I knew it would happen one day but I always pushed the thought away, always propelled it into the Future. What I don't have to do today I can do tomorrow or perhaps next week, next month, next year, ... The Future is endless.
Since I left CERN I knew that my Web pages at cryptocellar.org, which have been hosted free on a number of CERN Web servers since I started it in 1995, were hanging in a thin thread. When I retired in April 2012 I lost access to all CERN computers and servers including the Web server hosting my CryptoCellar Web pages. This meant I could no longer maintain the site, add new material or correct stale links. The pages lived their own life outside my control, however I knew the pages were still serving a purpose. They were still being visited by people and on 10 September 2015 the Web counter showed 779514 visits.
On 23 October 2015 I received an e-mail from a friend, he wrote:I just went to look at something on your site, but it appears to be down. Is this a temporary outage? Or did CERN kick you off their servers?
Sadly it is the last of his questions that can be answered with a Yes. CERN has now got their own Internet domain, .cern, and in the process of moving all their Web servers to the new domain they are also changing their Web hosting policies. From now on only persons actively engaged in CERN activities can host Web pages and the content of these pages will from now on also have a much narrower profile than previously. Cryptology is no longer seen as a subject connected with CERN and its core activities.
So my Web pages has disappeared down the drain and into the dark Internet void of deleted Web pages and closed Web servers. It means I must now start in ernest the work of finding a new hosting service for my CryptoCellar Web site and perhaps also let the pages get a new look and feel.
However there is a immediate saviour, The Wayback Machine, which has archived a complete copy of my Web pages. While you wait for me to get my new CryptoCellar up and running you can access the archived copy here: CryptoCellar Archive
