December 9, 2004
Photos from my trip to Budapest are now online in the gallery. I've included some night shots, plus a lot of looks across one side of the river (Buda) or the other (Pest). Beautiful city, lots of great food, especially if you like meat, fried in breadcrumbs, and stuffed with duck liver.

December 8, 2004
Uploaded my most-recent trio of security stories for Enterprise Systems, and the latest for the IT Compliance Institute. Just back from a long weekend in Budapest, photos to follow soon.

November 6, 2004
Think a Web browser is just a Web browser? Not when it comes to security, usability, and even the fun factor. My latest article for The Times of London, "Surf's Up," details alternatives to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

November 3 , 2004
Updated photographs on site, adding a catch-all category (and stock repository) called Paris Places for everything from scenes of Montmartre, to Galleries Lafayette -- already in the throes of leche vitrine (window shopping) since in France it's a dead run from Toussaint on November 1 to Christmas, with no Thanksgiving in between.

Speaking of festivities, some Halloween touches were in evidence this year at a number of boulangeries, brasserieis, and restaurants as well as these pumpkins and blood-orange eclairs at high-end food seller Fauchon.

October 13, 2004
In addition to keeping links to my latest stories updated, I just added two photo galleries. One is recent autumn shots in Paris, taken over the last six weeks (of such things as the Moulin Rouge). The other is a half-dozen shots of the 2004 Nuit Blanche, an all-night festival in Paris of light sculptures and installations.

The new photo galleries are standalone -- static HTML -- which is my wave of the future. (How 1996, I know.) As of now, the new galleries don't completely integrate into the existing photo menu structure, which is run by an online database ... But since I haven't been adding photos to my site, because working with the online photo database software is a pain, this is a start. Soon I hope to transition all of my images into static HTML galleries. That should make adding new galleries, or updating existing ones, much easier. In short, my photos should actually start staying updated!

September 14, 2004
Dateline: Paris. I've moved from Toulouse, land of siestas and well-paced life, back to big-city Paris. Thankfully, there's been no repeat of last year's Canicule -- the heat wave of 2003 that killed many elderly Parisians and left the city steaming well through September.

Autumn is already inaugurated with maple leaves falling on my street, such later-summer fruits as figs in the outdoor Bastille market, and cool nights. It's good to be back.

Just updated the site today with seven September security stories. In the last two weeks, I've moved my life's possessions (well, the ones not in storage) between cities solely in a rented Citroën Xsara Picasso -- talk about vertical room in a mid-size -- and also attended my first Irish wedding, of a friend from university days, in Wexford. Travelogue and photos to follow. I was able to take a couple of extra days to relax in Dublin, which is much more cosmopolitan and heterogeneous than 10 years ago. Also pricier and busier. At least there are budget European airlines.

August 24, 2004
The Fodor's Paris 2005 guide was released today. Having moved to Paris in the fall of 2003, I got to crawl the city with a mission. First, for the book's chapter on "Sports & the Outdoors," I chased down bike and in-line skate rental shops; found scenic jogs, parks, and spas; and searched for boules players and their dirt pitches. I also added yoga studios, included information on where to catch popular rugby and football/soccer matches, and more.

For the "Books & Movies" section, I profiled essential reading and cinema for a jaunt to Paris. Being mildly obsessed with French cinema, it was hard not to go encyclopedic, though the chapter does run the gamut from black-and-white heist films, to children's films, to musicals. Something for everyone, I hope.

The guide looks great, with notable changes from the previous edition: a taller and narrower trim size, improved paper stock, and the addition of a full-color Métro map in the inside back cover, essential for navigating the city. Find Fodor's Paris 2005 at Amazon.com or read more at the Fodor's site.

August 18, 2004
Summer continues here in Toulouse with beach-worthy weather (hello Mediterranean, a 90-minute dash by weekend train) and lots of grilling on the terrace overlooking the center of town. (Yes, I even have a small Weber grill for the burgers and Toulouse sausage; life is good.)

Exciting news for me on the photography and pop-culture front: the latest album, "No Shelter," from the Irish band Cactus World News features my Dublin photography on its cover (at left). The wolf was added; those don't tend to dine out in Dublin. On the packaging front, the CD and insert are beautifully designed (by Dublin's Emagine Media) and printed, with the cover sporting a duotone look -- plus a bit of color -- that continues throughout the rest of the insert book.

