We've just returned from a week's vacation on the Amalfi Coast of Italy. For those contemplating a similar trip, here are a few scattered impressions.

While we were in India we took a week's vacation in the Andaman Islands, primarily to indulge in some diving. We spent most of our time on Havelock Island, which is a couple of hours by ferry from the main centre at Port Blair. Here's some scattered things to share from our experience.

We recently took our annual dive vacation. Whenever we do this we face a dilemma - do we go to Saba which we love so much, or do we try something new? Our answer to this was to go to Saba and somewhere new, which led to a longer vacation that made up for the long trip down from the frozen North East. Our new place was Dominica.

I recently needed to stay at a Heathrow airport hotel in order to make an early flight. A big annoyance of doing this is the difficulty of getting from a hotel to the airport. There are plenty of hotels that are just half a mile from the terminal 1-3 centre, but to get to them you have to use the Heathrow Hoppa bus service. This isn't a bad service, but is apallingly expensive: 4 UK pounds, each way, for a journey of half a mile. A half-mile is an easy walk, so I really balk at using a bus, let alone one that charges such a ridiculous fee. Fortunately there's an alternative, although Heathrow makes it hard to find.

I'm back from my trip now, so in return for all the tips I got over the emails, here are some of my reflections from our three week trip to Japan.

Recently we returned to one of our favorite places in the world, Saba - a very small island in the Caribbean, close to St Martin. In many ways the best things about Saba are the things it doesn't have. There are no beaches, no golf courses, no casinos. The mass tourism and resort complexes that litter so much of the Caribbean have ignored Saba since it's too small and too hilly. As a result the island is wonderfully quiet and relaxed.

We recently spend a week on vacation in the southern cities of Savannah and Charleston. I'd heard good things about both cities in terms of their beauty and historic interest - and I can confirm those good things. Both are well worth a couple days of wandering around.

Like most geeks I'm not much interested in fashion or having this season's styles. My philosophy is there isn't much point worrying about the packaging when there's nothing attractive about the contents. But I've had a few conversations with my geek friends about clothes, enough to inspire this entry.