• BT Content Connect service faces ‘two-tier net’ claims – “BT supports the concept of net neutrality, but believes that service providers should also be free to strike commercial deals, should content owners want a higher quality or assured service delivery.” I’m not sure I can parse this. BT both supports net neutrality… and also doesn’t?
• Demolition of the Paris Metro – Great images of the Paris Metro.

• 10 cheap and cheerful city breaks – Some ideas for next years November trip…
• Schneier on WikiLeaks – “Just as the music and movie industries are going to have to change their business models for the Internet era, governments are going to have to change their secrecy models. I don’t know what those new models will be, but they will be different.”
• Publishers take note: the iPad is altering the very concept of a ‘book’ – The future of publishing?
• eclipse of 2010 – Great images of the recent eclipse.

It may be a silly idea, but that’s never stopped me before. Yes, travelling to Holland would be the thirteenth year where I’ve spent some or all of November out of the country.

I decided on The Hague for a few reasons. First, it would be short. I was starting a new job so I couldn’t take very much time off work. The Netherlands is just a short flight from London so there was no need to try to ask for a day off in the first few weeks! Secondly, I spent a few days in Den Haag in 2007. Unfortunately it was in December and I was working a little way out of the city centre. I wandered around after dark, looking for somewhere decent to eat but otherwise saw very little. It did look pretty, though, so I flagged it for a later visit.

Late to the party again, but I finally found what I think is a suitable image for this weeks PhotoFriday challenge, “Vivid.” This picture was taken so long ago that it’s actually on film (remember that?). It’s in Tromso, Norway. I thought the colours of the buildings and sky were very bright, deep and vivid contrasted with the snow.

I nearly didn’t take part in this weeks PhotoFriday challenge, “Photoshop Skills,” as I’m not a big Photoshop user. I tend to tweak images, enhance the colours, maybe a little dodging and burning, but nothing that would show my Photoshop skills — the whole point of my edits are normally that you can’t see them!

Then I remembered that I’ve spent quite a lot of time over the years trying to make the perfect panorama. The above image, taken in Siena, Italy, is perhaps the best that I’ve managed. (I’ve used a variant of this one before for PhotoFriday.)

For the past few weeks I have spent almost as much time in Switzerland as I have at home. Unfortunately with business trips you can never guarantee that you see anything more of the place than the airport, and office and a hotel¹.

Fortunately I did finish “early” a couple of days though and the weather did manage to cooperate.

My first time in the city I arrived at the office in a taxi and walked five minutes to the hotel. Dinner wasn’t far away either. I had no impression of the orientation or size of the place. Well known for being next to a lake, I couldn’t have told you which direction to find it.

• June 22, 1783: Icelandic Volcano Disrupts Europe’s Economy – It’s not just 2010 where this was a problem…
• WWDC – The Acceleration – “But at one point everything exploded and there was no way to keep up with all the new API:s and all the new things Java was attempting to do. I feel that we’re approaching that point with iOS (formerly known as the iPhone OS).” As someone who does this in my spare time, this is certainly something that I’m feeling right now!
• I’m Comic Sans, Asshole – Your favourite font responds to criticism…

It’s been a while since I got back from Paris but things have been so hectic since then that I’ve not found the time to document my trip.

The last time I was in Paris as a tourist I did most of the obvious stuff which meant that this time I was able to just hang out and wander around without any particular aim. That I also had great weather and some luck factored in to make a great weekend.

I know I say this every week, but I had difficulty picking my image for this weeks PhotoFriday theme, “The Coast.” And that’s because my first reaction was, well, any picture with the sea or ocean in it. Then I realised that “The Coast” is a little more specific than that; it may be where the water meets land but, to my mind at least, it doesn’t conjure images of a beach. Hence this picture take towards the end of my week in Corsica, in Porto.

As I write this I should have just returned from a trip to Istanbul. Unfortunately the now infamous Ash Cloud put a stop to that before it even started. I spent a Friday evening going through cancelling my flights, hotels and tour.

Dispiriting doesn’t begin to cover it.

But I wasn’t going to let something like that completely ruin my week. Limited to the UK, I decided to go to Salisbury and the near by Stone Henge, two places that I’ve not been to for a long time.