people did. After considering various options, I decided to use (for the first time) the TTabControl. There is a similar TPageControl, which allows different pages containing different controls; I tried this briefly, but didn't like it. As the the container control will hold a grid and a few buttons, it makes more sense to use the TTabControl (which uses the same child controls for all the 'pages', forcing the programmer to switch the data) as opposed to the TPageControl.

Here is a screen shot of the TTabControl in its naked form:

The TTabControl has two tabs, 'One' and 'Two', along with a grid. This would be ok if the program were working outside of Israel, but we need right to left controls. Although the TTabControl does have a BiDiMode (bidirectional) property, this controls how text appears and not the layout of the tabs. Obviously the solution is draw the tabs on the right hand side of the top of the TTabControl. Easier said than done.

I found a magic invocation which I have used before to get controls to draw themselves from right to left. Here is the result of using a little magic

Whilst the tabs are now drawn as I wanted, on the right, the grid seems to have disappeared. Thus the 'magic option' has very limited uses in the real world (such as none).

There is a property called TabAlign, which can display the tabs on the top (as I originally did), at the bottom, on the left or on the right. Is this the answer? Not really.

But we're nearly there.... All I need to do is to have the tabs draw their text horizontally, and then at least I will have a reasonable solution to what I want. The way to do this is to mark the TTabControl as owner drawn and to handle the tab drawing code by myself.

The sharp of sight will notice two things: the grid is now displayed right to left (by setting its BiDiMode property), and more importantly, the text of the tabs is wider than the tab. So the tab width has to be set manually? Not quite. If one remembers that the tabs have effectively been rotated by 90 degrees, then increasing their width effectively increases their height (at least, as how we see it). So to get the effect that I want, I have to increase their height, which will increase the onscreen width (who said that programming was easy?).

If I'm already owner drawing the tabs, why not add colour to the selected tab? Here is a screen shot of the final dialog, complete with a little data.

In case it isn't clear, there are two tabs on the right of the TTabControl: the selected tab has red text on a light blue background, whereas the tab below it has blue text on the common green background.

I have to say that I much prefer to concentrate on a program's logic, to get it to do what it's supposed to do with the minimum of effort from the user, instead of focusing on what seems to be arcane minutiae of the user interface. But sometimes there's no escaping this, especially if one works in a right to left environment. Looking back, I'm quite pleased with what I accomplished, even if it isn't exactly what I originally wanted. I hope that the client will also be pleased.....

After the accounting exam

Well, my accountancy exam has been and gone. It was much easier than I expected, for which I am truly grateful. The exam consisted of two sections: one part multiple choice, and one part containing two scenarios which have to be dealt with in depth. The 30 multiple choice questions covered most of the syllabus, and some were harder than I expected, but none of them were really hard. Theoretically, an hour and a half should be devoted to this section; I finished after an hour, and that included checking the answers.

The two in depth questions were much easier than I expected - or putting it another way, they were in areas which I know very well. I had been expecting a question about cash flow statements, which is a subject which I haven't grasped very well and so I have devoted a fair amount of time over the past week to solving questions in this area. My hopes were dashed - darn! - when it turned out that the first questions was simple accounting: create a balance sheet from opening balances and a series of transactions, some of which were given and some had to be deduced. Once the transactions had been recorded, one had to make a profit and loss account from them, as well as a trial balance. Solid work, but straightforward. After that, one had to comment on the financial state of the balance sheet - not very good; the company's current liabilities outweigh their assets.

The second question was even easier, if that's possible: a group of people want to put on a theatrical show which runs for a week. The theatre costs so much, the programmes cost, the theatre staff cost, etc. If the theatre seats 800 people and they expect 50% capacity on two days, 60% on another two days and 100% for the remaining performances, what is their financial status if a ticket costs 12 pounds? If a ticket costs 16 pounds? How many tickets do they need to sell to break even? I solved a very similar question to this a few months ago and the memory stayed in my mind; as it happened, one of the practice questions which I solved yesterday was a simpler version of this question (a group of students want to hold an end of term party).

Unfortunately, I won't get the results for another two months, but I am very optimistic about my chances. Actually, there are only passes and fails; a pass is 50%, and theoretically there is no difference between a pass at 51% and a pass at 90%. Maybe a future employer will want to look at the actual marks attained, but in my case, that would seem to be purely theoretical. Still, one wants to do as well as possible.

I remarked the other day about the 'fight' between the amygdalae and the cortex in the brain. Their fight was very pronounced today, with the amygdalae saying "check, check the answers", and the cortex saying that I've checked and that it's ok.

I forgot to try out a learning technique which I had read about. One of the few things which I had to memorise was the five advantages and five disadvantages of maintaining a budget, as I was convinced that there would be an in-depth question about budgets, and knowing the above ten words would give me ten marks. The technique states to place a little perfume on the back of one's hand when learning the material, and to place the same perfume on the hand when sitting the exam. It is well known that smells are a key to memories (the smell of eucalyptus trees in the damp always brings to mind Army basic training), so this perfume smell is supposed to unlock the memory of the learnt material. As I say, I forgot to try the technique, and anyway we only had a few multiple choice questions about budgets, which was really variance analysis.

