Remixing songs and playing live

As my throat still won't allow me to sing - there are times when I can barely talk, either - I haven't been able to create very much music lately. What I have been doing whenever I feel the urge to be musical is to take a previously recorded song and remix it. This remixing can be at any one of several levels

• Changing the balance and effects on a recorded vocal to improve the final result
• Running the vocal tracks through a very clever program which can autotune the vocals. I am very happy when this works, but I have noticed that in some cases, the tuned vocals are worse than they were before. In such cases, I leave the vocals as they were.
• Changing the music track slightly, normally by syncopating some notes, but also by changing parts slightly
• Creating a new music track

A song which I mentioned before, 'The road to Antibes', underwent the first three treatments and now sounds even better than it did before. Unfortunately, some of my older work was not backed up correctly, meaning that I don't have separate vocal and music tracks. No separate tracks means that I can't remix them.

I played a gig on Saturday! A friend (who has a beautiful voice) was arranging her father's 75th birthday party and asked me to accompany her and her family on some songs. In the end, I played six different songs and attended several different rehearsals. It was really good playing live again - this time, I used the semi-acoustic Washburn guitar which is easier to hold and easier to play than the acoustic Ovation. My amplifier also helped in the process - I added chorus and a slight delay in order to produce a fuller sound. My friend asked at the beginning how I was managing to sound as if I were playing two guitars.

To my slight surprise, I fingerpicked all the songs: I even left the plectrum at home! Some of the songs were picked and some strummed, but somehow using the plectrum didn't feel right. I also took a leaf out of the Robert Fripp school of guitar playing and played sitting down.

It was very interesting to look at the songs that I played from a harmonic point of view, as opposed to my songs. The chord sequences were fairly straight forward: one lovely song had either a minor i-iv-v sequence or a major I-IV-V sequence, where the minor was the relative minor of the major (in other words, Em-Am-Bm and G-C-D). Another was also based G-C-D, but then had a familiar B-Em-Am-D sequence. One tune was a jazzy waltz based on the chords Bm-E, but this too had a sequence of dominants (from E to A and thence to D, also C#-F#-Bm).

My songs, on the other hand, tend not to have dominants at all; to an extent, this is done on purpose, but it tends to happen automatically. I prefer 'chord streams' - Em-F#m-G-F#m or rather stranger sequences.

Friday is cooking day

I almost always eat fish for lunch on Friday: I'm at home and can cook myself something nutritious. The meal has undergone a few changes over the years: at first it was a grilled fillet of hake along with chips and salad, stuffed into a pita. I cut out the chips after my daughter pointed out that it wasn't good to eat chips if I was supposed to be dieting, and shortly after I cut out the pita, for the same reason. I stopped eating salad after I managed to spill the olive oil from the salad dressing onto my shirt, something which happened a few times, before I realised that I had better find a replacement for the salad.

In the last month or so, I've frequently been preparing antipasti - a mixture of red bell peppers, yellow bell peppers, tomatoes and onions, all cut into strips, over which I drizzle olive oil. The vegetables are then baked in the oven (175 degrees Centigrade for 30-35 minutes). 

On the left is a slightly blurred picture of the vegetables prior to their being placed in the oven. I find it best to place them on a sheet of baking paper as this keeps the tray clean.

After the thirty minutes is up, I then place on top of the vegetables a few hake fillets and spray them lightly with cooking oil (this stage may be unnecessary as I'm not grilling the fish) and put the tray back in the oven. After about five minutes, I turn down the heat in the oven - the food keeps on cooking but of course I save on electricity. 

After another ten minutes, I take the tray out and serve the fish and vegetables (see picture below).

Completing the cooking theme, here is a picture of my new slow cooker, filled with vegetables and chicken pieces. The vegetables are underneath the chicken and so can't be seen. This picture was taken very early on in the cooking process, which is why there is no steam nor water droplets visible. My daughter doesn't like spices on the chicken which is why the pieces are 'naked'; I could add parsley or paprika to make things slightly more interesting, but to be honest, I too prefer the natural flavour of the chicken and the vegetables (onion, courgette, carrot).

A new season, a new team

A new season began last night in the Euroleague Basketball Tournament and Maccabi Tel Aviv opened that season with a new team. It used to be that each season Maccabi would keep the core of its team, replacing two or three players with names new to Europe, but in the past few years that tradition has no longer been maintained. 

From last year's team, only three Israelis and one American remain; the rest have gone due to retirement (two), enticement by larger contracts (two) or simply let go (two). As a result, an almost completely new team has been constructed this summer - I don't write 'built' for the players have yet to coalesce into a whole, the team has yet to be built. And of these new players, whilst some are new to Europe, there are two who played for other teams in the Euroleague last year whilst at least one other played in a lower grade European tournament. As it happens, the American who remains from last year underwent an operation in the summer and has yet to make an appearance in any of the practice games. Thus Maccabi opened last night with four players who I've never seen before; unsurprisingly, the three Israelis made very important contributions.

These constant changes, including faces who last year were opponents, makes building a team identity very difficult. Of course, there are problems on the professional side but I'm not really writing about that but rather about the difficulty of an average fan to identify with his team. As I have written before, I am an armchair fan of Maccabi and there have been times when I have preferred to spend my Thursday evenings doing something else than watching an Israeli team being taken apart. But on the whole, Maccabi manages to supply teams whose performance exceeds what one might expect from their dry statistics, and these performances can bring a little joy into my life.

