20220523 required to update the "php" to 5.6 as earlier versions have reached the end of their useful life. I have no explanation what php does, though Heart were very keen to explain what would happen if I failed to do this update. But there were two options, edition 5 or edition 7. No-one was offering an explanation why I might want to use version 7 instead - or even if I could. Still up to £387, though I added another page of maths last week, trying to make logs look useful to non-A-level students.
20220515 now up to essay 387, having splintered Snippets yet again. Pulldown menus failed again but a prompted renewal of upload (all the sub-pages) seems to have fixed this.
2022 0125 Essays to 381, more Maths written. Some links indexes restored or created to fit objectives. Typos seem endemic - is it me or the dyslexic fingers? Does that persistence point to brain fade or simply bad learning? Both children now in their 40s - a landmark for us all.
20211222 Up to 380. Snippets icon changed to be more visible. Issues with mail server and Apple mail.
20211205 More of last. Latest essay is 376, but 373 has five subpages, 362 one and 353 has three. Extra maths (reading and numeracy really) steadily increasing and proper recount is in order. Wonder if there is another way to do that, such as collect it from the hosting site. Tried looking at File Manager and see a lot of duplication there, but don't dare fiddle with it. Total volume is 4.457Gb
20210910 Several of the Snippets pages turned into small collections. Total pages thus passed 700. Latest essay numbered 364 and there is a sort of defacto length at which a 'page' is deemed to be, rather than within snippet or a collection. It serves particularly well when I want a pointer to another page and that turns out to be within a snippet. The back-up file sandvox (Sunday) is updated considerably. I've no idea if that is uploaded, but it's saved on the hard disk (Time Machine).
20210702 Essay 352 begun, July snippets. Total site count updated, perhaps incorrectly. MfU pages added recently and this currently located (hidden) in Support, hoping JPF-C will have a look and make suggestions.
20210611 Essay 348 uploaded. Today the pull-dowm menus work in Safari; I really don't understand.
20210513 spellchecking from the fairly recent 344 to about 280 - the point at which three pages in a row had shown free of fault
20210409 essay 340 uploaded earlier this week and edited. Happy birthday Pete. Very bored over Covid, but in no way wishing the relaxations to go any faster. A lot of this is (boredom) is due to the back-up failure explained below, but one additional consequence is that I have no reason to sit at my desk with any regularity.
20210324 Discover that the covid spreadsheet has reverted to a January copy. This means no more updates to charts on the covid pages or a large amount of work to recapture that data. It also means that the several back-up disks generate some work in trying to fix the failure of Time Machine to work since upgrading to BigSur, which is the whole of the explanation of data loss.
20210210 Up to #337, Graphene unfinished. Snippets #335 now quite lengthy. Hierarchical menus only work within Sandvox, not on the net; have spent quite some time trying to fix/repair this, but the Karelia site won't load correctly either. Same issue if via Chrome rather than Safari.
20210118 Now up to #335.
20210110 Now at #333. Charts in covid pages updated most days. Winter wave exceeding all expectations thanks to new variant virus, much more infectious. Hospitals at breaking point and rules not sufficiently demanding to cause reduction – we were told to behave at Christmas and New Year and clearly did no such thing. The consequence was there for all to predict and we can only wait while Darwinian consequences occur. In the Brave new World, there'd be a stupidity test to remove one from care facilities. We don't do that, of course, but neither do we provide any censure for blatant idiocies. We could do that quite easily.
20201119 Now up to #326. Still waiting for Covid case figures to peak, though they have done so in the NW and now Yorks&Humber. Some places still not changing and this requires state intervention on a massive scale.
20201028 For £60 a year I can move the site to https, using a package called Simple SSL. I think this is a lot to charge, but then I received mails with believable addresses telling me about outstanding bills for companies with which I have no business. This was a tipping point. Subsequently I wonder (CSI Cyber style) if the hacker—for want of a better term—is in the employ of those who benefit, the suppliers of the SSL certificate. Essays now up to 321 and awaiting a response from the darling daughter before sharing any of these via FB.
20201022 Essays to 319 with quite a bit to expand in essay 313, Snippets. Second covid wave well established and the numbers are running away, increasing everywhere in Britain at regional level. We are far from clear what if anything works to stem the spread. The government is being remarkably unconstructive, erratic and untrustworthy. Prevalence is very high, restrictions significant but with compliance as low as 73% and still no significant system to compensate people for isolating, people are thinking for themselves and of themselves. The weather is not helping at all and it looks as though Christmas is going to particularly grim — and if it isn't, we'll pay for that in early 2021, largely repeating 2020. We need leadership and a strategy, even if that strategy is to say, basically, "over to you", doing demonstrable devolution as a route to handing over responsibility and workload. The attempts to move control to a relatively tight group in London is (again, demonstrably), not working.
20200915 Essays to 316, increasingly disgusted by the behaviour of our national representatives and in consequence the perception of us as a nation – and an increasingly divided nation, at that. The Tories are successfully setting up a situation where anyone given an opportunity would want separation from England, myself included. I'm afraid that those who feel otherwise are deluded, as in led astray. This is what happens when we have a populist election, when our electoral system is designed to flip-flop between so-called extremes and when the media persist in having both a desperation born of short information cycles and a desperation to keep us as afraid as possible.
