Status report on the Swan Song

 Still alive and kicking, said the Swan.

Here's the current status on all fronts:

All volumes complete verse by verse with the music -- like this. 

This image contains: 

• 5 syllables (middle of last line)  in the score 
• over three words (top line Hebrew) of the first verse of 1 Chronicles
• a transcription (lyrics) based on a simple mapping of consonants and vowels
• a translation with verse number and harmonic progression in parentheses
• the Hebrew accents from which the score is derived
• the SimHebrew equivalent with verse number (bottom right).

There are about 34,400 separate images for the 23,196 verses. Their production and merge with the html was controlled by several procedures from my database. So they are an accurate representation of my translation and the automated music process, but of course open to textual and linguistic criticism.

Here's a more complex example. See if the syllable counts agree with the column of numbers in the bottom centre of the image. There is an occasional discrepancy +/- 1 difference between the syllable count and the notes in the score. I have found it impossible to find this bug. I'm not the only software developer with this problem. I suspect there are other bugs that I have not noticed.

Tasks to do: 

• for 7 volumes, update the html to include legarmeh (routine process, takes maybe a few hours of interrupted work to do -- probably unimportant).
• 10 more covers to design -- really fun to do. 10 days (not contiguous) and it will be done.
• 17 more ISBN's to get. Routine.
• 10 + brief introductions to the music of the volume. Very challenging. In this area my work has converged with another student of cantillation history. My data formats may be very useful to him and I have to think carefully to get good query design from my database to see the potential patterns.

Future work: to anyone who is interested, the data that is generally available now online in various places in Unicode can be coded for the questions we want to ask. It's a very large undertaking to consider the relationships in the Scripture itself and to reconcile the history of cantillation with the theoretical discovery that has been demonstrated by Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura. By the way, a large number of video recordings of her work done by John Wheeler are now available (again) here. (Very slow start but they are there.)

My computer apparently has only a few months till its expiry date. The folks who make Windows do not consider it worthy to support. I have routinely 30 to 35 windows active on it. It is very fast and has adequate memory. This sin from Microsoft is duly noted for the heavenly assizes. I can certainly buy another computer but whether I can still install Oracle and the last working copy of my complex software and all the other things I need for this unique environment is moot. Maybe I will just maintain it off the web and go back to sneaker net to get any words out. But my expiry date is also approaching -- who knows when!