As per last the last few seasons, Maccabi opened with an away game in Spain (Malaga), but this time managed to win the game; towards the end of the first half, they even had a 16 or 18 point lead, which unfortunately evaporated in the third quarter, only to be partially restored in the final quarter. Such is the nature of the early stages of the tournament that this away win may be enough to secure Maccabi the first place in their group: most of the other teams (bar Malaga) are minnows and Maccabi will be expected to beat them. Thus beating the strongest other team in the group in an away game will be the 'something extra' needed in order to achieve first place. 

But this year, the structure of the Euroleague top 16 stage has been changed, adding more games; thus finishing first in the first stage has less meaning this year than it has done in previous years.

Don't worry: this is not going to turn into a sporting blog; I doubt that I will have any more to write about Maccabi for the next few months.

Blues for S

I'm currently in one of those periods when I can't really concentrate on anything; I think it's due to the fact that Israel is in the high holiday period. We work a day, have four days off, work three days, have four days off, work three days, have two days off. I have all this time in which I could do anything but I don't seem to do much. This blog entry itself is going to be a bit of a hodge-podge in itself.

Last Friday, my trusted slow cooker developed a leak - I became aware of this when I smelt something burning. It turns out that there was a huge crack down one side, through which were leaking the juices of the chicken pieces I was cooking. The leaked juices were heated by the heating element and burnt, hence the smell. Whilst the food that I was cooking in the pot turned out ok (slightly underdone by my standards), I realised that there was no option but to throw the pot away. I have bought a new one but have yet to use it.

We had our first rain on Sunday evening; all day had been humid and by mid-afternoon I wasn't feeling too well. The weather as usual has been affecting me and I've been coughing much more in the past few days. I am considering resuming acupuncture treatments, this time in the hope of improving my immune system. Apparently, people who have had whooping cough are more susceptible to simple colds and chills, and have stronger reactions. That's not very good news for me.

I did a certain amount of programming - playing around with adding items to the system menu and discovering how I can sum a column in a query's result set without either iterating through the result set or using a separate query. I needed this technique in a few places in my programs but discovered that it didn't always work - it seemed impossible to sum a column which is in itself a calculated column. The answer to that is here.

Of course, I devoted some time to studying: I have completed my first pass through the 'Introduction to Business Research 1' text and have now started the second pass.

About the only thing that I did in the past week of which I am proud is that I managed to record a new instrumental! I was fiddling around on the guitar, playing a slightly unusual chord - F#m7add11; this name sounds weird but it's a simple guitar chord, played (from the bottom) x44200 - an F#m chord with the top two strings left open. Picking this chord in a simple arpeggio, combined with the effects setting on my amp (a small amount of phasing), produced an interesting sound. I started playing around with possible chord sequences and melody lines and evolved an interesting piece which seemed partially derived from a 12 bar blues sequence (although I doubt that anyone would guess this). I then went to the computer, sequenced the guitar arpeggio (with a certain amount of randomness) and continued from there - bass, drums and tune. I found an excellent guitar patch in Reason, which really 'makes' the track.

The piece itself is slightly strange as 'verses' 1, 2 and 5 differ from 'verses' 3 and 4 in their length (3 and 4 are elongated) and chord sequence (1,2 and 5 have a Em6 chord leading to C#9, whereas 3 and 4 have C#9, D9, C#9), although I don't know how many listeners will pick up on this. As befitting a jazzy-ish piece, the 'tune' undergoes a certain amount of development, along with changes in the instrumentation.

I had been listening to Miles Davis'  'Kind of blue' a few weeks ago and I think that some of that seminal recording's influence had rubbed off on me, for the main instrument in my piece is a muted trumpet. Of course, the 'playing' is somewhat stilted and nowhere near as fluent as Davis and his sidemen.

The piece is called 'Blues for S' and can be found at my SoundClick page. I hope that you'll listen and enjoy it.

Watching the dark

The phrase "watching the dark" means different things to different people. As far as I am concerned, until recently WTD meant a Richard Thompson box set of three cds, which contained some fairly rare material. I am not aware of any previous use of WTD; the phrase would seem to come from the sleeve notes written by Greil Marcus.

But these days, it also means the title of a new book by Peter Robinson (in the DCI Banks series) - which internally refers in passing to the Thompson compilation. Frequent readers of this blog will know that I enjoy the police procedurals of Robinson, and the Thompson links are simply icing on the cake.

This book starts off with a murder in a police rehabilitation centre which DCI Banks begins to investigate; long time sidekick DI Annie Cabot returns to the team after having been shot in the previous book, "Bad boy", which enables Banks to travel to Tallinn (the capital of Estonia) in order to investigate a thread raised by the initial murder. As I considering a short trip to Tallinn combined with my projected visit to Edinburgh next summer, this section was very interesting (and to be honest is one of the reasons why I read novels - one can always learn about different places and jobs).

The first time through the book, I thought that there was too little active investigation; a fair amount of information fell into the detectives' hands through no intervention of their own - a passive technique which used to be frowned upon (in terms of literature; I am sure that most policemen would be only too pleased if vital information would fall on its own into their hands). But a second run through revealed that the detectives were somewhat more active than I had originally thought - although again, one key witness falls into their hands by default.