20200820 Essays to 313, daily covid now every other day and August page quite different form earlier pages. Wet weather returned after a brief heat wave. UK.gov stumbles from disaster to disaster with cronyism rife and little evidence of competence. One hopes Trump will fail re-election; migration issues rise again but still the politicians and press miss the point. Exam results allowed to show radical grade inflation as OfQual fail to come up with a way to provide grades in any defensible way. On their way to being replaced, much as Public Health England. I see both as largely scapegoating since UK.gov interfered enough to remove responsibility. Test and trace seen as not working, but I see that as because there is incentive to not name people who will then lose income significantly.
20200727 Now up to Essay 310 and the daily covid updates are less regular, but still worrying. Weather steadily wet as successive depressions cross the Atlantic. The boss has work too often (it is 'holiday'), perhaps a couple of hours every day.
20200601 After something like 30-40 attempts, website updated. Heart said not their problem, so rewound site file back to Friday 30th, keeping a copy of the scoins.net.sandvox file (and, note there's a slightly corrupted one labelled (Sunday) in the sandvox file folder). Started Covid in June, essay 303. Edits made in all sorts of places, and some of these are now lost. Very bored with lockdown, very cynical about UK's perceived failure; easements very small but still too soon. Weather far too good to help.
20200523 Essays up to 302. Quiz attempted in 301 and if it works on other people's machines I'd like to do more of these, but I'd want the window/button to be less disruptive and smaller.
20200515 To do: expand units and measures so as to separate out dry volume measures and weight measures.
Essay 293, the covid charts, separated out into Charts (March) 293, April 299, May 300. Added the first of possibly several on Life in Britain test, 301. Lockdown eased this week to general confusion. Found website and twitter account VisitBlackpool renamed DoNotVisitBlackpool. Excess deaths understood and understood how hard to apportion to disease-type classifications; decided this point irrelevant. Not much nearer having sorted out door paint, except to not do it. Now have three downstairs internal doors with the intumescent strip (3 of 4, not done kitchen); none of the middle floor's five.
20200505 (May the 4th be with you). Essays to 298 written and contemplating dividing coronavirus content still further, as 293 is now very long. Perhaps into months?
20200417 ditto last; daily updates continued.
20200404 The several pages on Covid-19 have been edited and updated often, 293 on a daily basis. Added 294 on the horrid paint I have been trying to use while in lockdown. And mostly failing.
20200324 graphs and charts in essay 291 made into essay 293 and updating occurs daily. As of today we have 'soft lockdown, where many or most shops are now closed, where one is still permitted a daily run (relief) but required otherwise to stay at home. Social distancing to be enforced (how?) and, basically we need a week to pass to see that this is working. Quite clearly the gov't forecast of spread, no doubt strongly influenced by London, is dire compared to what I can see.
20200314 Essay #290 and #291 written and published. Graph added to #291 shows imminent explosive growth of Covid-19 cases in Iran and Italy. Wife at school 7-days a week and might as well stay onsite.
20200214 wrote and publish #289, which starts the 2020 series, there being twenty in the 2019 set.
20200213 Coronavirus updated. Attempted to update the page on population modelling, but I fail to understand how to embed a page from another site. The NRO offering clearly fails to comply with the rules for HTML as understood on this machine. iMac update to Catalina OS, with no significant issues as yet, though syncing was something of an issue yesterday.
20200131 recently wrote and published two pages on Coronavirus and Epidemics - and moved these to Finance and Science, as an 'other' category, where Modelling belongs. Or so I decided up until I change my mind again. Names not as intended in URL. Last essay, 288, was early Dec '19. Election gave big majority to Tories and I couldn't be bothered to produce the Apathy Party figures. Actually, can't be bothered to do very much at all about anything. Lost faith in the nation; not at all good.
20191120 wrote and edited 287. Some updates/edits of 280 upwards. Concerned at the acceptance of untrue statements and the lack of challenge to statements that are patently untrue. Concerned that the spin applied to any public statement is sufficient to render effectively every public statement subject to challenge and to ridicule, so that no-one in their right mind would enter such an arena. Part of the problem is that everyone—me included— can publish opinion so easily. Where I take issue is the shouting, not the opinion. So we are reducing our society to a matter of control of opinion. That, I think, may well cause something similar to the Dark Ages, where there is so much power in the control of opinion (different from fact, different from truth) that many simply opt out and confine themselves to local affairs. If government is sufficiently hands-off, that could be quite healthy, but only locally. Global-scale matters such as climate change, migration, access to clean water, human birth rate, global poverty — all these could so easily just be ignored, so powerful is the grip on opinion. Brave New World, but not as we thunk it. Not Good. Serious need for Truth and Fact. Action isn't the problem but considered unbiased action definitely is.
20190928 After a long time off, wrote 284. Discovered some duplicates in the files and cleared some of these out. 271 remains unresolved, leaving an issue of discovering how to tidy the files on the server rather than in Sandvox—and doing that without creating a bigger screw-up. As it is, see the need to not create files by duplicating a previous page. It would be better to have a 'next' page ready for typing into.
