Hydra

This morning didn't start off well: there was no internet access, and after 10 am there was no running water in the flat. Fortunately we had tickets for the hovercraft to the island of Hydra, so we weren't too inconvenienced by the lack of water -- although we fervently hoped that the problem would be fixed by the time we came back.

Hydra is a 25 minute trip from Poros, almost due south. I have to admit that I didn't know much about Hydra, apart from the facts that Leonard Cohen was a well known resisdent of the island in the mid 1960s, and that motor vehicles (save those of the fire brigade as well as rubbish collectors) of all types are not allowed on the island -- although we saw two vehicles that should not have been there.

There are many ferries going to the island: in the first hour that we were there, I saw ferries from three different companies arrive along with one small cruise ship (this might have been a day trip from Athens as it wasn't one of those huge ships with cabins). As such, every hour or so there is a new group of people that arrive and overwhelm the small island.

Our first port of call was the Hydra museum, that was small but interesting. Most of the exhibits were concerned with the Greek war of independence period (1820-3) but there were also some artifacts from the second world war. This reminded me slightly of the war museum in Malta¹. One large room was dedicated to the artist Kostas Grammatopoulos with many paintings, wood cuts and lithographs, where generally these were of a faux naif style (but very well done). One wasn't allowed to take photographs within the museum otherwise I would have taken many photos of his works.

Once we finished with the museum, we carried on in the same direction where I ascended a peak lined with cannons - from this position one could see and control a large area of sea. My wife had been going on about 'the sun'; where is the sun, she kept on asking me. I said that it was directly above us as it was noon. No, she said, there is a sculpture of the sun. We carried on walking below the defensive position and eventually came to 'the sun'.

This sculpture is made of two sets of arms; the first is fixed and the second is constantly turning. Fittingly shaped as a giant golden sun, the 9.1 metre wide ‘Apollo Wind Spinner’ that bears the face of the Greek God is just one of artist Jeff Kloon’s newest pieces on display in an exhibition on the Saronic Isle proudly presented by the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art. This was worth the trek in the hot sun.

After the sun, it was back to near where the ferry landed for a very big pizza, even when shared between two. Then we split up, as my wife had had enough walking. I went down into the town by the promenade: like Poros, there were many shops selling tat or dresses. Naturally there were also many bars and restaurants although the range of food was more limited than in Poros. I found  a small monastery tucked away in an alley off this main strip that was very quiet and relaxing.

Eventually we joined up, sat by the ferry landing and swapped pictures. The ferry came, we travelled back to Poros stopping below our flat, then we walked into the flat. One of us turned on a tap ... and water flowed! So I had a cold shower then my wife had one; a cup of tea later we laid down for a rest, and here am I at 9 pm typing this.

A good day, but tiring because of the heat and the walking (almost 10,000 steps). We are undecided about tomorrow - I would like to buy a linen shirt and maybe we will take the local minibus for its trip around the island, the local 'hop on hop off' bus.

Internal links
[1] 290

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
199	17/09/2009	The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo	Literature, Steig Larsson
977	17/09/2016	Obligatory monthly grandfather picture	Grandfather
1072	17/09/2017	Interface for importing XML files into Priority	Priority tips
1168	17/09/2018	Maartin Allcock, 1957-2018	Obituary, Fairport Convention
1664	17/09/2023	The GI tract and the new guitar	Guitars, Musical group, Nutrition
1822	17/09/2024	Is this the government that we deserve?	Israel
2002	17/09/2025	Robert Redford RIP	Films, Obituary

Nothing much happening

Because the evening had been relatively cool, we decided to sleep with the windows open. As Julia Roberts said in 'Pretty Woman', "big mistake. BIG MISTAKE". There was a tremendous amount of noise coming from the restaurant/taverna where we had eaten (just below our flat) and that noise went on for hours. Not only the noise was making it hard to sleep: at about 2:30 am, my left nostril became blocked, making it hard to breathe with the CPAP mask. At home, I keep a inhaler by my bedside, but of course on holiday I had nothing. After thinking about it a little and remembering how either the ENT doctor or a nurse said that salt water would do just as well as the inhaler, I decided to get up, make a cup of tea and inhale the steam coming  from the tea. To my surprise and pleasure, after a few minutes my nose cleared and I could go back to bed.

My wife also suffered from the noise so she stayed in bed until quite late. As a result, we didn't get moving until about 10 am. Although we are on holiday and not really bound to any timetable, we had intended to drive around the island in the local minibus that follows a circular route. The bus has strange hours (for us): 8-11 am, 1-2 pm and 7-12 pm, and so we didn't feel that today would be suitable. So we spent more hours walking the shops. By the time we stopped for lunch, it was already close to 2pm and by the time we had finished it was nearly 3 pm. In order to make something of the day, I suggested that we take a taxi to the monastery; when a taxi finally pulled up, the driver told us that the monastery closes for lunch between 1 and 5 pm, so that was out.

So we spent our afternoon dozing in the flat and making up for the lost sleep. Eventually we had a light supper in our flat and then I went out for an evening power walk. I discovered that past the supermarket there is a coloured fountain, similar but smaller than the one outside Bari train station¹. Waiting in the supermarket queue, I heard someone speaking Hebrew - this is the fourth group of Israelis that I have come across in the past few days, so obviously Poros is known in Israel. Unlink my wife, I don't believe in engaging unknown people in conversation, even if we are speaking the same language.

