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Thanks for coming back! Over the years we built up a tremendous feeling of being a real community and I came to think of so many of you as friends, some of whom I had the good fortune to meet, either in the US or the UK .

I was also used to getting thirty or forty emails a day from visitors. People would write to share information or experiences: I really enjoyed those emails, so please keep them coming!

I'm reviving the Newsletter as well, one of the most popular parts of the old site with 4500+ subscribers. I hope you'll sign up for that - and I promise: no HTML! just a plain old ASCII text missive.

There were almost 1000 pages on the old site, and if I waited until they were all converted to the new format, we'd probably not get online before the next millennium, so I decided that the News Archive should not be formatted at all, except for the indices. As there were over 250 files, this saved a lot of time!

There will be a slight change in the News section, in that I will try to upload as and when the stories break and I won't wait till the end of the week, although the Newsletter will feature a round-up of the week's news. I'll also issue special editions of the Newsletter when anything of importance happens, something I couldn't do with the very inflexible About format.

I have been asked if I am bitter about the About dropping the site. I was upset - after all, I had built it up from nothing over a period of four and a half years - but I am hard-headed enough to know that companies have to take difficult commercial decisons to try to ensure their survival. So I don't bear a grudge. In fact, I am grateful that I am able to set up this site using all the content I had built up with About. The strict letter of the contract would have prevented that, but the company chose to waive that requirement, and for that I am grateful.

The costs of running the site are not minor! That's why I am looking for advertising and/or sponsorship - and it's also why you see a pop-up banner when you connect to the site. I know people don't like them, but it reduces my hosting costs by almost 50% and that makes the whole thing affordable. Without it, there wouldn't be a site!

I hope I can continue to provide the service as before, and I am delighted to welcome you back.

Cheers,

Peter