20190705 Added two how-to pages on fast arithmetic. Several more essays, to 283. Attempted to update this and the Page Count, now totalling 591 (I think). Not uploaded until 11th (Happy birthday, C!!)
20190531 Now reached 280 essays and sidebar updated a little in consequence. Heading to a major overhaul, I suspect, but that may keep until the winter. Builders about half-way through the work.
20190403 Completed and uploaded 275 on English tenses. By implication 273&274 must have been done, but the perception is that writing has not occurred much at all this year. Work on our house began today and I worry that builder's dust will get everywhere.
20190310 Written and successfully published up to Essay 272. Consistently having issues with publishing on a Friday afternoon. Recognise (here) that maths is steadily disappearing as a skill (sliding backwards), and that the future entries will be only in looking for places in which maths might occur. Also, note that the spell/grammar checker always introduces the em-dash, so that has moved away from its earlier consistency. I have tried to make all footnote signs red and sitting in space 1 so that they are more easily found and returned to. Sources are now (consistently, I hope, referenced as in square brackets [1] but I do not as yet see any need for colour, as some are entered in the text as links to sites; Links should be in this colour. All [source] entries are linked where the collection is placed, down below the signature block.
Quite a lot of general editing done. Several essays updated with edits or addenda.
20181101-20 general edit; Quite a few pics lost their wrap feature. Attempted to regularise the style, e.g., footnotes numbers in red, since there is no GOTO (and back) facility in SandVox. Completed essays to 265, Editing reached 175 on 16th. I am bothered that a lot of work is not as black as it should be. Some of these articles read well and others are awful.
20181008-12 Uploaded 257 and 258 but, on trying to do edits on 20181009, find nothing works. Turns out that Heart has a problem; “our most senior networks team is currently investigating this as a top priority”. Problem found 0730 still a problem (worse from my perspective) at 12:30, but at least I now know it’s not my end, though there’s a tiny chance I may have caused the problem somehow – at least, I hope that’s a tiny chance.Page 179 on electricity smartened up thanks to a response out of the blue from Paul Martin. “google search console” reports a fault in essay 66 where previously it said there was a fault in 83. I’m ignoring this for now. Wrote 259-262 this week too.
20181001 Essays to 257 written and published. Googlebot says there is a problem with essay 83, crawling and somesuch, but I can’t understand what it is that needs to be ‘fixed’; I suspect it might be having a ? in the title. Scrubbed the page and re-entered it, but no obvious improvement.
20180501 I have missed entering the publishing of the five essays written this year. Found failure for thumbnails to match intent and found a solution. Not wild about this, since it appears to require two copies of the targeted picture.
20171130 Site uploaded and relatively minor edits done today. Need to suppress or even delete some pages, notably the sortable list, which now seems unnecessary. Some work done on Family tree, but that really depends on sorting the tree more than entering it on the site.
201711 (all) Experimentation over and decision made to switch from iWeb to Sandvox, helped significantly by an update of Apple OS that caused many links to vanish from my index pages. Managed to lose the index file for the whole caboodle and the first half of Nov has had no scoins.net at all — error 404, even for me. Restored and first upload under Sandvox occurred on 20171113. Inevitable changes to the ‘feel’ of the site. Not terribly happy that superscript and subscript are so difficult to input, but it does force a re-read of every Maths page. Also not yet discovered how to set the default text for the whole site. Sandvox distinguishes between Return (new paragraph) and Opt-return (new line), so a new habit to acquire. Deleting a return causes the modified paragraph to default to a text 6 or 7 sizes larger, adding significantly to the keystrokes for any change. The essays (Blog) appear in several forms as I experiment with what works. Two blog features apply: (i) grouping entries by month (ii) publishing responses. At the moment (10-17th) I feel like keeping both suppressed (i) because the grouping needs to be by topic not by the writing date and (ii) because there has been virtually no response in the ten years or so of running the site (realised this today, insertion below to record the moment).
20171116 Would have been Father’s 89th birthday
Idea for essays include response to a You.gov survey on overseas aid, writing about the changes caused by switching software,
201710 (all) October ’17 spent experimenting with Sandvox and Everweb, opting for Sandvox and rejecting EverWeb simply because of the indexing. Neither helps me have footnotes as well organised as WordPress, but Sandvox allows things to appear in the sidebar. Both of these are relatively awkward to insert photos into text, but the experimentation showed that some of the things I wanted to do—and may still want to do—are possible in Sandvox and remained undiscovered in EverWeb.
20170801 wrote and uploaded essay 238. Had terrible trouble, like two hours, trying to get it to load correctly. Apparent problem is the number of links leaves the content invisible. Fixed by repeatedly beginning again, but the text box that hold the content is not the same one that is visible on the search engine.
Ten Years since the first essay was published.
20170720 Wrote and rewrote 236&7. Updated links for 235-7. Historically, this was a significant date. Guesses in an email, please. A typo just now makes me wonder at a connection between data and date. And a possible use for dati, dato datu and other dat? word forms. Something is going wrong with updates and I wonder if iWeb is doomed.
