I went for a walk in the area around the hotel, and had a terribly unhealthy but authentic lunch. I had an "English breakfast" which includes beans, bacon, sausage, eggs and something fried that tasted good but I don't know the name of.

I checked into the hotel -- a cute room with a tiny bed. I plan to go out for walk along the river in a while and I realize that I don't have a large selection of clothes to wear for this weather. I brought shorts and sandals...

It's 11.45 am local time now and I'm in the lobby of my hotel in London. Around 8.30 am we landed at Gatwick airport, and after journey by train and cab I'm now waiting for check-in to start.

I guess in theory I could have rented a car, but I'm quite happy with the train... it's pretty strange to see cars on the left side of the road, especially at crossings. I've been in the U.K. a few times before but I didn't drive yet then so I never really paid it attention. I had to consciously think about where to stand so a cab could stop and pick me up.

The flight was nice. The seat next to me was empty and I slept quite a bit. I had a great hamburger at the airport for dinner, sort of a good-bye to American food for a week.

The Farrington train station.

I am on my way to London today. On Monday and Tuesday I have meetings for my work in our London office. I'm really looking forward to it -- we're talking about some exciting things.

Travel wise, I am as ready as can be. I'm scheduled to arrive at Gatwick Sunday morning local time, 24 hours earlier than I really have to. Should something make me miss my flight from Newark tonight, I can take the next one a day later and still be nicely on time. All the same, my flight from Newark isn't until 8 pm and I'm scheduled to arrive around 5 pm so there's plenty of room for delays.

An example of unexpected incidents is that when we went to the supermarket to pick up some fresh bread, an hour before I was scheduled to leave the house, a police car stopped in front of us and blocked the road. There was a parade just around the supermarket, and all 3 crossings from our house under freeway 147 were blocked by the police. We tried all 3 crossings (in vain), and at the third one we parked and walked and ran towards to supermarket. We quickly picked up the bread and went to pay. When you're in such a hurry everybody seems to be slow, but due to the parade Whole Foods was almost empty so we were done quickly. We ran back to the car and we arrived 10 minutes before the cab picked me up.

At first the flight to Newark seemed to have a short delay, "I just wanna board very leisurely" said the flight attendant, but in the end we arrived on time.

I have the last seat in the plane, and there's nobody next to me which is nice. From the air it is clear to see how the drought of the last months is affecting lakes in North Carolina (there have been severe water restrictions in effect since the summer).

Writing an article for my website. My laptop bag is full with electronics -- camera, webcam, laptop of course, and three different headsets.

The New York area is incredibly densely populated. The view from the airplane window is so different than above North Carolina.

Yesterday evening we went to Andrej's birthday party that he celebrated on a parking lot at Duke.

This may sound like an usual location but this weekend is the weekend that the season tickets for the Duke basketball team are on sale. The basket ball team is Duke's most successful sports team and tickets are in high demand. Students who want those tickets have to "stay in line" for over 48 hours, and on Sunday evening the tickets are distributed. Over the years this weekend has become a big party weekend, and in addition to students staying in tents there are many who choose to rent a big truck or even a RV to spend the weekend as comfortable as possible.

Andrej, a Ukrain national, had brought many Ukrainian snacks and drinks (vodka, of course) and celebrated his birthday in style. We didn't stay until very late but it was fun. When we left he gave of some Ukrainian sweets for in the car.

The basket ball team on TV.

So, you could stay in a tent...

...or you can rent a truck. The party was in front of a truck rented by Duke economics graduate students.

There's an article on Economist.com about a black market in candy bars in a school where candy bars are no longer sold by the school.

Reading that article brought back some really nice high school memories. When a vending machine for candy was placed in the hallway where we used to sit in the breaks, we decided to undercut it and made a nice profit for about two weeks.

For years I have been listening to web radio. When I worked in the Netherlands I found http://www.shoutcast.com, a collection with free MP3 streams with a wide variety of music styles. Most of the streams I listen to are broadcasted by DI.fm or Sky.fm, its partner company.

Instead of going through Shoutcast.com, I found myself listening to Sky.fm pretty much all the time. The music selection is excellent and their servers are so reliable that it's as good as listening to an MP3 collection on your hard disk.

A few months ago I upgraded to the premium service. Partly to get rid of the advertisements, and partly because I want to support the company in the hope they'll stay alive in the wake of the new royalty fee scheme for internet broadcasting. I don't know who's wrong or right in that conflict between the RIAA and internet broadcasters, but I do know that I would really miss web radio if they have to take their service down.

Occasionally you may see a spam comment on the website: somebody making commercials for other websites or commercial products, usually of dubious value.

If they show up, I delete such comments within a couple of hours. In fact, the great majority of spam comments are automatically blocked by filters (up to 50 comments a day). This morning somebody told me that a real, legitimate comment was filtered out... which is not what I want!

I've changed the filter settings. Comments placed by logged in users will not be checked for spam anymore, only comments from anonymous users will. If you do experience any problems please let me know -- your comments are a very big part of the fun of this website.

Last week when we came back from Southpoint Mall with Joost and Ankie the odometer reached 20,000 miles.

We've had the car for a year.

Yesterday Julian Milan Zane was born!

Julian was born at 5.13 am in New York and mother and son are doing great. He's 20" and weights 7 pounds 7.2 ounces.

A wonderful addition to the Zane family.

Jonathan, Irena, Ilana: many congratulations from both of us!

This afternoon I went for a long walk in the Eno River State Park.

The park is very close to us, maybe a 15 minute drive. The river Eno floats north of Durham, and the banks of the river are a State Park for a number of miles. I've been in the park before, that was on the west side of the river.

Today was notably colder than it has been in the last months. I was still in my shorts and a T-shirt but I could feel that the fall is slowly starting.

I started at Cole Mill Road, but I noticed that the trails on that side of the river are pretty short. I started the trail and took a car bridge to the other side, and walked about 30 minutes outside the part to get to the trails on the other side that are longer. I encountered a guard dog there and I wasn't really looking forward to go back the same way.

When I was on this second trail I saw that in fact there is a crossing in the river and on my way back I used that crossing. With some athletic jumps I made it safe & dry to the other side. The trail runs mainly through woods and there's a variety of wild life in the park. I saw a tiny frog, but the nicest was a close encounter with four deer near the end of my hike.

Entrance of the park (Cole Mill Road).

The trail through the woods.

A tiny little frog. I only noticed it because it was moving.

Walking outside the park. My encounter with a guard dog earlier was a surprise and I was glad it decided not to attack me.

I went back into the park, this time on the other side of the river. Geese on the river.

Ruins of an old house.

On the way back I crossed the river the exciting way.

On my way back I saw a group of four deer. They were staring at me for about a minute before they ran off. Beautiful creatures.