Anne-Rachel arranged for a car to take Tim and me on a tour around Dakar. We went to Africa's most westerly point before moving on to Gorée island. The slave trade was based there for about 350 years but it is now home to a small community of just over 1,000 people and a lot of shops selling tourist goods.

A damned fine sunset tonight

Tuesday was another gloriously warm and sunny day. The marina area was hard to see because of the bright light and I was worried I'd get sun burned :-)

I woke up late enough to miss the hotel breakfast this morning but that's not a problem as the quay side is next to the hotel and has some fantastic brunch food.

I stupidly managed to delete my photos from my first day in Stockholm before I did anything with them. On the second day I spent hours at the Modern Museum which doesn't allow photography - probably because so many of the pictures are still in copyright - but I did grab a couple of decent shots of art in the subway system.

Another lovely autumn day. The harbour looks fab.

Camilla suggested a visit to Frogner Park and so I walked there straight after I arrived. It's absolutely fantastic: full of colour, symmetry and interesting statuary.

I drove from Christchurch to Hanmer Springs and stopped along the way to take a few photos. It was a beautiful day with mostly clear skies, crisp air and bright sun. I had lunch outside and didn't need a warm coat. The countryside is absolutely gorgeous and well worth a future return visit.

Denesh and I visited the Eiffel Tower after dinner last night.

Feel safe at Tony P's in Marina del Rey. You're right next to fire station 110.

Dinner and drinks on the boardwalk by Brisbane's river. It started out balmy and breezy and ended up with a torrential downpour.

I went for a little walk around Lake Merritt. Its circumference is about 3 miles and it's really pretty. Some parts have a fairly strong aroma but I'm sure it's fairly clean as there are loads on little shell fish scattered all over the paths by the geese or ducks.

There are some interesting statues in the Bay Area and here are photos of a few of them.

We visited a few vineyards in Sonoma County, today. The temperature was in the mid-70s and the sky was blue. It was a beautiful drive and we even bought a bottle of wine.

Beth, Shira and I went for a walk in Redwood Park, this morning. It was gorgeous. Highly recommended.

I popped up to Amsterdam for Ruminic's joint birthday party. A good time was had by all.

I'm not sure what kind of bug this is. If you know then please leave a comment with its name.

Michelle arranged for Steve to sail us up the coast and back this afternoon. I like sailing!

Before, during and after.

I arrived so later it was then next day, then it started raining and didn't stop for three days. But that was OK because I was inside where it was mostly dry and air-conditioned down to 65F. Yesterday was glorious, though, and we all took a couple of hours to visit the Bacardi distillery.

These pictures were taken from the office window and just down the street from the office. It's been a good week for lovely views.

This vixen and her cubs stopped by in my parents' back garden, yesterday. One cubs had something to eat while the other two had a little romp around near the garden shed.

Photos taken while at and around the ICANN meeting in Lisbon

Yesterday's bright sunshine and winds have been replaced by cold temperatures and snow. Nathalie's escaped it all in Cape Town, so these photos are for her :-)

It's Spring! It's Sunday!

I'm heading back tomorrow evening but I'm actually enjoying this place despite the humidity, rain and so on. For instance, the snake fruit, or salak, only seems to be available here. And it's superb!

Two pictures from a balmy, tropical evening...

Of course, my room has an arrow in it, pointing towards Mecca. There's also a sort of statue hanging from the wall that could be a model of a god, I'm not sure. And there are statues of people, possibly gods, all around the hotel. They are decorated several times a day.

I've also just seen a procession walk by, ringing a gong as they go. I'm not sure if it was a religious procession or not.

I swam for 20 minutes at 6am and about an hour later it started raining, which took the temperature down to 27°C. Apparently that's fairly normal. After the rain I went out and took a few pictures.

An interesting story on the front page of this morning's Straits Times. I wonder how many machines would be confiscated if a similar scheme were run in London or Amsterdam.

I saw this as I walked back from lunch, this afternoon. The police were in attendance and an ambulance was leaving quietly as I passed. It looks like the car may have been shunted from behind but it could also be a careless driver. There's a car mechanic almost directly behind the car. How convenient.

I like the tree lined avenue next to the pier by the office.

I want to give this a go. I would be so incredibly bad at it I'd have excellent fun.

It must have rained last night as I saw this little group of very fresh mushrooms growing in the grass on my way into the office this morning.

A steak dinner goes weird when Hungary's finest herbal liquer is introduced.

