Very much a day of two halves. I bought The New York Review of Books on the way to Peter Chatterton's and started with a really interesting review of a recent book on the history of the tank - Cambrai, Blitzkrieg, the Russian Campain, the Arab-Israeli battles.

I have a slight obsession with the T34 - the tank the Soviet Union mass-produced during World War 2. In the current craze for denigrating Communism it is forgotten that the system got this weapon of war right in terms of quality manufacturing feasibility and numbers. Firstly there is the brilliant encirclement of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad and then the Battle of Kursk in July 1943. Taylor's history resolves this into 4 phases and in the final phase 500 German tanks battled against around 800 Russian - mostly T34. Although some of the German Panthers and Tigers had superior performance the Russian machines were good enough and more reliable - and so this decisive battle went to the Soviet Union.

Both Stalin and Hitler were homicidal maniacs,but Stalin learned in time that he had to trust some of his commanders. He recovered even from executing his core team of tank strategists in the pre-War purges. I will show this review to my son James and see whether he can pick any holes in it from his vastly detailed knowledge of the first 30 years of the Soviet Union.

On the train I read more from Musical Worlds: New Directions in the Philosophy of Music. There are some good categorisations of the different levels at which a musical work can be discussed eg - how it goes, what it conveys and the way that how it goes delivers what it conveys. Also an interesting article on feminist musicology. Thinking in terms of analysis and structure has been criticised as patriarchal in so many disciplines that it goes without saying that is unfemininist in a musical context. The argument runs on that structural analysis erects too many false boundaries - rules too much out of the frame. Analysis is an insider game mostly played by men or so the allegations run.

Peter Chatterton showed me some of the plug-ins he has got for his more elaborate version of Cubase. He is using his WX7 and Yamaha tone box to make a creditable clarinet timbre, downloading MIDI files of for example.

Peter explained about CPTM - the Commonwealth Partnership for Technology Management - an organisation which connects senior people from Commonwealth Governments with new thinking on the application of technology (something Peter has plenty of). He thinks that the Highveld project has some characteristics that might attract CPTM members - this has to be worth a try.

Then we sat down and worked on the Highveld website front page and made good progress - very satisfying to see the emerging shape. Peter went off and got Robin singing Sandy Grey - I was unaware that he had fetched that particular file and as the song started up I asked him if it was Sandy Denny singing.

We drafted an action list and sloped off to the pub for sauasges and mash and a couple of pints of Youngs.

Peter lives just down the road from Clapham South tube station. I used to have a flat directly above the booking hall in the late 1970s - good times as I remember. Peter Giles used to live down the road in the cluster of houses in the middle of Clapham Common. Like most parts of London it is gradually getting more and more gentrified.

Tonight I think we are going to see Johnny Depp hunting Jack the Ripper. Tomorrow is a seminar on clusters in Milton Keynes. Oh - I started to wonder about an allignment between The Silent Pool and Farnham Castle, encouraged by the discovery that St James Palace was a leper hospital in Mediaeval times.