Exact Echoes

After a 25 year lapse of time I have at last completed this 50-page A4 PDF booklet which derives from the successful ‘Exact Echoes Tourney’ which was announced in Chessics issue 15 in 1983, entries being published in issues 17 to 21 and the award in issue 23 in 1985. Composers were asked to send in not only their original compositions but also outstanding examples of their previous work, or the work of others that they considered should not be missed, with a view to publishing a booklet on the subject. I have not so far attempted to bring the collection up to date to cover work done in the intervening years, but may yet make a few minor improvements. It is available on my publications page.

I've just noticed that in Safari, the browser I am now using, the box of text runs off the righthand side of the screen. This must be due to a different interpretation of the CSS instructions as compared with Internet Explorer. I must try to correct it.

I went to the Hastings Chess Club AGM on Sunday, but didn't find it a very encouraging experience. Perhaps I've had a glut of AGMs this past week. I was at the BHA AGM in London on Saturday, as reported on the Hastings Humanists blog, and the Arts Forum AGM on Tuesday. Fortunately I postponed the Hastings Humanists AGM to November. In July it is too hot to think.

A Chequerboard of Afternoons and Evenings

On Tuesday afternoon I went the unveiling of some new sculptures at the "Chess Square" at the end George Street in Hastings Old Town. They depict a sea-horse, an octopus wrestling with a chess rook, and a sea serpent, I think. I didn't notice anyone from the chess club there, but there were several Councillors, including Dom Sebatian who sometimes comes to our Humanist meetings. The chess pieces for use on the board painted on the ground are kept in a cupboard against the wall of Butler's Emporium, and the key can apparently be obtained from the West Hill Lift Office, further along George Street, for a returnable deposit. It might be an idea for the chess club to put on a demonstration now and again.

In the evening I went to the AGM of the Hastings Arts Forum. It's a surprisingly large organisation, since the quorum required was nearly 50. They met in one of the sections of the Azur restaurant on the lower promenade. I was there just to see the venue and to get a better idea of the people behind the venture, and its recent history of recovery from financial problems.

On Wednesday afternoon I managed to arrange for a man from Sussex Bin Cleaning to come and clean our bins which were in a disgusting state. I found the company on the web, at the suggestion of my landlord, Mr Griffiths, since the Hastings Council do not provide a bin-cleaning service and indeed could not suggest anyone to do the work. He will be coming monthly to keep the bins clean from now on.

On Thursday afternoon Mr Griffiths arrived and took away most of the rubbish that had accumulated on the old sofa that had been dumped in front of the flats. I'm wondering what to do to stop more stuff being dumped there. Some plants in pots perhaps? The Council will remove fly-tipping but only of it is on public land, so perhaps that means redumping it on the pavement, although if you are seen doing that presumably there is a fine, so you can't win either way.

It's A Humanist Life

I've not posted anything here for a while, since I've been mostly occupied with Humanism, which is dealt with on my other blog for the Hastings Humanists.

On 15 June My Humanist Hero essay on Robert Owen was published on HumanistLife. It was the second in what is now a long series.

I've also been contributing a number of biographical and descriptive pieces to the new Humanist Heritage site. For example, the entries for Down House, Leicester Secular Society, Alan Turing, Paul Dirac, and Richard Carlile are mostly mine, though of course the information in these articles is not new.

On 26 June I went to the BHA Conference on Humanism, Philosophy and Arts at Conway Hall.

On 3-4 July I went to Lewes to join in celebrations of Tom Paine.

The Wider View

This is the wider photo that I took before the telescopic image posted last time. It has been enhanced slightly so the houses are not completely black.

This week I've been getting more minor nose-bleeds. I did think of making an appointment to see the doctor, but their system seems likely to raise my blood pressure more than anything else. Speaking to the receptionist at the counter she was reluctant to arrange anything except a month ahead, and to book on the actual day you have to phone between 8:30 and 9:15 in the morning. Obviously they are completely overworked. So I decided to leave it for now, and nothing has recurred.

I've been getting a series of emails from an chap in St Albans who has very vague plans to set up a chess variants organisation to replace BCVS, but he keeps using my name and that of Variant Chess as if I've already given approval to his efforts. This has not done my blood pressure any good either.

I've also entered the Hastings Chess Club Summer tournaments, those that are not rapid-play at any rate. The first opponent I contacted failed to turn up at the appointed time, but I did get a friendly game, which I won. I've agreed to rearrange the appointment for next week, though apparently I could have claimed the win by default, but really I just need the practice.

Sky View

Fantastic sky this evening, about 8 pm. The seagull seems to think so too. Photo taken through a window of my living room, using a telescopic setting.

Mathematical Art: A Chessboard Mosaic

Over the bank holiday weekend I spent some time drawing and colouring the pattern shown here. It is a "Chessboard Mosaic" of the type I described in The Games and Puzzles Journal (Vol.1 No.4, March-April 1988, p.64) but on a larger scale. Varied patterns of this type can be formed by first numbering the cells of a chessboard 1 to 64 in some fashion. This example is derived from the numbering of the first Magic Knight's Tour, discovered by William Beverley in 1848. It is a 64 by 64 matrix; when numbered 1 to 64 along the top and left edges, a mark in the square where the r row meets the s column indicates that a piece can move from cell r to cell s. In this example the dark cells indicate rook moves, the yellow cells bishop moves and the red cells knight moves. The pattern is symmetric about the principal diagonal since these moves are all reversible. The rook move pattern is symmetric about the secondary diagonal, but the knight and bishop patterns deviate slightly from this symmetry, due to the nature of the Beverley numbering. The red railway-line pattern down the main diagonal is the result of using a knight's tour numbering, since r is always connected to r+1 by a knight move. The apparent figure "8"s on the main diagonal derive from several zigzag pattern of knight moves in the tour wheren the first and third and second and fourth cells are in the same rank or file and thus connected by a rook move. I'm wondering whether I should exhibit this at the Art Forum; apparently any member can exhibit one item free; but is it really Art?

Edit: I've replaced the original image by an enhanced version, since it came out too gray. The background I used was in fact a sheet of white card.

An Afternoon Walk

This afternoon I took a walk along to the Arts Forum to have another look at the exhibition of paintings by Katherine Reekie "Artists on the Beach" which feature images based on well known works by famous painters like Matisse and Picasso, and sculptors like Moore and Gormley, against a background of Hastings images. It's quite a fun idea.

I went on to walk to the Garden Centre along the Bexhill Road to see if they have anything in the way of a compost bin. They only had two old ones with bits missing. I'm thinking of installing a bin by the front garden so that I can dig up all the weeds and compost them. It's getting rather overgrown.

I carried on walking to the Glyne Gap and then back to Hastings along the beach path. At the old bathing pool site I noticed that the seagulls seemed to have some small shellfish that they were dropping from a height to crack open, or else they were practising with pebbles. Further along the promenade a black-headed gull was flying along the surf line and repeatedly landing on the sea only to immediately rise again. Presumably it was catching something to eat.

Finally I went into a supermarket to top up a few things for my own larder. I ought to be getting out more regularly for exercise, but seem to be leaving it for days and then taking it all in one go.