I’ve had zero feedback from you on the utility of the emtg pages for display on your mobiles, so have just gone ahead & published it, hoping for the best. That was a day or two back (it was “published” by creating a ‘sitemap’ (xml-file containing meta info on all pages on the site), putting a link to that file in to the robots.txt--yet another file of meta info--then creating a webmaster page for myself with Google & listing all that info with them). What it now needs is links from other sites to flourish.

Here’s the visitor stats in the Altervista Dashboard that I got just now:-

Modem-Help used to have 5,000 visitors daily (that was individual humans, all bots removed) & 15,000 daily page-views from those visitors, which makes etmg’s stats look silly, of course. However, MH also had 1,000,000+ pages to view, whilst emtg has just 231 (and slowly building as I add new emails). Here is the current info on the site:

I felt very brave to do all the above on 10 January. I normally suffer from SAD (“Seasonal Affective Disorder”) which, essentially, is us feeling very low because of short, miserable, cold days made worse because the excitement of the holiday season is over. The extra info on SAD is that it is a physiological (as well as psychological) issue mediated by the timing of Melatonin release, which is a brain-chemical which has our eyes and the pineal gland (a mysterious pine-cone shaped gland positioned at the top of the brainstem) as intermediaries.

Melatonin is released during dark hours only, and that is triggered by specific levels (and frequency) of light. There are brain pathways between our eyes & the pineal gland (which latter manufactures the hormone), and it’s clear that this is at least one mechanism that allows to detect the changing seasons plus when, as just one example, that it is Christmas time.

Something useful: The above has a different responsiveness to red levels than to blue levels of light. That is *really* important because of changes in the lighting & entertainment technology that we now use. The bottom-line is that blue-green lighting will keep us awake for longer than red-orange-yellow lighting. That is because melatonin is triggered by drops in the level of the red-end of the visible spectrum quicker than by the same drop in the blue-end of the same spectrum.

The older tungsten-wire light-bulbs gave a light that was centred within the red-orange-yellow parts, whereas modern LED + long-life (fluorescent) light-bulbs are more at the blue-green end, as are TV-screens. Therefore, if you want to feel wide-awake at the end of the night, then watch TV or consult your mobiles immediately before sleeping.

The same issue even extends to street-lighting. Councils are rapidly exchanging all the old street-lights for modern LED variants due to the lower running costs of LED over older lighting. That means that we are exchanging (predominantly) yellow- & orange-lighting for green/blue-lighting. That is very useful for keeping taxi-drivers awake, but most hard on those working normal shifts that want to be able to wake up in the morning.

Together with all of the above, I have a very personal, family reason for hating 10 January; it is the day that my mum died. Ovarian cancer tortured her for 6 months, then took her at 10 minutes past 8 in the morning of 10 January 2003 at Dove House hospice in Hull. A year earlier to the day I had had a presentiment of her death; it only made sense the day that she died.

So, it may be foolish, but I publicly started EMTG on the same day that my mum snuffed it.

Postscript:
I got a reply the same day from Liisa:

Not read this email or others as we're in Seattle, WA and enjoying time with my brother and his wife and child. Back to UK chaos on 14th January.

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Alex Kemp