News and views on domain names, the Internet and life in general
From the category archives:
I am leaving my job as general manager of public participation for ICANN on 25 November.
Yesterday, the COO sent round a note to staff; this morning I find myself elevated to the point of wanting to dance. Whenever I leave a job, I get the feeling of a weight being lifted off my shoulders and, [...]
{ 21 comments }
I’ve always thought Eddie Izzard was supremely funny but I didn’t realise that he’d be a really nice bloke just to know and have a conversation with until today.
I embarked on some rather silly Twitter-following very early this morning (all sparked off by Stephen Fry tweeting about Trafigura) and ended up discovering that Eddie Izzard [...]
{ 1 comment }
Is this a flower reaching out of my Bird of Paradise – or just another leaf?
One of the things I love about Los Angeles (well, Southern California) is the abundance of the Bird of Paradise and its extraordinary bright orange (though sometimes black) unfurled mohican flower.
So when I moved to my new flat and had [...]
{ 1 comment }
Today’s my 34th birthday and I’m writing this post the evening before because I think I might give myself a break from all electronics for the day.
This time last year I took the day off and went surfing. I think I might do the same tomorrow. I have taken the day off work and [...]
{ 2 comments }
So one of the many questions rolling around my head, particularly since living in the United States, has been: was is American beer so bad?
It really is bad. I know Brits get mocked for flat, warm beer (I love it – taste is terrific), but American beer – your Coors, Buds and Millers – really is absolutely dreadful. Tastes of nothing at all, doesn’t refresh or quench. Just about the only thing it does is get your drunk if you can stand to drink enough of it.
Well, I have found out the answer. There was a History Channel documentary on US brewing history at the weekend and it was easy to define from that this peculiarity that an entire nation loves drinking rat’s piss while everyone else in the world has spent centuries savouring their beer.
And this is the three-part answer:
{ 5 comments }
So after 18 months of retaining my UK phone while living in the US, I finally got tired of paying £30 a month for absolutely nothing and killed the contract. It ends next week
Why did I keep it for so long? Well, for one, I didn’t expect to stay in the States all that long. I figured ICANN would drive me nuts within a year and I’d move back to Blighty. Plus I didn’t want to rely on just a work phone for contact with friends and family. And lastly I didn’t want to lose my telephone number – 07932 783686 – which I have had for over a decade.
Well, I am still at ICANN and so still in the States and I didn’t use my UK phone because to use it over here was prohibitively expensive. I don’t rely on just my work phone for contact – I mostly use Skype to contact friends and family. It’s free and it comes with pictures. And as for losing the number… Well I am the proud owner of a .tel domain name.
In fact, due to my name being slightly unusual, I have kieren.tel.
{ 3 comments }
We first learned that the domain name market was far from stable around eight years ago when the dotcom crash turned a booming market into dust in just a few months.
Over the years, that market has grown in strength: its stability saw people invest in advanced systems for buying and selling domains, and the never-ending demand for Internet sites, coupled with the fact the the number of top-level domains stayed the same and so the domain space became smaller, meant that prices increased steadily to the point where tens of thousands of domains became worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Well, the DOMAINfest domain auction has just demonstrated that the domain name space may be more stable but it ranks alongside art, rather than houses, when it comes to property.
In short, the auction was a bit of a wash-out, with none of the 200+ domains available exceeding expectations; most hitting the bottom-end of their estimated value; and a very large number meeting no bidders and being pulled off the floor.
{ 5 comments }
I’ll be taking pictures at DOMAINfest today and sticking them on Flickr – and possibly here – with a CreativeCommons license (free non-commercial use; accreditation required). The stream is below:
{ 1 comment }
One of the bizarre but wonderful things about living in Los Angeles is that when all your friends are freezing cold or trapped under the snow in January, you get to walk in the sun and witness the most extraordinary sunsets.
Last night I saw the makings of an extraordinary sunset and jumped on my bike to Venice to get some snaps. Here’s one and under that, a Flickr feed of the rest:
{ 2 comments }
It’s been six weeks since I last posted here. That can’t be good. And I have a ton of stuff to get out of my mind through my fingers. The one-day trivia brain of Los Angelenos; the US presidential election process; the insane bureaucracy and mind-control of this peculiar and remarkable country. Plus, lots of pics – some with world famous stars of the screen. And the tale of trying to get hold of my possessions after 16 weeks now.
Why is this material still in my brain and not on the page? Because of work. Too much work. Far too much work. This job is a constant invitation to burn-out. I think it is the three international meetings a year that is what really makes the workload impossible: there is never more than a week in which you can get on with all those things that need quiet periods to get done. I thank god that the cycle ride home (along the beach – it’s nice, even in crap weather) is 35 minutes. It’s the one conscious hour of the day I can’t be at my laptop. Although I did take two phonecalls on my way in this morning. How long before I’m balancing the Dell on my handlebars, trying to pick up WiFi signals from the beach houses?
{ 1 comment }