In the night I woke up again with a blocked nose. This time I didn't bother making tea: I boiled water, poured a cup and inhaled the steam. Again this worked perfectly after a minute or two - so when we are back at home, I'll use this trick the next time my nose gets blocked.

Internal links
[1] 1509

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
975	16/09/2016	Intermediate submission accepted, part two: the feedback	DBA
976	16/09/2016	Sleep apnea (again)	CPAP, Apnea, Gadgets
2001	16/09/2025	Biopsy results	Health, Motorbikes, BCC

A change in the weather

As opposed to yesterday when it was very hot, today was reasonably cool - around 24ºC. There was a little rain during the night although I didn't hear it, a little more in the afternoon when we resting and then again in the evening when we set out for a pre-prandial walk and dinner. One side of the main road is where boats are tied up and there were some puddles there; the other side has shops and outside restaurants, but it is possible to walk past the shops and through the restaurants so very little rain actually fell upon us.

I woke up a few times during the night, and on one of my visits to the toilet, I took the picture that appears on the left: this is the sea that separates Paros from the Peloponnese town of Galatas. It looks better at night than it does during the day. Probably one day we'll take the snall ferry over to the other side to see what lies there but I doubt that there's anything particularly interesting.

I awoke fairly earlier, and in lieu of my normal breakfast, I started off with half a bottle of strawberry flavoured kefir, Kefir is made by fermenting the lactose in goat milk, yielding a sour, carbonated, slightly alcoholic beverage, although the consistency is similar to the drinkable yoghourt.Over the past few weeks I've started buying s similar product from a Israeli dairy that supplies to the kibbutz once every fortnight; the kefir was 'sharper' than the Israeli product. The kefir has 48 calories per 100 ml whereas the Israeli version has something like 100 calories/100 ml, if not more. Maybe I'll try and find kefir in Israel.

I couldn't figure out how to get the electric cooker to work so we had toasted cheese sandwiches for a lighter breakfast that we would have preferred. I discovered later on that the fuse was turned off in the main fusebox so from tomorrow we can have omelettes for breakfast. After leaving our flat, I took my wife slowly up the sea side of the road until we reached the supermarket. Here we bought more supplies, including two bottles of blackcurrant flavoured kefir that I look forward to drinking over the next few days. We walked back on the shop side of the road, checking out the produce so that we could see what would be better to purchase. Unfortunately my wife wasn't too consistent with this attitude and bought something that turned out to be inferior (and also more expensive) than something that we saw in the evening.

By the time we got back to the area near our flat, it was already 13:30, so we treated ourselves to brunch in the cafe directly under our flat, adding the protein that we missed in the morning. My wife had scrambled eggs with salad on french toast whereas I had scrambled eggs and smoked salmon on toast. Very nice.

After a rest, we went out again, turning left at the bottom of our steps instead of right, and so we saw a new set of restaurants. I didn't see many shops, but when we turned back, partially because of the rain, we discoved an alley way consisting only of shops. Some of these we better than the shops that we had seen in the morning.

Eventually we arrived back at our steps and sar down in the restaurant on the right of our steps. I had seen previously that they had various fish stored on ice in their window so I knew that we could have grilled sea bass close to our flat instead of having to walk to a recommended fish restaurant that was near the supermarket. We had to wait some time for the fish to be cooked, but probably because of the coldish wind blowing, it wasn't particularly hot. But it was good.

[I notice that there's a bug in the label algorithm of Blogger: I have chosen the label 'Poros' but instead the label 'coupling' appears. Weird.]

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
9	15/09/2005	Migraine	Migraine
406	15/09/2011	Planning the SQL	Delphi, SQL, Firebird
511	15/09/2012	My father's 90th birthday	Personal, Father
1663	15/09/2023	Cropping videos	Home movies, Musical group
1821	15/09/2024	A gentleman in Moscow	Personal, Literature

13,000 steps

Shortly after my announcement blog, the taxi came to take us to the airport. I had aleady performed a check-in that gave us boarding cards, but I (and many others) also had to use the automatic check-in machine to print luggage tags. What we didn't know was that the machine would only allow one to check in at a maximum of three hours before the flight, and we got there too early. So we had to hang around for 20 minutes before the machine would print the tags. What was the advantage in this? The queue to hand over our suitcase was much smaller and hence much faster. But once we had handed over the suitcase, we were like everyone else.

The flight with El Al was fine - this was probably a jumbo as there were ten seats per row and there were many rows. The flight took just over two hours, and we were served with a hot cheese and omelette sandwich - very tasty. Once we touched down at Athens airport we had to walk a fair amount before we came to passport control. The staff were prepared to recognise our British passports as EU passports, so we didn't have to wait at all in order to have our passports checked. The luggage didn't take long to come out, and very shortly after we had passed through the minimal customs and we were out of the airport.

In a similar manner to Malpensa airport (Milan), we had to walk a certain amount in order to get to the metro station. There was a train waiting for us to take us to Piraeus port, and like the train from Malpensa, it was at first packed. But many people got out at Syntagma Square and Monastiraki (about 100 metres from where we stayed in Athens¹ last time) so then we could get seats. The train delivered us to Piraeus port.

I looked at our tickets (also printed after a web check-in the previous day) and saw that our ferry would leave from wharf E9. This turned out to be quite a long way from where the train station was, probably the furthest wharf of all. We wanted to leave time to be sure that we would arrive at the ferry stop on time, so I booked seats on the 13:00 ferry; we were there at about 11:30 and had to wait for an hour. Eventually our ferry came, we embarked, found our seats and had a comfortable ride for an hour and 10 minutes.So far so good.