The European Commission building, as with most of Brussels, is covered in a poster welcoming Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union. Yay for the new members! They have almost as many rights as everyone else. They must feels truly equal; truly welcome ;-)

Carrasco is a lovely part of Montevideo. I took a few photos of things in the area.

I just got in to town and took these photos from the balcony of my hotel room and in the downtown area. Montevideo is looking even better than it did when I last came here.

Ricardo tells me that Brazil's best chocolate is made by Kopenhagen. Fortunately, they have a store five minutes walk from the LACNIC office, so we popped over there today and I picked up a mercy package for the folks back home in Amsterdam.

I've been in town since Sunday evening but last night was the first night on which I took photographs. BRNIC put on an excellent social event with acrobatic entertainment and considerable lubrication.

Dominic and Rumy organised a superb leaving do for me. It had to be a little early as Rumy, Filiz, Axel and Jochem have to pop over to Mauritius next week - but it was superb. There were presents, a presentation, speeches, karaoke and dancing. I didn't get to do any Johnny Cash or Adam Ant, but I made do with "New York, New York" and "Knowing Me, Knowing You". Ahaa!

Emma's over in Amsterdam for a week of cycling around and stuff like that. We met her for drinks...

I was in London at the weekend and my brother and his new wife took me out to lunch for a curry. Very nice it was, too.

I turned 33, today. That's 0x21 in hex. Iratxe, Rumy, Dominic, Sandra, Filiz and Nathalie bought me a teapot for my birthday. (Nathalie had previously checked what I wanted :-)) Those who were actually in Amsterdam stopped by the Tig Barra for a few drinks. A bigger party is expected later in the month.

I saw this windmill for generating electricity as I passed Bijlmer, earlier today. I've always thought these machines look rather elegant. It would be great if there were more of them about, and nearer to me.

Leslie, Nick and I went for a wander around St Louis. We found loads of funky little boutique stores and a rather large funky smell. Maybe it was the sewers and maybe it was the river. I don't know. I do know it was persistent and pervasive.

Filiz took Matt, Mike, Paul and me to a blues bar a few blocks from the hotel and the ball park. Good music, drinks and snacks. Mmmm

ARIN organised a very fun social event in an old shoe factory that had been converted into a museum. Wat leuk!

Mike, Filiz and I did a little sight seeing in St Louis, MO.

Rumy organised a birthday party cum housewarming at her new appartment. I took loads of photos but my camera seemed to eat most of them :-( These are the few that are left after using CocoViewX, which seems much better at reading them than Preview.

Kate found tickets for the Bolshoi Ballet while we were in Moscow. We got the cheapest seats in the house, just 1900 Roubles. The first half of the ballet was good - beautiful music - but a restricted view. Five minutes into the second half, we were ushered into new seats, just 5° off from dead on to the stage. These seats must have cost five times what we paid! I can only assume tht the usher was a lovely lady and wanted us to get the best out of the performance. The performance was transformed and I thoroughly enjoyed myself :-)

Just two pictures I snapped in Moscow, today.

RU Center sponsored another great social event, this time an evening at a jazz bar near Red Square. As always there was a lot of food, a lot of drink and a lot of music. A good time was had by all, as exemplified by Nick!

Camilla took us out to dinner at a little restaurant near our hotel. The food and drink never stopped flowing: stuffed rolls, fish, salads... and then a main course. All washed down with gallons of Kvas, which is absolutely delicious.

I noticed three horseshoes abandoned on the ground when I locked up my bike outside my house this afternoon. That's right - count 'em - three. If your three legged horse has lost its shoes, please contact me. I may be able to put you in touch with some nice people in the adhesives industry...

Marina del Rey is apparently a bit overcast most mornings. It gets bright and sunny by the afternoon, though. But I didn't take any afternoon photos.

Guy and Simcha were married on Sunday. I only managed to get a few pictures, though. I think the flash on my camera is fading, or just didn't work very well.

I bought a second-hand bicycle in November, but it was stolen a couple of weeks ago. I bought a new bike yesterday, and it is fantastic. It's so much more comfortable to ride than the old one. It's so good I'm almost not pissed off at the bastard that stole my old bike.

I made a bread and butter pudding. It went very quickly, so I assume people enjoyed it. I know I did :-)

We were going to do Highland Games but ended up in a bar. Such is life.

I popped into town today, to get some new lenses for my spare glasses. While there I noticed a couple of old London double-decker buses parked by the Queen's palace in Dam Square.

