Knight's Tour Notes website gone

I've just noticed that my old Knight's Tour Notes website has vanished into the ether. This is not unexpected, since it was housed on a dial-up site which I have been unable to access for several years. I will now have to relaunch it on my Mayhematics site, or start up a new URL. This may take some time. I will probably want to put it into a revised format and improve some of the diagrams.

Outing to London and Leicester

On Saturday morning I decided on something of an impulse to combine a trip to London to attend the Conway Hall talk by Jim Moore on "Darwin and the Sin of Slavery", with a trip to Leicester to attend the lecture by Ken MacLeod on "Darwin Dawkins and the Left". This was just about possible in the time by using booking.com to locate a Hotel and the National Rail Enquiries to book the trains, using a debit card and collecting the tickets from the machine at Hastings station. The machine was a bit recalcitrant but finally came up with the tickets.

One of the interesting points from the Moore lecture that I'd not been aware of was the role of Louis Agassiz (now best known for his work on ice ages) in diverting Darwin's efforts into countering Agassiz's strange theory of multiple 'creations' of separate human races known as polygenism.

Ken McLeod's thesis was that many people on the political Left have deliberately misunderstood Richard Dawkins, or the implications of his "Selfish Gene" idea, though it seems to me that many of other persuasions have been equally free in criticising Dawkins without having apparently read his books.

I was hoping also to fit in a Gresham Lecture by Christopher Hogwood, given at the Museum of London at 1pm today (Tuesday). But this was scuppered since my train was over half an hour late arriving at St Pancras, due apparently to signaling problems. It was also raining, so I used my bus pass to get the No.17 to London Bridge, but managed to get there just in time to miss the first Hastings train.

Twittering

Well the beard didn't last very long. I'll have to change my photo again. It felt too uncomfortable, and was just as much trouble to maintain as shaving every day or two, as well as making me feel old. Srangely three people complimented me on the beard, but unfortunately after I'd already got rid of it.

I joined Twitter a few days ago. As if I need more ways to waste my time. Somehow I have already acquired five followers and sixteen subjects to follow, and posted two tweets, all this mostly related to humanism.

Nostalgia Apologia

I thought I'd let my beard grow during the cold spell over the Winter Solstice, thinking that I would probably shave it off when the weather changed, but it seems I have now become attached to it, at least until any really warm weather should come along. I've also updated my photo here and on facebook accordingly.

This evening, having seen it previewed in the local paper, I went to the White Rock Theatre for an evening of nostalgia, where the Glenn Miller Orchestra was performing. The tunes were good, and some of the individual performers, but it was just far too loud. After the interval I tried moving further back in the Gallery but couldn't escape the sheer blast of sound. It was getting almost painful. So when they started playing something from The Sound of Music, which I certainly don't associate with the Glenn Miller era, I decided I'd had enough.

Queen Victoria in Warrior Square

There was a spectacular sunset this evening around 4:30. I went out with my camera to try to capture an image, but by then the view had changed, first the sun came out from behind the clouds, then it quickly set. I got some images, but they were similar to others obtained before. I ended up on the sea-front by Warrior Square and noticed that the statue of Queen Victoria was illuminated with a spotlight and that the plinth seems to have been cleaned. Hence the photo shown here.

I did very poorly in the Weekend Chess Congress, playing in the Minor tournament, since I managed only a draw, and that was against the youngest competitor, where I ended up with a knight and pawn against two knights and pawn. The middle game of the five, played in the evening of the first day, was weird. I made a muddle of the opening and was well down, then somehow revived to fight back to a winning position, and then went to sleep again in the end game and threw it away. Sheer tiredness I think. There are another five games to go in the New Year tournament, which I suspect will be against stronger opposition.

Chess and the Brain

I've been playing in the Hastings Christmas Morning and Christmas Afternoon chess tournaments over the last four days, and managed to score 1.5 in each (i.e. one win, one draw and two losses). No prizes for that, but I'm in it just for the practice, since I haven't played orthodox chess for many years.

I'm also entered in the Weekend Congress, and the New Year tournament next week. This is probably too much really. I'm already quite tired. The draws which both went to over 60 moves were particularly wearing. At the end of my last game this afternoon, which I was fortunate to win, I think we were both punch drunk; I'm sure a lot of the moves will make little sense when seen in the light of day.

There was an interesting item on the Today programme yesterday (I think) where it was claimed that Liberals have a developed "Anterior Cingulate(?) Cortex" in the brain, while Conservatives have a stronger "Amigdala(?)" (a primitive, reptilian, part of the brain). It was questioned whether this was from birth or whether the brain differences developed due to experience. I'm hoping my chess exercise will help stop my brain from subsiding into Alzheimers, as it seems to me to show signs of doing.

John Wyndham recalled

There was a programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning about John Wyndham, the science fiction writer. I meant to listen to it but as usual got engrossed in something else and forgot. But fortunately it is now possible of course to use Listen Again.

He was a writer I grew up with in the 1950s, and I read all his books, probably from the Public Library, and have returned to them from time to time, and picked up second-hand paperback copies a few years ago, when I joined the Leicester Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror group, and compiled my Guide to Fantasy Authors and Tales (which I must update some time).

I've always been fascinated by his full name which was John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, as if he was named after a team of some kind! He used various different combinations of these names for his fiction. His "John Wyndham" style matured after his experiences during the second world war.

In the programme it was mentioned that he called his novels and short stories "Logical fantasies". It seems he was an atheist, since he intended to leave the rights in his royalties to two daughters of a friend or relative, but changed his will when one of them went into a convent as a nun. He also lived in London at something called the Quaker Pen Club, which I'd not heard of before.

I must read The Chrysalids. I seem to have missed that one.