I wrote two years ago about the previous Banks novel, "Bad boy", and about editing mistakes (Robinson published a novel last year as is his habit but it was outside the Banks canon). This time around, I could only find three mistakes, one of which being a mistake in English grammar, one a debatable point and one definite mistake.

The grammatical mistake is towards the beginning of the book (location 2453 in my Kindle edition): "... and the most unattractive of the two [detectives]". If there are only two detectives, then the text should read "and the more unattractive". The superlative "most" implies at least three items whereas the comparative "more" means that only two items are being compared.

Chapter 7 begins with the sentence "Banks and Joanna were barely talking when they got to the hotel". To me, this implies that they had a row (on their way from Eastvale to Tallinn), but no such row occurred. Banks spent the flight listening to music whereas Joanna "had sat beside him with her laptop ... working on a report".  Whilst it's true that there wasn't much conversation, the opening sentence implies that they were actively not talking to each other. To me, this sentence implies that the tension between the two is at a much higher level than events would seem to show. As I wrote above, this point is debatable; I think that this sentence could have been safely deleted, as I was expecting some terrific row on the journey.

The third mistake occurs in the third part of chapter 10 and was very subtle: Banks and Joanna are talking to someone in the spa town Haapsalu; at one stage, the person says "Here in Tallinn" - but they're not in Tallinn! This mistake, of course, is hardly important but it shows a lack of copy editing.

Being a tourist in Israel: Tel Aviv

As both my wife and I had errands to run in Tel Aviv, we decided to run them together on Friday morning and then act as tourists by going to the Nachlat Binyamin street fair. The train to Tel Aviv was fairly empty (who travels at 9:30 on a Friday morning?), but the streets in the metropolis were bustling.

Once we had completed our errands, we traveled to the street fair. This is open twice a week (Tuesdays and Fridays) in a pedestrian only area. As much as I appreciate the fact that this fair makes one feel as if one is abroad, I have to point out that none of the stalls sold anything which could be described as 'useful'. Most of the items on sale were artistic artifacts - ashtrays, doorplates, ceramics with the occasional item of clothing. Colourful but not useful.

The only stall which remotely interested me was one selling musical instruments - wooden flutes, ocarinas and what might be termed a hammer dulcimer. This instrument was tuned something like D, C, A, G, F, D (I have very good relative pitch but not absolute pitch, and anyway it was difficult to hear with all the noise) which seems slightly limited. Playing each string in turn reminded me of a riff which took a few minutes to identify - it's towards the beginning of the long instrumental break in Richard and Linda Thompson's song "Civilisation".

It was pleasant being able to feel as if we were on holiday abroad without having to go to the effort of actually traveling abroad.

My father's 90th birthday

It's my father's 90th birthday today and in a few hours we'll be going to a restaurant in the renovated Tel Aviv harbour district in order to celebrate with family and friends. My wife has been imploring me to write something for his birthday card, and whereas normally the words just flow (I'm having no difficulty in writing this...), I can't find a suitable place from which to start.

This being the Internet Age, I initially scanned many sites looking for ideas. There seem to be three approaches, none of which seem too appropriate

• The witty/pithy approach: "Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative", "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards"
• The deprecating approach: "You have reached that certain age/Where it’s acceptable to be/Grumpy and complaining/About everything you see"
• Seeing things from my point of view: "90 years!/What a treat and a privilege for me/To have you hold my hand as I walked by your side/down life's pathways/for most of them"

My wife says to write something from the heart, but then it sounds like a eulogy, which is what I definitely don't want to write. I have the following line in my head "It's been an honour and a privilege to have known you for all my life", but the past tense implies that he is no longer with us. How can I phrase that in the present tense? "It's an honour and a privilege to know you for all of my life"? "To know you" implies something which is happening now, whereas "all of my life" is something which has happened over many years (albeit still happening).

It's an honour and a privilege 

To have a father such as you

Always caring about his fellow man

With barely a thought for himself

The values you have instilled in me

Are the best a son could ever wish

The only way to repay you

Is to wish you all the best on this

Birthday of Birthdays

Happy New Year!

The Ministry of Health enquires about MY health

I wrote a few weeks ago that I received the results of the blood test for Pertussis (whooping cough) which I did on Sunday. Here are the results

Test	value
Bord.Pertussis IgG	64 IU/ml
Bord.Pertussis IgA	Positive
Bord.Pertussis IgM	Negative

What does this mean? I haven't been able to find a suitable reference which explains the above in clear and simple English, but as far as I can gather, the IgA level means that I definitely had pertussis. My doctor may order a repeat test in another week or so; the Ministry of Health might also be interested in these results.

---

Today I got that phone call from the public health department of the Ministry of Health (well, they actually called my home phone number a few days ago and left a message; I returned their call today) who, as I imagined, contact everyone with a positive Pertussis result. The above results show that there are some remaining antibodies from my original vaccination (that's the IgG level which is on the low side) and that I have new antibodies (that's the IgA test - positive means that I did have pertussis). The lady on the other side of the phone didn't explain exactly what the IgM test is, but pointed out that some doctors refer to this as the deciding factor, whereas the MOH had issued an instruction three years ago that the IgA test was the most important.

This might explain why I received a note from the clinic saying that I didn't have pertussis - my doctor presumably was reporting the IgM test and not the IgA test.