Alex organised a relaxing party in the park, to celebrate his birthday of last week.

Eiran asked me to get him a hat for him in Montreal, but I couldn't find anything suitable. I did find three suitable hats in Istanbul, though. Guess which one didn't come from Turkey.

Carol and Harry came over to London from Perth for the first time in about 30 years. There was lots of food and a lot of people turned up to say "g'day!"

I went for a walk through the park, this morning. On my way back, I managed to twist my ankle. Now it's gone and swollen up :-(

I bought a copy of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" and then went for a walk along the banks of the Bosphorus and met Desiree and Geoff. It was a bit blowy, but very relaxing.

For some reason I barely took any photos at RIPE 52s socials. Ho hum. Maybe there'll be more at RIPE 53.

I was up early to get to the airport in time for my flight to Istanbul. Although we'd paid for the KLM product, KLM felt it was fine to substitute a cheapoTransavia plane, which is a bit cheeky, really. But it's only a three and half hour flight, so you barely have time to get uncomfortable before arriving.

Istanbul appears to have a slight traffic problem on weekends, but maybe it's better during the week. In any case, it's really quite lovely. And the food looks damned good too, so more on that later.

My best meal yet in Montreal, tonight, dinner at Schwartz's. It's one of the most famous delis in town and the meat is absolutely delicious. Well worth a visit if you're in town.

I got back from Brisbane at 8.30am, yesterday. This morning I woke up at 4am. It's now light enough to see out of the window and there's just a light dusting of snow on my bike and on the flat roofs behind my flat.

Leslie and I drove up to Australia Zoo, the place where Steve Irwin dangles his kids in front of live, meat eating crocodiles. Check out the crocodile feeding movies linked from the bottom of this page.

We didn't see Steve, his wife or his kids on anything but merchandising. (It's a bit of a cult of personality). However, we did see a whole bunch of Australian and Asian animals. Some scary and some cute and cuddly.

The drive back to Brisbane was painless, and we stopped along the way for a pineapple crush (a crushed pineapple in a cup) which was delicious.

George and Elly took Leslie and me up a hill near to Brisbane so we could see how big it is. The CBD is fairly tightly packed in the centre - but the rest of the city spreads for a long, long way...

Today I drove down into the Gold Coast and over to Tamborine Mountain. The GPS made sure I didn't get lost and two lovely ladies directed me to the Glow Worms Cave when I got there. I don't have photos from inside the cave, my camera isn't good enough to show it properly.

The cave is next to a couple of wineries, so I came back with a few bottles of fantastic wines, too.

I popped down to the Perth Zoo, today. I'm normally a little bit wary of zoos, but the Australians seem to be quite careful about not being too evil to animals so I decided to risk it. I was impressed with the zoo's high animar care standards, no bears in pits, nor sticks to poke them with. In fact, the set-up is incredibly good, with large sreas for the animals to live in, and minimal use of chain link fencing.

I saw lots of wonderful Australian creatures that you can't get hold of in Europe for love nor money. Ace!

I'm in Australia for my first time and staying with family for the first couple of days. This is a wonderful country: big, warm, dry, friendly and full of the most delicious fish I've ever eaten. On my first proper day in Perth I went to the beach and paddled in the ocean before lunching opposite the central business district.

I'm in Australia for my first time and staying with family for the first couple of days. This is a wonderful country: big, warm, dry, friendly and full of the most delicious fish I've ever eaten. On my first proper day in Perth I went to the beach and paddled in the ocean before lunching opposite the central business district.

I bought a great little Japanese bottle of lemonade at the mini-mart at the airport, yesterday. It reminded me of the bottle that Rick Pav's son opened here:

http://www.herroflomjapan.com/2005/09/24/videocast-how-to-open-a-bottle-of-lamune/

As you can see, I haven't even opened the bottle yet, let alone disassembled it. I'm sure I will in due course, but not just yet...

Now I live on the top floor and above a canal I can show what Amsterdam looks like with a coating of snow

I have no idea why it happened. I left it downloading and filing e-mail in Mail.app while I made tea and had a chat. I came back a bit later and found these horrific messages on my screen. I've never seen anything quite as scary. Is OS 10.4.3 significantly less stable than previous versions? What happened?

We were meant to have a summer barbecue, but a sudden downpour nixed that idea. Instead, we ended up doing a pub quiz, organised by Catherine. A good time was had by all.