Accounting exam

The first semester of my MBA course is drawing to a close and the concluding exam is on Wednesday morning. I have been a witness for the past week to an ongoing battle between different parts of my brain: the mid-brain (probably the amygdala) keeps on saying that there is an important exam in a few days and one has to revise, revise, revise, whereas the top brain (the cortex) is calming the amygdalae down, saying that yes, there is an exam, but this is accountancy after all, a subject which I have been practising for years, and judging by my performance on the test exams, I'm going to get 75% without even trying very hard.

In the previous week (not the one just finished but the one before that), we had a guest lecturer from the home university come and give us three lessons. This is apparently a rare occurrence, which happens once every three-four years, so my fellow students and I should consider ourselves lucky. For reasons unknown to me (although I can guess), only about a third of the class attended these lectures. I think that this is a shame, because the lecturer went over test exams, taking a more tactical approach to that taken by our normal lecturer, and I found  this approach complimentary to what we had already learnt. In other words, those lectures will help me get a higher mark. The lecturer is the man who actually writes the exam questions so of course he has insight on how to solve them. He was careful not to give away which subjects will appear in the exam paper, claiming that he writes the questions two years in advance (as they have to be checked and translated) and so does not remember what will be in any specific exam. I think that there was a certain amount of truth in his statement, but felt that he probably did know what was in the paper.

I am going to take the middle course: devote an hour or two each evening to the areas in which I don't feel confident and which haven't been examined in the past four courses (the lecturer left us a list of which subjects have appeared in which exams). In my opinion, most of the areas are straight forward, and one only needs common sense aligned with mathematical sense to answer the questions. Of course, 'mathematical sense' is not shared equally between all students; for me, accountancy is easy because it aligns with my skills. It is considered one of the 'harder' subjects in the MBA constellation, both in the sense of 'hard' (as opposed to 'soft') and 'hard' (as opposed to 'easy'). Next semester I am taking the course in organisational behaviour, which is supposed to be both soft and easy. I suspect that the exam will be harder for me than the accountancy exam.

'Next semester' starts this Friday; the winter semester is short and compact. Our timetable reads as follows: Friday 4 Dec – last accountancy lecture; Wednesday 9 Dec – accountancy exam; Friday 11 Dec – first lecture in winter semester; Sunday 13 Dec – second lecture in winter semester.

Swedish Fly Girls

Sorry about disappearing for what seems to have been all of November. I had two very busy weeks which didn't leave me any time for blogging (work and MBA), and anyway the system administrator at work has removed access to all blogspot sites, meaning that I couldn't read many of my favourite blogs at work, let alone add to my own. Although the pressure eased up this week, I managed to catch a bad cold, so I wasn't able to focus much. But now I'm back.

One of the rarer items in the Sandy Denny discography is the handful of songs which she sang for a forgotten film from 1970 called 'Swedish fly girls'. This was shown on tv last night and I had the presence of mind to record it ... only I needn't have bothered. The film has not aged well, and probably wouldn't have been well thought of even when it was released. Then it would have been considered somewhat risque, as the eponymous air stewardess (only one, and she's Danish) spent about a third of the film naked. But let's say that the nudity was non-sexual; this certainly wasn't a precursor to 'Emmanuelle'.

Sandy sings maybe ten lines in the film, although apparently the soundtrack featured four songs with her singing. Digging through the old letters from the Sandy mailing list, I found this gem from Moses Henry (grammar slightly corrected by me):

I was in London for 12 weeks the spring and summer of 1970. Manfred Mann and I co-produced the music for "Christa". The rhythm section was the band who did the London Production of 'Hair" and we used London Philharmonic strings and brass. At times a 30 piece rock orchestra for the film. I wrote all of the music, Dereck Wadsworth arranged it [and] Manfred [was the] # 1 Producer. I was associate producer without credits. I sang "I Need You" with Sandy. Sandy was ill and after she saw the lead sheets of the music she came to the studio to record it anyway, She told me 'What Will I Do With Tomorrow' was the most beautiful song she had ever heard. In my book she sang it like an angel. When she sang the final take for that recording the entire studio was lifted to another place and time words cannot describe. The recording said it well enough.

I also sang lead vocals on 'Make it to the Land that I Know', 'She is Free', and 'Love is All I Need'.

The film opened in New York in Three Theaters; I got to go to one in a Limo and I asked the owner of a theater [in] uptown New York why he had booked the film. He (not knowing I had written and sung the music) said the music touched his heart. The film titled 'Christa' did not make enough money as that title so it was re-titled 'Swedish Fly Girls'. I know that more people saw Christa because of the new title and that is good. It will always be 'Christa' to me. I have 54 pages of lists of countries from BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.) of all the countries the film played in, some for over six years. The film played all over the earth for 18 years.

Almost every movie since then has been modeled on 'Christa'. It was the first film edited to the beat of the music and other film makers are using a lot more music in their soundtracks. We were the first to edit to the beat of the music with 'Christa'.

A wonderous project. I am still doing concerts: read 'The Miracle Concert' on my website and 'The Last Breath' film treatment. It is my true story; I,  however,  did not want the hassle of the publicity for that film project.

Let's keep touch; perhaps I will be doing a concert in your area some day. and we could put together a video salute for Sandy. She truly has the voice of an angel.

One Heart

Moses