The lady from the department of public health talked me through my symptoms, which of course match those of pertussis. She asked whether I had been abroad and I told her about Croatia. She also asked about other family members, but none of them were affected. Obviously the disease has run its course, but I still have the occasional severe coughing attack (the last one was exactly one week ago whilst sitting in my office and working on the computer); the lady advised me to keep my throat moist. I've been going to sleep with a Strepsil in my mouth for the past ten nights; the only night which I missed was the night I had an attack.

My voice is coming back to its former strength but it's still not there, and prolonged talking causes my mouth to dry which then causes the gag reflex to kick in which then causes me to cough. Fortunately, I don't generally talk that much at work (I communicate primarily by writing) but it's a problem when I attend meetings or give training sessions. I might even be able to resume singing soon.

PDF games

I've been looking for some time for programs which will convert PDF files into something else - either text or pictures (jpg). I need the latter for work with Priority - I was asked recently to alter a procedure which prints a work order for parts to be produced; the printout should also contain any files which have been linked to the parts. This is a very good idea and should save a great deal of time so I was enthusiastic about it, but I discovered that if the linked file is in PDF format, the PDF reader which we have installed on the servers stays in memory. A more elegant solution was to convert the PDF (generally a blueprint)  to JPG and then have the JPG printed. It transpires that the PDF reader which I prefer - the lightweight PDF X-change viewer from Tracker Software - has an option to do this ("export to image").

I have also been looking for a tool which will extract the text from PDF files - the recent posts here about the DBA degree could easily have been prepared using such a tool. The acceptance letter was created by creating a JPG file from the PDF letter which I received (see above), whereas the text about PhD vs DBA was extracted by marking the text (with Adobe Reader 9) and saving the marked text to a text file. Michael Covington has again opened my eyes by pointing out that Adobe Reader has a 'Save to Text' option on its main menu! D'oh!.

What's the difference between a Ph.D. and a D.B.A.?

After having been accepted to the DBA programme, there was a little bureaucracy to be attended to; then I was able to download the text to the first required course, "Introduction to Business Research 1". Initially I downloaded in Kindle format (mobi) but later downloaded as PDF. I am considering whether to order the printed version as in the past I have had difficulty in reading course texts on the Kindle - one can only see a small amount of 'page' and I have found it easier to read the large, printed text (not because of the font size but because one can see more at the same time, including diagrams). I looked at the PDF version a few minutes ago and this is much easier to read than on the Kindle, but I baulk at printing some 350 pages.

One of the first things discussed in the text is the difference between the degrees PhD and DBA: I thought it worthwhile to quote that text here:

The aim of the DBA is to produce applied business research professionals who can use their doctoral-level skills at senior executive level in a business environment. The term ‘research professional’ should be clearly understood. It could be said that a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programme produces a graduate who is a professional researcher. He or she has developed a detailed theory or hypothesis in order to evaluate a specific piece of theoretical research. The hypothesis, or theory, could be concerned with almost any area, from molecular structure to particle beam physics. In many cases, there may be no direct application of the hypothesis or theory. To gain a PhD degree it is necessary only to demonstrate an original contribution to the knowledge base. A large proportion of PhD graduates continue their research either in academia or in non-academic organisations such as private companies and the public sector. The EBS DBA programme, in contrast, aims to produce research professionals. EBS DBA graduates are typically professional managers who are also researchers. The majority of DBA graduates will go on to work in a non-academic environment, primarily as senior managers who will not only retain their doctoral research skills but will also use them in a real and applied capacity within their organisations.

Admission to Heriot-Watt DBA programme

Fomer school friend knighted

I don't know quite why the urge arrived, but just now I googled an old school friend of mine, Timothy Holroyde. To be honest, I don't quite remember how we were friends as he was a year in front of me; I seem to recall that he lived nearby and was a classical scholar. I once hosted a fairly boring party at my house and he was a guest of honour.

I've tried googling other old friends, but apart from finding one person who seems to work for the Board of Education, I've only drawn blanks.

Anyway, Google started returning links to a Timothy Holroyde who had been knighted and appointed to be a Justice of the High Court. Could this be the same Tim that I knew, head boy of Bristol Grammar School in 1973?

Indeed so:

The Queen has been pleased to approve that the honour of Knighthood be conferred upon Timothy Victor Holroyde Esq. Q.C and His Honour Judge Gary Robert Hickinbottom on their appointments as Justices of the High Court.
Notes for Editors
Timothy Victor Holroyde: Born in 1955 and educated at Bristol Grammar School; Wadham College, Oxford. Called to the Bar, Middle Temple, 1977; A Recorder since 1997; Bencher, 2005.

And this story is from January 2009! Well done, Sir! 

Three emails

Yesterday evening I received three very interesting personal emails. I should point out that I subscribe to four music-related mailing lists so I normally receive anywhere between 30-60 emails a day; interesting personal emails are rare.

The first was from a lady who I met (in the new, virtual sense) via the Robert Silverberg mailing list several years ago. At first, her enthusiasm caught my eye; then I noticed that she was writing from an Israeli email address and so I had to contact her. After a few exchanges of personal email, I invited her to the kibbutz for a harvest festival which she and her daughter enjoyed. We started collaborating on Silverberg related material in Israel when our contact was abruptly terminated: she informed the mailing list that she was ill and would have to cease posting. Putting two and two together, I guessed that she was probably suffering from breast cancer. 

Anyway, she has now recovered and whilst she hasn't posted to the mailing list yet, she has written to me and we are renewing our connection. She writes that she was in contact with RS and his wife during the period and that they were very supportive of her.