The album's release is a testament to the band's persistence: after opening Britain for the Cult in 1985, releasing an EP produced by U2's Bono, and touring America and Europe, the group had its second album in the can with MCA Records when suddenly -- weeks before the album's release -- label ownership changed and the group was dropped.

The band finally got their hands on the master tapes and have released it. It's New Wave-inspired Irish pop, with hooky melodies, a lean, driving sound, hints of the Waterboys, R.E.M., and the Talking Heads, and excellent production courtesy of a variety of Irish producers, as well as Dublin's famous Windmill Lane Studio. Check out the band's site for more information.

On the writing front, I loaded links for recent stories, including a bunch from Enterprise Systems on information security topics. I've also begun writing for IT Compliance Now, a publication dealing with information technology, and regulatory and compliance issues, and have a few stories there to date. Also, my second Times story, Web-mail@war, ran last month. It profiles Web mail offerings, including Google's still-in-beta Gmail. Unfortunately, due to a quirk in Toulouse-area distribution of The Times, I haven't gotten my hands on a printed copy yet. One Tabac owner told me it was because there was no one available to drive the papers from the airport into town on Saturday mornings. Another said it was on account of demand. With the Sunday Times arriving Saturday afternoon, apparently distributors didn't think the window for sales of the Saturday edition was enough to bother shipping it. I'm not sure which theory I should subscribe to.

July 3, 2004
My first-ever story for The Times (of London) runs today. Called "Slipped Disks," it's about what happens to the data on your PC -- after you sell it.

June 21, 2004
Today the "Ten Best Government Intranets" report came out from Nielsen Norman Group, and the top 10 winners were also announced publicly. Business Wire carries an announcement here: "Government Intranets as Role Models; Nielsen Norman Group Announces The Top 10 Government and Public Sector Intranet Designs in the World."

I co-authored the 150-page report with the Nielsen Norman Group's Kara Pernice Coyne and Jakob Nielsen. In his weekly Alertbox column on usability, published today, Jakob Nielsen calls out key findings, including this: "Redesigning an intranet for usability often more than doubled the use of these award-winning designs from ten public-sector organizations." To read more or get a copy of the report, see here.

May 19, 2004
Summer comes to Toulouse, France, with 80-degree (F) days. First update in a little while, including a slew of information security stories (here's an easy link). My second story for Wired News ran recently on biometric ID cards in Britain.

Last month, I had the opportunity to visit Beijing and Shanghai, speaking with mobile phone operators there, as well as other journalists working in China. More to come soon from that. For now, a photo from the Great Wall, near Beijing (at right).

April 1, 2004
My first article for HSPstreet.com, which covers the hosting industry, ran today and yesterday in two parts. Here's part one: "Memo to the United States: The German Hosting Providers Have Arrived," and part two, "The battle grows beyond low prices."

March 23, 2004
Updated the homepage with new links. Also created a 2004 Archive which contains everything I've done this year. I'd like to run the archive back in perpetuity, but as I cut, paste, and style the text it occurs to me I need some kind of content management system that would let me input the data once, then allow dynamic output -- by date, by subject, by publication, etc. Any ideas?

March 16, 2004
My first-ever story for Wired News ran today. "Europe Considers Harsh Piracy Law" details the European Parliament's directive, passed last week, to standardize anti-piracy laws across all member countries. With 10 new countries about to bump the number of member states up to 25, the pressure was on.

February 25, 2004
Days of DSL, working at home, even snow: it floats thinly through the air here like it doesn't know what to do. True, it's rare, though we're getting "a lot" here in Toulouse. As a native of Chicago, it's strange to me I don't miss snowy winters more.

Though the city is in the midst of gray days, I've been exploring: the Pont Neuf bridge, the gorgeous, mostly Romanesque St-Sernin (see left). Toulouse is beautiful, though I'm only now adjusting to the pace; much more relaxed than Paris.

February 11, 2004
Site updates: I've relocated to Toulouse, a southern French city renowned ed (especially among the French) for its cuisine. New photos to come of the Toulouse area, plus hopefully the accumulated (as yet unpublished) backlog of restaurant reviews here and in Paris. Just for fun. First I have to wait for the DSL to get hooked up.

January 12, 2004
Happy New Year to all! I moved myself from an IBM laptop running Windows XP to a small Macintosh Powerbook. Still working out the kinks but have Dreamweaver up and running to do Web site updates again. Many more photos to post just as soon as I get the time.