This site began for two reasons.
The first was as a place to store some form of the maths worksheets I had been writing since 1983, though what was included here ended up being a condensation of that work into more general forms, followed later by becoming a place where work could be placed for classes to access (notably while in Beijing, 2012). Following retirement in 2014 the maths has been reworked to some extent, including discovering how much became a forgotten skill as soon as retirement occurred. 2017 onwards, any mathematical effort has moved into what I am calling extension work, use of the content of school syllabuses to develop, I hope, an interest in the wider world.
The second reason was that, on moving to work in China in 2007, I was being asked by friends to share the same material repeatedly. Thus began the essays, currently under the heading Writing. As topics occurred to me, not at all limited to the experience directly connected to being in China, so the breadth of writing grew.
Consequentially, the vast majority of the site as a whole is within these two topics. At the moment there are approaching 250 essays of varying lengths and about half that of Maths, though the maths was a lot more work. Demand for repetition of messages about applying to university caused me to develop a section for that, which has barely changed since its first writing in 2008 and was then aimed at Chinese students. Similarly the family ancestry files. The section entitled Finance and Science is a small collection of other stuff of school-level content, while the top link to ‘support pages’ may well be irrelevant with the updates occurring this year.
DJS 20171123
The original website was constructed using iWeb. As upgrades to Apple operating systems occurred, Apple decided not to support iWeb any longer and the steady breakdown of iWeb in consequence forced a change. Eventually I chose to go with SandVox (Sandvox, Karelia software), having trialled some others. This gives me the least new learning and the greatest application of old learning.
The change of software engendered—perhaps even forced—dramatic changes in presentation and I hope you find it easier to navigate that it was. I certainly had a reduction in total pages in consequence. Navigation is done using the pull-down menus in the very top row of the page, above the title bar. Clicking anywhere on the title bar (the big black rectangle) returns you to this page, Home.
DJS 20171208
Navigation is done using the pull-down menus in the very top row of the page, above the title bar. Clicking anywhere on the title bar (the big black rectangle) returns you to this page, Home. Except when that doesn't work, as noticed today (not right in Safari but fine in Chrome), so I have added an index on the leading pages of each section so that you can use that if or when the buttons that are supposed to be in the header fail to work. From this page, there are links direct to essays by year and maths pages by header topic.
DJS 20200806