---

The second email contained the results of the blood test for Pertussis (whooping cough) which I did on Sunday. Here are the results

Test	value
Bord.Pertussis IgG	64 IU/ml
Bord.Pertussis IgA	Positive
Bord.Pertussis IgM	Negative

What does this mean? I haven't been able to find a suitable reference which explains the above in clear and simple English, but as far as I can gather, the IgA level means that I definitely had pertussis. My doctor may order a repeat test in another week or so; the Ministry of Health might also be interested in these results.

There exists a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the doctor who treated me during July and August: my regular doctor (who ordered the blood test) was abroad for several weeks and so I had to see his replacement. I get the feeling that she (the replacement) had never seen a case of pertussis before (although the kibbutz nurse guessed correctly!) and wasn't too sure what to do, so she covered all the bases. In her defense, I should note that the illness is very difficult to diagnose in the early stages and that once it has taken hold, there is very little which can be done save let nature (and antibiotics) take its course. She could have ordered the blood test which I did on Sunday, which would have at least helped me psychologically (I always maintain that people feel better when they are diagnosed with an illness, no matter how severe, than to suffer from undiagnosable aches and pains). She also wasn't very supportive in her manner, as opposed to the regular doctor who goes out of his way to make his patients feel that he cares.

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The third email came from Heriot Watt University. I took my final exam for the MBA degree at the beginning of June and expected to receive the results by the end of July (I tacked on the cubicle wall facing me certificates from previous exams and note that the relevant ones from previous years are dated 19 July and 22 July). All through August, I checked the university's website looking for the results, but none appeared. Eventually I decided to write to the university and ask what was happening - this mail obtained an immediate result, this third email which I am writing about. I was informed (without apology, I think) that my results had not been linked to my file and that I would see the results "tomorrow" (ie today). This, I suppose, is the digital age version of 'the cheque is in the post'. Of course, almost the first thing that I did this morning was to log onto the website and check my mark.

Well, I passed the exam with a mark of 60%. This is lower than I would have liked but as I wrote before, "From the grading guides which I have seen, it is very difficult to achieve an outstanding mark in this exam. It is also quite difficult to fail - as long as one uses the analysis format (which has been drummed into our heads) and one mentions the process method enough times. So it's clear that I passed although I have no idea what the final mark will be." 

This means that I have now completed all my scholastic obligations and so am entitled to the MBA degree to be awarded in next year. Documentation which I have from the university says that "Students will be contacted about a month after the completion of all the obligations with an information pack about graduation". Theoretically this month has already passed so I shall contact the local college where the lectures were held to see whether such an information pack has arrived for me.  

Somehow I feel almost numb about these results; whilst I am pleased that I have passed, it doesn't seem to affect me at all. Maybe I'm starting to worry that my marks aren't good enough to be accepted into the doctoral programme - although I can say that most of the courses which I took were completely divorced from my working life, whereas my proposed doctoral research is something which sits at the centre of my job.

Disappointing blood test results

Way back in February and January, I wrote about a dairy drink called Danacol, which is supposed to reduce blood cholesterol levels. I had a blood test done at the beginning of February in order to establish a base level and had another yesterday in order to see how six months of Danacol have influenced my cholesterol levels. Here are the tabled results of my last three blood tests:

Date	cholesterol	triglycerides	HDL (good)	LDL (bad)	ratio
15/08/11	205	149	39	137	5.26
03/02/12	188	135	44	117	4.27
26/08/12	207	197	44	124	4.70

All of the numbers - save the HDL - should be as low as possible. It's clear to see that apart from maintaining the HDL level, all the other values have deteriorated! In other words, assuming that everything else has remained the same, Danacol had no effect on me!

Of course, as a scientific experiment, there are several problems. 

1. I am basing my data on one measurement point (ideally the values should be measured weekly, or at least monthly)
2. I am assuming that the food that I eat has remained the same (not too difficult, seeing as I almost always eat the same) - for example, I might have been eating more 27% fat cheese than before, as opposed to 9% or even 5% fat. I certainly have been drinking more milk (although mainly 1%) in the past six months (Spring/Summer) than in the previous six months (Autumn/Winter).
3. I am assuming that my recent illness has had no effect on the lipid levels
4. The body is not a perfect machine

 My immediate decision is to stop buying Danacol! Your mileage may vary.

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Some of the blood which was taken on Sunday will be tested for Pertussis (whooping cough) antibodies. Apparently it is possible to determine whether there are any 'old' antibodies remaining from when I was inoculated as a child and whether there are any new antibodies which were created in the past few weeks. If there are new antibodies - then I did suffer from Pertussis. The results have yet to arrive.

The first step (in solving problems) is the hardest

Continuing a very erratic series of blogs about problem solving, I want to describe a real life problem which I faced and how I solved it. The psychological aspects of this story are more interesting than the problem itself.

First, a little history. I have described before how my company is actually an amalgamation of two (if not three, four or even five) previously existing companies, each with its own specific product line and way of doing things. In terms of our ERP program, the two main companies each have their own environment; whilst many things are the same between those environments, certain things (some crucial) are different.

The Board of Directors decided that as from 01/01/13, we will all work in one environment. Such a decision was made a year ago as well, but was rescinded almost immediately. I've been working on creating a joint environment for the past month or so and have solutions for almost everything (MRP is going to be a real problem!). We decided that initially the development work would concern itself with changing what needed to be changed in order to allow the two companies to co-exist; only later would efforts be made to change those work habits which I consider to be worth improving.