20170711 Spent a lot of the day trying to update links, particularly to Blogcopy, not to Blog_Site. Pushed essays from 180 to have correct listings.Mostly this is because it is so much perceived work to update the Blog_Site copies. Possibly not true, but that is where I go to do editing, so that is where the work ought to go. Happy Birthday, C!! 7 again.
20170710 wrote 235 late evening. Didn’t fix all the links. Very slow update.
20170707 wrote 234. updated some of the links.
20170705 wrote 233. Think sort table now fixed. Recounted Home.
20170626 tried to update sorttable. essay 226 went bad again. Bad diesel, obviously.
20170608-24 wrote 223-9, but have not updated the associated pages, except this one.
20170512-5 wrote essay 222 and had issues publishing the top Site, ‘Can’t create the file “mwmac_white.png.” ‘ Which possibly means I have to re-create the top page. No issues with updating and publishing the other websites, as iWeb calls a collection of webpages. Proof of that, both Essays and Updates update correctly. May well leave this a week. 21070523 the same task goes 80% sticks, and then succeeds. Weird. Essay 222 then looks empty on the site and this fixed (but without knowing why) on 24th. Sorttable updated, but not showing on the site itself.
20170501 small edits found to make in essays 188, 204... No doubt many more to find... Can see that steady changes to Apple OS make iWeb steadily decay. In particular, see that some sorts of link fail, such as on my index pages. Something to do with turning print into image causes the failure.
20170424 Wrote the 500th page, with matching updates and links. And the 1st edit of that page.
20170421 Wrote 219 on locks and updated Home and Sitework. 20170124 215, 216 and 217 written. Lots of editing of the header area of essays from 190 onwards, attempting to make the links to nearby pages actually work as intended. Either my vision is going or I have been erratic in choosing a font size. It may well be the vision — my optician says my eyes are failing. Sorttable list updated to match these latest.
20170107 Wrote up to 214, and updated links and sort-table. Re-edits again to about essay 50. Many hyphen issues, some spelling. Clear difficulty (mine) with reading small print. To the optician once more!!
20161120 Wrote 209, edited 207. Wrote percentages. Updated links for these additions. Updated sorttable list, not previously done past 205.
20160929 Added essays 207 and 208. 205 & 206 occurred shortly after last entry. Spending a lot of time travelling between Manchester and Tyneside.
20160913-5 Essays now up to 204. Added at least 2 to Extension work and one more on differential equations, following a tidy-up of paper and a mass throw-out. So a little made it into electronic form. Lists partially updated and a general tidy-up is called for. Added 205, more the press is the enemy, but trying to explain why that is so. Sortable list updated.
20160704 Essays 199 and 200 written ‘Sortable list maybe’ is failing, though route through Home is working. Country sliding downhill rapidly. Far too many people not thinking at all clearly.
20160621 Wrote Area & Perimeter in extension work and with Links to Y12 differentiation and modelling. Added Essays 197 and 198. Referendum goes says Brexit. Cameron stands down. Dark days indeed.
20160613 Essays 194 & 195 published. Site seems to work okay but no doubt some damaged links remain.
20160605 rejigged front page and committed to the update / reconstruction.
20160601 working steadily on updating and uploading essays. Now have essays to 2011, Blog_Site and Blog as repositories for essays, where Blog is probably the current one in use. Issues with testing connection fixed by restarting machine (had already tried disk utility). Reluctant to update Site (top) pages as this changes the overall index. Really not sure about uploading files to Heart anywhere but to public_html. Unclear how to access pages not in public_html. To investigate further. Index page for sub-2011 recreated (better, too).
20160518-31 pages multiply recopied from existing website as on Heart site. This is very slow work, and copying just thirty essays is about as much as I can stand in a day
20160512-18 TOTAL SCREW-UP following what should have been a simple use of Time Machine to fix a mail problem. Instead, the whole system wound back to 2009 and ZhaoQing. Disaster.
20160419 Inserted what might be called a local menu, a list of links to nearby pages. Reached essay 193.
20160410-5 Seem to have ignored the site for a while. 186-190 written. Updating included the sortable list but not the other indexes.
20151230 Wrote 183 about festival dates. Updated home, lists and this, too. Improved ways of importing excel spreadsheets discovered. Wrote 184&5 and did similar updating.
20151214 Wrote about Grammar, sentence types (not a good page) and about landlines disappearing (better). Updated lists, home page, maths sections and so on.
20151211 Recently wrote dementia, a eulogy for Father and Roman Numerals following from the boss teaching this topic at Primary School. A General page written for SixthForm Maths and partly duplicated in other sections. The total count might be 420 not 415 in consequence. Update needed for Jessie’s component. Update to ‘sortable list’ done up to 179. Small edits to recent work.
20151118 Updated sortable list and checked it. [Landmark: PV solar on roof yesterday]
20151117 Discover this page not updated at all since 20130421 - which seems unlikely and suggests that the page got lost in updating. Moved back to Britain 201407, to Wallsend 201409. Moved site to Heart Internet about 201409, working properly around 201412. General site repair and updating generated a sortable list, updated all of the access files at the top of Blog site. Written essays from 167 to 177, added a lot of Jessie’s blog. 400 plus pages.
