I knew most of the passwords but the more important ones I have very complex passwords for and rely on accessing my domain accounts directly to recover them. I have been able to do this for my personal domains - this one, kierenmccarthy.co.uk, for example - and I have tracked down the others. But one has been lost.

I haven’t used Eclipse as an ISP since I left Oxford in October last year, although my email account - kieren@kierenmccarthy.eclipse.co.uk - was still running and a number of friends continue to use it. While the account is still live, Eclipse has killed my access to their website so I can’t recover the password. It was a purposefully complex one as well. So, the upshot is that I am killing it off. By my rough estimates, this is the sixth email address I have killed off. Not including those like university and work email addresses that are ended for you when you leave.

I would say that I will keep “kierenmccarthy.co.uk” for a very long time into the future, so if people want to be certain of getting me, then kieren [at] that domain is going to be best long-term way forward. So sayonara Eclipse.

It felt good to have a bit of a think and a type. I still amaze myself that I buy any iTunes songs at all. And I also bought some CDs for the first time in nearly a year this month - but only because my van only has a CD player at the moment, my iPod radio thing doesn’t work in the van, and Los Angeles radio is absolutely dreadful. Even then though, I hesitated with buying a CD. Now I have to rip the tracks - what a pain.

Digital downloads *are* music from this point on. But because of that iTunes needs to make sure it doesn’t rest on its laurels. Anyway, you can read my blog post on the Comment is Free site here - complete with argumentative and aggressive comments from members of the public who have only read the headline and sub-head.

I’m going to put the money aside and into my van and helicopter lessons. But hang for a second. How come the government is *paying me* such a huge sum of money. All the Americans think that this refund - nearly four thousand pounds - is terrific. “Aren’t you lucky?” And it seems that getting a tax refund is a very common event. The systems are all in place and look extremely efficient - a sure sign in government that it happens alot. It seems talking to people as well that many of them actually wait for their refund - even look forward to it - in order to do something special. There is the sense that this is somehow free money. That you’ve lucked out.

Which is quite clearly collective madness. Having a massive refund doesn’t mean I have massive amount of cash to spend - it means I have been hideously over-charged on my taxes through the year. It means I have effectively given the US government a huge interest-free loan. And it means that the systems my company has put in place is taking, completely unnecessarily, more money out of my wage packet than it needs to - a LOT more than it needs to. It means that those months in which I have had to judge how much of my credit card I pay off, and figure out when my wages will appear in my account, have been completely unnecessary.

And yet somehow I am supposed to be overjoyed about this and go spend the money handed back to me on pumping up the failing US economy. Talking of which - another really odd thing. President Bush has given everyone - or appeared to give everyone - $600 direct by simply taking it off their tax bill. Or, if your tax bill is under $600 (which still strikes me as crazy) GIVING people money. I don’t understand - isn’t this direct manipulation of the economy by the government? Doesn’t that go 100 percent against the concept of the free market that is held is such enormous regard here in the United States of America?

Considering this is the most capitalist society on the planet, I simply can’t understand these two interventionist economic policies - holding your money interest-free for a year, and directly injecting funds using the tax system. I may have to read up on this. In the meantime, because I don’t know any better, I will have to simply enjoy the fact I have a big chunk of cash I wasn’t expecting.

I am currently arranging for some mechanics to go check it out, and if it’s all good will head down to Poway, California (near San Diego) to go pick it up possibly this weekend.

What you need to know about the split-screen VW camper van is that it is one of only two cars I have ever really properly desired. The second is the Citroen DS. It made sense to get the camper while I’m living in California because the climate is fantastic for curs not rusting, which means the cost of campers from 1960s is much lower as it hasn’t needed a complete rebuild.

In the next 10 years or so, the only split-screens available will be those lovingly restored (at great expense) by enthusiasts. Anyway, I am fulfilling a dream of nearly 16 years with this camper and I intend to drive it up and down California, checking out the coastline, the vineries north of Los Angeles, and north of San Francisco, the Joshua Tree national park, the Grand Canyon, Tijuana, and whatever else springs to mind.

Anyone that fancies jumping in the back and coming along for the ride, you know where to find me. Plenty of room.

But in between, and for Thursday and Friday this week, I will be at Domainpulse in Vienna giving a talk partly about my book, Sex.com, and partly about the history of making money from domain names. You can see the full programme here. It should be interesting: Wolfgang Kleinwachter, Peter van Roste, Sabine Dolderer, Patrik Faltström, Daniel Karrenberg plus a number of people I have yet to meet and look forward to doing so. If you’re going, see you there.