On Monday, I was informed that the merging of the environments is to be postponed for another year and that I was to stop all development work (some of which was contracted out to our ERP consulting company). I would give equal odds that the joint environment will not be active on 01/01/14, but that's irrelevant.

One small issue in the merging process was that of part prices. Our ERP program allows two mutually incompatible approaches: supplier price lists or 'only one price per part'. Naturally, one company uses the price list approach whereas the other uses the 'one price' approach. As far as I am concerned, the price list approach is far superior, for it allows one to manage several prices for the same part (one price per supplier), to allow quantity discounts (one can define a price for amounts 1-249, a separate price for amounts 250-499 and a third price for 500+; these quantities are not fixed, so a second part might have one price for quantities under 1000 and a second price for quantities over 1000), and of course a proper history of prices is maintained. Tools exist for automatically updating the supplier's price list should prices be increased by a given percentage.

I can't really see any advantages in using the 'one price per part' approach, although I might be blinkered. I think that this approach's supporters would probably say that they only ever have one supplier per part and so don't need the flexibility. I think that they're wrong.

Anyway, we had to make a decision as to which approach would be used in the single environment and supplier price list was the choice. I had informed the people in the purchasing departments that use the single price approach that they would have to begin preparing themselves for the change before I knew that the project was abandoned (or postponed), so theoretically I could now tell them that they could continue working in the same manner to which they were accustomed. Whilst this might be considered a violation of the Prime Directive - don't change work habits which don't need to be changed - I considered this an opportunity too good to be missed.

I considered the problem of implementing the change. Each part has a defined purchase price and a designated supplier; my intention was to take this information and build price lists for each designated supplier. But when I tried to define a price list manually, the program informed me that I could not do so as the environment was working by part prices. When I tried to change the system variable which determined by which approach the program worked, I was told that I can't change the variable as there are extant part prices.

I felt that I was facing a chicken and egg problem - I need the part prices to create the price lists but I can't create price lists without deleting all the prices - and of course, if I do that, then I will have no prices with which to create the price lists!

How would you solve this problem?

After humming and hawing for a bit, I outlined a four stage strategy

1. Write a procedure which will take the existing prices and output them to an external file in a format which will be conducive to reading them back in again 
2. Delete the existing prices
3. Change the system variable
4. Create an interface program which will read the file back and create the price lists

The first three stages went smoothly, but I had difficulty in reading the data in the file, so much so that I was unable to create a single price list (there were also problems with the file itself, but that's irrelevant).

Of course, now I was left with a test database bereft of all the part prices so I couldn't continue with anything. My next step was to copy part prices from the production database into the test database - for around 16 thousand parts! Whilst this step would have taken about fifteen minutes in good circumstances, it transpired that there were at least thirty parts defined so badly that one is unable to update them. This caused my rate of copying to be severely compromised, taking maybe an hour to do so (and some part prices I didn't bother copying). 

Taking the time allowed me to think a little about what I was doing. I vowed that before doing anything else, I would copy the price parts to a separate location within the database so that I would be able to repeat the conversion process if things went wrong without having the same problem of manually copying  all those prices and getting stuck with problem parts. As it happened, there was a vacant field in the parts table which I could utilise for this purpose.

Then the penny dropped. The prices were stored in a field called purprice, and the system variable was checking whether there were any values greater than zero in this field. Copying the prices from purprice to a field (which I'll call savedprice) allowed me to zero purprice - and thus change the system variable - whilst maintaining the price in savedprice. I could write a procedure which would build the price lists from the saved prices. In other words:

1. Save price in new field and zero old price
2. Change system variable
3. Run procedure which reads the prices from the new field and creates supplier price lists

The program needed in stage 3 here was much simpler than the program required in the previous stage 1 and utilised an interface which already exists (no need to write a new interface program which proved problematic). I was able to write the program - and painfully debug it - in about an hour; converting the test database from one approach to the other took about fifteen minutes with a minimum of pain.

As I wrote at the beginning, I am more interested in how I arrived at the insight necessary to solve the problem and less in how I actually solved the problem. It has been my experience that the solution to many problems are simple to implement/code once a suitable approach has been adopted; the problem is finding the suitable approach.

I had so blinkered myself with the chicken and egg aspect that I couldn't see at first how the simple initial step of saving the required data (prices) in a different place would enable me to solve the problem. Cat Stevens once wrote a song called 'The first cut is the deepest' (initially recorded by P.P. Arnold and then possibly by Rod Stewart); in problem solving, I would say that 'The first step is the hardest'.

I noticed this same blinkering effect with people trying to find an optimum solution for the puzzle in which four people have to cross a river with a two person canoe. Those who started with the slowest person crossing first (Andrew and David in my example) had great difficulty in finding the optimum solution, whereas those who had the two fastest people (Andrew and Brian) had less difficulty.

The lesson to be learnt from this example is how to convert what seems to be a chicken and egg problem into something more simple. We'll see whether I've learnt anything the next time such a situation arises.

Back to normal (well, almost normal)

Over the past few days, the intensity of the coughing attacks (especially at night) has been decreasing and it was becoming clear that shortly things would be returning to normal. So after having had the pleasure of a night spent in my bed without waking up for a coughing attack, I decided to return to work (I should point out that I have been working from home, when not coughing, but it's not the same thing).