We had booked our stay in a large flat (more of that later) that apparently was near if not on the seaside promenade, but it wasn't clear how exactly we would get to the flat. We knew that it was very close to where the ferry drops its passengers. While we were on the train to Piraeus I saw that we had a message from our landlady saying that she couldn't meet us but would leave the key in the ferry office. Where was the ferry office? I walked a certain distance one way on the promenade and a certain distance the other way and couldn't find the office (shades of when we arrived in Andros). Then I noticed that behind where my wife was waiting in the shade was the office I was looking for! At first they didn't know what I was talking about but then they saw the key and gave it to me. How do we get to the flat? Go pass the cafe on the left then take the steps. ... these steps are very steep and very hard to walk up with the suitcases.

Eventually I got everything to the top ... but where is the flat? I could hear voices coming from the first door by the steps so obviously it wasn't there. I idly tried to put the key in the lock of the second door - and it fit! So I knew that this was the correct place.

After recovering from all the walking and lifting, I went out in search of a supermarket. I had an idea of where it was, but it turned to be wrong. Someone gave me instructions: go down to the promenade and walk 500 metres to the right. So I did this and found the supermarket - except that it seemed to sell only toiletries and cleaning materials.With a heavy heart, I started walking back to our flat, but decided to stop at an ice cream parlour where they sold (amongst other flavours) a gorgeous after eight mint  chocolate ice cream! So of course I stopped and had a portion; whilst I was eating it, I asked the server about the supermarket. He said that the supermarket was split into two: I had gone into one half, but a bit further on was the other half that sold only food. So I bought milk, eggs, bread and a few other items - enough for tonight and tomorrow. I don't want to visit there every day (it is about 1,000 steps from the flat) but obviously another visit is called for.

It is now 18:30 and I am worn out; my feet hurt and my face is hot from all the sun. Tomorrow is another day.

Internal links
[1] 1223

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
281	14/09/2010	A twilight health stage	Health
405	14/09/2011	Firebird DB management	Programming, Delphi, Firebird
510	14/09/2012	Happy New Year!	Jewish holidays
974	14/09/2016	Intermediate submission accepted!	DBA
1662	14/09/2023	A long, long day	Jewish holidays, Health, Guitars, Musical group
1820	14/09/2024	Remixing 'Tribe'	Home recording
2000	14/09/2025	2,000 blogs	Meta-blogging

Holiday!

I'm writing this at 2 am, not because I can't sleep but because I am up early in order to travel to the airport, in order to fly to Greece. We're going on a short holiday to the Greek island of Poros that I imagine that few non-Greeks have heard of.  This was all booked at short notice due to various reasons that I won't go into.

More later.

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
281	14/09/2010	A twilight health stage	Health
405	14/09/2011	Firebird DB management	Programming, Delphi, Firebird
510	14/09/2012	Happy New Year!	Jewish holidays
974	14/09/2016	Intermediate submission accepted!	DBA
1662	14/09/2023	A long, long day	Jewish holidays, Health, Guitars, Musical group
1820	14/09/2024	Remixing 'Tribe'	Home recording
2000	14/09/2025	2,000 blogs	Meta-blogging

New Year's greeting

This year, amongst the various pictures and videos that I have received for the Jewish New Year (starting tonight), I have noticed a new trend: an AI 'enhanced' picture of a family. This can be done easily via the Gemini application on my phone. I created the picture on the left as an 'impressionistic saxophonist', but I'm well aware that my current level of playing wouldn't allow me to ply my trade in a park. 

I have to say that this picture bares almost no resemblance to the original picture! My face is recognisable but I can assure any reader that I certainly wasn't smiling in the original; I was too busy concentrating. Apart from anything else, I was sitting, not standing.

Here's a more conventional greeting.

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
6	11/09/2005	Song uploads	Soundclick
7	11/09/2005	Comments	Meta-blogging
198	11/09/2009	Sandy Denny in "Ma'ariv"	Sandy Denny
404	11/09/2011	Fictional MI5	TV series, John Le Carre, MI5, Stella Rimington
755	11/09/2014	Last of the Luddites	Mobile phone
1167	11/09/2018	New Year holiday	DBA, Personal, Swimming
1257	11/09/2019	Mobile phone problem ... solved	Mobile phone
1421	11/09/2021	Chicken and rice together in one pot (2)	Cooking
1422	11/09/2021	Smart watch (2)	Mobile phone, Walking, Swimming
1527	11/09/2022	The ink black heart (2)	Cormoran Strike
1818	11/09/2024	Guitar setup	Guitars
1998	11/09/2025	Rapallo log 8 - A day off	Holiday, Italy, Rapallo

Another long day

Yesterday was exceedingly similar to another long, long day.¹. On the day before yesterday (i.e. Tuesday), the acoustic line-up (more on this later) had a rehearsal that lasted until 10:30 pm. As a result, I didn't get much sleep that night. Yesterday morning I was up at 5:30 am to take the dog for a walk, then I went to the swimming pool for what is now a short swim - only 28 lengths. After coming home, showering and breakfasting, it was into the car for a doctor's appointment for my wife. I had hoped that there would have been a break after lunch for a short lie down, but one of my clients requested my presence at 14:00 and the work with him lasted until 16:00. 

