Sorry there's been another lengthy delay between updates of the website.

I mentioned last time that I'd had a disk failure on my home server — this turned out to be terminal and I had to rebuild the machine from scratch. I had the machine functioning normally again within a week or so, but I never got around to recovering my server software from copies on other machines. Until now.

I think it should be mostly back to normal, with all of the images available as they used to be. I'll look at putting some more recent images up shortly.

I'm still working in Canberra. I enjoy the work, if not the travelling, and all the driving through the Australian countryside has given me a closer sense of affinity for the country. Previously I'd spent almost all my time in the cities, first Melbourne and then Sydney, and it's been good to see more of the open spaces in between.

As with the photos, I'll try to update the written material shortly. This weekend has been spent getting the technical aspects of the site working again, and that has left little time for the content.

An Emu alongside the road between Goulburn and Marulan. Notice how dry the grass is — this was before the drought broke. Now the paddocks are much more green and lush.

If your browser allows JavaScript you've probably noticed the clocks at the top of the page. I have found it useful to show the time in various places I may want to communicate with, and I thought others may find it useful as well. I have ideas for a few more changes, but it all depends on having the time...

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 summarise: 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. In late 2000 I moved to the U.S. and I lived in New York for almost 8 years before moving back to Sydney in 2008. 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 third.

But Google isn't the only game in town. If you search on Yahoo! for "Peter Wall", for a long while I was coming 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.

Dermot Bremner has a website for his Transheldrake marine and yacht logisitics and transportation consultancy businesses.

Selwyn van Zeller has a website for his Maths In A Suitcase and Science In A Suitcase businesses.

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.

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 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.

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