And, of course, as it always is, that airport is Heathrow. I hate Heathrow. I’ve always hated Heathrow. Even as a kid, I remember the sensation of life ebbing away from you as you sit in uncomfortable chairs next to grumpy people, eat dreadful food and get annoyed with snooty staff. It’s Heathrow, it’s British Airways, it’s delayed, and I’m flying economy, seat 49J, which means no sleep, cramped legs, and an incredibly frustrating effort trying to do work on my laptop for the next nine hours.

Still, I’m on my way to the ICANN meeting in Delhi which should prove to be the usual mix of fun, exhaustion, confusion and interesting events. Plus I’ve never been to India before. What’s happening at the ICANN meeting? Well, plenty. Discussions on front-running, on domain tasting, on new gTLDs and IDNs. And the JPA. And the translation programme - which I have been working very hard on and should really help ICANN become an international organisation. And, you know, all the other sorts of issues that underpin the future evolution of the Internet and which I now concern myself with every day.

I have to say though that I felt an itch as a journalist to get stuck into the US elections yesterday. Shame I wasn’t in the country for Super Tuesday. Ah well, new gTLDs and IDNs are going to have a bigger impact on the world than the next US president. And I mean that too.

Why is this material still in my brain and not on the page? Because of work. Too much work. Far too much work. This job is a constant invitation to burn-out. I think it is the three international meetings a year that is what really makes the workload impossible: there is never more than a week in which you can get on with all those things that need quiet periods to get done. I thank god that the cycle ride home (along the beach - it’s nice, even in crap weather) is 35 minutes. It’s the one conscious hour of the day I can’t be at my laptop. Although I did take two phonecalls on my way in this morning. How long before I’m balancing the Dell on my handlebars, trying to pick up WiFi signals from the beach houses?

Still, I’m going to Delhi in a week’s time. It’ll mean 37 hours in economy there and back (I’ll be in London, Paris and Vienna briefly if anyone desperately wants to meet up), but I should have time to go see the Taj Mahal at some point. And I’ve always fancy seeing that and India. The urge to take off a month and travel the sub-continent is pretty intense, I have to say. Anyway, more work, then sleep, then more work…

But you know their hearts aren’t in it. All the mass-produced, completely supply-reliable, unrottable, choose-your-shade-of-green foodstuffs that the multi-nationals supply them with make supermarkets’ lives much, much easier. And so supermarkets cheer themselves up by ripping off organic customers, charging an even greater mark-up on organic produce, and making their mass-produced products look more and more like the organic versions.

In the UK you can tell organic food because it looks weird. All bumpy, misshapen and vaguely threatening. It’s been pulled out the ground for chrissake. No beauty competitions underground, believe you me. As we speak, the chemical maniacs that produce most of our food are inventing new fertilisers that distort vegetables sufficiently to pass the ugly test but still just creep in under legal toxicity limits.

So I thought organic food would take the same design in the United States. But no. In the US, organic food still has to look as if it is an Oscar nominee and has been in make-up all morning. The crucial differentiator in the US is: organic food comes dripping wet.

Spade-like hands

Not wet like having been pulled out of a bucket, but wet like a huge farmer has filled up one of his huge hulking spade-like hands with water and then scattered on top of his glorious produce.

Everything’s wet. To the extent that you have to shake it when you pick it up - sending water flying over everything else. I have they have good drains underneath the veg racks. And, of course, not to be left out, the non-organic stuff also has *some* water sprinkled over it - but not as much. That’s how you tell.

Call me paranoid but I’m pretty certain that some supermarket big boss up there is enjoying this water-loading as a terrific joke against his customers that insist on continuing to buy organic produce. Two-thirds of a cent extra thanks to the weight of the water, he’ll be chuckling to himself. And they think it’s healthier. Broahahahahaha.

And then, on the other end of it is the pre-made salads in a bag.

These bags already have a notoriously poor reptutation. They are rinsed in all sorts of chemicals to make sure no bugs make it through and then they are sealed in nitrogen bags to keep them fresh. The result is: utterly tasteless nonsense. But I still buy them on occasion because I eat such little salad that if I buy all the ingredients (leaves) separately I know I will end up throwing most of it away.