20150421 Wrote 165&6, Shopping deceit and Dress sizes. Issues with password solved by resetting user interface, locking and unlocking access. Maybe my IP address changed? 22nd, updated lists to match - harder to do than it should be.
20150326-31 updated essay lists to match current writing and modified to-do list accordingly. Created new website Extension Work and added several pages. Re-count for Home page. Updated Jessie’s site with additional material.
Tried to make a sortable list. Had extensive difficulties getting the HTML script to recognise what is on the server. It will find /index.html but not /lists/indexcopy.htm - indeed nothing in /lists. It may be a caching problem; it may be a mismatch of script (HTML, CSS, VHTML). I made it work eventually.
20150324 wrote several essays 153-162, including 156-162 on vehicles. Added a page of maths to go with these. Small edits on several recent pages. Speed issues all gone except for a first access. Noted that Google caches the first new entry, so now know to delay announcements until after first re-edit.
20150221 Published 151-3. Email issues for scoins.net on the laptop, not on the desk machine. Updating process: login to Heart and open up access for an hour; do upgrade, close access. Had directory path set wrongly: should be public_html
20150205 The site is now hosted by Heart Internet, directly or indirectly, and apparently working.
20150109 Transferred eighty files to a new site as basis of bookwork, .../book/Book/Book.html. Response from system says can’t create .png files (three different ones, as I throw things away). Solution is to quit iWeb, delete user/library/preferences/com.apple.iweb.plist and relaunch iWeb.
20150107 Wrote and tried to upload essay 150 on recycling. Failed to upload. May be a file content issue. Publish error, it says, but this file entry uploads okay. Seems to be a picture issue. Fixed by loading text separately and then adding pics one by one.
20141230 small edits to last post about Christmas, 149, including the photo. Changed photo for Owl Chess. Frustrated that no change has occurred on the web hosting situation. Other updating of apparent corrections done. Very quick to upload.
20141112 JPF-C tells me her view of the site is uneven. A relayed screen shows the font hasn’t carried over and the formatting is horrible. All my machines show what I expect, so maybe this is a PC problem or a browser problem. I don’t see how to investigate this. Did many small edits over the last few days and created an index to essays different from the chronological list with topic references. Changed the Essays header page to point at a more general readership.
20141109 Wrote 145-Gower but it misbehaves, telling me of connection problem after it attempts to upload the file.‘There was an error connecting with the FTP server. Try again later...’ Took out the pictures and tried upload piecemeal. Did various little tasks, including saving a copy locally.
20141107 Failure yet again. Copied site to scoins.uat.sitedr.co.uk and running tests. Upload failed for eight of Jessie’s essays, all re-input, reformatted and the footnotes re-fixed. Essays [27 117 122a 124 125 126 128 132 136 137 138 143] all needed putting in a second time, which caused distinct problems for the ones with pictures; 136 Catalysis and 27 Earthquake needed multiple repetition even with this process. Total of pages now 356. Testing - not sure what that involves; multiple access?
Outstanding questions, then: how do I prevent what has happened with iyus, where it would appear someone (me?) has logged on and is using up the three connections.
20141020 All seems to work correctly. Retitled Essays since not in China. Updated some links. Added early drafts of essays 137, 138,...
20141019 11:30 Seem to have fixed the problem. Big machine takes secs to load the essays list, where the macbook is practically instantaneous. Some machines fixated on wrong link to website and find Ancestry, not Home. Note that Google will take some time to update its link, which fails at the moment.
20141019 09:30 Wrote 136 [Back to Britain], saved in ftp.scoins.net/public_html but still not visible from a browser. Suspect the link right at the top that directs readers to scoins.net is pointing at the wrong place. Tried setting URL as www.scoins.net/ and dir/path as public_html - result, that correct files loaded to folder. Deleted many files on site using filezilla, leaving complete site inside public_html as directed.
Hoping to persuade thesitedoctor to fix my problems.
20141017 Worse, now: www.scoins.net gets only to Ancestry files. Transferred many files (uploaded to) public_html by changing the URL to www.scoins.net/public_html
20141009 Graham at YourUk moved the site to a different server. It is not clear right now if this has had the desired effect. It fails in many regards. Graham says the site is moved to public_html but I cannot access that in Safari. I can see the files on the server using ftp, but not using http. Happy birthday to Colin, in Sabah.
20140316 Wrote Zombium recently and about making the bed and lying in it [126,127]
20140303 small edits to the recent work 122-125 and wrote Chemistry, putting it in Finance and retitling the section Other Subjects. Unfulfilled need seen (again) for Linear Algebra on determinants, eigenvectors, echelon form, diagonalisation, kernels - the FM Pure hard bits.
20140206 Added 125 - British? Updated essays by topic and Home, 310 pages now. Updated Photos to 2012
20140201 Updating this, year of the horse (bye bye, snake). added Chemistry, and essays 116-124 as dated on each. Some editing done to the running essays.