I still occasionally have an unproductive cough and can still feel the mucus at the back of my throat, but my status seems to have returned to what it was three weeks ago. I still can't talk at a volume above that of a whisper, so I don't try.

Still coughing

My last post was an excellent example of why people should not diagnose themselves. Since about lunchtime yesterday there has been a vast improvement in my condition, which rules out the self diagnosed whooping cough and rules in the more likely upper respiratory tract infection. I am still coughing (especially at night), but there are no more paroxysms, thank God. The end is in sight - which is why it can't be whooping cough, aka 'The 100 day cough'.

There is still some amount of mucus which occasionally prevents me from breathing properly; this mucus is still extracted with great difficulty (and with whooping, or more accurately, hawing) but the effect required - and the price paid by my muscles - is much less.

I tried sleeping in my bed, but a coughing attack at about midnight sent me back to the reclining chair in the lounge where I have been trying to sleep for the past few days. During the day, I was watching television and almost nodding off; my head must have angled down for again I suffered an attack (this exact thing happened the day before). So: I must keep my head up at all times - very difficult when trying to sleep!

I had two chest x-rays taken today, one from the front and one from the side. I've seen the resulting pictures but have not yet seen the specialist's analysis (there is a great internet based system in operation the past few months which enables one to see the x-rays from any browser). 

On a completely different subject, this is my 500th blog! I started blogging after returning from a holiday in 2005, so in seven years I have written 500 blogs, or about 71 a year. This is works out at about one and a half blogs a week on average, which I think is fine. 

Tomorrow is my 56th birthday.

Diary of a cough

On or around 9 July, an innocent cough appeared, at first very timid, which didn't seem to be connected to anything. As the doctors say, it was unproductive. By the weekend, I was still coughing and now feeling slightly weak - but there was no elevated temperature.

Obviously this cough was worrying me enough by then to go to the family doctor (15/7); she examined me and listened to my lungs. "The lungs are clear", she said, "and everything else seems to be ok, although the throat is slightly red". As the weakness had passed, I was "released for observation" without treatment.

Nothing much happened during the next week, although I began coughing harder and harder; in fact, I would have coughing attacks at night which left me temporarily very weak. The cough was still unproductive. So I returned to the doctor on 23/7; she repeated her examination with the same results. This time she prescribed an anti-histamine (which would be intended to reduce any inflammation, not that she could see any) and a mucolytic agent (which would thin out the mucus and allow me to expel it).

Again, nothing much happened for a few days, although one night I had yet another coughing attack and felt that I couldn't breathe at all. Fortunately, I have the CPAP machine, which blows pressurised air into my nose, so I quickly put the mask on and started breathing again. The next morning I drove to Jerusalem in order to see an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist (this was the nearest clinic with the most immediate appointment). He checked me out and even performed an endoscopic examination (tube goes into the nose and down to the back of the throat) which was very uncomfortable, due to the local anaesthetics. There still seems to be nothing wrong organically.

The next few days - unfortunately, the weekend - were a repeat: coughing attacks which left me unable to breathe (or so I thought), with a wheezing sound. Most of these attacks happened at night, where I had the CPAP machine, but one happened when I was in the local supermarket; the manager was quite frightened by my performance (I too was frightened).

The piece de resistance was the Saturday night, when at a frequency of about once an hour, I would wake up, start coughing exceedingly violently and not be able to breathe. Of course, I wasn't getting any sleep - and neither was my wife. The attacks would end by my body trying to vomit - I did in fact vomit once on Saturday morning, when the two cups of tea which I had just drunk ended up on the floor. But generally these were only dry heavings. 

At about 3am, I had a brainwave: maybe I am suffering from side effects of the mucolytic agent. I checked the instructions which came with the tablets, and sure enough, breathing problems and vomiting were listed as possible side effects. I decided there and then not to take another of those tablets. At 4am, my stomach started rumbling, as if I were going to vomit once again, but I managed to control myself and so saved yet another attack. 

Later on during the day, I managed to snag an appointment with the family doctor (29/7) and tried to explain what had been happening since we had last met (by this time, I could hardly talk). She seemed disinclined to my theory that I was suffering from side effects; she tended to believe that I was suffering from reflux gastritis which can cause coughing (and I am technically a chronic sufferer of this, but I take a pill every day and so am asymptomatic). I tried to describe my breathing problems and unintentionally went into the same non-breathing loop there and then. It turns out that I was breathing - the wheezing was the automatic attempt to force air into the lungs - but not in a normal matter, and of course my freaking out wasn't helping.

The doctor ordered a chest x-ray (which I intend to do today; I don't know what she'll be able to see from an x-ray) and prescribed an antibiotic as well as increased dosage for the anti reflux gastritis medicine. 

A chance remark by a nurse in the clinic suggested to me that I might be suffering from whooping cough aka pertussis (as it happened, there had been an item on the news the previous evening about mothers refusing to let their babies be inoculated against whooping cough); when I got home, I started researching the subject. And what did I find?

