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Peter Wall | Home: http://pwall.net |
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OK, the big move has started.
Last night was the farewell party at my apartment here in New York,
surrounded by packing materials and the detritus of 8 years of living in
this city.
Thanks to everyone who came.
In a short while my home server while be disconnected and packed up for
shipping.
That means the all the functions that require the home server will no
longer be available, principally the “click-through”
to larger image files.
I will also have relatively limited access to my email — at times
only by cellphone.
Please understand if I don't respond promptly, and please don't send any
messages with large attachments until I get myself established again.
I'm hoping to have some of the functionality of the home server restored
within a week or two, but it may take a while to get back to the current
level.
So, now I'm off — heading home …
Greg Brice, Alan's partner, is dead.
He was found dead outside a club in Auckland, and while the cause of death
has not yet been established, foul play is not suspected.
An accident?
A seizure?
At this point we still don't know but I must say I'm relieved to hear
that there is no suspicion of criminality.
Greg was one of life's true individuals.
Quirky, idiosyncratic, one-of-a-kind — and mostly in a good way.
While I enjoyed many of his eccentricities,
I have to say that some of his career choices puzzled me, and his taste
in television could only be described as atrocious.
Judge Judy indeed!
I had already figured that I was going to need a separate television in
the guest bedroom if Alan and Greg were going to stay with me in Sydney.
But Greg was a good friend.
He was loyal and conscientious, and he was genuinely supportive of those
he cared about.
His values were impeccably decent, and his judgement … well
… er …
There was never any question that Greg was the right man for Alan.
Alan has a very strong personality and he needed a strong partner —
Greg was not someone to be easily intimidated, and while in other
circumstances this could have led to unpleasant confrontations, both of
them had the sense and the motivation to accomodate their differences.
And they both benefitted from those differences — each bringing to
the relationship quirks and characteristics that enriched both their
lives.
And there is no doubt that Alan and Greg were devoted to one another.
I often heard each of them make dismissive or negative comments about
the other, mostly in jest although occasionally with an edge of real
exasperation, but there was never any doubt about their underlying
feelings — Alan loved Greg and Greg loved Alan.
As Alan's friend from before he met Greg, I know that Greg made Alan
very happy, and I loved him for that.
But as well, he was a lovely man in his own right.
Goodbye Greg.
We'll all miss you.
A page of photos, posted just after I heard the news, is
here.
Greg in New Mexico, January 2006 (at the
Very Large Array).
If you do a search on Google for
"Peter
Wall", you'll find that it's not a particularly uncommon name.
There's an academic
from Sweden (yes, Sweden),
a guitar teacher from
France (yes, France), and
a General in the British Army, to mention just a few of
the Peter Walls you'll find.
And then there's a blog named simply
Notes (formerly
Res Ipsa Loquitur)
by a student at
San Joaquin College of
Law in California.
This Peter Wall uses his blog largely as a political soapbox, expressing
views which overlap with my own in many respects, and diverge
significantly from my views in others.
Then there's the Peter
Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British
Columbia in Canada — a gift from a Vancouver businessman named,
unsurprisingly, Peter Wall.
This Peter Wall is also the owner of the
tallest building in Vancouver (I'd always heard
Vancouver was a lovely city but now I have another reason for visiting).
Because universities generate a lot of web references, the Peter Wall
Institute tends to dominate the search results for Peter Wall.
There's also
a former Liverpool football player,
the Dean of the Diocese of Niagara, Ontario,
a former Junior Mr. World (one of my favorites) and
many, many more.
And there's me.
So if you've found this page through such a search and you're wondering
which Peter Wall I am, let me summarize: I was born in Cumbria in the
north of England in 1951, moved to Manchester when I left school, and
emigrated to New Zealand in my early twenties.
I lived in Auckland for many years before moving to Melbourne, Australia,
and then to Sydney.
Over seven years ago I moved to the U.S., and I currently live in
New York, although as noted above that is about to change.
If these facts fit the person you're looking for, chances are you've found
me.
I knew I shouldn't have mentioned it.
For some months this page was coming up as the first result
in a Google search for
"Peter
Wall" (in North America, at least).
It subsequently slipped to about ninth or tenth place, although right now
it's back up to second.
But Google isn't the only game in town.
If you search on Yahoo! for
"Peter
Wall", right now I come out in the first position after the
sponsored links.
Clearly Yahoo! is the superior search engine.
I'm still not sure how my high placements happen — the search
engine companies are very secretive about their page ranking algorithms,
and I have no way of knowing what it is about this page that causes it to
rank so highly.
Or what causes it to be demoted later.
Let's see if Yahoo! will turn out to be as fickle as Google.
A few of my friends have websites.
I'm mentioning them here for mutual support, and in the hope that it will
raise all our search rankings.
Gary Stewart has a website
featuring his art work.
Heidi Schuster has a website
with photos and news (and that annoying dancing baby).
Chris Roberts also has a
website.
And Heidi and Chris have a shared
website.
Lily Chang has a photo website, but
I think she updates it even less frequently than I do mine.
Kathie Callaghan
has a website for her recruiting business here in New York.
Rob Byrnes has a blog.
Will Schenk has a blog.
And Laam has an online retail store called
Jesper-LA.
If I've left anyone out please don't hesitate to draw my attention to the
fact.
No changes to the appearance of the website this time round.
In December 2006 I moved the full-size images to my own
home machine, leaving the rest of the content (HTML pages, thumbnail
images and ancillary files) on the web hosting facility.
This means that there is now no limit on the amount of space I can use
for photos, but it also means that the full-size photos may occasionally
be unavailable because my machine is down for some reason.
There is now an indicator on the photo pages to show whether the image
server is available — if the indicator is red try again later.
For information about this website, see here.
Sun, Sun Microsystems, Java and JavaOne are trademarks or registered
trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries.
This website, all text content, formatting, programming, photographs and
Java applets are copyright © 2001 – 2008 Peter Wall.
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