30 May, 2024
Taller buildings let us design better towns
I lived in a range of places as a kid, partly because my father was a bit of an itinerant who didn’t know what he wanted in life, other than that I mustn’t live with my mother. Go figure. Eventually I got to settle down with my grandmother, but in the process I learned a […]
28 June, 2023
Recovering from a heart bypass. The physical and mental challenges.
Having a coronary artery bypass isn’t much fun and comes with challenges. Four years later I thought I’d describe some more of my experiences.
4 September, 2022
Steps and missteps on my path out of poverty
At 18 I was skint and got made homeless. It took a lot of graft, patience and mistakes to get out of that and into a moderate middle class lifestyle. Here’s how.
26 April, 2021
I broke my heart in five places and got it fixed
A year ago, I was sitting, shorn of all body hair and waiting to go in for a five or six hour operation. I knew the next two weeks would be hell.
11 March, 2014
Bono’s office, some time in 2014
Hi guys, I suspect you know why I’ve called you in here for this meeting. Adam, Larry, uhm… hat guy… you know that costs have been rising and, what with piracy and everything we just don’t get the receipts we used to. Obviously that means we have to find some savings and, after looking through […]
22 February, 2013
Finding a missing person in South America (and elsewhere)
I promised, ages ago, that I’d write up some tips on how to find somebody who’d gone missing in South America. Recently I had an email from somebody in the same situation which has spurred me into action. Since 1997 I’ve found or been found by my mother, my brothers and my sister. Here I’m […]
8 September, 2010
Extreme Landscapes
I’m now back in Arica following my trip to San Pedro de Atacama and Bolivia. I have a couple of things to deal with here before heading back to Lima for my flight home. I’ve been foiled by this computer in the hotel from getting a decent image gallery up from the last eight days […]
29 August, 2010
Quiet Weekend in Arica
I’m staying put while I wait for the headstone to be finished and fitted, and consequently got to see an Arican weekend. There’s not a lot for me to do in many ways, so yesterday I spent some time going through all of my father’s papers and notebooks. I found evidence of one email address […]
28 August, 2010
The Story of Juanito
Here’s something… a smiling, happy and charming man who knew my father in Arica, lives just around the corner from the hotel I’m staying at. He actually lives in the cabin that guards a car park. Just him. He’s been married twice, I believe, but that’s all I know. So how can I tell his […]
27 August, 2010
The Funeral
And so it came. In a way it’s weird… I always felt there were only two likely things to happen. First, I would find my father (or he would find me) and a period of reconciliation may take place. Closeness, perhaps never, but reconciliation would be fine. Second, I would never find him, and that […]
25 August, 2010
Arica – Day 1
For no obvious reason I’ve woken up really early today. Maybe it’s something to do with the herd of elephants that evidently checked in around 1am. Or the, ahem, charmingly rustic plumbing that means the noise levels in here pick up markedly as the hotel awakes. But it’s not a bad hotel, the Hotel Amaru, […]
24 August, 2010
Chris Coveney…the Introduction
I’ve started writing this post in Amsterdam airport…I’m on my way to Arica in Chile where I’ll be (hopefully) burying my father, Chris, who died on the 19th of July. I say hopefully not because this is something I’m looking forward to but because I face a number of legal and monetary issues with the […]
8 June, 2009
Five Things Bing Does Better than Google
MS have, at last, come up with what appears to be a competent rival to Google. Here’s five ways in which it beats Google.
7 June, 2009
Crazy European Sports To Try This Summer
Europeans are considered to be the best educated, most sophisticated people on the planet. They also like diving into bogs, throwing tomatoes at one another, and chasing cheese.
25 May, 2009
mySQL Database Search & Replace With Serialized PHP [Updated]
Ever needed to migrate a database to a new server or website (especially with WordPress and other PHP applications) and been stuck because when you do a search and replace some of the data seems to get corrupted?
17 July, 2006
Ouch – garage door dangers
If you don’t open your up and over door properly you can get hurt when you walk into the corner of it. Here’s a quick shot to show just how much – note that I’d already rinsed my head once and this was the bleeding quite a few minutes later. I wasn’t too happy. Being […]
16 March, 2006
Ouchy Wouchy!
When someone says they want to see you at noon, your mind usually meanders to thoughts of lunches. A salad perhaps, or maybe some pasta. And a beer. Hmmmm… lovely lovely beer. Not Dr O’Dempsey. Nice bloke though he is, he had an ulterior motive. You see, since New York I noticed that a mosquito […]
16 February, 2006
Ouch…
I thought a handy idea would be to carry some samplers of aftershave. Then if I wanted to smell nice I could just use that. Small and light. These samples tend to come in small glass vials. And in a rucksack, small glass vials aren’t so clever. They were safely inside my washbag, but sadly […]