I wrote to him and hoped I might hear back, and to my delight I just received a response which he has encouraged me to share here with you...
------------------
I’m ok, sorry for the silence, I’ve been intending to send a newsletter for a while, basically I’m currently between a rock and a hard place with the server and site and having trouble dealing with it all at the moment. The server is on its last legs and too old for the required TLS necessary for SSL, but the site needs a lot of work to bring it up to PHP7 specs which I keep attempting but failing with things like preserving the order history which is the most important thing.
I have a new server set up and ready to go, I just need to persevere with converting the site, and I have to admit it has me beat at the moment. It’s a very old site and has tons of customised code I wrote over many years for the Download and file distribution system. It’s pretty daunting as quite a lot of stuff like the encryption algorithms I used have been removed from PHP7, anyway you get the idea, I will get there eventually.
I’m still intending to continue last years group buy but it’s not likely to be until the new year now assumes img I can get the site done. It’s actually been good for me to take some time away from it all, and I’m feeling tons healthier than this time last year, but there’s certainly some psychological baggage to get over.
I have some health problems which are not heart related which are making life harder, but I had a 2nd angiogram last week which should have been in March/April but postponed due to Covid19. They thought I would likely need another stent but it was good news and I didn’t. The artery has narrowed in one area but not enough to worry about at the moment. The existing stent is holding up well too which is good news. My arm has just about recovered now from that and so I’m glad it’s out of the way finally, it’s been a grim prospect for months!
Anyway, please don’t let anyone worry about me, I know I’ve neglected things for a while and hope I haven’t offended anyone, but I just don’t seem to get around to responding and doing stuff etc... I’m definitely foggier than I used to be, presumably because of the meds I’m on, but I’m seriously grateful for the concern and looking forward to eventually getting back on track and creating some new instruments
It’s been a crazy year for us all and hopefully next year can see us getting back to something approaching normal.
Feel free to copy and paste this, and hope you and everyone else are well and surviving our dystopian world!
All the best
Andy
, what a relief, so happy to hear these news. At least some good news in this "dystopian times". Thanks for sharing this, means a lot to many people in here I am sure.
great news...