The classic signs of pertussis are a paroxysmal cough, inspiratory whoop, and vomiting after coughing. If there is vomiting after a coughing spell or an inspiratory whooping sound on coughing, the likelihood that the illness is pertussis is nearly doubled. The incubation period is typically seven to ten days in infants or young children, after which there are usually mild respiratory symptoms, mild coughing, sneezing, or runny nose. This is known as the catarrh stage. After one to two weeks, the coughing classically develops into uncontrollable fits, each with five to ten forceful coughs, followed by a high-pitched "whoop" sound in younger children, or a gasping sound in older children, as the patient struggles to breathe in afterwards (paroxysmal stage). Fits can occur on their own or can be triggered by yawning, stretching, laughing, eating or yelling; they usually occur in groups, with multiple episodes every hour around the clock. This stage usually lasts two to eight weeks, or sometimes longer. A gradual transition then occurs to the convalescent stage, which usually lasts one to two weeks. This stage is marked by a decrease in paroxysms of coughing, both in frequency and severity, and a cessation of vomiting.

I think that my symptoms match the bill: the slow build up, the paroxysmal cough, the whoop, hourly episodes. Whether I do actually have whooping cough (ie a bacterial infection) is irrelevant; I do have the symptoms and I certainly have the 'whoop'. Knowing this made coping slightly easier: I don't get totally stressed out when an attack occurs (although the paroxysm is exceeding unpleasant and slightly painful) and know that immediately after, my body is trying to breathe. I have worked out a repeated arrangement of cough, clean mouth/spit, breathe, which seems to do the trick. Also, I am now actively removing as much of the mucus/phlegm from my body as I can, which should help.

I have to sleep in a chair with my back raised so that the mucus doesn't drown me, a position which is hardly conducive to sleep. I awake after maybe an hour for a coughing attack which lasts maybe fifteen minutes; then at least another fifteen minutes go by before I am calm enough (and my mouth clean enough) to try to rest again. As a result of all the above, I'm only sleeping a few hours every night - and of course, this sleep is not continuous and so not useful.

During the day there are fewer episodes - mornings seem to be less problematic - so I manage to get some work done (of course, I haven't traveled to work the past few days). I generally feel almost all right, although very tired. I daren't lay down for a nap, for if I do, I will wake up with a coughing attack. I have to be very careful about what I eat - adding wheat germ to yoghurt is a very bad idea as the small grains stimulate my palate which causes me to cough.

Today I hope to do the chest x-ray and tomorrow I will return to the doctor. It looks like I will have to conduct my side of the examination via a mobile computer as I can barely talk (physically talking seems to encourage coughing attacks). The quoted passage above doesn't give me very much hope - the paroxysmal coughing stage can last eight weeks! Of course, I may not have whooping cough, in which case this stage should be shorter.

[Edited 13/09/12 - a few of the final paragraphs have been revised and rewritten]

Trivets and punnets

For a long while, I have wanted to find a way to cook vegetables in the slow cooker in such a way that the vegetables get cooked but stay separate from everything else. The clearest expression of this wish occurs every Friday night when I cook chicken drumsticks and thighs, along with a melange of courgettes, carrots and onion. Towards the end of the cooking period I remove excess liquid which serves as the liquid for rice. My wife doesn't like rice and would prefer to eat potatoes, but she also doesn't like to eat the vegetable melange. If I could find a way of cooking a potato in the slow cooker without mixing it then she would be very pleased ( for those who don't know, one does not cook a potato whole in the slow cooker but rather chops it up into small cubes).

I have read about a technique with pressure cookers that uses something called trivets to keep certain items separate; when I google trivet, the primary results are frameworks made out of metal on which one places hot dishes - not what I want at all. The example on the left is the sort of thing which I have been finding. I have tried in the real world to find what I have been looking for but being unable to find a suitable word in Hebrew, I have had difficulty in cooking appliance shops ('trivet' translated into Hebrew gives the same word as 'tripod'). Yesterday, I dragged the old chestnut out again but started searching for 'perforated metal cooking', which at least gave me different results.

I realised that a good example of what I need is the kind of container in which people keep cutlery after washing: a tall, circular metal container with holes in. Whilst making a cup of tea, I noticed that we had exactly this kind of container next to the sink! I took all the utensils out of the container and tried it for size inside the slow cooker - although the container was tall, it fit exactly under the slow cooker's lid! So I chopped the potato, put the cubes into the container (after having thoroughly washed the container!) and then put the container into the slow cooker. The other ingredients fitted around the container. There was no doubt in my mind that I was on the right track but this container was far too big - the potato cubes did not even fill half of the container and the rest was empty space.


My wife (of course) expressed doubt about this new culinary technique but was very pleased with the results. I asked her if she remembered where she had bought the container but she didn't recall; she also pointed out that such containers come in only one size which is too big - I was contemplating buying one and cutting it to size.


After dinner comes the ritual of throwing rubbish and taking the dog for a walk whilst getting my daily exercise. Such is the power of serendipity that next to the rubbish bin I found a plastic punnet which was exactly what I was looking for (and it turns out that there were two punnets stacked together)!

We were uncertain as to whether the punnet could resist the mild heat of the slow cooker; rather than wait until I cooked something (and so possibly ruin whatever was cooked), I put the punnets in the slow cooker, added a few cups of boiling water and then turned the cooker on for a few hours. The punnets passed this test without any damage.

Today's menu features salmon cutlets: I placed the salmon pieces on the floor of the slow cooker, poured over them a thin sauce of water, lemon juice, diced onion, butter and dill and then placed on top the salmon the two punnets, one with potato cubes and one with frozen green beans. When it comes time to serve, I will simply decant the contents of each punnet into a separate glass dish.  

Finally I have the solution to cooking with but serving separate.