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What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

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This is what I really look like:
http://www.flickr.com/people/ricardo/photosof/

My flickr stream is at:
http://flickr.com/ricardo

I was born and raised in a beach town in San Diego by Mexican-born parents. I have lots of family still in Mexico.
I went to school in Boston (studied Astro), and have lived in both San Francisco and Manhattan.
In 2008 I was married in Gibraltar to a girl from Lisbon.
From 2008-2011 we lived in Bloomsbury, London, UK.
We now live in the South Cotswolds in the Stroud district.

Photo of where we live now.

When people ask me where I'm from, I say "San Francisco." It is the city I grew up in, in many ways. I first moved there in 1992 and have lived in (in order): the Haight, Hayes Valley, Pacific Heights, Potrero Hill, the Marina, Nob Hill, the Mission and Bernal Heights.

My wife is an Antiquarian Bookseller and an Art History nerd.
She is also a really good Chef.
This is one of her weblogs.

I read a lot. I can read English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French. I hope to improve my Japanese enough to say that I can actually read it.

My secret to keeping up and even expanding language skills is to read detective novels. Here's my favorites:
Spanish: Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett and her Petra Delicado series set in Barcelona
Portuguese: Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza and his Espinosa series set in Rio de Janeiro
Italian: Augusto De Angelis and his De Vincenzi series set in Milan
French: Simenon of course but also Fred Vargas
Japanese: Would love to read Soji Shimada