My name is Francis Turner. I usually go by the nickname of [Dirty]
Dingus, which is the name wished on me by a bunch of Samurai hashers.

I live on the Riviera, but for the last year have actually been
working in Wiesbaden most weeks. This is good for air miles but has no
other advantages I can think of. Despite the ocasional little issuettes,
such as a need to completely rewire the place, I love our house in France,
which is 'un vrai mas provencal' - see my web page for some pictures
of our olive trees - and the quality of life in France, so I'm not moving to
Germany full time.

I'm originally English but have not lived in England since I graduated
from university. Since then I spent 9 months in Finland, 2+ years in
Japan, nearly 7 in California and now 3 here. As one of my colleagues
put it I am "try-lingual" in that I try to speak many languages. I've
travelled a lot (40+ countries so far and about 2/3rds of the US
states). My wife is Japanese, an excellent cook, artist and budding
photographer. She'll be exhibiting in Kobe next June so feel free to
come see :)

A large part of my social life has been defined by the Hash House
Harriers - a group defined as a "Drinking Club with a Running
Problem". The hash has resulted in many friendships, many hangovers,
being run over by a mercedes, my nickname and my marriage. It also
keeps me fit and lets me see the parts of places normal tourists often avoid.

I work with computers. I started off as a programmer, discovered I was
good at troubleshooting and so became a bugfixer ratehr than creative
programmer. Then I became a network designer/troubleshooter. Now I'm
CIO of a small biochemical company which means I do everything for
them including writing programs in Perl.

DD