Web Site

Column Kynosarges

Welcome to the gymnasion! This is the personal website of Christoph Nahr. Visit the following index pages or use the sidebar menu to show categorized lists of content pages.

Here are some notes and other information regarding the content pages.

This website is accessible through two domains, kynosarges.org and kynosarges.de. Both point to the same files and can be used interchangeably. See below for the history behind these twin domains.

Menu Navigation

The sidebar menu is implemented in pure CSS 2.1 and uses hover functionality. Its behavior differs depending on your input method.

  • Mouse – Hover the mouse pointer over a menu link to show its submenu. Click a menu link to visit its index page, or click a submenu link to visit its content page.
  • Touch – Tap a menu link to visit its index page. You can reach all associated content pages from there.
  • Touch with Hover Emulation (e.g. Mobile Safari) – Tap a menu link once to show its submenu. Tap the same menu link again to visit its index page, or tap a submenu link to visit its content page. Tap the Contents heading to close the submenu without going anywhere.

The pop-up submenus are based on the examples at Claire Campbell’s tanfa CSS. They should work on Mobile Safari and all current desktop browsers. Internet Explorer 6 and earlier are not supported – please upgrade your browser!

Contact & News

Here’s how you can keep up with Kynosarges contents and get in touch with me. Since March 2012 all website news and status updates appear on the Kynosarges weblog. Major website news and the occasional links of interest also appear on my Google+ and Twitter profiles.

Blogger Kynosarges Weblog  – all news & plans concerning the website

Atom Kynosarges Newsfeed  – weblog newsfeed in Atom 1.0 format

Email Kynosarges E-mail  – for general feedback concerning the website

Google+ Chris Nahr on Google+  – personal profile with major news & links

Twitter ChrisNahr on Twitter  – personal profile with major news & links

You can post feedback and contact me at any of these services. Moreover, if there are any weblog entries for a given Kynosarges page, the link “Leave Comment” in the footer leads directly to the latest entry. Please note that weblog comments require JavaScript.

Historical Note

The Κυνοσαργες (Kynosarges) was an ancient Greek gymnasion dedicated to Herakles, situated in the demos Diomeia outside the walls of Athens. It was the place of education for those Athenian boys who did not enjoy full citizenship. Antisthenes (445–360 BC), student of Socrates and founder of the cynic school of philosophy, taught at the Kynosarges. The most famous cynic was Diogenes of Sinope (412–323 BC), allegedly residing in an empty barrel and subject of countless anecdotes.

Addendum 1 June 2004: I am pleased to discover that Kynosarges was also the title of a short-lived literary magazine whose only issue was published in Berlin anno 1802. Otherwise the name appears to have seen little use since ancient times, at least with the “K” spelling.

About the Website

The Kynosarges website was established in 1999 – not quite so ancient as its namesake but still pretty old compared to most of the Internet! I wanted a distinctive domain name to host my first small game project, Star Chess. Since then the website has grown organically with all kinds of code, links, and articles which I found interesting or useful enough to share.

Addendum April 2012: Originally I had been posting all website news directly on this page, deleting old news periodically when the list got too long. Last month I finally got more organized and started posting updates on the services linked above (Blogger, Google+, Twitter). So you won’t find any updates older than March 2012 there, in case you were wondering.

About the Domains

As a German resident I got a free .de domain from my ISP, so that’s where Kynosarges started out. However, this website is neither in German nor specific to Germany, and quickly acquired a global audience (however small). So I registered the kynosarges.org alias in June 2011 and have been using it in public URLs ever since, although the .de variant will remain valid as well.

An amusing incident in June 2011 provided additional incentive for the .org alias. Chinese domain hunters were evidently targeting foreign website names at random – including mine! They had only squatted on local domains such as kynosarges.cn at that point, but I decided to take preemptive action before anyone else could grab kynosarges.org.

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Christoph Nahr © 27 April 2012