Then it was time to walk to the local arts centre for my second saxophone lesson. During the week between lessons, I had watched some YouTube videos concerning the first steps: how to put the ligature and reed together with the mouthpiece, and how to blow. Despite these videos that helped somewhat, I was barely able to get a note out of the neck, let alone with the neck connected to the saxophone. The picture shows the neck without the mouthpiece but one gets the idea.

At the beginning of the lesson, I asked my teacher to show me exactly how to put all the parts together and I filmed him doing this. I tried blowing again after he had put the saxophone together, but once again couldn't get a note out. So he replaced the reed with a thinner one (2 mm) and also replaced the ligature. Then I put all the pieces together, despite my three left hands, and finally managed to get some sounds out of the saxophone. These were much better than the previous week's sound that had shades of David Jackson's avant garde playing for VdGG.

Then it was time to do some exercises. My teacher put some sheet music on a stand and I started playing - or at least I tried to start playing. It took a while to get going but eventually I played several of the exercises. There are two main problems: I don't have enough breath necessary for playing some of them, and I have difficulty with the low C (this requires using the down octave key). But generally the playing went well, and the teacher said that I was doing very well for someone who was having only his second lesson. Of course, he didn't have to explain to me how to read music. The top jaw has to bite quite hard but the bottom lip has to be fairly relaxed: pressing too hard will close the reed and so no sound will emerge. The mouthpiece also has to be at a specific point within the mouth otherwise notes are liable to be out of tune. I am sure that this will become much easier as I continue.

There are a few major differences between playing the guitar or piano as opposed to playing the saxophone. On my instruments, one plays a scale from the lowest note to the highest note, whereas on the saxophone, the scales are mainly played in a descending manner. One idiosyncratic point to note is that the top note C (it's actually Eb as the alto saxophone is a transposing instrument, but we won't go into that) is played by pressing the second key in the left hand whereas the B is played by pressing the top left hand key, and A is played by pressing both those keys. The other major difference is that playing a note on the guitar or piano is not particularly dependent on which note is played, whereas the lower notes on the saxophone are considered harder to play than the higher notes.

By 17:15, the lesson had finished and I was all blown out. Then it was time to go home, pick up the 12 string guitar then walk down to the dining hall where the New Year ceremony would be held. It has occurred to me that this is the third time that I have played at this ceremony in the past four years (I don't remember what happened last year) and that every time I have played a different guitar: the Washburn, the Stagg and now the 12 string. I doubt that anyone else would have paid attention. This year we were what I call 'the acoustic line up of the House Band', and played three songs.

When the ceremony finished, it was back home to take the dog for her evening walk, by which time I was totally wiped out. I went to bed early and slept for a long time. My phone tells me that yesterday I walked 11,476 steps which is more than enough.

My saxophone teacher sent me a link to a shop where I could buy thinner saxophone reeds, so I ordered last week. The parcel came today - a shame that it wasn't yesterday. Today was a much easier day, mainly consulting work. 

Internal links
[1] 1662

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
403	10/09/2011	Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world	Israel
508	10/09/2012	PDF games	Programming, Computers
1817	10/09/2024	Temu surprises!	Temu
1997	10/09/2025	Rapallo log 7 - Villa Durazzo	Holiday, Italy, Rapallo

The first lesson

Today I had my first lesson learning how to play the saxophone. As far as I can see at the moment, there are two separate actions that have to be learnt: how to produce a tone in a constant manner, and how to finger the correct notes. The second action doesn't bother me too much: I've already picked up a certain amount of skill. But it's the actual mechanics of producing a constant tone that have me stymied. 

It may just be that the reed in the mouthpiece is too thick (2.5 mm) and that a thinner reed will be easier. But the actual form that my mouth has to take - the embouchure - seems unnatural at the moment. My upper teeth have to grip the mouthpiece but my lower lip - not the teeth - should be on the reed. Also, it seems that I shouldn't take the mouthpiece too far into my mouth. The high notes were more difficult than the lower notes, which according to my teacher, is unusual.

No doubt this will all become easier in the future. 

I asked (tongue in cheek) which sound is worse: someone learning to play the violin or someone learning to play the saxophone. He answered that the violin sounds worse but that the saxophone is louder! So it's six of one and six of the other.

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
622	02/09/2013	The Magic of Belle Isle	Films
1164	02/09/2018	Delphi community edition	Delphi
1335	02/09/2020	Wedding stairs	Personal, Kibbutz
1417	02/09/2021	Once again, John Martyn	John and Beverley Martin
1812	02/09/2024	Eight months of Temu	Temu
1987	02/09/2025	No luck with guitar strings	Guitars

Ajovy

Following a third appointment with my neurologist a few weeks ago, I was prescribed Ajovy which certainly is the most recent treatment for migraines and should be the most effective and with the fewest side effects. It will be difficult to tell how effective it will be during the coming month as I don't normally suffer from migraines over the summer; it's the autumn, winter and spring that are the seasons for migraines, especially with rapid changes in the weather.

I went last week to fill the prescription, but was told that there was no prescription even though the medication had been authorised by the 'regional head office', and anyway it would have to be ordered, as the pharmacy doesn't keep a stock of these syringes. During the past week I checked with my GP that she had issued the required prescription, so today I had the chance to go to the pharmacy again and collect the medication. I had fully intended to go to the kibbutz clinic so that they could show me how to use the medication; in the accompanying leaflet to the syringe, it was written that the user should be shown how to use the syringe by a doctor or nurse.