20130623 Work on Hexaflexagons and TWO & TWO done. Editing of Going to Cambridge. Small edits on Sets and Binomial. Essay 115 written but it may well be scrapped later. Essay links not updated recently. Seeing need to divide large sections or to find a better way for navigation. Maybe need for section between Lower School and Sixth Form.
20130609 Updated links to Essays. edited 112&113. Wrote 114 about Water.
20130531 Added Dimensional Analysis 1&2. Started writing Natural Units, all in Sixth Pure.
20130528 Added 112 Going to the Gym and 113 Heart Rates on 27th & 28th. Added second page on Bearings, another on related equations (roots of equations), and pages on Advanced Differentiation (calculus) and hyperbolics.
20130525/6 Wrote about Mondegreens [110] and Spooner [111], having extended Quotations - [56] and renamed it un petit d’un petit. Wrote Temple of Heaven [109] last week. Added one more C4 paper; Updated and extended FPM material. Wrote abut modelling in Mech and Ec. Recent new Middle School work has been written on paper for the Y8-10 classes as I can’t easily do diagrams in iWeb. Added Archive link to Essays front page. Added 112 and 113 on 27th & 28th.
20130430 Recent additions in Lower School: Set theory 2; Units and Measures; More Weird Units; edits and additions to Sketching. In Sixth, FPM Rates of Change; Integration 3; Calculus-why?; Calculus index; revision of all Finance pages. Not all links sorted out, but using site quite often at BSB means more errors are found and fixed. Need seen for Poisson distribution in Stats.
20130415 Various extensions to bits of maths and quite a bit of editing to improve layout in the maths of ‘lower school’. Added Matrix Principles and Factorising. Added links to Edexcel papers for Y11,12,13. Happy birthdays to Jess & Pete.
20130323 Added link to Edexcel papers. Small edits this week and FPM 6.
20130318 Extended FPM5 and added Ratio & Proportion to Year8 collection.
20130314 Added a number of files for and made minor edits to 102-107, plus Related Equations and the FPM files themselves. More files saved at BSB but left there on the local disk.
20130214 Updated rivers in China Geog, may need to write a separate piece. Deleted GZ Tech as a site. AQI of 42 meant running, for once. Domain file is 106Mb. Found a site iWEB selling integrated accounting; frustrated hope that someone has bought the s/w off Apple for long-term support. Input Pandora’s Last Gift. Wrote and uploaded Series at A-level. Fixed a few other small errors. Wrote two pages about the Binomial. Found need to update Set Theory and did so. Re-jigged the headers of most sections, tidying up the effect of adding a Links page to each section means the extra buttons at he top of each page are now redundant.
Found a bit of a mess with links inside Sixth Form - there are three different access / link lists. not yet fixed.
20130213 Spent the day trying to write Maths, plus converting FPM Edexcel files to Word. Uploaded lat that evening, two pages of FPM / Core 1&2 material. Revamped Syllabi and started to work through a re-arrangement of the Pure. See need for more basic material. Yesterday successfully fixed the faults described below, but it took all day. AQI around 400 - officially unhealthy.
20130210/11 Wrote 105 Calling the shots in the afternoon. AQI under 100 for the first time in a long while, so went running a.m. Note the effect of fireworks on AQI as reported after midnight. Uploaded new money page from yesterday. Wrote a second page, 106, on pollution and worked towards some maths on this at dinner time. Added Links back to elsewhere in every section. Problems with portrayal for others seen by Timo and spent a long evening of 11th trying to fix that. Problem either file corruption or caused by html snippets inserted to make Google maps work. Try again tomorrow, as Google Earth not loading tonight.
20130208/9 Happy New Year to all. Reformatted JPD entries, separated them [19 now] out from other essays, renumbered essays [102 from 109], checked links. Same day, wrote 102 about school and 103 about BJ’s geography. 104 about air quality up by midday on the 9th. Typos found and fixed 90-105. Updated counts and lists. Updated the Money section, adding some answers and another page. Googling Scoins, gets *.net as 2nd hit. David Scoins gets me@LinkedIn top, Facebook at 4th and *.net at 8th; the top nine are all correctly pointing at me. Domain.sites2 file now 96Mb.
20130128 A good deal of reformatting of Year Eight work, replacing tabs with spaces and reworking some layout. Some additional comment/material added. More to follow over CNY, first half of February, written in Beijing.
20130121 Wrote and uploaded Pythagoras and its concomitant links. Made a space for writing about Beijing. Need to separate out Jessie’s efforts - looking at CNY for this.
20121023 Many links on CIE page failed and fixed. More photos added. Thinking of separating out JPD’s work as she writes more. Editing passed #55. Imminent move to Beijing. Growing up and Dying away added earlier. Attempted to update use of α, trying this on ’Related Equations’. Domain.sites2 file now 87.4Mb.
20121007 Edits begun to every page hunting for typos and lack of clarity. Reached #15. See that Graduation has gone missing. At end of 8th, reached #22. Found, 11th, that #54 is missing; fixed.
20120911 Added #102-4 and took a day to write #102&103. #104 took until 13th. Edits required; testing on the iPad shows that some formatting fails. Domain.sites2 file now 75.4Mb and then jumped to 80.3Mb; I think it is pictures and links that add size, but there is something odd happening when I Save: Interest is added!!