Nathalie and I went to Bart Smit, to buy a birthday present for Britt, Dominic's daighter. We found just the right thing, but I was a bit surprised at some of the toys they sold.

I got back from LA, last Sunday morning. It was my birthday, so I had a few people over for a birthday party/housewarming. Timothy won the prize for the best dressed man.

Tony took us on a tour of LA. We saw a *lot* of celebrity homes... well the bushes and fences and locked gates that surround the celebrities' homes. But we did see Phil Collins' dog sleeping by the gate to his mansion. But these pictures are of the Walk of Fame, Grauman's Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood Hills.

Filiz and I went to Fry's to buy electronics. Filia was considerably more successful than me. She managed to get the MP3 player she wanted and rechargable batteries for hr camera. I just ended up buying candy for the office and a flashlight (very nice one, though). Outside the shop we were each fascinated by different flying things: Filiz took pictures of the planes leaving Burbank airport, while I found a humminghbird in the car park.

Equinix hosted an excellent pre-NANOG social on Saturday night.

This time we were at Mercurius, near the Centraal Station. A good time was had by all, and then I went off to the Whiskey BoF...

After five years in Amsterdam Emma is going back to Leeds. Her leaving do was at St Paul's and just about everyone was there. Unfortunately, Nurani couldn't make it over from Brisbane, but her Powerpoint presentation did :-)

We went bowling at Pims, on Buikslotermeerplein in salubrious Amsterdam Noord. It's a classy joint and it suited us down to the ground.

All the work's finished and so we went out to dinner at a nearby restaurant favoured by Moscow's 'oligarch's'. The food was excellent and was served with a fair amount of liquid accompaniment. Sadly, Arno had to leave early to catch his train to Nizhni Novgorod, which seems to be suffering from a Hepatitis A outbreak at the moment.

Nathalie, Camilla and I went for a walk through the centre of Moscow. We were partly looking for presents for the folks back home, but we also just wanted to see the sights. Oh, and I found some stawberry toothpaste, too, so a good time was had by all.

After a horrifically early start and a long day of listening, preseting and listening we retired to a beautiful fish restaurant about a third of the way towards the edge of Moscow (that's just 87 miles north of the centre :-)))) They served fresh and smoked fish, crystal clear vodka and entertained us with excellent games. I won some gingerbread and wine. Fortunately, there was no mistletoe and no Cliff Richard.

We had drinks in the hotel bar before moving on to a Georgian jazz bar just a few blocks down the street.

I spotted this spider climbing my bedroom wall, this morning. Maybe it's the reason I've not seen many flies or mosquitos this summer? It's about 1.5" wide and really quite impressive. I'm fairly confident it can't hurt me though. I don't think any northern European spiders have teeth that can bite through a human's skin, so I still feel quite safe :-)

After many, many, many years Nik and Nichola finally got married.

The social was at the Kensington Roofgardens. We started with Pimms and moved on to a barbecue and a disco. Top venue!

Nik's getting married at the end of the month. The stag weekend was in York, though I missed the mountain biking, only arriving in time for the food and alcohol :-D

It was an early start and a Sunday. But once the business had been done we popped into town for a quick lunch.

This week in London's been fairly crappy. I was stuck in a traffic jam on the M25 for two hours because they closed the road when a van carry oxy-acetylene cylinders caught fire. That led to me missing dinner with friends. The same problem helped me miss my flight to Newcastle for the Nominet AGM the next day. Today there was a series of terrorist bombs in central London.

I did manage to meet up with Eiran and have lunch at Solly's, though. It was slightly surreal eating really good food in a nice quiet restaurant just a few hours after the bombs went off.

It was originally going to be an XDHM curry evening, but it morphed into cocktails and tapas for a wider group of people.

30 April is the last day people are allowed to make bonfires in Sweden. It's also the King's birthday. Eva took Pierre and me to a community bonfire in the park near where she lives.

Cats eat mice, so restaurants and shops in the Netherlands keep cats on staff to improve the level of hygeine. Casa di David has a new recruit and Kurtis helped train him up using his scarf as a lure.

People tell me that Amsterdam's canals are nine feet deep: three of water, three of bikes and three of mud. They actually need to be free of obstructions. So every now and again the canals are cleared of unwanted clutter. As these pictures show, that includes a lot of discarded bicycles.

I went to the US and took the train down to San Francisco from Seattle, via Portland (OR not MN). These photos were taken by my cousin while I was visiting her in San Francisco