Except that when I arrived at the clinic, the nurses didn't know initially what to do. Apparently there are several members who use Wegovy, the weight loss medication that also comes in a syringe, but there one syringe is for four separate injections, whereas with Ajovy, one injects the entire contents of the syringe and the effect lasts for a month. In fact, it's possible even to inject at the same time three syringes in order to cover a three month period.

The actual mechanism of the injection is very simple: after cleaning the area (near to the belly button) and removing the needle guard from the syringe, one simply presses the syringe to the target area and holds it for 30 seconds. Initially a click is heard, which means that the needle has exited the syringe and then a few seconds later, a second click is heard, signifying that the contents of the syringe have been injected. One is told to hold the syringe in place for another 10 seconds and then one wipes the injection area with gauze. The spent syringe is sent to the clinic for disposal along with all the other 'sharps', even though the needle has retracted (this probably happens during the extra 10 seconds). 

Did I feel anything? As I was concentrating on the injection, I felt a little prick and then a mild feeling of liquid entering the body, but this was negligible. Next time I probably won't feel anything. The injection site has not turned red - in fact, I'm not too sure exactly where I injected. So good: no side effects. Below appears the syringe on top of its box; I appreciate that it might be difficult to see what is what. Here's a clue: the blue cap that appears in the lower left hand side of the picture is the needle guard, and the syringe goes from there to the right hand side of the picture.

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
51	01/09/2006	More about Pip	Obituary, Canterbury sound
1163	01/09/2018	The mp3 player for swimming takes its maiden plunge	Personal, MP3, Swimming
1416	01/09/2021	Adrenal venous sampling (3) - unofficial results	Health, Aldosterone

CD database/2

After converting all the data of this database¹, the only programming that I've done so far is to define the form that retrieves concerts data according to the parameters passed along with the code necessary for adding and editing concerts. I tested this by adding the date of the concert when I saw 10cc - according to a site that I found,  they played three concerts at London's Hammersmith Odeon, on 17-19 February 1976. The entries come from the notebook in which I used to record the concerts; I threw the notebook out years ago after I copied all the data into the database so I can't check anything anymore.

There were two very interesting entries (at least, to me) towards the beginning of the list (these weren't the first concerts that I attended, but I didn't add data for those - Tom Paxton twice and Julie Felix): on 20/02/1970 I saw Fairport Convention supported by John and Beverley Martin, and on 22/03/1970 I saw Fotheringay supported by the Humblebums and Nick Drake. These data make sense of the mixed-up memories² that I have about the support acts.

Internal links

[1] 2135
[2] 2044

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
50	31/08/2006	Pip Pyle, RIP	Obituary, RIP, Canterbury sound
505	31/08/2012	Fomer school friend knighted	1972
1162	31/08/2018	The search for the perfect mp3 player	MP3, Headphones

CD database

Thinking about how many times I have seen Sandy Denny¹ in concert caused me to wonder how many times I have seen Fairport Convention in concert*. I know that I have this datum stored in my old CD database, but since the great computer blackout², I discovered that I don't have this program/database installed on my mobile computer. Fortunately I found a backup on a disk from several years ago so at least I could restore the program sources and data. But I couldn't run the program as the database engine involved was the Borland Database Engine (aka BDE) that has been deprecated for at least 10 years if not more. 

So before I could look at the data, I would have to convert it to a different format. At first, I thought that I could do this on the Windows 11 computer, but it turns out that FireDAC cannot read from Paradox databases. Fortunately I have an installation of Delphi 7 on a Windows XP virtual machine, and although I hadn't previously installed the BDE installed there, it wasn't difficult to install it. After searching hard in my memory, I remembered that there was a program called the Database Desktop that allows one to see the data in a BDE database; I should point out that in the BDE each table is implemented by four to six different files, so there were about 40 files that together make up the database, and not one big file as Firebird implements databases.

There is an old version of Firebird installed on the VM (no unicode) so initially I defined the seven tables that make up the database. I changed quite a few of the field names within the tables - originally I had defined several fields with names like 'cd title', that caused more than a few problems when writing the code to access the tables. At the moment, the order of the fields within each table is the same as it was in the BDE, but in Firebird it's better to have varchar fields defined at the end of each table instead of having them scattered randomly throughout the table.

After a great deal of mucking about (including one colossal bug of my own making that set me back about an hour), I had a program that converted those seven tables to a more modern format. The next stage in restoring the data was moving the database file to the Windows 11 machine then converting the database to unicode. This was partially complicated by the fact that a few of the tables had fields containing Hebrew. The conversion from win1255 to unicode took somewhat longer than I had expected and not only because of the Hebrew. For example, one field in the 'tracks' table holds the length of the track; for some reason I had stored this in a string field, such as '4:17'. One track out of the 3,217 tracks in the table had the time '4.17', so of course this table didn't convert until I fixed the errant record. 

There are two tables ('composer' and 'musician') whose primary key should be a composite of track and person, as per this blog³. But the transfer failed because there were several duplicate entries in both of these tables, i.e. the 'id' field was different (as it was an auto-increment primary key) but there were rows with the same 'track' and 'person'. I deleted these before attempting the conversion. The fact that there were duplicates means that the original program logic was flawed; duplicates cannot be created if the primary key is the composite of track and person.

So now I have a unicode database and I can set about writing the program that accesses this database. Most of the code is going to be new as the original structure left a lot to be desired. Actually, the program was originally intended to be a cd player that could display data about a cd as it was being played and that influenced the design.

