Catching Up

I seem to have lost the motivation to keep this diary up to date lately.

Before christmas I invested in a new computer, a Samsung laptop with Windows 7 and considerably more power than my previous desk top tower type, and I've now just about got it all working, transferred all the files from my old machine, and reinstalled the key programs that I use. Now I should be able to catch up on all the updating work on my website, and on the Hastings chessclub site, that I have in mind.

Over the new year I played in the Hastings chess congress, just in the lower sections, and didn't do particularly well, but I'm hoping my grade may have improved slightly. I seem to be getting better at prosecuting an attack once I have obtained an advantage, particularly using queen and knight together.

Today (Sunday) I went to London by train, to attend the 11 am lecture by Kenan Malik at Conway Hall. The subject was "The Myths of Christian Europe". I thought it might provide me with some material for my own talk to Hastings Humanists on 9 February, which is on the rewriting of history by christian apologists.

I also stayed for a symposium held at 2.30 pm on the future of South Place Ethical Society, of which I am a member. It seems some members fear a "take-over" by the BHA, but personally I can see no harm in greater cooperation between the two organisations. I would also like to see the Rationalist Association involved. Some of the members there seem to hold strange ideas about what "Humanism" is.

Going to the first meeting meant getting up very early since there were works on the line and a bus service between Wadhurst and Tonbridge. The train left at 7.38 and I arrived at Charing Cross about 10.15. The return journey was longer due to waiting for the connecting bus and train. The "bus" was in fact a very long "Eurocruiser" coach which had considerable difficulty negotiating some of the sharp bends on the side roads and station entrances.

A Bright Morning's Walk

I seem to have been neglecting this Diary. The last message I intended to post here, about seeing a rainbow at London Bridge, went to the Hastings Humanists blog by mistake.

It was a beautiful sunny day this morning, so I took a walk along the front as far as Glyne Gap to see how the new cycle path is progressing, and there is stil quite a lot of work to be done, but when finished it will be possible to cycle to Bexhill without going on a main road at all.

I went to the Ravenside retail park to have a look at the computers on display in PCWorld and ended up buying one. It's a large Samsung laptop, which I'm hoping will be able to replace the old desk-top machine on which I'm typing this message.

I left about 10 am and got back about 2 pm. There was quite a cold wind, whipping up surf on the sea, which was near to high tide, but the sky was blue like a spring day, and the birds were singing. But soon after I got back the sky darkened and the rain came down. It's just started again now as I write.

Last month, after my visits to Leicester and Bournemouth for the chess, I had some trouble with my right leg and had to rest it, but it seems to have held up today, but maybe a bit stiff in the morning, well see. I needed the exercise anyway.

Website Upgrade

Yesterday my mayhematics website was unavailable due to the bandwidth limit being exceeded. This appears to be due to more people looking at it and downloading pages from it. There was a big spike at 4pm on Saturday for some reason. So I have had to upgrade to the next level, which about doubles the price to be paid each year to £60, which still seems very reasonable. At any rate I hope this resolves the problem. Perhaps I should look into ways of charging for donwloads.

I'm also thinking of registering some other domain names, since the subjects covered on the site do not all fall logically under the "mayhematics" heading, they have all accumulated in one place due to previous service providers closing down or not continuing to provide support, and due to changes from dial-up, to cable broadband, to telephone-line broadband connections.

Probably it is about time to upgrade my computer as well, but I dread all the problems that that could throw up so will probably leave it to the last minute as usual when it will be unavoidable.

Computer Modifications

This week I've been trying out some alternative browsers on my computer. A while back there was a "Browser Choice" message that came from the European Union, which listed a range of different browsers, with the idea I think of creating a more level playing field for them to compete with Internet Explorer provided by Microsoft with Windows. Since IE has increasingly been incapable of showing some video connections, and there are threats to update it to a form that will not work with XP, I decided to try a change.

A few years ago I tried 'Firefox' but wasn't keen on it, though perhaps I didn't find the right settings to suit me. This time I tried 'Opera', but found I could only reconstitute my list of favourites from IE by transferring them one at a time. Also the 'circle dial' thing on it was a bit puzzling, and included advertising. The second one I have tried is 'Safari'. This turned out to have a button in the Bookmarks section which allowed all the favourites to be transferred automatically. It also seems to be nice and simple, which is what appeals to me.

Earlier to day I also got an instruction from Virgin Media to install their new Security 9 system to replace PC Guard. This I was glad to do since I have the impression that it is PC Guard that has been slowing everything down. The installation went reasonably straightforwardly. However I did get a message that something called "rpcapd" was trying to get through the firewall. Not having any indication of what this is I blocked it.

My Website Reorganised

This Sunday I've spent most of my time at the computer rearranging the material on my mayhematics.com website. Most of the content is unchanged, it is just the way the pages are classified that has changed. The Index page now leads to three sitemaps, one covering Chessics and the others Reality and Fantasy. It took much more work than I expected, and several FTP sessions, to get all the links, forward and backward, to work correctly.

I've more or less given up on CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) methods, finding them more trouble than they are worth, particularly if you want to change anything. I've reverted to simple HTML. All necessary styling, which I keep to the minimum, is all on the page itself.

There is one new item, namely a version of the missing Issue 45 of the Games and Puzzles Journal, which was lost but now is partially found. It comprises only three articles, the others needing further work.

The website got confused when NTL closed down my old Home pages and I was forced to squeeze them into the mayhematics site. The different sets of material are now much more spaciously arranged, which should allow for ease of development.

Autumn is Here

I took this photo of my favourite tree as I went out for a walk along the front as far as the old bathing pool site at the end of Sea Road. I have been thinking of getting out on my bike and going perhaps as far as Eastbourne, but left it too late to do that today. It was a very sunny afternoon. The other pictures I took haven't come out very well probably because the light was too bright and I couldn't see clearly what I was focusing on. The leaves on the tree are starting to turn brown, and some of them may have been shed already. There are a lot of leaves from other trees blowing around.

When I turned on my computer and activated the PCGuard I got a message "Rps: The parameter is incorrect" with no further explanation. Checking it on Google I was led to download a thing called RegistryBooster costing about £20. Whether this does any good remains to be seen. It claims to have cleared up a lot of errors in the Registry, but whether they are really significant or just listed to impress I don't know. Perhaps I shouldn't be so cynical.

Computer Trouble

After having my kettle blow a fuse, the next day my laptop computer packed up. The enigmatic message "Unknown Hard Error" came up and I could do nothing but turn off the power. When I switched on again all I could get was a blank screen with cursor at the top left. Apparently the fault was in the mother-board. I ended up paying £150for a replacement, reconditioned, computer.

Fortunately I had kept a back-up of most files on a USB stick, and it also proved possible to save the most recent work from the hard disk, so I don't think anything significant was lost. I prefer to use a separate laptop for most of my wordprocessing, rather than the PC that I use for connection to the internet.

As reported earlier I've been making progress in sorting out all my files on knight's tours, with a view to publishing the results in book form. I've also rediscovered a lot of other work on geometry and numbers and puzzles that I'd half forgotten. This could form the basis for several books, if I can find the energy and motivation to complete them.