Thursday 5 August 2010

Archiving the Ether

I've been trying to sort out all the files in the "My Documents" section of the computer. These included several lists of "Old Favourites" from previous computers. Naturally a lot of these coincided with those on my current list, but a surprisingly large number of old links have just vanished into the ether. There were quite a number on the "geocities" site which it seems Yahoo took over and closed down. There are now a number of archiving sites where old web pages are kept, for instance the British Library now has a webarchive, and there is an American internet archive based in San Francisco.

This week I received another letter from Professor Donald Knuth, enclosing four chapters on knight's tours from his forthcoming "Fun and Games" book. They cover non-intersecting knight paths, celtic tours (which include no minimal triangles), tours on three-rank boards, and longer leaper tours. As might be expected his idea of "fun and games" extends to some quite complicated mathematics. I'm naturally pleased to see that quite a number of my own results are quoted.

2 comments:

  1. Hi George,

    I am happy to hear about new progress in knight's tour world. Please inform us about the recent developments in non-intersecting knight paths and new mathematical break throughs by Prof Knuth in a simple language.

    With regards,
    Awani Kumar
    INDIA

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  2. It will be in his book on "Fun and Games" due out some time soon. I can't give a preview since that would violate Prof. Knuth's copyright.

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