A cd database is quite problematic in terms of data design because the unique 'unit' is not a cd but rather a single track - and even this isn't unique as a track can appear on both a 'normal' cd and on a compilation. A track has composers and musicians whereas a cd doesn't have composers. Of course, a track belongs to a cd. The 'concerts' table is a nice addition that doesn't affect any of the track data but can utilise the 'artists' table.

* 22 times

Internal links
[1] 2132
[2] 2041
[3] 2123

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
195	30/08/2009	The world of Henry Orient	Films
504	30/08/2012	Three emails	Health, Robert Silverberg, MBA
1161	30/08/2018	Maximum word count for submission	DBA
1255	30/08/2019	Priority tip: beware of linked files when checking in Windbi	Priority tips
1334	30/08/2020	Evening ferry	Song writing, Andros, Greece
1811	30/08/2024	Books (new song)	Song writing

Health benefits from freezing bread

I watched a YouTube video a few days ago by "Dr Alex" in which he made the astounding statement that freezing bread - or even storing mashed potatoes in the fridge - causes the starch in the food to change its structure, and as a result, the starch becomes 'resistant starch' that the body has difficulty in metabolising. This transformed starch behaves more like dietary fiber, delaying glucose release into the bloodstream. Not only that, the undigested resistant starch passes into the large intestine, where beneficial gut bacteria ferment it into short-chain fatty acids like butyrate. This process is called retrogradation.

At first, I thought that this was another crank video, and indeed another video popped up that purports to bust this myth of converting normal starch into resistant starch. But I do have a master's degree in research and know that hearing something from one source does not make it so and that YouTube is not a reliable source of information.

Thus I looked at the literature: the first paper that appeared, entitled 'Effect of freezing and heating white bread on the glycemic response of healthy individuals'. Here's an extract:

Results: The glycemic response of the participants to frozen and reheated white bread was lower compared to fresh white bread at all time intervals. The maximum blood sugar level was reached after 30 minutes of consuming fresh bread, at 132 mg/dl. However, for reheated bread, it reached 120 mg/dl. The prolonged freezing time did not increase the amount of resistant starch, and similar results were observed for 3, 5, and 7 days of freezing in terms of decreasing blood sugar levels.

Conclusion: Frozen and reheated white bread leads to lower blood sugar levels compared to fresh white bread. This can be attributed to the formation of resistant starch during the freezing process.

I could look for more but there are plenty of hits that conform this. As it happens, the bread that I eat is baked by an artisanal baker of the kibbutz and is far from the white bread sold in supermarkets. I normally have a spare loaf in the freezer in case the baker decides to take a week off (his mother is seriously ill at the moment) and I keep the current loaf in the fridge so I am unknowingly taking advantage of this health benefit. I also keep a loaf of white sweetened bread in the freezer for the grandchildren: we take a slice out and toast it, so again even though they are eating the worst possible type of bread, we are actually mitigating the qualities that make it so bad.

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
194	29/08/2009	Nick Drake in "Ma'ariv"	Nick Drake
279	29/08/2010	The Swell Season/The Frames	Swell Season
884	29/08/2015	What's been happening during August	TV series, Films, Meg Ryan
885	29/08/2015	Ways of encouraging companies to participate in survey for my doctoral reseach	DBA, Statistics

Swimming and showering

The number of lengths that I've been swimming has slowly been increasing - today I swam 34 and I might have swum more if I hadn't had to return home at a specific time. I always used to have a hot shower when I arrived home, trying to warm up my shoulders and thighs. But as it happens, I was rereading a book entitled 'Swimmingly' (about the author's experiences in open water swimming, ie rivers and the sea, not swimming pools), when I came across this passage.

No hot showers at the Serpentine, thankfully, otherwise you’d get a lot of people emerging from the freezing lake and heading straight into a hot shower. Which is a really ugly thing to do, because you don’t recover for the rest of the day. When you’ve been in cold water for a while and your core temperature has sunk, the capillaries shrink. They contract as you get cold. Your body’s trying to get as much heat into its core as possible. So if you go and get hot after being cold for a long period of time, the capillaries open and the blood flows to your skin, robbing the efficient heating process your body’s going through.

Having a hot shower before going to bed is recommended, as the hot water causes the blood vessels to dilate and so the body loses heat which is ideal if one is going to sleep. But in order to recover after a swim, it's better to shower in cold water, as illogical as it may seem. So today my shower was cool and even though I swam more today that I have on any previous day this year, I am not tired and feel no need to lie down for a rest. Of course, part of this is because my body is getting more and more used to the swimming, but I believe that the cold shower also plays a part in this lack of desire.

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
193	28/08/2009	Firebird date fields, continued	Programming, Firebird, dbExpress
503	28/08/2012	Disappointing blood test results	Health
621	28/08/2013	Nothing more	MIDI, Sandy Denny
1333	28/08/2020	Time sheets and perceived value	ERP, DBA, Organisation behaviour
1810	28/08/2024	More on internal links in the blog manager	Programming, Blog manager program

Sandy Denny: a people's history

A few years ago, I bought a book called "Gonna see all my friends" and subtitled "A people's history of Fairport Convention". I thought that the book might provide an up-to-date history of this long running band, as the two previous books ("Meet on the ledge", "The Woodworm years", IIRC) only went as far as possibly 1990 - and that was 26 years ago! Reading the book, I was quickly disabused of this notion: the book consisted of short piece by numerous people, mainly recording their attendance at concerts or meeting the various musicians that played in the band. It was somewhat self-congratulatory and I'm not sure that I even finished reading it. Obviously someone who contributed text to the book was going to buy it and so I felt that it was somewhat like a 'vanity press' book: here's the text, here's £100 (probably much more now), print me 100 copies. The same company has published several books in the same vein.

