Acknowledgements

Means, motive and opportunity are the traditional essence of any successful criminal enterprise and the creation of this website (though not necessarily quite as antisocial as a bullion robbery or bank heist) has been no exception. I have been extraordinarily fortunate in all three respects, and would like to express my deepest appreciation ...

Firstly to our son Nick and his partner Phil who - sceptical as to whether I'd ever get round to it myself - gave me a lean mean desktop machine, the first computer of my own in over 40 years of software development. It's been a life-changing acquisition and a steep learning curve, but without the means to access the internet myself and to prepare the website content, OrnaVerum could never have happened.

Secondly to my fellow post-doctoral colleague in the office we shared next to Joe Gerratt back in the mid-1970s, and now an eminent academic in his own right, Dr Manthos Papadopoulos. It was during late-night conversations with him during an unforgettable visit to Athens in the early summer of last year [2011] - with an inspirational view of the floodlit Acropolis from the balcony - that I was suddenly motivated to excavate all the research material from long ago and put it into the public domain. OrnaVerum had become a burning ambition.

And thirdly to the facilitator of these intentions, the provider of the opportunity, the dispenser of the fairy dust that changes dreams into reality, the man who has made it all come together, the subject of the following tribute (and quite remarkably lifelike portrait)...

WebWizard

I am delighted to acknowledge the tremendous enthusiasm, professional expertise, wisdom and experience, endless patience, tolerance and unfailing good humour of my dear friend, erstwhile colleague and all-round good guy, now shrouded in almost impenetrable anonymity as Eboracus, the WebWizard without whom this website would still be just a pipedream. A man of many talents, he is also renowned for his circus skills ...

Thank you so much, maestro

Quality Assurance

In my (second) career as an applications designer and programmer, I became convinced that many of the difficulties and disasters encountered in an IT environment are simply the result of sloppy documentation and administrative procedures. (There are of course many other reasons, mostly testosterone-related.)

Applications programs for which the author is unknown, the version information is missing and the source-code has been lost, are all too familiar to the seasoned IT professional in large corporate environments. Such software is even worse than useless, as its results are entirely unpredictable.

And so in the internet context, it is of primary importance that the visitors to a website should be properly assured as to the credentials and bona-fides of the author. There are of course all too many charlatans and flat-earthers around.

Likewise, there needs to be evidence of the ongoing relevance of the content. We have all encountered websites whose information, advice or recommendations turn out to be way out of date. To be totally visitor-friendly, all websites should provide clear evidence of being regularly maintained and reliably updated. In other words, QA is of the essence.

Between the two of us, Eboracus and I have made every effort in these respects, and hope you will agree that it has been worth our while.

Even webpages suffer the ravages of time (more prosaically, from updates of operating systems and internet browsers), so if you happen to notice a particularly damaged-looking page anywhere in OrnaVerum, please notify Eboracus or myself via the Contact menu-option, and we will endeavour to repair it as soon as possible.

Construction

The pages on this website are written in html, plus a few PHP and JavaScript routines that were too fancy for html. The design and coding comply with the international standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium and are supported by the recent versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. If you are using an older browser and experience problems with this site, it's perhaps time you upgraded your browser to the latest version.

If you find any missing links, page rendering errors or similar wobblies, please contact WebWizard directly at webmaster@ornaverum.org

Unicode character codes are used for text characters outside the conventional English alphabet, such as those found in some formulae.

British English is used for spelling, date formats, measurements, etc., with the exception of a few phrases quoted from third-party sources.

A PDF reader is required to view or download documents such as those linked from the Postgrad and Postdoc pages. You can download a viewer (free) from the Adobe website: get.adobe.com/reader/.

Version Control

The version number and date seen at the top of each page point to the latest version of this website. See Development Log for details.

Due to the comparatively lengthy intervals between first-level or second-level releases, and the plethora of third-level tweaks in between, there is now (Feb 2018) an update alert on the Home page title-bar of the date of the latest change.

This feature also serves as a sign that the website as a whole is still alive and kicking, as it is rare indeed that more than a fortnight elapses without some change being made.

Visitor Statistics

The Google Analytics service provides ongoing tallies of the visitor activity on client websites. Though not of course revealing any id data on the visitors themselves, it summarises the duration and scope of visits on a daily basis, and can of course be of great use in pin-pointing underperforming areas of a website. Eboracus of course has a healthy scepticism of the quality of such internet metrics, but readily concedes that they are very useful in gauging trends in usage. See Visitor Statistics for details of this website to date.

As of July 2023 however, Google Analytics will no longer deliver visitor activity data suitable for OrnaVerum's purposes. And so, regretfully, the ongoing tabulation and display of our Visitor Statistics will have to be rather abruptly terminated.

Copyright

Yes, plagiarism saves time, but please read this website's Copyright Notice.

Disclaimer

Whilst I have confidence that this website's contents are statements of fact, the substantial number of pages has inevitably increased the risk that transcription errors may have crept in. Therefore I waive any claim that this website is 100% faultless and offer you this Disclaimer Statement.