20120906 added Cathy Song as #101. Googling Scoins, gets *.net as 4th hit. David Scoins gets me@LinkedIn top, Facebook at 4th and *.net at 8th. Domain.sites2 file now 69.2 Mb.
20120822-25 Worked on input to Ancestry pages (site, technically, iWeb says). On 24th had raised 3 pages. JPD sent #99 & 100, uploaded on 24th. Style issues raised with JPD.
20120817 added #98 about being bitten on Wushan. Googling Scoins today had this site as third hit !!
20120814 added #94-97 over last few days. Domain.sites2 file now 65.2 Mb, with a copy at 65Mb but of greyed display. Problems today with file integrity, fixed by Disk Utility
20120803 added #91-93. Edited Jessie’s entires just a little. Auto google now puts s*.net 3rd on 2nd page - metadata problem? DJS China puts s*.net 8th on Page 2.
20120625 auto-google [david scoins] puts scoins.net as 7th, mac.com AboutMe as 10th.
20120612 Found #13 is not, so wrote it and pre-dated it to fit rather than renumber so many. Added Integrity. Other synchronicity applies this day. Scoins.net now 8th on Googling my name, tho’ web.mac.com is 9th.
20120606-8 Uploaded recent essays. Added Jessie’s material. Small edits. web.mac.comclosed. Attempts to fix metadata problems - site not easily found. Deleted Old Essays; domain file shrank by 120Mb at that point. Uploaded all changes. Tried to re-organise Essays more helpfully. 62.8MB Hit counters have vanished from site pages, while remaining in website files; this is because no longer using MobileMe.
20120512 Updated the section on University following suggestion of a mass download by the current AS year group. Added Finance and Mathematics (at last). 180MB Happy wedding to Qing& Lei
20120507 Brief problems with uploading #82 and settling down to write more this week - C in YZ for her sister’s wedding.
20120424 Realise a need to upgrade the metadata on this site, since Googling self finds old site. Must research this. Preparatory work done for several more pages but no attempt made to upload anything beyond No81, found recently. Fixed missing threads and links, upgraded site work and Links to match that. need to work through the links to check what needs updating.
201201-03 Many many attempts to get to 80- essays, largely thwarted by having a file that refuses to save properly on the hard disk at home. Several new essays written and uploaded in this period, including: the Race to get Married, Planetary Conjunctions, the Move to Qingdao, Post Partum, and the Office. End result is a move to www,scoins.net and many more attempts to clear up the fault. Writing to an Apple discussion group raised the same old answers that fail and show that answers are not answers if they fail to address the question as posed. New sites created ../site/ for one; also ../essays/blog_essays/ which has no back-up copy but serves as a back-up itself.
20111016 small edits to post-75 essays. Difficulty finding right domain site file and in saving the updates.
20110520 wrote and published Qingdao [76]. Edited 70-75 and re-edited 60-69.. Recognising a need to write more. 20110529 wrote Ningbo [75] in a hurry.
20110203 wrote and published Overheard [73] and Ganbei [74]. Trouble at MobileMe with maintenance. Happy new rabbit.
20110124 wrote & published Feeling Cold [61]. updates to formatting, buttons, title pages, therefore. Happy birthday, Hoagy. Counters added to 1-40, formatting regularised, title blackened, counter moved to title area. more Email buttons added but not to all. Links to Related stories inserted. It looks like counters don’t work unless they’re at the bottom of the piece - that may be why they arrive there automatically. Wrote about Linear Thinking [72], 27th.
20110115 wrote and added Into the Hills [70] about the range immediately north of ZQ. Included photos. Updates to title pages, therefore.
20110105 reloaded domain file using iWeb v3 on the laptop and find that spelling checking now happens, so edited all essays for visible errors. Moved links to Home and Essays to top of files, since essay list keeps conflicting with titles as the list lengthens. Working on essay about Flocking [69]
20110102-3 Wrote and published Behaviour [68] following the New Year’s Day race. Re-edited on 3rd. Updated Essays front page extensively, noting its count as 128, but many counters still missing. Reformatted ten most recent essays, adding counters. Quite a lot of Numeracy updated on 20110103. Finished and published UK vs PRC Maths.
20101229 updated some of the AS Maths sample papers for layout and content. Thanks to Daniel Chan for that.
20101205 Added Letters [65], Trail Run [66] and Ikea [67]. Edited Face [58]. Was told that Dale’s received Flight [62] in some awe - thanks to RC’s delivery.
20108020-8 Wrote and published Flight Experience, Hash Two, Hydration [63], Sock Monster [64]. Many updates of style and font; some consistency achieved. Updated Home and Essays.
20100727 Wrote a bit of PT (60:Physiotherapy) and uploaded it - waiting for docs in UK to respond.
20100625 Added Chinese Television. Found failures (Essay title page, AGAIN) and fixed them - sort of.
20100614-19 Found and added Interruptions (from 200801); also 451º, (Oxford comma required) and Quotations, Not. Broken link to Grass fixed. Optimizer updated to Web Site Maestro. All counters apparently reset (damn!). Several updates attempted. See new essays in list on any single essay but not on the Essays selection page. Most popular essay is The Lads’ Weekend.