So when I heard that they were compiling a similar book about Sandy Denny, initially I was in two minds as whether to contribute or not. Eventually I sent three different pieces to the publisher: one standard piece about how I learnt about Sandy and about the concerts where she appeared that I attended. I also sent one piece that had previously appeared in this blog, one about her songwriting style¹ and one about the an Israeli radio station playing her songs. 

The Sandy book arrived yesterday and I've been reading it since. As the book is arranged in chronological order, my first piece appears under the heading 22 March 1970, Colston Hall Bristol, which is where I saw Fotheringay, etc. I notice that the piece has been lightly edited but it still takes up an entire page.

If the book is going to continue in chronological order, then it seems that the other two pieces won't appear. Although I don't want to emphasize my contributions, this is a shame, as the pieces that I've read are almost entirely factual in the style of "I went to this concert", "I heard this record" and "I met someone who went to school with" with no critical content whatsoever. I've paged through the book, looking especially at the last third that includes pieces by Joe Boyd, Andrew Batt (compiler of many Sandy compilations) and others; whilst this part has a different tone, my extra contributions appear not to appear.

So here's the contribution that didn't get used: One Israeli radio station plays the 'Unhalfbricking' version of 'Who knows where the time goes' about once a week, although recently I heard what must be the original version from 'Sandy and the Strawbs' as it was only Sandy playing acoustic guitar and singing the original arrangement. I wonder how on earth the station managed to lay their hands on this version - it didn't come from me! My wife has become extremely enamoured of the song (finally, after 43 years of marriage!) and asked me to add it to her telephone playlist. She then asked if there were any other songs that she might like - I could think of at least one hundred - and so I sent her 'I'll keep it with mine'. It occurs to me now that IKIWM has several similarities to WKWTTG in terms of harmony - although in fact it should be written the other way around, as IKIWM was written in 1964 by Bob Dylan and WKWTTG was written in 1968 by Sandy Denny. There are several formal correspondences: both songs have three verses, neither song has a chorus, and both feature each song's title as the last line of every verse. Dylan does this frequently whereas Denny does it less often. The arrangements also are similar with Richard Thompson playing guitar obbligatos. There is a world of difference between the original Strawbs' version (Sandy solo) and the Fairport version, and today I wonder how much the arrangement of WKWTTG was inspired - if at all - by what they did with the Dylan song. Occasionally I wish the radio station would play some other song from 'Unhalfbricking', although I assume that they have some computer file and not the physical cd or even vinyl.

Internal links
[1] 825

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
278	26/08/2010	Updates (mainly The Swell Season)	DCI Banks, Peter Robinson, Swell Season, Time signatures
397	26/08/2011	Implicit vs explicit joins (SQL)/2	SQL
619	26/08/2013	Chaining functionality	ERP
1808	26/08/2024	Internal links in the blog manager	Programming, Blog manager program

More on the 1972 Nahal entertainment group

This morning I stumbled onto a treasure trove of pictures and factoids regarding the Nahal troupe, from its beginning until at least 1972. This helped me fill reveral gaps in my knowledge about the 1972 troupe. I realise that probably only a few people are interested in this material, but it's important to me.

First is a picture - captioned, so that one can see who played what - of the musicians from that time.

This picture establishes some facts: the flautist is Riva Shechter and she appears on stage during 'comradeship'. So much for CoPilot's opinion that it was probably a professional flautist. There's a passage about her written by the ranking soldier, Shimon Weitzman:

The flute was almost always used in the band's songs. My friend Benny Nagari asked to get him a flautist. I remembered the beautiful girl on the kibbutz, she was a year younger than me (not what you think), the blonde with the bright eyes, who I used to follow as a teenager. When we learned about all the possible types of musical instruments, she started with the flute and did wonders with it. She had another advantage besides being from Kibbutz Sasa, where I came from. Her mother and my adopted mother were twin sisters.

On the left is Danny Pe'er who played keyboards and apparently was a combat medic before he became part of the troupe. He later went on to play three different shows with Yehonatan Geffen, and later played in Gazoz, alongside Gidi Gov.

Another captioned picture that partially solves another lacuna in my knowledge: who was who in the song 'The Ballad of Yitzchak Sadeh" (this coincidentally was the name of the drummer pictured above!). Unfortunately the quality of the picture is poor but sufficient to see who is seated/standing where so that they can be matched in the video. Shimon Weitzman is the one holding the microphone (note that in the video, there are no microphones to be seen; I seem to recall that there were some strung above the performers). I am most interested in who sings the second verse; unfortunately it's not possible to do so from this picture. Had I read the caption a bit better, I would have noticed that the person I am interested is not in the picture! He would have been to the far right, outside of the frame.

Why the second verse? The singer had good stage presence and later told the amusing story (in a mixture of Hebrew and Italian) of an Italian boat captain who is hired to take illegal immigrants from Italy to Palestine (as it was then). The name that I originally considered for this role turned out to be one of the musicians, so obviously I still didn't know who it was.

But the following picture nails the identity. Again, a very poor quality picture but it's captioned and that's what is important. Gidi Gov can be seen here on the far right wooing his future wife (they married in 1977), but I was interested in the second soldier when going left to right. This is Itzik Ben Melech, a name with which I am not familiar. According to Wikipedia, he has been active both as a singer and as an actor, but our paths have never crossed.

