Yesterday morning the world lost a fantastic individual. I am honoured to have known him, be his colleague and above all, be his friend.

David was an amazing man. He was strong emotionally and physically, one of the very slender number of people whom, upon meeting, one naturally respects before words are even spoken. He had a genuine ability to fill a room, so much so that when he spoke, everyone listened. He didn't suffer fools gladly - he had a bullshit detector second-to-none - but was always absolutely and unconditionally fair. He could get angry, storm about and swear like a trooper (all of which often came with hilarious consequences), but it was all born of real passion to do what was absolutely the best thing, the right thing, in any given situation.

He was a great boss and mentor. He lead from the front and took the flak so his team didn't have to. This was particularly noticeable when he first left work to recieve treatment for his cancer: with absolutely no disrespect whatsoever to the people who came in to take over David's role, the ship he had been sailing lost its mooring and rocked violently out at sea for some time. If anyone were blind enough not to realise how good a manager David was when he was around, they certainly could when he was gone. That's not to say his team didn't cope, David had instilled in us the authority to master our own destiny and it was down to that leadership that even in his absence, everyone continued to pull together and write some of the best software I've been lucky enough to work with.

It was David who orchestrated my move from Development to Product Management. "I'm looking forward to getting your shit code off our servers", he quipped, but the lengths he went to ensure I was happy and well looked after at that time, was off the scale.

Whislt trying to keep clichés to a minimum, David was a great inspiration to us all. If I can live my life a tenth as good as he did his, I'll have achieved something. Even when he was very sick he continued to join in, was always positive, stayed smiling and had time for everyone. As my colleague Chris so perfectly said, "I do wish people would die in the right order".

The pain of losing David will hurt for a very long time. It is nothing however compared to the grief his loving wife will be going through, or his young boy and girl who will grow up without their dad. Our thoughts are with them.

Rest in Peace, mate.

Wow, how did this blog become so neglected? I'll make it a New Year Resolution to be a more frequent diarist, one of these years.

We're on the cusp of the noughties and, for the wife and I, the cusp of a complete life change. Half running headlong to embrace it, half dragging our heels, too full of nervous self-doubt to accept the inevitable, the coming years are going to be very different from what we know now. Our son is definitely only days away.

Aside from the anticipation of our new arrival, I can safely say this has been an eventful ten years!

This time a decade ago I'd yet to fly in a commercial plane and hadn't lived anywhere outside Yorkshire, England. Since then I've lived abroad for half of those years, visited twelve new countries (working in four of them) across four continents. My massive move to London in 2000 seems almost trivial now, of course it wasn't at the time.

In some ways, the biggest moment was the return to England after so long away. Seeing just a little piece of the rest of the world made me see my home country in a completely different light, we're not half as advanced as we like to think we are, but there were plenty of aspects of our society and home-comforts I was glad to re-embrace.

The key high points of the last decade must include taking the job (and the accompanying new life) in Bangkok: I can't imagine my life now had I followed my mothers wishes not to go! I later started my own company, watched it grow, watched it wobble, saw people living in poverty, saw people blasé in their massive wealth, lived through a coup, bought my first house and met and later married the girl (not all necessarily in that order).

On sadder notes, I remember the feeling of being in a Greek airport lounge for hours on end unable to depart, reeling from the unforgettable images of the World Trade Centre being flattened hours previously and a solemn anticipation of the implications this act would have for everyone everywhere. Also, the things I saw in the hospitals of Thailand in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami will stay with me forever.

I've definitely made my fair share of mistakes in these last ten years but I'm glad I went out and did it all. As long as I've learnt from the majority of those experiences, I'll be happy with that. Definitely no regrets.

What has been key throughout has been the countless excellent people I've been lucky to meet plus the fantastic individuals I've had the pleasure of working with and learning from. Thanks for having me.

It's the evening of the 31st of December and we're preparing to go out to party. Have a very happy new year.

I received this scam email in my BKKPages.com inbox yesterday:

(Please transfer this email to your President or appropriate person, thanks)
Dear President,

We are the department of Asian Domain registration service in china. have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on Sept. 7, one company which self-styled "Gody Industries Ltd" were applying to register "bkkpages" as Network Brand and several Asia/China Domains based on this brand name.

After our initial checking, we found the name were similar to your company's, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we will handle this issue better. Out of the time limit we will unconditionally finish the registration for "Gody Industries Ltd".

Best Regards,
Peter Liu
Room 1303,No.11,Lane 788,Xiupu Road,
Nanhui District,ShangHai,China
Tel:+86-21-69106991
Fax:+86-21-69106670
Please consider the environment before you print this e-mail.

It was one of those mails that immediately screamed the word SCAM! in my head but was worded in such a way that I had to re-read it properly to really register what was going on. Their 'call to action', based on the notion that a process was already underway, is rather crafty and the website they link to is a plausible fake, but ultimately, it is just neatly channeled spam.

Search for their phone number and you'll see a bunch of other "companies" doing the same thing. Search for random sentences from the above and you'll find a whole bunch of other bloggers who have been victim to the same or similar attacks. If you get one like this, please hurry up and ignore this domain registration scam.

Daeng is pregnant.

Yes, I'm going to be a dad. It's all very surreal typing this sentence, even moreso as each time I say or type those words it remains as novel, unfamiliar and as striking as the first time it passed my lips. My body is rejecting to build a tolerance and each time is the polar opposite of deja-vu.

Don't get me wrong, I love what is happening and all the change that he or she will bring. I couldn't be more excited to be honest, it's what we've wanted for a long time though nothing quite prepares you for the realisation when it strikes. Furthermore, I'm assured that this tingling apprehension all morphs into something altogether different (and better) the instant a crying, defenceless dependant is placed in your hands. Until then, here we are.

Poor old Daeng isn't having a great time of it with morning sickness but it seems, on average, to have been getting better the last couple of weeks. It goes without saying she's totally excited too, though a tiny part of me wonders if this is her new excuse to eat as many litres of ice cream as Wall's produces each day.

Our baby is due at the end of January next year. We don't know the sex yet (next month's scan should prove that), though we have some ideas for names lined up for either eventuality, "Flake", "Neopolitan" and "Cornetto" having already removed from the list.