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.

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.

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.

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