Worldwide Dave

So you're on a trek in the Himalayas, close to Everest. A combination of food poisoning and altitude sickness has made you so ill that you're vomitting with alarming regularity and so weak that another member of the group has to carry you on her back. It would rather put you off the whole idea of travelling, wouldn't it?

Well, not if you're David Thompson it wouldn't. He experienced all of the above in 1996 and, far from vowing never to venture beyond his home in California, he has developed a real passion for travel. Soon after his Himalayan experience he set up Dave's Travel Corner, a website that has expanded over the years to become a magnificent resource for all adventurous types.

This reassuringly uncommercialised site presents reports and photographs from Dave's many travels in various parts of the world. It also features travellers' tales submitted by other globe-trotting folk as well as Dave's own top travel tips (a toilet roll - with its cardboard tube removed - is always a useful thing to have on you, apparently). Dave's travel articles also appear in the Upbeat Times, a monthly Californian newspaper which, as the name suggests, likes to take a thoroughly positive view of life.

And when he's not travelling (or writing about it) Dave spends his time being the CEO of the Internet service provider Pacific Online, doing a bit of recreational gold mining, writing poetry and making harshly critical comments about modern country music. No wonder he never gets time to watch television.

According to Dave, '99.9% of the time computers do not work correctly'. Surely not.