So I bought a “Spring mix with herbs” bag a few weeks ago to occasionally grab at and shove a few leaves next to the meat and veg on the plate. I then spent a busy week in the office, a week in Rio at a conference, and two days sick with flu, and while cooking yesterday, noticed the bag at the bottom rung of the fridge. Carefully picking it up to avoid the leaf sludge, I was bemused, exciting and then appalled to discover that aside from very slight curling, it was in almost the exact same condition as when I left it.

I don’t know what the hell they’ve done with leaves but the fact that they’ve done it and the end products are still somehow digestible is testament to what mankind is capable of when faced with enough profit incentive.

Tubs

I don’t know where Americans got their love of sauces from but my god. It’s not the Land of the Free, it’s the Land of the Sauce. The more the merrier. And plenty of it. Why restrict yourself to a smattering of sauce that you dip your food into when you can smother it in that shit - and add another two on top. The more sauces, the more taste!

The aisle devoted to sauces is in turn impressive and depressing. I have a big problem with pre-created sauces. They always but always lose what makes a sauce - the delicate blend and punch of different flavours. You simply cannot stick a ton of ingredients into a monster vat, stir it up, shove the results in thousands of tiny bottles, stack em on shelves and expect them to taste anything like a sauce knocked up for the job alongside the meal.

But it’s far worse than that. What I’m describing is the best sauces. Most of the sauces in supermarkets over here are one-flavour e-number plastic gunk-fests. And to prove it, they come in enormous jars at ridiculously cheap prices. Don’t worry about the taste, feel the weight.

On the other side

But enough bitching and moaning. This is the US of A, which means that everything dreadful is balanced with something extraordinary.

In this case, it is choice. And high-quality choice when it comes to things Americans like. It may seem like an odd thing to say but the choice of ice creams is like nothing you’ve ever seen. Yes, ice cream isn’t *healthy* but then that doesn’t make it any less tasty, and there is the most tremendous array of ice cream. And most of it is extremely nice, bordering on sensational.

Likewise pizza. I don’t really like pizza (small bits of food on tomato and bread) but every now and again it’s a tasty and easy snack. Pizza bought from a supermarket everywhere else in the world is a pretty poor affair - floppy bread, plastic cheese, watery tomato. In America, the pizzas are often better than what you get in restaurants. Yes, they’re fatty, but they’ve got decent ingredients and they are, well, tasty.

But perhaps most importantly - and maybe it’s just California - the selection of wine is tremendous. It doesn’t cover the world as much as I’d like but there is a huge array with lots and lots of Californian reds. And they’re pretty good. I’ve been sampling at different prices and I’ve yet to hit a dud. A slightly different experience in the UK.

Plus of course many of the shops open for much longer hours - the Ralphs nearest me being open 24 hours. Yes, you can buy soaking wet lettuce at 4am if that floats your boat.

But what’s the biggest secret?

It has to be the hot plate with ready-cooked meatloaf and chicken-roasts. Yes they may be poor quality food and yes they may have been there all day, gently, slowly wasting away from heat exhaustion but buy one, tuck into it and against your better judgement, you’ll find it’s a taste revolution.

Am I serious? No. They look and smell absolutely disgusting. I’d rather cook a dead dog over a candle. But hey, so long as I never have to spend too long in a room with someone who eats this stuff, it remains a glorious bizarre blend of foodstuffs.

I believe ebooks are the inevitable future. It’s just another step along the digital revolution. But - and what a but - have you seen the state of the “Kindle”? It looks like a prototype. A prototype designed by 18-year-old students back in the 1980s. Here is good technology and big demand with crappy design - i.e. the perfect opportunity for Apple.

The problem is that if Apple gets to it fast then the control-freak company will insist in tying in content providers into its new format, will do deals with big bookshops and newspapers and will screw up the huge leap that a quality ebook reader will provide society.

Amazon’s Kindle downloads content over wireless - which is terrific - another example of why wireless networks are changing the way we function as a society, It is too pricey at the moment - $399 - and the content is too expensive. But all that will change if this takes off. And that’s the big question - are people ready for an ebook reader? I would say yes. With better design. Mobile phones are too fiddly; laptops too over-spec’d and slow.

I also like Amazon’s system for people to upload books into its system. It looks easy and appears to work. I have the ebook rights to my Sex.com book so when I get back from a Thanksgiving lunch I am going to in five minutes, I will try to upload my book and see what happens. I also have US rights to my book by the way. My publishers have let me down with that one. As soon as my workload lifts I will spend some time getting the book into the States and pushing it.

It will be a great day when I see my book being read on a well-designed non-Apple ebook reader. I just wonder how long that will be.