Shimon Weitzman wrote a book about his days in the Nahal; I'll try and get a copy of this although I suspect that it might be a private printing.

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
276	14/08/2010	Bad boy	DCI Banks, Peter Robinson, Police procedurals
391	14/08/2011	Optimisations	Programming, Delphi
1657	14/08/2023	Nutrition and blood tests	Health, Nutrition

The 1972 Nahal army entertainment group

54 years ago, give or take a day or two, I and my year group went to see a performance of the Nahal army entertainment group when we were in Israel for the first time. As I wrote¹ 19 years ago, On the Sunday, we all collected in the cafeteria. This was my 16th birthday, and I felt like I was holding court. After lunch, we travelled to Kibbutz Mevo Chama, which is on the Golan Heights, overlooking the Sea of Galilee: a magical view. In the evening, we had a short "get to meet the kibbutz and its people" as well as a birthday party for me. A wonderful evening.... On the penultimate day of our stay, I arranged for us to go and see the Army entertainment troupe who were appearing not far away. In those far off days, these troupes were the best entertainment in Israel, and we saw the best of those troupes, in one of its best line ups. Not that we understood a word of what they said! But the songs were great.

Over the past month or so, I've been listening to several of the songs from that performance and thinking about them. The opening song was one that was played frequently on the radio and we were all familiar with it at the time. As the record had applause between songs, and as the sparse sleeve notes said that the show was recorded at Kibbutz Givat HaShlosha in recognition of 30 years of the Palmach, I presumed that the record was a live recording. It's only been in the past month that I noticed that several of the vocals were double tracked and that there were no visible microphones. Slowly it dawned on me that this was a studio recording with applause added at a later date - a fake live recording.

There is another song from a bit later in the show, a song from the heady days of 1948, called 'comradeship'; this begins with a duet between a male soldier playing the mandolin and a female soldier playing the flute. The mandolinist is a recognised top guitarist in Israel, although his active playing days seem to be over. I wondered who was playing the flute; CoPilot told me that it was probably a professional flautist and not one of the performers as one might imagine. Again no microphones are visible.

I remember years ago trying to match the names of the songs as listed on the sleeve with the songs listed on the record's central label and with those that were playing. It seemed to me that there was one extra song that played but was not listed; this was a real shame as the song was beautifully arranged, played and sung. It was only in the last month that again I became interested in what this song could be. Someone uploaded to YouTube all the songs and skits of the double record, and this mysterious song can be found: 'Emek', aka the Jezreel Valley. Here is a link to the song, but this is not the only one on YouTube. Here is another, and the uploader's comments are very interesting.

From a hidden bonus track on "Palnach"nik", 1972: A typical Sanderson arrangement (+ Hendrix and Clapton hints) of a sweeping hymn full of love for the land, the human soul and life in full drive; Amazing solo: Gideon Gov; background musicians: Yardena Arazi, Ephraim Shamir and more of the best of the Palmach production of the time. The audience - in ecstasy! (and rightly so). Recorded at a public performance at Kibbutz Givat Hashlosha to mark the 30th anniversary of the Palmach.

There are two very interesting factoids in that paragraph: the first is that the song was indeed a hidden bonus track, partially explaining why the title didn't appear on the sleeve. The other is that Gidi Gov played the guitar solo (especially at around the 3:58 mark); I hadn't considered Gov to have been more than a capable guitarist (what The Band would have called 'a strummer') but CoPilot assures me that Gov really did know how to play the guitar but he stopped playing in public when he concentrated more on his vocals.

There is even a third, albeit truncated, video available on YouTube that is most interesting; this mixes shots of the original settlers working the land spliced together with shots of the Nahal group performing the song. The direction of the filming could have been improved. This recording is definitely different from that on the record - and singers can be seen singing into microphones.

According to CoPilot, the reason why this song was a hidden bonus track is that it was part of the 30th anniversary show but not part of the regular show. Most if not all of the performances on the records were studio recordings, documenting the show. The third video makes me wonder whether this was the actual live recording from the 30th anniversary and that what appears on the record is a studio recording. Gidi Gov is clearly not playing a guitar in that third video. The notes for this version state that the arrangement was by Danny Sanderson, who was in the previous Nahal troupe and would go on to found Kaveret.

Going back to our stay in Israel: I was part of the 'cultural committee' that arranged activities from the group. I don't know who else was with me - if anyone - as I remember three events that I proposed. The army show was one; when in Jerusalem, we went to a nearby cinema to see the original version of 'Far from the madding crowd', and at some stage we went to hear some chamber music at the old railway station which wasn't far from where we stayed. The only piece that I remember from that show was ' 'Introduction and Allegro' by Ravel; I found this in one of the classical records in my school's collection and recorded it to cassetter whilst reading a newspaper in the background (I can be heard turning a page). In the pre-YouTube days of the 1990s , I looked for this and eventually found it on a cd. This is considered one of Ravel's minor works, but I like it all the same.

Internal links
[1] 98

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
616	12/08/2013	Puzzle	Puzzles
750	12/08/2014	Robin Williams, RIP	Films, Obituary
1655	12/08/2023	Eli, continued	ERP, Obituary
1656	12/08/2023	Walk exactly 3,967 steps in a day	Walking
1801	12/08/2024	Genesis of a new song	Song writing
1984	12/08/2025	Yet another excision	Health, BCC