20100507 Added Issues of Face and Short-term Targets. New visitor counters show 22 already. Added more counters. Edited “What is safe? so pics stopped wandering. Found faults with Sixth Form Maths - not fixed.
20100513-18 Edited every Essay page. Added more photos. Colour added to Essays selection page, Updated News; Added Life in ZQ; Britain. Fixed (removed) Future Work fault. Added a visitor counter to site pages. Discovered how to make pictures float properly, & fixed that mostly, 16th. Also fixed a lot of formatting issues by copying text style where it has worked properly. Pages now more consistent for formatting style, but it is not uniform. thinking about using this to indicate age of page. Don’t see why some pages have different formatting in the header links area. Added Finance to Sixth Form Maths and first two pages. Working on fixing spreadsheets. Edited this page so readable. Added to the Links page and tested they work (better). Adeed quite a few cross-references (to other pages) within the text of essays. Site speed improved, 18th, using HTML Optimizer.
20100430 Wrote about Macau. Edited several pages where the text has drifted. Updated the Essays page with more buttons. Something wrong with Future Work. Added some photos to pages.
20100313 Published site all over again following various problems. Nail Girl added - thanks to Jessie.
20100112 Wrote and added A Christmas Message to Mechanics. Quite a lot of minor editing to Essays since last.
20100102 Language 3, Looking both Ways, four letter word II uploaded. Some editing of older stuff, like Running stuff; not as boring as at first thought. Essays page re-arranged. Some links restored. Also wrote The Leak and Rising Water Levels (but they’re not connected).
20091223 Found Christmas and published it.
20091209-13 Future Work planned out, to be acted upon over the New Year break. What is Two and Two edited. Wall Race updated, Fresh Air & New Flat edited. Photos Added. Attempted to upload to scoins.net - and failed. Partial result is that all needs uploading again and again to mobile.me.... confusing.
20091016 a little editing here and there, What is 2+2? particularly.
20091003 Happy birthday to CRS. Added the new Flat. Updated other references.
20090928 Changed cities again: five weeks in UK and now in Guangdong. Broadband arrived 21st, Added the Rotten Apple Shop, the Graduation Ceremony, Two and two. Need to add a lot more - should be writing at length daily, so this should happen soon.
20090417 Wrote Exponential Distribution. Edited The Hash a little. Missed Lee’s wedding in Xi’an. Updated to new iWeb (which took ages). Still can’t write alpha, lambda or integrals without using picture boxes.
20090208 RotatIon and inertia, Rings and disks. Updated Torque. Found and added: The Point Is?. Updated some of the internal links.
20090215 More inertia; retitled pages 1-2-3. Added A Hash.
20090222 Added Complex Numbers; extended it. Added The Bank. Found some broken links.
20090112 Wrote and added Fresh Air. Fixed Links to FM revision.
20081126 Wrote the Lad’s Weekend. Corrected typos 20081220.
20081116 Happy 82nd Birthday to HIS. Four Nov 2008 pages, Basic Mech; Cleaning. News
20081108 Happy Birthday to TLS Wrote Architecture (much help from the web). Made corrections to North America.
20081029 Edited many pages and their links, so that the mobile.me collection is up to date. Fixed links in Facebook, too. Inserted North America. Added Telephones.
20080930 Edited and extended the section on University. Intending to add a few pages here over the next few days.... Links in China re-established. Now at me.com not mac.com.
20080506 edited University site; fixed links & spelling
20080511 Added trip to Beijing; 13th added Earthquake; 20th added Nanjing and edited last two.
20080424 Added University site (3 pages: Applications, CHoosing a Course, References)
20080413 Added What is Safety?
20080315 Fixed connections between pages, and added Sixth Form Pure. Failed to update answers to FM Rev 3 & 4
20080205 inserted this page. Guess at dates.... Update several, including Sports Day for typos Essays: 5th, at the Spa; 10th, Chinese New Year. 14th, Terracotta Warriors 16th CNY Maths. Gallery begun, link inserted.
20080101 Maths - insert FM Rev 3 & 4, updating FM3, Edit 4-letter words. Added Man or Mouse [20071219]. Added Maths - Inertia, Essay - Reasons
20071205 Correct typos in several pages. Added City wall race [20071103] Edited Wedding. Added FM Matrices, Expectation and variance, Revision 1&2. Edited Related Equations
20071105 Add Essay - Wedding - Added Stats site and type up some pages Added more Maths (Stats) Edited Traffic some more; Added 4-letter Words, City Wall race. Began Mats and Dets
20071025 Added Ineffective [20070725] Essay , Sports Day; Wine into Water edited again. Started Differential Eqns exercises
20070925 Inserted website Mechanics, CIE Maths, add syllabus. Added Essay - Wine into Water, v1
20070909 Added several Essays - the Locale, Plastic bags [20080108], Grass. Added Censorship [20070815]. Rewrote some of Traffic, extended Rowing, edited content on Traffic and Language
20070805 Inserted first few Essays Wk 0 [20070803]